Some Ideas That Can Hopefully Help You with Your Depression

(Originally posted this to r/depression, but it just got removed for some reason. I figured it would be more appreciated here anyway.)

These are some of the “philosophical” ideas that have helped me with my depression and some little strategies that you can try to work into your life. If you like them, great, but if you don’t like them or don’t agree with them, that’s fine, too. Not everything here applies to everyone, and I’m aware of that.

Should and Shouldn’t

There are no guidelines to life. There is nothing you necessarily should be doing or no way you should have acted in a situation. Where do our expectations of ourselves come from, then? Some of our expectations come from our own values, while others come from the values of our friends, family, coworkers, and society in general. Life itself, however, places no expectations on each of us. No shoulds or shouldn’ts. Maybe it’s a fact that I didn’t get out of bed this morning, but there’s nothing wrong with that from the view of the world.

Absolute Thinking

There are almost no absolutes in life. A great example of this is food: something isn’t either “healthy” or “unhealthy”; there are varying amounts of “healthiness” to each food item (although it’s a different story as to what defines healthiness...). The same thing goes for depression. No one is completely depressed, always depressed, or never happy (although some may like to argue that). I personally think that we feel varying amounts of every emotion throughout every day. Even if, say, the depression I felt today was much more common and intense than the happiness, I still felt happiness throughout the day.

Another thing to know is that we think things are impossibilities when they really aren’t. “I will never be happy. I will never be normal. I will never be not depressed.” Well, a lot of these things aren’t absolute to begin with. There isn’t “happy” or “not happy”; just varying amounts happiness, even if it’s not as much as we want. It’s also not realistic to think that we’re either totally depressed or totally not depressed, but it is possible and realistic to reduce the depression you feel on a daily basis, even if just by a little bit.

People

A lot of us center our lives and our happiness entirely around other people. We’ll even sacrifice our own happiness to do things for others. However, there’s so much more to life than just other people. In fact, I feel that each of us should be the single most important person to ourselves - especially since we’re suffering from such an awful disorder. Even if everyone’s struggle is different, it’s a struggle nonetheless, and we’re hopefully trying to do something about it.

Happiness doesn’t only come from our interactions with others. You might find happiness in music, art, nature, or any number of things. Try not to let others stand in the way of what makes you happy. I think that we should value our own happiness much more than the judgments of others.

Comparisons

He’s/she’s/they’re too good for me. I’m not good at anything. Everyone else has a life, while I don’t. Well, we’re not all the same person. Maybe if we were all born exactly the same and we all had the exact same experiences, we could justify ourselves in our comparisons to others. The truth is, we’re all extremely different, and we can’t expect ourselves to do anything just because an entirely different person can do it.

Assumptions

We, of all people, know that our thoughts can mislead us. However, we don’t know for sure what someone else is thinking until they give us a definite answer. I mean, there are times when people can be insincere, but, hopefully, we can accurately judge when that is. Assuming that a person feels a certain way about something or someone (especially ourselves) can be really bad for us. I may think that my friends don’t want to be around me, while, in reality, they might just be busier than I thought. Our assumptions can often make things worse than they are, so it’s often best to try to get rid of assumptions and just accept that we might not know what someone is thinking or feeling.

The Connection Between Body and Mind

Our body chemistry has a strong link to our moods and our emotions. There are the obvious things, like that eating healthy, drinking a lot of water, exercising, and sleeping enough should make us feel better, but there’s more to it than that. Our posture can actually have an impact on our mood. For example, I lay down on the couch watching Netflix all day and felt like absolute shit after a few hours of it. Sure, there are other factors causing me to feel awful as well, but I felt better getting up and just walking upstairs to make tea, or even just sitting up. For other emotions like anger or stress, it can help to try to relax your body and face as well as unclenching your hands and putting them on your legs, palms up.

To try to deal with intense emotions, we can also do something to quickly change our body chemistry. Ever wondered what the point of doing breathing exercises is? Well, focusing on breathing in and out for around a minute can help to reset our “flight-or-fight” response. Simply put, breathing in increases heart rate and speeds up the body’s functions, while breathing out decreases heart rate and slows down the body’s functions. The longer we do this, the closer we hopefully get to baseline. It’s also helpful to breathe out a little more slowly than we breathe in. Doing intense exercise, like working out or running, can also change our body chemistry enough to lessen the intensity of negative emotions.

Depression and Thought

This may not always be the case, but I personally find that, when I feel depressed, it’s almost always a result of my thoughts. In theory, if I clear my mind from nagging thoughts, I should feel less depressed. That’s the idea of mindfulness. It doesn’t necessarily mean “meditation” or even trying to clear your mind; it means being aware of the present moment. Try to take some time to focus on what you’re doing throughout the day. For me, my thoughts tend to wander a lot while I take a shower to the point where I can’t remember if I’ve washed my hair, so I’ve been working on paying attention to what I feel when I’m taking a shower. I’ll notice that my thoughts still wander, and I can’t expect them not to wander, but it’s good to recognize that and bring myself back to the moment. Everything becomes so routine to us, so we stop paying attention to the world around us and get lost in thought instead.

Building Mastery in Our Lives

This means doing things that give us a sense of accomplishment, often as a routine. In order to build mastery in our lives, we can give ourselves challenges that are doable and make us feel accomplished. This could be making the bed in the morning, taking a shower every day, doing a little bit of exercise every day, spending some time working on an art project, or anything that makes each of us feel accomplished. At the same time, it’s okay if we don’t do what we planned to, and it’s important to know that even if we don’t or can’t do what we set out to, it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible or can’t be done another time. It really isn’t easy to work new challenges into our lives.

Validation

I find the idea of validation/invalidation hard to grasp at times. To validate, in this case, means to express that something is acceptable and reasonable. It’s important that we don’t invalidate our emotions. I shouldn’t be feeling depressed. I have no reason to feel depressed. Not everyone agrees with this, but I feel that every emotion is caused, and they’re all valid as well. Of course I’ll feel depressed if my friends did something without me or if I did nothing to make me feel accomplished all day. I’m sure plenty of things happen to all of us to make us feel depressed, and there are good reasons for it, too. If we accept our emotions and their causes, we can better understand what we can to do to change them. It’s just natural for a lot of us to be invalidating to ourselves, saying that we don’t deserve what we have, or that we shouldn’t feel the ways we do, or anything else, but that’s just not helpful in a lot of cases.

In Conclusion

I hope some of this could help you or at least get you thinking. Depression is an awful thing, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.