6 Self-Help Tips for Treating and Managing Depression

 

 When we're depressed, we don't have the energy, motivation, or desire to do many of the things we used to, but the less active we are, the more depressed we become, and when we're feeling this way, it's even harder to get ourselves to do things, creating a vicious cycle in which the less we do, the worse we feel, and the worse we feel, the harder it is to get ourselves to do things. So here are some tips you can apply when you feel depressed.

Behavioral Activation 

A strategy for improving our moods involves gradually increasing our levels of activity and beginning to do more things that provide us with a sense of pleasure or enjoyment, a sense of accomplishment, and a sense of social connection with other people.

Now, the goal with behavioral activation isn't to be ambitious but to gradually increase our levels of activity through a series of small manageable incremental steps. It's critical, to begin with, small changes that don't seem overwhelming for some people, this might just mean getting out of bed, showering, or eating something; for others, it could mean doing a little bit of hoisting.

The important thing is, do not bite as long as you can start with the smallest possible step and try not to bite up yourself if you need to take such a small step in comparison with what you used to do when any amount of increased activity is depressed and can help us feel a little better at least a little and we begin to develop our activity levels back to where they used to be.

Change How You Think

An enormous effect on how we feel and how we feel affects the type of thinking we have, and there's a close link between negative thinking and depression. Negative ideas that automatically enter our heads are a sign of depression. They can lead us in depression and if we already have a deep depression it's very difficult to begin to feel better and experience a continuous barrage of automatic negative thoughts that make us even more depressed.

 

The main prerogative of cognitive therapy is that when we change our thinking, the way we feel, and the technique that we are using is called cognitive restructuring, which is a way for us to reframe our thoughts to make them less negative. This is one of our most effective treatments for depression. Our negative thoughts tend to have something true about them, but they are also highly pessimistic about self-criticism. Culpability deplores impotence and negative hopelessness.

The key to cognitive restructuring is generally to challenge the precision of our negative ideas and then to change those thoughts so that we have a more balanced approach so we do not attempt to replace negative thoughts with positives that are equally prejudicial in the opposite direction.

Change how we relate to our thoughts

We can try to change how we deal with the content of our ideas and interact with our thoughts rather than attempting to change them by means of cognitive restructuring. Thoughts pop in and out of our heads all of the time and we don't really care and we don't often even realize that we do but when a thought comes with emotional pulls, we tend to notice it especially if it reinforces how we already feel when we are depressed and have a negative thought.

As best we can we keep our minds focused on the present we're aware of what we're thinking and when thoughts arise that aren't related to what we're doing in the present moment we don't try to reframe them or change them or think about them or do anything with them we simply notice we're having that thought and let it go and refocus our attention back to the present so for example if we're cooking dinner and taste the food and think this is a little bland that's thought relevant to what we're doing and we probably want to pay attention to that thought and act on it but if we're cooking dinner and have the thought I hate my life Or I always let everyone down there's really no value in giving that thought our attention while we're making dinner we can just acknowledge it and then let it go so while we can't control what thoughts we have and we can't stop certain thoughts from popping into our heads when we have a thought we do have some control over what we do with that thought

Letting go of thoughts is a skill that takes practice but it's one of the best things that we can do to take away the power that our negative thoughts have over us when we learn to just watch our negative thoughts and let them come and go without reacting to them allow them to pass through our minds like clouds passing through the sky we don't get caught up in this negativity we don't get stuck in our heads with our minds racing and we avoid getting sucked into vicious cycles and as a result, our moods start to improve depression can start to lift and we become less likely to get depressed.

Look for positives

First and foremost, one method to help overcome this negative bias we have when we're depressed is to make an effort to acknowledge the positive things we experience on a daily basis, even if it's only for a few moments. We think too much about what goes wrong in our lives and not enough about what goes right, according to Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, and this focus on negative events sets us up for anxiety and melancholy. One strategy to avoid this is to improve your ability to think about and appreciate what went well.

He suggests doing an exercise called three good things, in which you take some time at the end of each day to write down three good things that happened, went well, or that you enjoyed, regardless of how small or insignificant they may seem. This may not seem like much, but research has shown that doing this exercise for just one week can increase happiness and reduce depression symptoms for up to six months.

Write down what you did to help bring about the good thing or the thing you're grateful for, such as forcing yourself to get off the couch or reaching out to a friend, because this gives you a sense of agency and shows you that there are things you can do to make yourself feel a little bit better, which can act as an antidote to feelings of lack of control.

Regulate our emotions

When we're depressed, our emotions can feel overwhelming, and they're not just sadness and despair; anxiety and anger are also common, and learning to control our emotions can help make depression more manageable. Usually, we react to our negative emotions with aversion; we don't like how they make us feel, so we try to shut them out, ignore them, or force them to leave us alone.

 Emotion regulation relates to our ability to control our emotions and how we feel, and learning to exercise emotion regulation techniques such as validating and accepting our emotions can help our emotions become less intense. Now, validating and accepting our emotions doesn't mean we have to like how we're feeling or accept that we'll always feel that way, but if you're sad, it's okay to be sad; if you're anxious, it's okay to be anxious; if you're angry, it's okay to be angry; and while you may prefer not to feel these ways, it's okay to feel them.

We can't control our emotions and it's always okay to feel however you feel but while we can't control our emotions we can influence our emotions and how we feel if we're able to accept our emotions and validate how we feel our emotions tend to become more manageable they lessen in intensity and this feeds back into any vicious cycles that were helping to sustain them so now our thoughts become a little less negative which helps calm our emotions even further and there's often a close relationship between our emotions and the physical sensations we experience in our bodies when we're depressed it's common to feel the depression in certain parts of our bodies.

 Maybe a lump in your throat or tightness or heartbreaking sensation in the chest can be seen, where tightness or butterflies in the stomach or fear in the stomach can also cause physical pain, even if we haven't hurt it or even if we get so many headaches or just like all sorts of headaches and pains.

Besides this though, if we are able to accept the reality of our situation and accept our physical discomfort, our bodies can begin to relax our unpleasant physical sensation and, as a result, our moods improve, and as our moods improve our physical symptoms they tend to decrease even more.

Self-care and compassion

It is easy to begin neglecting not getting enough sleep or sleeping when we feel depressed. So try to take a regular routine and keep a consistent sleep schedule, and I have a few videos of how to sleep better which can help and get a sort of regular exercise, even if just walking is important and helping us.

We can develop bad eating habits when we are depressed and start eating junk food or only eating too much to try and soothe our emotions and feel better or lose all the appetite we eat and try eating as good as possible because what we eat has an effect on the moods and energy and the feeling that we have overall and sometimes when we eat. It's hard to feel depressed, depression is difficult. If you're depressed often do anything to break up and don't beat yourself because you don't do the things you want or if you fight things you think should be easy or can't feel melancholy.

None of those ideas is a magic cure because depression can even be partly implemented is likely to help feel a little better at least and once you take one step in a positive direction there will generally be additional improvements and some light at the end of the tunnel may be seen.