What is depression? When you feel sad consistently for more than two weeks and can’t shake off this feeling, you show a sign of having clinical depression. If you feel sad for a time shorter than two weeks, you don’t have depression.
What to do help yourself out of depression or reduce the impact of depression?
Depression is a serious mental illness. Ideally, you should get professional help to handle depression. Your therapist will lead you through a series of consultations and enlighten you on how you can tackle depression.
There are also minor activities you can use to help yourself.
Activities to manage depression:
- Plan your daily schedule. An idle mind may revert back to thoughts about depression.
- Write about your thoughts. Write about anything that runs through your mind. Even if you don’t have anything else to write, write the line, “Life is great and I feel happy.” Write this line many times until the message sinks into you.
- Record your day in your journal. You will come to recognize triggers that set off sad or low feelings. You should tell yourself to harden your resolution to resist thinking and feeling depressed whenever you recognize the familiar triggers.
- Talk to your friends for moral support.
Depression is an uphill battle to wrestle control for our mental state to be in a good equilibrium. It gets easier when you are often in a good equilibrium. This becomes your steady state and you’re less likely to feel sad for long.
