One of the best ways to overcome depression is to learn to identify others who are susceptible to depression and avoid their conversation. There are many levels of depression that range from extremely mild to severe. Extremely mild depression may be caused by dwelling on a sad occurrence that happened in the community such as a car accident. In conversation with others, regarding this incident, the sadness of the initial individual hearing about the accident details is passed on. In turn this may cause the second individual to dwell on this sad depressive issue throughout the day. There are many topics that people can discuss among themselves. Yet, those who routinely discuss accidents, robberies, ill health, and death are not spreading uplifting information to others. Those people who can only talk about subjects grounded in negativity are spreading a form of depression to anyone who listens.
Recognize that there are individuals who enjoy the bonding of conversation which involves negative topics. By engaging others with this kind of news they feel a sense of self worth and value. It may be difficult to walk away from relatives, co-workers or neighbors that you have known for many years who seem to discuss negative topics routinely. Since that is the case, learn how to effectively change the subject to something uplifting. You must learn to change the conversation atmosphere. You have no choice but to interrupt the individual in mid sentence with a topic changer. Begin your interrupting sentence with hey or say. For example: Say, did you hear about the sale on shoes? Hey, did you hear about the new restaurant on Main Street? Make it a point to find an uplifting topic to use when you are confronted by people who routinely talk in a negative tone. Stop the negative conversations, turn them into positive uplifting topics and you will find this is how to overcome depression you inadvertently receive from others.