Listening to what Dr Michael D. Yapko said about depression, it seems it was my story. He said that man is a social being. The more he has social activities, the more psychologically balanced and stable he will be. The more limited his social activity, the more his mental balance will deteriorate.
Depression has become such an epidemic since 2010 that 39% of Americans suffer from the disease, and this is the period when the combination of smartphones and social media has left people isolated. Everybody is busy on their smartphone. Visits and condolences are also being made on social media.
Understandably, there are two types of social activities. One is necessarily social, such as being with other people while on duty, and the other is the one in which he is active according to his “hobbies and tastes.” Then it also has three layers.
The first layer consists of the closest people, the parents and the wife and children. The second layer is of loved ones and relatives and the third layer is of friends. Social media has cut these three layers while indifference to any one of these three layers is enough to upset the psychological balance.
The biggest consequence of loneliness is that lack of communication does not keep the warmth of the relationship. It causes irritability, which results in people starting to shy away from it, which in turn reinforces the notion that everyone hates it.
And the thing never stops here. Then he also starts thinking that all these people will be conspiring against him. There is nothing wrong with that, he even found an element of conspiracy. The result is regular fighting. And that’s depression, which began with the end of his social activities. If he had not given up social activities, he would not have assumed that his friend had lost his importance in his heart or that he hated him.
Therefore, the only cure for depression is for such a patient to give up this lifestyle immediately. Depression will go away automatically if he adjusts his level of social activity to the pre-social media era. If not more so, when everyone returns home in the evening, keep the home Wi-Fi off for at least two hours.
The inevitable result is that everyone will leave their rooms and automatically gather at the lounge. In this way there will be happy gossip with each other, there will be mutual consultation on each other’s problems, new ideas will also come up.
Thus the first layer of social activity will return to its proper state, but not just the first layer, the whole social system must be restored to its natural state. So the second thing to do is not to give preference to the limited use of social media over the guest or friend. If you are writing a post and a guest comes, leave the post as it is and give the guest time.
If you have a reduced number of visitors, start inviting people regularly. So that your social activities can be restored. If you invite someone, they will invite you. And it runs on the other two layers of social activity, the level of loved ones and friends. The only difference is the heat.
Therefore, the other two layers of social activity will be restored to its old form. You will also know when everyone is interacting. When you are happy in the happiness of others and sad in the sorrow, you will be in your natural and right mental state.
Hearing all this, I felt as if my guilt had been readout. All of this has happened to me in the last few years, and even more so because, unfortunately, I am one of the so-called heavyweights on Facebook. For the past eight years, I have been living on Facebook instead of at home. It has been an average of six posts a day.
During this time, I talked to my children only to the extent of getting information or if any of them had any work, they talked as much as necessary. The limit is that we spent out Eid on social media. So without wasting time, I enforced two big rules at home. First: to close WiFi for almost two hours in the evening everyday. And second: everyone will eat together.
The first day when this process was completed and I came back to my room I started thinking what we did today during these two and a half hours. I had to think about it regularly because what happened in this session was not a pre-plan but happened automatically.
So it was that when I went to the launch, there was a Hollywood movie playing on TV. My youngest son, 20-year-old Waqas, commented on it, so I asked: Do you know what acting is?
(To be continued)
