How Do I Deal with Depression: Part Two the ‘How to’ skills 

Welcome back to part two of How Do I Deal with Depression!

I hope that last week’s article was helpful for you in understanding what to look for, and what depression does to us. 

It can be really heavy and hard to manage with the symptoms of depression, and still want to do something to change it.

I applaud you for coming back to learn what you can do to support yourself. 

I hope that this week’s article on skills you can do to deal with depression are helpful, easy, and manageable for you to start with and do.

The skills shared here are three of my favourite skills to use when starting to work with depression. I encourage to to read them over, think about which one would be THE EASIEST for you to do. Start there. Easy is good when working with depression. It increases the likelihood that we will do it. When we complete it, it increases our positive sense of self, motivation and confidence to do it again. All things that are really helpful in moving out of the deep dark place depression likes us to live. 

 

Skills you can do to deal with depression:

Do one thing.

               This can be moving from laying down in your bed for the day, to sitting up in your bed for the day. It might be opening up the covers on the window, or standing in the shower with the water on. It could also be responding to one message you’ve received from someone in your life that you have been putting off. Whatever it is, do one thing.

Make a plan

               This can be done by yourself or with someone. Ideally, it is done by yourself for an increased likelihood that it happens. For example, if your goal this week is to have coffee with your friend, and they can’t make it, you wont’ get to achieve your goal. If your goal is to ask them to coffee however, you can still achieve your goal if you ask, and going for coffee is just a happy bonus!

Whatever you choose, choose one day and time in the coming week and schedule yourself to do something specific. It could be to walk outside of your house, having a cup of coffee out, or spend time doing one of your hobbies. Whatever you decide to do, set a reminder or an alarm for it, on a specific day, and spend a moment or more with that activity.

*Disclaimer here: You don’t have to like it when you are doing it, or even after- it’s not the point. The point is to do something. You can notice your depressive thoughts, but focus on the fact that despite how you were feeling and what you were thinking, you still were able to do that one thing. The trick here is- the more you do that, the stronger that new voice will be, and the easier it becomes to do things for yourself.

**Pro tip: do fun things first. Chores can wait. Plus, they are harder to motivate yourself to do.

Practice Gratitude

               Practicing gratitude is a great way to help shift your mind’s focus from the things that are crappy and not working right now, to things that you can appreciate. They don’t need to be big things; small things are actually very important and helpful! How to practice gratitude is quite simple: write down three things you appreciate every day. That’s it.  If you can, try to find different things to be grateful for, but know that you can notice that you are appreciative of somethings repeatedly too. The important part of writing them down is to show yourself as the days go, how many things you have un your life that you appreciate, which shifts the focus of your mind again. Think about it this way, if you expressed gratitude for 3 things in your life every day, you would have 21 things to be grateful for by the end of the week, roughly 90 things by the end of the month, and 1695 things by the end of the year!

 

Helpful Tips

Now I will say that doing these suggestions once is not going to make a difference in your life. I’d like to hope that for a moment you’ve had a break from all that has been weighing you down, but it won’t last if you only do it one time.

To see really know if these skills are helpful for you, you are going to have to practice them regularly.

I invite you to do one of them once a day, and see how you feel in a week. You won’t be depression free in a week, but maybe, just maybe, you won’t hate practicing that one skill every day. Then there is room to add another skill to try, or practicing the same skill twice a day.

As you build these practices into your day or routine, they will help to decrease the level of intensity that you are experiencing, little by little, and then big by big. They will help because you will be able to notice that you don’t have to put in so much effort anymore to get it done; it feels a bit easier. And maybe if that got easier, maybe trying something new will have a similar experience, and so on and so forth.

It really becomes a snowball effect, where one day, just maybe, you might be back living the life that you want to be living, or at least well on your way.

 

If you want more information, skills and support with your mental health, make sure to sign up for my email list to hear about my upcoming Crash Course in Mental Health online course!

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Photo cred: @Marc-Olivier Jodoin