Feeling Down In The Dump?
Check These 10 Ways To Deal With Depression
Depression itself is a challenging mental situation. Failing to deal with depression can cause people to feel even more down. This applies to many areas of our lives.
Thankfully, there are ways to battle depression. You can use these 10 strategies in dealing with depression in your life:
1. Stop The Negative Energy Flows In Your Life
All sorts of negative thoughts can blurt out inside our heads if we let the negative energies causing depression flow in our life. Oftentimes, your moods can weigh you down to a point where it seems impossible to challenge your thoughts.
Fortunately, there are practices such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness exercises, and self-help materials.
You, too, can use these so you can stop the negative energy flows that trigger depression.
2. Be Self-Respectful And Boost Your Self-Esteem
People who suffer from depression also suffer from low self-esteem. Lower self-esteem is often associated with the inability to respect ourselves.
So, starting from now, be respectful of yourself by acknowledging your best qualities and be proud of every step you make to overcome depression, even if your timings take longer than they should be.
3. Learn To Laugh At Life’s Problems
Almost all people have proved to laugh at life’s problems breaks negative thoughts that are caused by depressions.
Laughing is also one of the many tools and techniques to decrease excess cortisol hormone that cause people to feel stress.
That being said, keeping humor in your life is one of the 10 ways to deal with depression. Some examples you can do are sharing humorous stories with your friends or watching funny shows.
4. Learn To Plan Your Days And Stick To Them
People’s motivations drop if they suffer from depression. The symptoms of depression, including fatigue and difficulty concentrating, also make some people lazy to plan their days, leading to more severe depression.
To overcome this, learn to focus on the things that you like on your schedule.
Start with the basic things, such as get out of your bed, shower, get dressed, or do household chores to boost your feelings of self-accomplishment.
5. Keep On Moving Everyday
The first thing you need to do so you keep on moving every day is to reword exercises to physical activities.
Exercises are closely tied to boring routines, while physical activities relieve stress and boost your self-esteem as you get physically fit.
Whenever you feel sluggish, try to concentrate your thoughts on the things you can do. For example, working on your hobbies or meeting your friends for coffee times.
The more you keep on doing things, the more positive energies you will create and get.
6. Create A Wellness Toolbox
Essentially, a wellness toolbox is a set of tools you can use to calm yourself down when you feel negative.
As everyone has their own unique toolboxes, you may want to write down your lists of activities and interests to generate your toolboxes.
In other words, think of things you like to do when you’re happy and revisit these whenever you feel down.
Some ideas that you can use are cuddling your pets, listening to your favorite music, or reading books you love.
7. Improve Your Sleeping Quality
Researches have proved that people suffering from depression have sleep disturbances as some of their symptoms.
They either sleep too much or not enough. Feeling exhausted is another symptom of depression that leads to rotten sleeping qualities.
Your times to go to bed and wake up should be consistent. Not stopping there, avoid using your beds for activities other than sleeping.
For example, doing work in beds can make your unconscious minds associate beds with stress, which will increase the likelihood of suffering depression.
8. Connect Foods With Moods
Researches have also proved that there are strong relations between a healthy diet, good nutrition, and depression.
People who are depressed almost always have an unhealthy diet. Some other researchers also found that depressed people lack zinc in their bodies.
Apart from zinc, omega-3 in higher amounts can also bring out positive moods.
So, eat foods that are rich in either one of these two substances, such as dark chocolate, seafood, and fish such as salmon.
If necessary, consult your physician, especially when you’re considering changes in your dietary intake.
9. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help
Some people are hiding their depression and claiming asking for help is a weakness. The good news is, you can allow yourself to try this one of the 10 ways to deal with depression.
Your bits of help can come from your closest knit of friends. If you begin to acknowledge even one symptom of stress and depression, don’t be afraid to talk about what causes you to get stressed or feel down.
Talking with your therapists also helps in managing your emotions and working toward improving and enjoying your life.
10. Build Strong Support Systems
Improving your social life is also one of the 10 ways to deal with depression.
In order to overcome the low self-esteem and lack of social interests caused by depression, you need to push yourself to socialize and stay involved with your friends.
This is because wider social networks can keep you away from feeling isolated as a result of suffering depression.
Social activities such as sharing a brisk walk or just catching up with old friends can help a lot in lifting up your spirits.
Joining online communities of your interests can also be a decent alternative if you’re too shy of socializing.
Finally, we can’t stress enough how depression can elevate to a point of suicidal thoughts regardless of the frequencies.
Suicide prevention hotlines and non-profit organizations are available in most countries all over the world.
So, if your loved ones are suffering from suicidal thoughts as a result of depression, call those hotlines and reach out to those non-profit organizations.
There are also journals and articles on mental health that you can use to deal with depression.
This article about 10 ways to deal with depression is one of them. So, be sure to revisit this article every time you need help.