In a strange way, the emotional state of depression can lend people a sense of power and control, because if there's no use or hope then we don't have to risk ourselves in any way. Depression can be a form of protection that basically says, "You can't hurt me because I am nothing already. This world can't take anything away from me if my life is empty."
Depression takes root and grows in us when we learn not to trust ourselves. This can happen for numerous reasons. Perhaps we grappled, as children, with the huge disparity between what we knew in our hearts to be true and what various authority figures (such as parents, teachers, preachers, and politicians) told us was the truth. In the end we succumb to the word of the world and sell out that inner voice that knows. Depression creeps into the empty spaces left behind. Then we have our work cut out for us: to reclaim our inner selves and somehow learn to trust our instincts again.
Depression is usually a substitute for something else that we're even more reluctant to feel. If we were to dig deep within ourselves and accept this denied feeling, we would break the hold that despondency has on us. Imagine that you grew up with parents who found you burdensome. They ignored you. A circumstance like that would be painful for any child. Many of us, in the course of growing up, learn to bury such pain in order to function. We grow around it, build up defenses against it, and protect ourselves against future disappointments. That's where nihilism starts.
If we deny ourselves then we also deny any love that might come our way from the world. By the same token, once we’ve reclaimed ourselves from depression we may have to get used to a new and unfamiliar kind of life experience. We might experience new thoughts and energy as well as some fear that these foreign feelings might sweep us away.
"It'd be so much easier," depression says, "if you'd just accept that everything is hopeless. Your life can't be healed. Love can't be found. The human race can't help but destroy itself in the end. If you believe otherwise then you're just setting yourself up to be hurt."
All too often, negative expectations are accepted simply because they were never dragged out into the light of day and examined. Consider the previous example. Such self-protection may have been necessary during childhood; but we’re grown adults now, and we’re free to form new beliefs about ourselves and our relationship to the world.
Energy follows expectations, whether they are optimistic or despondent. Low expectations naturally feed into a state of depression - but we can change those old programs. Each despondent thought you have is upheld by old convictions that don't need to live in you anymore. Expose them, and they will dissipate before your understanding. Stop feeding depression with low expectations.