Are you depressed? Find out by asking the right questions

Let’s play a game! I know this is not a regular motivational article but keep on reading. Maybe you’re confused, a little sad or you don’t feel anything at all but... Are you depressed? In this game, you will have to ask yourself a few questions. 

• Is there anything about your life that makes you sad? 
• Do you need to fulfil a necessity (money, food, social life)? 
• Is it something that you can change?

Do you have an answer to those few questions? Good, now let’s understand what depression is. Science says that a depression comes as a reaction of your brain on the things that you subconsciously thinking. You don’t have to think about this as a deficiency but rather as an evolutionary benefit. For example, if I think long enough that I want to be an astronaut and I don’t do enough to achieve this, my brain (at a subconscious level) will give me signs that what I’m doing is not okay. Simple as that! If I would ignore these signs, then this might trigger a depression. It’s not actually a problem with your goal, but rather with your approach. At an empirical level, depression is a state of numbness, a constant melancholy that you cannot change, nor express. You might have moments when you laugh, might cause a strange desire to make other people happy or to fix other people’s problems but when you are alone, you know that’s not enough.
Let’s be real for a moment. There are 2 possible scenarios here. Either you’re not depressed or you actually are. In the first case, you don’t have to be afraid. Life sucks sometimes and that’s perfectly alright. You don’t need to compare your life with others. You’re the one in control of your own life and you’ll get over any problems that you have. The second case is a little bit more complicated.  The numbness will go away over time but you will have to work it out in small steps.

If you answered -yes- to any of the above questions, then I’m gonna gladly tell you that you’re not depressed! You’re just sad but the good thing is that, because of this article, you already know what do you need to change about your life.
If you didn’t tend to have a positive answer to the above questions, then you might need to read more about depression. There are a few more signs of depression that are characterized in general by exaggerated behavior. For example, overeating or eating too less, sleeping too much or insomnia. Also, it might the identified as a lack of interest in any activity. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is to think that they are alone in this fight. They are not! Even you have no friends and no family members, the fact that you ended up on my article means that you have access to more than 3.5 billion users over the internet. That’s simply amazing and you don’t need to be scared to open up about this. Try to look at your goals as open-source projects in which everyone around you can be a contributor. Probably you're not the first one who has that problem or has that goal so any "commit" is useful. We lean into the idea that we all need to have a perfect life, the American dream or whatever corny thing you heard but actually, in the real life, nobody has a perfect life and you don’t need one. All of us have problems and nobody is prepared to face depression alone so why would you?