Habits That Maintain Your Depression
If you’re experiencing depression, you might be feeling tiredness, lethargy, loss of interest, loss of motivation, and indecisiveness, all of which can make it very difficult to be active. It can disrupt the way you live, stop you from doing the things you used to or stop you from enjoying them. These negative feelings and lack of motivation mean that you might begin to neglect everyday tasks and responsibilities and things can quickly become overwhelming.
But stress not! There are many different things you can do to fight against these negative feelings and feel like you’re on top of things again. Something you might not realise is that behaviour has a huge impact on mood. If we can change our behaviour, it often helps with these negative feelings we are experiencing. One way to decrease these negative feelings is to increase your activity levels.
Increasing activity can help you feel better. It gives your mind something else to think about, helps you feel like you’re moving forward, making progress and taking control of your life again. This is called having a feeling of MASTERY and it will be one of your best friends for getting through depression. But, you also want to make sure that you are doing activities that you ‘want’ to do rather than what you feel you ‘should’ be doing. Doing things that you’re interested in and matter to you can also increase your motivation levels.
Activity can also help you feel less tired! Usually when you feel tired you need rest, but with depression this can make things worse. Doing nothing can make you feel more tired and lethargic. It also allows you more time to ruminate on those negative thoughts which can make you feel even more depressed. Activity can help you think more clearly. Activity can help clear that foggy feeling and help change your perspective on things in life.
Another way to decrease these depressive symptoms and negative feelings is to do fun and pleasurable things! At this point you might be thinking “Well obviously!” but doing fun and pleasurable things is not always easy. Depression is not only feelings of sadness but also hopelessness and helplessness, so motivation is often very low. It helps to do tasks that increase other positive feelings such as achievement and a sense of purpose. These types of tasks can be as simple as folding the washing or making that phone call you’ve been planning to. Doing these things helps you feel more in control of your life and helps you feel like you’ve done something with your day. It gives you a feeling of… you guessed it, our best friend MASTERY! Increasing feelings of mastery and achievement both help you feel like you’re on top of things again and are just as important as doing things that bring you pleasure.
Now you might be saying to yourself “That’s all well and good but I really don’t feel like doing anything!” or “It probably won’t work anyway” and these thoughts may stop you from getting started. This is normal for people struggling with depression where things you don’t normally have to think about seem to require a huge effort. The best way to start is with something small. If you were training for a marathon and you hadn’t run in a really long time you wouldn’t run the whole 42km in one go! You would start small, you would build up your fitness and stamina slowly until you could run the 42km without a huge effort. That’s what we want to do. You can’t expect yourself to be able to jump out of bed, clean the whole house and then go out to lunch. Start with getting out of bed and having a shower. Instead of cleaning the whole kitchen just start with doing the dishes. Every task can be broken down into smaller tasks, we just need to break tasks down into pieces you find manageable. If you find you’re struggling with even the smallest task, you’d like support through this process or you’re just not sure where to start, reach out to a professional for some help.
How to Access a Psychologist at CQ Psych Services:
- Contact us directly by calling 07 4972 6929 or email admin@cqpsychservices.com.au
- Ask your GP or health professional to refer you to our clinic.
- Come in and see our friendly staff at Shop 1 & 2, 13 Tank Street, Gladstone QLD 4680.
- Visit our website and complete a ‘Request an Appointment’ form and one of our friendly staff will reply to your enquiry. Website: https://cqpsychservices.com.au/
Author: Ellie Putland
