10 Ways to Overcome and Treat Depression

Sometimes the most difficult thing that we do in our mental health journey is face the reality that we live in. For a long time, I looked at life as this idea that it wasn't real. This wasn't happening to me, this was not my problem. I don't have to deal with all of the ramifications of my past, depression is fake, anxiety is fake, bipolar is fake, all mental health is fake. That's what I used to think. And for me, what I realized looking back on that, is that was a survival mechanism. It was a defensive mechanism leveraging my own personal box. If you will, I put my mental health into a box. I realized that it was keeping me protected growing up. The thing that I always looked at was if mental health is really a problem, then why isn't everyone suffering? Why is it only these pockets of people? And then I started thinking about it more deeply. And I was like that's the case scenario for everything, even though there is suffering in the world and we see it on these grandiose scales, it's not always something that hits home. And the older that I got, the more deeply I had to step into my own journey and uncover the reality that in this life, I have been depressed. I have been anxious. I have been suicidal. And it got me thinking about. How do you really understand this mental health game when your whole life you've been trying to convince yourself that you're okay? Like how do you actually go about a healing journey when you've spent years trying to stuff down all of the pain? all the suffering all the hurt all the turmoil and pretend like you're fine, and then it dawned on me, you don't, you can't, and it's impossible.

And so my hope today is that what you will get out of this conversation that I'm having with you in this one on one, think of this like me coaching you right now. Let's say, for example, you came to me with a question that many of my clients come to me with. And you said, Michael, I cannot seem to overcome my own suffering, I'm depressed, I'm anxious, I'm insert whatever, can you help me? My answer to that question for anyone who I've ever worked with has always been no. And no, that's not the response you were expecting, okay. But the answer has always been no because I tell people this all I can do is show you the path That's it That's all I can offer you, I cannot change your life, I cannot force your hand I cannot make you become the hero of your own story, but what I can do is I can be here to guide you. I can be here to support you I can be here to show you possibility I can even be here in those moments in which you need me the most to help you move through and navigate the problem that is directly in front of you. But what I can't do is be the one who takes the action. And so someone will come to me and they will say, Michael, I feel this way about the world. And I'll ask them a very simple question. And that question is that true? And what I mean by that question is not, is your filling or are your feelings true? What I mean is that the reality that you live in? I remember once I was feeling unbelievably depressed, like this was after I had to come to allow myself to believe and understand and rationalize that depression was real. I was struggling so hard, I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't seem to take care of myself, I couldn't brush my teeth. My health was in shambles, my relationship was terrible, my money was terrible. Everything was not working in my life and I had to sit in the reality. I was suffering a massive bout of depression. And here's what I took from that. And this, again, this is my own experience. I'm not saying this would be your experience, but what I took from that was that this thing about depression was this unbelievable feeling of sadness, of hopelessness, of lack of interest. There was no pleasure in anything I was doing. I'd lost my appetite, my sleep was a wreck, I had fatigue, there was difficulty in everything that I was doing. And the levels varied day to day, and it wasn't until I would be around other people that I would realize Oh, I'm not depressed in this moment. I don't feel whatever those normal lingering feelings are when I'm using my energy to be in connection with other human beings. And then I would go back home from whatever it was. It could be a ball game or hanging out with my brothers, or it could be going on a date or any of the litany of things that we do as human beings. But I would go back home, and I would be in bed, and the lights would go out, the music would go off, and I would be with myself. And it was like, boom. Those feelings of hopelessness of sorrow of lack of fear would come up and I would sit in them and this was one of the most difficult things that I had to do in my journey was recognize the reality of the life that I was in and I started going deeper and deeper. Now, therapy. Therapy played a pretty significant role in this for me, because what it allowed me to do was have an understanding. This is the framework that I think is so important in therapy, is like creating an understanding of what is happening in your head. It was through practical action. Having a coach and having a community that is what pulled me through now full transparency. I will say this because I've said it before, I did try medication for a very brief period of time, I think it was maybe around a month, maybe a little bit longer than a month, and it made me crazy. I am going to caveat everything that I'm about to say with this. Medication did not help me, did help me was a series of things that I had to do to make sure that I could take my life back and control back from depression. And so the question becomes, what are things that I can do to overcome depression without medication? And that is what was in my head. I was like, okay, cool. If I can somehow overcome this thing that's in my head and I can create change, what would that look like? What would start to transpire? What would take place? And ultimately what I came into was this understanding that there were like these handful of things. And I'm going to start this with a list because I think that this is always important, right? I'm one of those people, as from the show over the years, I've created lists and this is a list of things that I've done in my life to overcome depression without medication. And what's really interesting is that there was a Newsweek article about depression medications and anxiety medications, and what this article found is that antidepressants work better than sugar pills, which are placebos only 15 percent of the time. I'm going to read this to you again. Ruth, this is a clip.

So in Newsweek in September of 2022, they released an article that antidepressants work better than sugar pills, which are placebos only 15 percent of the time, which means that we have been lied to as a society. As a whole, that medication is the solution for depression. In fact, I'm gonna read you this 'cause I think it's really important. 9:40 in 2019. So this is a little bit of an older study in 20 19, 1 in eight Americans. This is 43 million people at the time were taking an SSRR. Edit that again. In 2019, one in eight Americans, 43 million people were taking an SSRI and those numbers have risen again and again. And here is what is so fascinating about this. More than 60 percent of those people, about 26 million people, have been taking those drugs for more than two years. 26 million people. These medications, and this is my opinion, right? And I'm not a doctor. I always like to preface this, these medications are here to serve a short term purpose. They are not long term ethical. You see this again and again, go check out the Newsweek article that I just laid out to you, okay. I felt the tremendous amount of. Overwhelm for lack of a better term. The second I tried to take these medications, all of my symptoms heightened to the point where I thought I was going insane. And so even though doctors always say, consult me, don't get off the medication. These things are dangerous, which again, guys, context, I am not a doctor, don't listen to me. I took myself off of the medication at my own volition because I knew that this was making my life worse and I've talked about this on the show before you have to be the advocate for your own health. Alright, so let's talk about what happened after that moment. So this for me was probably 20-, I want to say 2016 or 2017 when I pulled myself off of this medication and I really started taking inventory of what I could do. So now I'm going to get into the list and these are the 10 things that I did.

Ruth edit that. And so we're going to get into the list. These are the 10 things that you can, one more time. These are the 10 things that you can do to overcome depression without medication. Now, number one is always going to be the go to in this context, that's therapy. And the reason why I suggest therapy is because from a biological standpoint, we need to really assess the feelings and the emotions that come along with the symptoms. Because most of the time the symptom isn't the root cause of what is happening and in therapy, you can unravel and uncover that root cause. You may find that the reason that you're depressed isn't even the thing that you thought was the reason, right? You're like, I broke up and then this relationship ended. And then you're like, wait a second, maybe that's not the reason, and then you go deeper and you find out the reason that you're depressed is because your mom didn't hug you as a child. That is the power of therapy and you think to yourself, wow, okay, this is in a situation where I didn't get affection and care and thus I'm unlovable. That makes me depressed, right? You can break that down in a multitude of ways, but that's the power of therapy, especially if you look at things like CBT, which is cognitive behavioral therapy. For me, my favorite form of therapy was gestalt and the reason why is because gestalt created this dynamic framework that helped me understand why, like at the root cause of everything, why I was suffering so much depression and anxiety and it is through gestalt therapy that my life changed forever, hands down the best therapy that I could do, shout out to my therapist, you know who you are.

Secondly, number two. Edit that. Don't say secondly, Ruth, take that out. The number two thing that I would do if I was trying to get rid of depression without medication is I would exercise. I would move my body with intention every single day. There are so many research articles and PubMed docs that have been published over the course of especially the last 10 years that there is a direct correlation between physical movement and mental well being. If you are sitting around all day, all day long. I promise you, you are exponentially increasing the opportunity that you're going to be depressed or anxious or deal with a lot more mental health strains than you probably would if you were physically moving. There's a lot of different ways you can get movement in your day. And if you're not capable of really intensive and vigorous exercise, you can do so many different things, and I think the thing that you have to look for here is how do you be solution oriented? Like how do you make the exercise happen every day? That's reasonable in your life in a way that is sustainable, right? For some people, and this was me, it's going to be yoga and CrossFit and MMA and softball and pitch soccer and the whole not like I went hard in exercise. I still do, right? But then when I first was like really trying to navigate it. I started joining clubs. I started going to build community. I started putting myself in a situation where I was being physical with other human beings. That was a game changer for me. It's still something I do to today. The other thing, and this is super simple, very low cost of entry, go buy a walking treadmill and put it in your house or at your desk at work and get some miles in throughout the day. If you look at our biological and physiological, just being as a human, we were meant to move. We were meant to walk, to run, to jog, to stand, to sit, to squat. And if you're just sitting all day long, you're not using those other elements that your physical body was created for. The walking treadmill for me has been a huge game changer. Even though I go to the gym every single morning, I will still walk five to seven miles a day on the walking treadmill. So exercise number two, unbelievably important.

Number three is looking, and here's what I will say. Number three, is get a coach, right? So here's the intervention. The way that I look at it. You have a therapist, you're moving your body, you get a coach. Why do you get a coach? This is the most important thing that I realized when I started investing into coaching for my own life. It is the same thing that the people who I coach have started to understand deeper. As I've coached them over the years, this is thousands of people when you have a coach, not only do you have someone who has walked the path with you before you and will after you, you have someone who's going to support you in your journey. Now, look, don't go hire a coach who has never done the thing that you're trying to do. That does not make sense, that it's not going to end well, I can promise you this, you're going to be like, why in the world did I do that? If you had significant childhood trauma and you're trapped, you want to get unstuck, you want to let go of self doubt, you want to overcome it, create personal boundaries, learn how to really interrupt the processes of your mind that keep you from going to the next level. You hire me, that's what you do, you go to thinkunbroken.com, you have a coaching session with me and we see if we can fit you in somewhere into the programs. If you're trying to learn how to cook, I'm not your guy. And I think that's the thing that you have to have is you have to discern that down and really recognize the power of a coach. But most importantly, working with the right coach. Because for me, like I bring a level of intensity that most coaches don't. So when you're from a background like mine and life was super chaotic and you live a little bit on the edge and you move at a different speed than most people, you need that as a coach, right? But you also like, you can see this if you're ever in coaching with me, there is also this softness and this human connectedness that I bring to our conversations. But always in truth and so that's what I would say go find a coach who tells you the truth don't find a coach who's gonna sugarcoat you and try to keep you in their program forever The greatest thing for me is the moment like one of my clients says I don't need to coach anymore I'm like, thank God go change the world number four. And this is one that is should be evident, but I don't think that it is.

The number four thing that I would do if I was trying to change my life and get rid of depression without medication as I would change my diet I would change my diet. This is so unbelievably important, guys. We are living in a desperate time when it comes to nutrition in the United States and really in the world. There is more obesity in America than any place on planet Earth. There's a direct correlation between your weight and your mental well being, it is what it is. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, when I was 350 pounds, I can promise you I was at the height of my depression and anxiety. There's no questions asked you have to take a look at your physical well being and so much of it starts with nutrition Taught look here's the thing a few years ago I became a certified personal trainer and nutritionist the reason that I did that was for my own self I never did anything with it I've never coached anyone in health and nutrition in my life the reason that I wanted to do it because I needed to educate myself because I did not understand food period. I don't think I had a salad for the first time until I was like 20 years old. And so here I am at that time, I think I got the certification, I might've been 30, over three decades of poor nutrition had played a tremendous role in my life and I was sick, I was unwell, I did not feel good and I made a decision to educate myself.

Now I went a lot of different routes, like I started reading about every sort of nutritional modality that there is. I started reading all these books about food and diet and soil and this and that I tried a multitude of diets. Ultimately over the years I have narrowed down and found the exact system that works for me. I tend to lean more carnivore, but I stay almost predominantly paleo, while I will say. There is a cheat that I have once a week. Anyone who knows me personally knows this. I'm gonna share this insider secret with you, and once a week I eat these gluten free peanut butter filled pretzels. Oh my God, they're so delicious. Literally my mouth is watering thinking about them. Cause I still, even though I live this healthy lifestyle, I still have a life, I'm still a human, I'm still going to indulge on the occasion. And so changing your diet, super important. Can you get the majority of processed foods out of your life? Get the energy drinks out of your life. Something I've been a victim to, I can promise you get the overwhelming amount of caffeine out of your life. Get the saturated fats, the bad oils, all of those things. One of the things that I would tell you, I did this episode of the podcast with Alison Melody years ago. I believe the episode is, titled food hills. So go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com. She has one of the biggest food and nutrition podcasts in the world. She's interviewed every expert about food and nutrition. Please go listen to that episode with her. And I, if you are stuck and you need a jump off point to figure out how to change your nutrition, because I promise you, this is one of the most important things you'll do.

All right. Number five is that you need social support. Social support is about community breaks all of the chaos of your life up so that you can go and connect in these different segments of other human beings who are supporting things that you are attempting to do in your life, okay. So if you are trying to get in shape, it's, I would say this. It's great to have a personal trainer, it's better to join a group fitness class, okay. Hear me out therapy. It's great to have a one on one therapist. It's even better to have a group therapy session. One of the greatest spaces of healing in my life was group therapy with a group of six other men where every Wednesday for years, I went and I sat down and had the most deep unraveling, often unnerving, often painful, often uncomfortable, but unbelievably healing conversations. You've got to understand that there is something about the power of community. That is innately built into us as human beings that will separate your journey from a slow burn to an exponential speed. That's why I do group coaching on Monday nights, because you get to see and bear witness to what happens in a community and other people who may have some of the same issues or problems or obstacles that you do. And so having the social support could also be things like a, in an essay, Salah, all of these things I've done, I've gone to multiple anonymous groups and meetings and meetups. I go to networking events, I have entrepreneurship communities that I've built and been around, and this is so important.

Depression feels isolating. And the thing that Ruth, this is going to be a clip. Depression feels isolating, and the worst thing that we can do is be alone. And the times in which we feel the most alone are the times in which we must be with other people. And being with other people could be communal, it could be volunteering, it could be just showing up and sitting in a coffee shop around other human beings. If you are depressed, do not be alone. It is one of the worst things that you can do for yourself, and while it may be uncomfortable to go and put yourself into a situation of being around other people, when you feel your lowest, I can promise you, it'll be the thing that you need the most. Ruth, that is a clip.

Number six. Let's set some goals. Now I won't go down a deep rabbit hole about goal setting, I've done it many times, if you want to find all the episodes about goal setting, go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com, but here's what I will tell you about setting goals. When you set goals, you have something to strive towards when you are depressed. When you are in this space where nothing in your life is moving forward, you have to force your hand. This is the reality of the journey. Most people don't want to admit this, but if you are stuck, you need to get a shovel. You need to pull yourself out of the muck and you need to progress into something. I know it is harder sound, I know that it is easier said than done because I've done it at the beginning of my journey. The hardest thing that I did was brush my freaking teeth. Today I speak on stages. I record podcasts. I coach thousands of people. Most importantly, I take care of myself. I set goals in the beginning that were about self care. Today, I set goals that are still about self care, but also that are about creating a massive change in the world. You need something in your life that pulls you into the future. And again, I won't go beyond that with goals. Go search goals on the podcast website, but go and create something that pulls you into the future.

Number seven, is limit stress. Now I know what you're thinking, you just said, set all these goals and now you're telling me to limit stress. But when I set goals, I get stressed out. Go and create little wins in your life on a daily basis because the little wins in your life will help you build confidence. The more confidence that you build, the less stress that you will feel. Let me say that again, the more confidence that you build, the less stress that you will feel. I can tell you this from firsthand experience. And in this, what will happen is you'll learn things like time management, you'll learn things like boundaries, and you'll learn things like support. And in that, I promise you, you will have stress come off of your shoulders more and more every single day. Stress is an amazing tool, like I don't think people talk about this enough. There is a tremendous power when you leverage stress in the right way that helps you create change in your life. We need a little bit of stress. It's the same thing as like coal under the right amount of pressure and heat turns into a diamond, you under the right amount of pressure will turn into the hero of your own story. And so you need a little bit of stress, but you need to pay attention to your physical body, your mental well being as you're going through whatever it is that you're in right now, because sometimes what you actually need to do is to pump the brakes. Take some time, remove yourself from the chaos of life, and set yourself up for success moving forward. Sometimes the best thing you can do to limit stress is to hit the pause button. Now, hitting that pause button could be for a day, a week, or a month. But at some point, you've got to get back into the game. The timeout has to end, and you have to start moving forward again.

Number nine, challenge your negative thoughts. This is what I was talking about earlier. Your thoughts are not always true and rumination. This idea of repeating a thought pattern in your head is one of the number one reasons why people get stuck. Listen to me again. Rumination repeating negative thought patterns in your head is one of the number one reasons why people get stuck in the mental health journey because the rumination about the negativity and the suffering of the thing that happened before. does not serve you today. And we believe that if we think about it more, we bring more energy to it, that we start to take control of it. However, what I will argue, and I will argue this until the cows come home, is that rumination is actually destroying your potential. This is why you need to go to therapy, this is why you need a coach. This is why you need practices in journaling and meditation, physical movement, health, and wellbeing. Because when these ruminations start to appear, you can take inventory of it and really put it where it needs to be more often than not, the thought that you are having about the past is not serving you and you're beating yourself up or worse, you're re traumatizing yourself because of experiences that you have not resolved. People think that this process of healing is about sitting and talking. It's really about a somatic approach, a mental approach, a physical approach, an emotional approach, and a spiritual approach that is going to help you shift those negative thought patterns. If you are trapped in negativity, the thing that you need to do right now more than anything is change the way that you think by challenging those thoughts and simply asking yourself, is this true?

And number 10, the thing that I would do, the thing that I did do, the thing that has given me more strength than anything in my journey to overcome depression without using medication. And even if you use medication, I might've said that maybe a few, many times, too many times. Look, I know that there is. There are people that medication serves a wonderful purpose for and it helps I get that but I will say This is the thing that for me changed my life forever depression anxiety ideations pain rumination loss overweight smoking drinking getting high Debt everything and this is where I'm gonna lose some people, but I always tell you I'm here to be your coach Not your friend going to tell you the truth.

This is number 10. If I were trying to overcome depression, I would stop making excuses. How do you stop making excuses? This is the question that you have to ask yourself because we will always find a reason why we can't do something. What I will propose to you. Is can you find a reason why you can do something while you can go to the group meeting while you can get out of bed and shower while you can go to the gym while you can eat the good food while you can hire the coach while you can hire the therapist while you can like I am only ever looking for solutions there are a million solutions. There's a million And one excuses that you can come up with for why you cannot do something. And you know what? Those excuses are valid. I will not take them from you. And I'm sitting here across from you as this guy who was 350 pounds, two packs a day, drinking himself to sleep. Mother cut off his finger. Stepdad was super abusive, homeless as a child, didn't graduate high school. And yet I'm sitting here and I'm telling you the one, huh? Undeniable truth of my life is that when I started getting solution oriented and I stopped making excuses that everything in my life changed for the better. And this requires a very deep look at who you are and it's uncomfortable and it sucks and you are not going to like it until you do. And in that process, and the reason why I bring this up as a way to overcome depression is because sometimes the thing that you need to do is get your ass out of the house and go and be of service to other people and lead the way that you need to lead yourself by doing what you know you need to do. There are so many people who will make a fucking excuse about their life and then complain about it. Nobody's coming to rescue you. No one's coming to save you. If you're one of these people who have been listening to this podcast for six years, and you've listened to all these episodes and you have come to the courses and you have bought the book, but you have never been in the coaching program with me. You have got to make a fucking declaration to yourself right now to go to the next level. You've been making excuses for a long time. Look, I'll just read the books and listen to the podcast. I will, this is enough. There's always a level to this journey. Maybe the excuse that you're making is about the career that you have that is sucking your soul every single day. Maybe it's the relationship that's not working that causes you so much anxiety and pain and suffering, and you're both depressed, but you won't walk away. Maybe it's the fact that you have a dream in front of you that you are terrified to pursue. Do something about it, so much of life. I'm telling you the antidote to all of this is action. And I know I'm getting intense with you, but I just really want to hit this point home because so many people Are just one decision away from their life being different forever. So that said, my friends, these are the 10 things that I would do if I were trying to overcome depression without medication, you need more help, more support. You want to go to the next level, go to thinkunbroken.com or message me at Michael Unbroken, hit me on the DM. I'll hit you back and I'll tell you this, please subscribe to this show. Share it, let people know, follow it, review it, do something, take an action today, because when you do, I can promise you the decision you're making not only changes your life, but it'll impact someone else who needs to see this today. With that said, my friends, thank you for being here.

And Until Next Time,

Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.