Woman Says Posting Cheerful Facebook Statuses Cured Her Clinical Depression
How Facebook Helped This Woman Beat Depression
PA/ The Huffington Post UK
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Charlotte Reed was clinically depressed. But the 36-year-old says she cured herself by posting cheerful Facebook statuses.
Reed, from London, refused anti-depressants and instead decided to post cheerful status updates everyday for two years in a bid to self-heal herself.
The former legal secretary who is now an author said it was successful and she was now free of the depression which crippled her.
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Describing her depression, Reed said it came on very suddenly following an operation in 2008 when she was 30.
“I had never experienced anything like it before,” she said. “I felt awful and I couldn’t understand it.
“I felt beyond sadness. It was physiological and psychological. I got very bad headaches - it felt like the front of my skull was cracking. It felt like there was water rushing through my head.
“I was having panic attacks on a regular basis - it was like someone had pulled cheese wire across my throat and was tightening it. It would get more and more intense until I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
"I would be sweating and my heart would be pounding. I would have a sense of impending doom. I felt like the world would end or my family would be killed. I was like a zombie in a dark cloud.”
She went to her GP and was diagnosed with depression. The GP suggested anti-depressants and counselling.
“I was a shaking woman in their surgery saying I wanted to kill myself,” she said. “But straight away I said no to anti-depressants.
“I had six weeks of NHS counselling and by the end of it I didn’t feel very different.”
So she decided to turn to social media.
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“I decided to write positive statuses,” she said. “One was, ‘Follow your own way’ and another was ‘Do your best and then let the universe do the rest.’
“The first thing I did every morning was put the messages on Facebook. My friends would always log on to read them.”
Reed said initially she still felt depressed but after a while the messages began to cheer her up.
“I realised to change that I had to fulfill my pact with myself to have at least one positive thought a day.
“It really helped me, but then I discovered it helped others too. I had people asking where my thought for the day was if I went away on holiday. They became really popular.”
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Reed has now turned her Facebook quotes into a book called May The Thoughts Be With You. Within a year she had sold 5,000 copies of the book. It proved so popular it is now on sale in the UK, Canada and South Korea.
“It’s more than I ever dreamed of,” she said. “Going through depression was awful but it brought me here. That has to be a positive thing.”
"Mindfulness is acute awareness in the moment," says psychotherapist Nicole McCance. "The depressed mind tends to ruminate and fixate on, say, a conversation that went wrong with your boss. Being mindful is just focusing on what’s going on right now, what are you hearing, smelling, sensing. It slows the mind down and it tends to put things in perspective, like ‘right now in this moment, I’m actually OK.’"McCance recommends literally focusing on "what colour is on the walls, where are your feet, where is your body in the chair, how do your clothes feel against your skin?" (credit:Yosuke Tanaka/Aflo via Getty Images)
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)(02 of05)
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"Most people think they have to see a therapist or lay on the couch," says McCance. But CBT can be done on the phone or over Skype, which tends to equal a higher retention rate. "It looks at the impact of your thoughts on your mood," she explains. "People start becoming aware of 'what are my thoughts and how do my thoughts impact my emotions?' It's counteracting automatic fear-based thoughts, because a lot of our fear is actually irrational, and you can learn that with enough practice." (credit:Cavan Images via Getty Images)
Interpersonal Therapy(03 of05)
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"This type of therapy looks at your relationships, rather than CBT which focuses on symptom reduction," says McCance. This short-term therapy usually lasts about three months, and looks at which relationships aren't working in your life and why. "It gives the tools to help you communicate better, or put up boundaries, for example." (credit:CareyHope via Getty Images)
Exercise(04 of05)
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You've heard this before, and you'll hear it again — exercise can lift your mood. "It also helps with fatigue," points out McCance. She notes exercise releases endorphins in addition to norepinephrine, a hormone and natural antidepressant. "Once my clients get exercising, they're generally more positive and the ability to let things go is a bit easier for them." She recommends half an hour to an hour of moderate exercises daily, and not to wait until you're "motivated" — just get your running shoes on and go, and the motivation will come. (credit:Cavan Images via Getty Images)
Acupuncture(05 of05)
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A lot of people don’t know that traditional Chinese medicine looks at depression very differently. "A lot of Westerners don’t know acupuncture can impact our mood — they think it can only impact our muscles," says McCance. "In acupuncture, depression is looked at as an imbalance in the body. Pins are put in at certain meridians to remove energy blockages." She admits there's not a lot of knowledge as to why exactly it works, but has found anecdotally it makes clients more calm and less anxious, gets rid of aches and pains, and helps with sleep. (credit:Erin Patrice O'Brien via Getty Images)