Like you, I suffered from depression when I was a teenager. The teenage years are some of the hardest years of life. Teens haven’t matured enough to gain full control of their emotions, so they can be really hard to deal with. As a teenager everything seems more traumatic, but over time dealing with emotions becomes easier. Below are some life lessons that I've learned over the years that changed me from a miserable person into a happy person. Hopefully they will help you too.

DON'T LIVE IN THE PAST

It's important to look at life as a timeline and to keep your mind in the present, not the past. Here is an example of what I mean. Let's say on Monday someone says something hurtful to you. It's now Wednesday and you are still thinking about what happened on Monday. Essentially what you are doing is going back in the past and reliving the event over and over in your mind. Why would you do this to yourself? It sucked the first time, why put yourself thought it again? You need to leave that horrible event in the past and live in the present. When you find yourself thinking about a bad event in the past just think to yourself "Is the event over? Yes. Is reliving it over and over in my head going to make me feel worse or better? Worse, so don't do it!" With enough practice you will be able to let things go in minutes, not days.

YOUR THOUGHTS CONTROL YOUR FEELINGS

If you spend all day thinking about depressing things, guess what, you're going to feel depressed. The reverse is true too; if you think about happy things all day you will feel happy. Even though you would think this would be a no-brainer, you wouldn't believe how many people don't seem to make this connection. I spent 10 years of my life completely miserable because I focused my thoughts on the negative aspects of life even though I had a pretty good life. Take some time to examine what you think about all day. If it is mostly negative things, you need to recognize that you're the one responsible for yourself feeling miserable by focusing your thoughts on negative things. It's important to train your brain to focus on positive things. We are creatures of habit, and breaking habits can be difficult to do and can take time. If you think about negative things all day, it's going to become a habit. The longer you do it the harder it will be to break that habit.

DON'T WORRY ABOUT THINGS YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER

When you encounter negative things in life you need to first ask yourself, "Can I do something about it?" If the answer is yes, then write down the necessary steps to make the situation better and do them. If the answer is no, then you need to accept that it can't be changed and stop thinking about it. Thinking about it is just going to make you miserable.

EXAMINE WHO YOU ARE

Are you the kind of person you would want to be friends with? When most people think about the qualities they want in a friend they think of things like caring, empathetic, respectful, honest, humble, positive, thankful, fair, and patient. The qualities that would make someone not want to be friends with you are uncaring, selfish, disrespectful, dishonest, egotistical, negative, whiny, ungrateful, and impatient. I highly recommend that you spend some time at the end of each day looking over all these qualities and see which ones you exhibited that day. If you did things that were on the negative list you should think about how you could have handled the situation differently, and see if there is someone you should apologize to. We all make mistakes in life and do things on the negative list, but the people who work each day to improve themselves and who make amends for their bad behavior are the ones who end up happy in the end.

If there is something you don't like about yourself you have 2 options, you can mope around feeling sorry for yourself or you can take action and change it. Make a list of things you would like to change and the steps necessary to make those changes. Most importantly, make sure you follow through with those steps.

SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP

It's important to seek help from a professional. Just keep in mind that there are a lot of so called "professionals" out there that don't know what they are doing, so if you feel that no progress is being made after a sufficient amount of time try a different one. Whatever you do don't assume that if one person is unable to help you that you are hopeless. It just means you need to try someone else who may know more about treating depression than the other person did.

MEDICATION

There are a lot of medications out there for depression. For some people they have little effect, but for other people they work wonders. I have a friend who was struggling with depression and anxiety. Her doctor put her on Lexapro and within a few weeks she was a completely different person. I couldn't believe how much of an effect it had. I know of other people who have tried it and it didn't help at all. If one medication doesn't work, try another until you find one that does. Just keep in mind that medication is only part of the solution. Learning to properly deal with negative thoughts is essential to a full recovery.

DON'T LISTEN TO DEPRESSING MUSIC

When you're depressed you will want to listen to depressing music. DON'T DO IT!!! It will just make you feel worse.

FIND SOME HOBBIES

It’s a lot easier to keep negative thoughts out of your head if you have hobbies that you can focus your attention on. If you Google “hobbies” you’ll find tons of ideas.

HANG IN THERE

I know things may seem hopeless right now, but as you mature you will learn how to keep your emotions in check, learn to focus your thoughts on positive things, and learn how to make the most of your life. As you learn these skills life will get easier.

I was molested by a clown.

8 years later, I found out who he was, where he lived, then molested him.

Sadly, I had to dig up his grave to do so.

In my experience, the trick is to stop dwelling on yourself. There are many facing more dire circumstance than you. Find them and help them. You will regain your sense of perspective.

Not too many things tragic happened, (Yet :( ) but I remember the day I lost the spelling bee in fourth grade.Yeah, I know, I'm a wimp, but I had studied sooooo much. I got my word and spelled it incorrectly. The next person spelled it right, and I was out. I'm probably being over dramatic, but I felt like I was going to faint. I had kept it together, but then I lost control. I started crying. People noticed, and the usual "give her space" happened. Everyone was trying to comfort me, but it made it even more embarrasing. The worst part was when it turned out the winner was sitting in front of me. He looked back, and we were face to face, with me and my red eyes. (From the tears, don't get any ideas) and I wanted the ground to swallow me up. Soo embarrassing!!!