How To Deal With Depression
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2022
11 February
Depression is a hard thing for anyone to go through. If you are going through depression today, know that you are not alone. I have personally experienced depression for years now. Does it make you sad, cause you to have outbursts of crying, and force you to fight feelings of hopelessness? Yes, it does. Does this mean you are less of a person or less of a Christian? Absolutely not.
Depression is very common for a person to experience at some point in their life or throughout the majority of their life. Depression can be the result of the passing of a loved one, grieving over a loss, or the ending of a special relationship. There are many reasons why someone would develop depression as sometimes it could be just something wrong with a neurotransmitter inside the brain. Therefore, not all depression presents itself in the same way. Some people with depression look like what we expect depression to look likethey are sad and keep to themselves. However, not all depression manifests in this way. Many people with depression often enjoy making other people laugh because, in their own hearts, they are overwhelmed with pain. In the same way, others struggling with depression may act as if nothing is wrong and strive to keep up appearances in order not to worry others.
Long story short, you cannot simply look at a person and decipher whether or not they have depression. Here are eight ways to deal with depression:
You Can Overcome This
No matter how low down you feel right now, no matter how much it feels like your depression just wont go away, know that there are still plenty of things you can do to turn things around for the better.
Yes, things may seem hopeless right now.
Yes, even simple things like getting out of bed in a morning may require a Herculean effort that youre not always able to muster.
But no, that doesnt mean you have to give up.
Here, well look at some practical advice on how to help depression when nothing else works, complete with simple, actionable steps, you can take right now, no matter how severe your depression may be.
Taking A Break From Technology
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What Is Samhsa’s National Helpline
SAMHSAs National Helpline, , or TTY: is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations. Callers can also order free publications and other information.
Also visit the online treatment locator.
Look For The Positive And Praise Your Teen Generously
If your teen is depressed, they will welcome praise when its offered. Depression often comes with feeling guilty, ashamed, sad, lonely, anxious, and confused. When you give your teen praise, you highlight a detail in their life and you help them shine a bit more. You also let your teen know that youre noticing, that you care, and that you love them. Teens who are depressed need you to highlight the positive because they are so frequently focused on the negative.
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Sell What You’ve Made
“Everything in my Etsy shop is a product of my mental illness, whether directly or indirectly. I battled for years with depression and anxiety and I was diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder a few years ago. After having my son, I felt useless, like I as a person has ceased to exist, that I was just a conduit for my son to receive food and care and comfort. Making things became my way of reassuring myself I still mattered and that, no matter how bad things got, I was still capable of making the world a little better with the things I created.” laurenl4
Creative Ways To Deal With Your Depression
Depression can have many facesthis common yet disruptive mood disorder affects people of all walks of life. So, it only makes sense that there is a wide range of methods used to treat depression, including some more creative strategies. To effectively cope with depression, its important to work with a behavioral healthcare provider who will help you explore clinical treatments like medication, talk therapy, ECT, and Spravato. However, you may also benefit from creative depression coping strategies, such as discovering artistic skills or spending more time in the sun.
What is Depression?
Before diving into the different strategies for dealing with depression, its important to understand exactly what depression is. Depression, or major depressive disorder, is a serious mood disorder characterized by feelings of sadness, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, and changes in daily habits like eating or sleeping. For example, many individuals with depression also experience insomnia. In addition, depression may cause physical and behavioral changes that disrupt your professional life, personal relationships, and ability to function at home. These changes include:
- Fatigue or loss of energy
- Slowed movements or fidgety movements
- Difficulty focusing on activities
- Feelings of worthlessness or guilt
- Thoughts of suicide
- Withdrawal from social activities
- Loss of concern for personal and professional obligations and/or self-care
What Causes Depression?
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Make The Food And Mood Connection
“Diet and nutrition are very important,” says Nelson, and cites omega-3 fatty acids as an example. Some studies have shown that a higher daily intake of omega-3s, which you can get in fish like salmon or through fish oil supplements, can improve mood. There are many connections between elements of diet and good nutrition and depression, adds Nelson. Eating a healthy diet can make you feel healthy, fit, and attractive, which improves self-esteem, while feeling unhealthy can worsen depression and play into negative self-perception, he says.
Try To Eat A Healthy Diet
Some people don’t feel like eating when they’re depressed and are at risk of becoming underweight. Others find comfort in food and can put on excess weight.
Antidepressants can also affect your appetite.
If you’re concerned about weight loss, weight gain or how antidepressants are affecting your appetite, talk to your GP.
See tips on how to eat more healthily.
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Think About What You Could Be Angry At
While some experience depression as a continual state of sadness or increased painful emotions, some depression can come in the form of a state of numbnessa lack of feeling that weakens all excitement and smothers your potential to feel joy. Suppressing or cutting off emotions could be a defense against something you aren’t comfortable feeling. Many people who suffer from depression are actually masking a feeling of anger, turning their rage toward someone else on themselves. Anger can be a hard feeling to accept, as from a very young age we are often told it is bad to be angry, that we need to behave, and not to throw tantrums or get in fights. While acting abusive is never acceptable, feeling anger is a natural part of our everyday lives. By acknowledging and accepting or discussing your angry feelings, you are much less likely to turn these feelings against yourself or allow them to lead you into a depressed state.
Use Nature As Your Muse
If youre an outdoorsy person who appreciates nature, you can incorporate that into your art therapy activities as well by painting or drawing the outside or taking a walk in the park and painting the things you saw that made you feel happy, or the things that made you sad from memory. Another fun little activity you can do is collect items from nature that seem interesting to you such as rocks and pebbles and draw on those!
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How To Practice Focused Meditation
Here are six tips to help you practice focused meditation. Based on your availability and interest, these tips may change and evolve. Thats the point: to create a structured practice that caters to your needs.
1. Find a Comfortable Seat
As with any meditation practice, comfort is truly key. The physical body responds to meditation practice by alerting you to whether it is comfortable and supported or stressed out and in pain. This is best observed in practitioners who tend to slouch and lose the tall, supported spine that is essential to meditation practice.
A simple rule in meditative sitting is to ensure that your hips are higher than your knees. Therefore, choosing to sit in a chair instead of on the floor may be a smart decision or perhaps propping yourself up on a cushion. For meditation techniques overall, it does not matter how you sit. All that matters is that you are supported and comfortable sitting for some time.
2. Choose Your Object of Focus
Every meditation training session is going to be different because no single day is the same for any one person. Therefore, experienced meditators know that choosing an object is more about listening to what you need at this time versus following any doctrine or rule.
3. Set Your Desired Time or Go With the Flow
Likewise, if you have the time, you can also listen to your body and come out of your meditation when you feel its right to do so. This is often a beautiful practice of listening and tuning in.
Tip : Eat A Healthy Depression
What you eat has a direct impact on the way you feel. Reduce your intake of foods that can adversely affect your brain and mood, such as caffeine, alcohol, trans fats, and foods with high levels of chemical preservatives or hormones .
Dont skip meals. Going too long between meals can make you feel irritable and tired, so aim to eat something at least every three to four hours.
Minimize sugar and refined carbs. You may crave sugary snacks, baked goods, or comfort foods such as pasta or French fries, but these feel-good foods quickly lead to a crash in mood and energy. Aim to cut out as much of these foods as possible.
Boost your B vitamins. Deficiencies in B vitamins such as folic acid and B-12 can trigger depression. To get more, take a B-complex vitamin supplement or eat more citrus fruit, leafy greens, beans, chicken, and eggs.
Boost your mood with foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids.Omega-3 fatty acids play an essential role in stabilizing mood. The best sources are fatty fish such as salmon, herring, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, tuna, and some cold-water fish oil supplements.
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Express Yourself In Writing
Writing in a journal is great therapy and can help you manage depression. You can relieve stress by being open about your thoughts, feelings, and concerns in your writing and stress management is an important part of living well with depression. Be totally honest in your private journal. Writing down your feelings and challenges with depression can release pent-up emotions. You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel after putting pen to paper for just a few minutes each day.
Create An Art Journal
Studies suggest journaling is a brilliant method for improving mental health and mood. Many people associate journaling with writing, but creating an art journal can be fun and relaxing too. Create pages that reflect your emotions by pasting cut-outs of images that remind you of certain emotions. You can focus on different themes for different pages like gratitude, comforts, fears, etc., and experiment with new things as you go!
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Alcohol Tobacco And Other Drugs
Misusing alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs can have both immediate and long-term health effects.
The misuse and abuse of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, and prescription medications affect the health and well-being of millions of Americans. SAMHSAs 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health reports that approximately 19.3 million people aged 18 or older had a substance use disorder in the past year.
Find What Works For You Best
The ideas and suggestions listed here arent meant to replace medical advice. If youre dealing with depression, consulting a doctor or therapist can make all the difference.
Yet if youve tried those things and find they arent working, or if you simply want to give yourself the very best possible chance to turn things around, working your way through this list may mean you finally find the one thing that really works for you when it comes to making your depression go away for good.
Featured photo credit: Pexels via pexels.com
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Connect With Friends And Family
This can be one of the hardest things to do when feeling depressed, but it is one of the most rewarding activities. Isolating oneself from others may seem like a good idea, but put a limit on it and then get out there again.
Confiding in friends and family members can have a huge positive effect on your mood.
Get Professional Help For Depression
At Advanced Psychiatry Associates, we know how difficult it can be to navigate life with a mental illness like depression. Thats why were the only private, full-service facility in the Sacramento area to offer outpatient services, including managing medications and therapy. We offer services like ketamine treatments and transcranial magnetic stimulation, all to provide compassionate and comprehensive care.
Get in touch to schedule an appointment with us at any of our four locations in Folsom, Sacramento, Roseville and Elk Grove.
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Stop The Negative Self
Depressed people tend to see the world in a negative way. When things go wrong, they blame themselves, and when they go right, they put it down to luck. Depression reinforces self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness.
Monitor your inner negative talk and make allowances for this type of thinking by reminding yourself that your thinking is being clouded by your depression. Dont take your thoughts seriously when you are feeling low. Acknowledge the thoughts, but this doesnt mean you have to believe them.
Creative Ways To Deal With Anxiety And Depression
You already know the common ways to deal with anxiety, depression, and stress things like deep breathing, meditation, relaxation, taking a shower or bath, listening to music, watching something funny, taking a walk, exercising, etc. But maybe these common tips dont always work for you, or maybe you are looking to try some new things because these common ones are getting pretty boring to you. In any case, here are 5 creative ways to help manage anxiety, depression, and stress.
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Tip : Get A Daily Dose Of Sunlight
Sunlight can help boost serotonin levels and improve your mood. Whenever possible, get outside during daylight hours and expose yourself to the sun for at least 15 minutes a day. Remove sunglasses and use sunscreen as needed.
- Take a walk on your lunch break, have your coffee outside, enjoy an al fresco meal, or spend time gardening.
- Double up on the benefits of sunlight by exercising outside. Try hiking, walking in a local park, or playing golf or tennis with a friend.
- Increase the amount of natural light in your home and workplace by opening blinds and drapes and sitting near windows.
- If you live somewhere with little winter sunshine, try using a light therapy box.
Create Art In Response To Something
A quote, a poem, a paragraph, a saying we all have something of the sort that we feel represents us, that is close to us. They may be a source of happiness to us or maybe a pain. Creating response art entails answering whatever it is that particular thing makes you feel through art and creativity. It can foster problem-solving and critical thinking skills within you and allow you to come up with methods and courage to deal with your problems yourself.
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Have Your Teen Assessed By A Mental Health Professional
If you suspect depression in your teen, its a good idea to have them seen by a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Most parents dont know enough about the mental health condition to know what to do if they suspect their teen might be depressed. For this reason, its best to have your teen assessed by a mental health professional so that you can learn about how to prevent depression as well as how to help your teen overcome depression. Here are some additional reasons for having your teen see a mental health professional:
There is no typical picture of depression. Not all depressed teens look alike. You may notice classic symptoms in your teen, such as those listed above. Or, you might see unique symptoms of depression in your teen. For instance, your teen might refuse to shower or use substances to feel better.
Depression is a progressive illness. Depression that is not treated can get worse over time. In fact, many suicides are the result of untreated depression. When teens are not given medication to stabilize their mood, tools to manage their thinking, and support, all of which come with treatment, their depression might get worse.
Depression is treatable. With treatment, a teens mood can stabilize and over time they can return to a healthy level of functioning.
Going to a mental health professional will also be an educational experience. You and your teen might learn more about depression, how to prevent it, and what you can do to manage the illness.