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Just endure it, get drunk every now and then. Another method is to consider a far worse situation than you are in now. If you are not at present in excruciating pain, then you are in paradise.
edit: The above advice from me is just pure, unadulterated crap. Doesn’t work.
Even when I’m excruciating in pain, I do like to remind myself it could still be worse. 
But I also make a point of putting that pain to use, pouring it on the parts of my soul that could stand ethical improvement.
Relatedly, I make a point of considering why the pain is occurring so that I can make adjustments where possible and feasible. Which is surely the primary purpose of any pain, aside perhaps for reasons of self-sacrificial devotion. But adjustment isn’t always feasible or sometimes even possible. So putting the pain to good use in another way, as spiritual purgation, is something I find helpful.
I find prayer and worship to be powerful means of comfort and grace. I also find that working in the yard, long walks in the woods, or doing something to bless others is helpful. And sometimes I just enjoy vegging while watching a good sci-fi movie or action flick. And lunch with a good friend surely cannot hurt!
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I pop vitamin D pills in winter. Makes a huge difference. I always feel better after some exercise. Get the blood flowing. Flush out the brain. Hmmm. What else… Eat healthy food (if you can find any.) Get 8 or 9 hours sleep. Find something useful to do, then do it. Go out of your way to help someone. Random acts of kindness etc. Every day, try to bring some beauty into the world.
I agree with all of the above comments as ways to deal with pain. If you are talking intense emotional pain, not related to anything recent that has happened in your life, that has lasted 2-3 weeks or more, I also recommend talking to your doctor.
I say this as a person who has serious mental health issues. This time of year especially, in the Northern Hemisphere, people are vulnerable to Seasonal Affective Disorder—which is basically Medical Depression caused by the shorter hours of daylight. There is effective treatment for this and other Mental Health issues. I wouldn’t be able to post if there weren’t. These are disorders of a physical body organ, the brain and cannot be handled by willpower or gritting your teeth.
Only a psychiatrist or pnurse practioner can make mental health diagnosis but your regular doctor can refer you to one. Please go if you think you need to, there is lots of help out there. God go with you.
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If I have to be honest, the one thing that has depressed me more than anything else is the Good News.
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Correct me if I am mistaken, but what I think you are saying is not that you are suffering from clinical depression and that is why you are struggling with negativity, but that you are saddened by the state of the world and the general tragic mess that the world is. The suffering, injustice and a sense that it is all spiraling out of control. If so, then I would say your feelings are more than justified and appropriate and demonstrate that you are sensitive and paying attention to what is happening to others who are suffering the worst of it. It should weigh us down and if we are not we are either sociopaths, without the capacity for empathy, or self-absorbed narcissists who can’t see beyond our own self-interests and concerns.
Jesus was, and is, the supreme empath. Any concept of God that involves a God who uses or allows suffering and the perpetuation of suffering and injustice as a means to an end, even if that ultimate end is a so-called salvation, is a sociopathic God not worthy of worship but only of contempt and disbelief. It is the empathy of the God who makes our pain his pain to take it away from us who is the real God that is needed by a real world suffering from unspeakable pain and injustice.
Dave
I guess I’m not sold on UR. But even beyond that is the issue of Jesus himself. I have never seen him as the embodiment of compassion as he is painted as. I could open the New Testament to the Gospels randomly, and would likely find where Jesus is haranguing, threatening, pronouncing doom, etc. as I would any compassionate act. I have always secretly marveled that he has the reputation he does. Don’t get it.
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I’ve read a dozen books and thousands of articles and web pages defending UR. But if UR is the truth, there should never have been any ambiguity about such. There never should have been 1500 years of eternal torment teaching. God could have made his intentions unambiguous, so much so that it would never have been considered otherwise.
It shouldn’t be so hard. Christian teachings have been awful to me. The yoke is not easy and the burden is not light. I’m just now admitting to myself that this is so.
I feel like that, Rob. But then I also think - and all the evidence points this way - that God’s way of running the world is (almost) entirely ‘hands off’, even to the point of ‘allowing’ appalling, evil doctrines like ECT and predestination to ECT to become dominant in ‘his’ church. I don’t understand this at all.
You know what? A lot of the time I feel like I want to throw off the whole comfort blanket of belief and become an atheist. The more I ponder the evils of this world, the more my heart cries out in despair. The news this week in England was utterly depressing. Jimmy Savile abusing hundreds of young people. A family burnt to death in Harlow, a mother and her four young children, the dad left to mourn alone. The shit just keeps on coming.
Peter Cook once joked that if he’d invented the universe he would have left cancer out. I agree. I know all the philosophical arguments for why it has to be this way, why the universe has to be free to be itself. I buy those arguments. But they’re impotent in the face of real suffering. The suffering of the innocent.
As Ivan Karamazov says, it’s not that I don’t believe in God, I just respectfully return him the ticket.
J
Today I attended the memorial service of my friend. He was 37 and died from Huntington’s. His 14 year old daughter has it and barring a miracle will follow the same horrifying path. The last 2 years of watching his decline has been heart rending. My friend has 12 siblings and 7 of them have the disease. They and their families were at the memorial service today too. Several of them already with obvious symptoms.
I didn’t want to attend the service. I’ve been upset that this sort of thing happens in our world. None of them deserved this curse upon their families. It just happened.
What occured today at the service was in my mind completely unexpected. I saw courage like I’ve never seen. I saw compassion. I saw love and extreme faithfulness. I saw a man and a wife face head on the worst life has to give. Through this awful predicament they persevered with grace and beauty. I saw other families facing the same prospects interact with each other in a way I can’t even describe.
There was something truly magnificent on display today in the lives of these amazing people. I’m humbled, and now more assured that this mess of a world is revealing something glorious.
Thank you my friend! Through your physical deterioration and progressive weakness I saw strength unimaginable.
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You don’t have to apologize. Be glad and happy that you have UR, and can trust it; when I was 19 the idea of UR was non-existent to me.
Thank you for your reply and understanding. Right now I’m flirting with atheism. Enticing, but I know there is a dark side to that. The initial exhilaration turns into something horrifying.
This is the reason for a lot of the depression people face in life — the news.
Even though the good, the kind, the self-sacrificing acts for the good of others BY FAR outnumber the atrocities which are committed by a small minority, it is only the latter which are newsworthy in the news reports of the world. If we want to be free of depression, we must not focus on the news in which people suffer — both from fallen man and fallen nature.
How often to you read in the news about heroic acts — people risking their lives to save others — donating their body parts to save the lives of others — giving large quantites of money to feed the starving? Do I hear NEVER? If not “never” then at least “rarely”.
Let’s become more involved in meeting the needs of others ourselves, and then focussing on others who do the same, giving of themselves sacrificially. This will result in the greatest feeling in the world! Depression will vanish like the mist.