Nowadays, depression is a typical and very frequent problem in the society in which we live, being an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in the population.
We consider as depressed a person who presents at least a sad mood and partial loss of the ability to feel interest and pleasurealong with other problems such as fatigue, poor judgment, sleep or eating problems, recurring negative thoughts appearing that make life look negative, sometimes uncontrollable and lack of hope.
What can we do to keep depression out of our lives?
Depressed people have mood, cognitive, behavioral, physical and interpersonal symptoms.being a problem that generates a large number of difficulties when it comes to living a normal life.
Taking this into account, we proceed to give you a series of indications or tips that are useful to improve your state in a depressive process. Although the tone of this article may seem casual, all the indications given have a scientific basis, with most of them applied in clinical practice in people with different types of depression.
1. Make a schedule… and stick to it
Depressed people tend to have a passive attitude toward life.. Depression causes you to lose enthusiasm and energy, losing motivation to make plans and do things. It is also common to think that whatever you do there will not be an improvement in your situation, which facilitates inhibition.
One way to combat this passive attitude is to make and commit to a schedule. This schedule must incorporate the different activities that will be carried out throughout the day and week, forcing the depressed person to distribute their time in a way that avoids as much as possible the negative thoughts they may have. It must incorporate both daily obligations (going to work, for example) and daily habits (eating time, sleeping and hygiene habits), and it is especially important to incorporate periods of leisure and socialization in a concrete way (it is not enough to say leave this time for leisure, but a specific activity must be planned, such as going to the cinema for example).
Making a schedule is a way to force yourself to plan and act.but the schedule you make must be realistic or else you may become frustrated and your mood worse.
2. Set goals
Closely linked to the previous advice. It is about imagining a future or situation that you want to reach and that you believe you can achieve..
The goals you set have to be realistic and achievable in the short term, requiring a little effort but not so hard that you want to give up. If the goal you come up with is complicated or long-term, compartmentalize it so that you can break it down into small, achievable goals in relatively short periods of time. It is not about doing a long-distance race, because you can fall along the way. It’s about taking one small step at a time.
3. Do sports
We all know the phrase “mens sana in corpore sana”. In reality, this popular saying contains more wisdom than it may seem. It has been shown that exercising regularly generates endogenous endorphinsmaking us feel in a better mood and reducing the effects of depression.
It also strengthens the body and immune system, helps improve self-esteem and allows you to rest better. The data reflect that it is even a protective factor for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, as well as for coronary heart diseases. So, do not hesitate to go for a run, swim or go to the gym, since it will make you feel better and will be useful in many ways. Endorphins relieve depression.
Writing what happens to us or happens to us is a good way to introspect.. Making a list of the things that make us feel bad can be very helpful. However, simply making a list of everything that is going wrong is a process that can help cognitively locate where the problem or dissatisfaction is, but it does not help unless further work is done. Once done, write down what thoughts provoke you, and then try to imagine possible interpretations different from yours.
This helps to gradually modify dysfunctional beliefs and negative thoughts if we manage to integrate more positive interpretations and reject those with greater negativity.
5. Let off steam
Anyone who knows a depressed person can probably tell that that person is feeling bad and may even have told them the reasons why they are that way. However, even if you can give reasons why they feel bad, many depressed people tend to become inhibited and keep their real emotions and thoughts to themselves about it.
In this sense, If you feel like you are in a bad moment, you don’t have to hesitate to vent.. That list of things going wrong we talked about earlier… burn it. Sing, scream, cry, run, play a contact sport that allows you to vent frustration. The important thing is that you do not close yourself in and let your thoughts and, above all, your emotions flow.
6. Force yourself to go out and socialize
Depressed people tend, in the long run, to avoid contact with others. Its condition initially generates empathy and concern in friends or loved ones, but in the long run the negative and isolationist attitude that depression produces can produce a certain rejection in others.
This is why if you are in a situation of depression, it would be useful for you to participate in the social life around you. This does not mean that you force social situations or establish a relationship of dependency with others, which also tends to produce rejection, but that you try to go out, participate in the conversation of those close to you and be open to participating in different plans and activities.
We have said before that depressed people usually have a passive attitude and lose the desire to do things. Even things that you were passionate about before now lose their meaning and the idea of doing them seems stupid to you.
For this reason it is important to force yourself to do them, trying to recover the illusion. It is not necessary that the activity makes you completely happy or that you enjoy it the same as before, but it is enough that it makes you reduce the level of sadness a little, and in the long run you could regain your passion for it.
7. Explore
Introducing changes in your life can make you discover new sensations and points of view about life. It is not about leaving all of the above behind, but about introducing some small variation that may be satisfactory and even change the vision of the whole.
For example, sign up for a cooking, Chinese writing, or origami class, or travel to a place you’ve never been before (even if it’s a different neighborhood in the same city). You can discover a new passion, get to know environments and people that make you reflect and value things differently.
8. Go to a professional
If you don’t feel able to get out of the situation on your own, you can always resort to the help of a professional. Mood disorders are, along with anxiety disorders, the most common type of problems that psychologists and psychiatrists usually work on.
This does not mean that your problem will be solved overnight, but they can help you establish strategies and carry out psychological treatments that improve your situation.
