Today’s writing prompt for Day 2 of the  WEGO Health – Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge is called Word of the Day Post.

The instructions are to go to dictionary.com and write a post inspired by their WOTD – or grab a dictionary (or any book) from your bookshelf, open to a page, and write about that word. Can you link the word to your condition somehow?

The word I got when I went to dictionary.com is:

There is no getting around the fact that depression is a disease of extreme gravitas. People can die from it. However, as much as I believe I need to keep this in mind, I think it is vital I continually strive to find humor in the world around me, as well as in my disease.

Even before my depression diagnosis, my viewpoint on everything was a rather negative one. I took life too seriously, death too seriously, and had an extreme amount of difficulty finding anything that made me laugh. Depression made my outlook on life even more dark. I was easily frustrated by the side affects of my depression medications, and fall-out from my suicide attempt. I had nothing to counter the many negative thoughts running around in my head.

When I began depression treatment, my counselor had me look for three positives in every situation. It quickly dawned on me, that positive could also mean something that amused me and/or made me laugh. It also occurred to me that if I could learn how to laugh at myself I might not be so frustrated all the time. So I did.

Humor has helped buffer the many challenges I have faced during depression treatment. It has allowed me to laugh at my habit of constantly dozing off – caused by my medications – and typing – sometimes deleting – while I am asleep. I have learned to find humor in my bad memory. Just the other day I got a laugh out of a depression research commercial that happened to be playing on the car radio immediately following my depression support group.

Yes, depression is a disease of extreme gravitas, and should be treated aggressively, but I think we all should keep in mind that if we can use – or develop – our sense of humor during our treatment process we stand a much better chance of being able to successfully manage it.

FYI It has taken me a while to write this entry, because I kept dozing off, waking up, and having to delete a lot of random letters and numbers off of the computer screen.