Golden DOs and DON'Ts in Overcoming Depression

The following DOs and DON'Ts are approaches and attitudes that many people have found helpful in overcoming their feelings of depression.

Five Simple Golden DOs in Overcoming Depression

1. Always look after yourself properly by healthy eating, socializing, exercising and resting in the ways that you know are good for you. Even when you feel lethargic consider it your job and your duty to yourself to look after yourself properly.
2. Often do those things that make you feel good and that you enjoy. If you can't think of any then try healthy new things until you find some. Keep them up even if sometimes they don't work for you, because as long as you maintain your possibilities of enjoying yourself you are providing yourself with the best opportunities to overcome that depression.
3. Remember to be kind to yourself and to respect your own needs and feelings (you have an illness just like any other and its not being selfish if you have to do a little less for others until you are feeling better).
4. When making positive changes to your life remember to only set yourself simple, realistic and easily achievable goals. When setting goals keep to the criterion of S.M.A.R.T.; Specific, Manageable, Achievable, & Realistic Targets and remember when making changes and improvements always keep it simple.
5. Seek help from any useful source. Go to your GP, go to a reputable self help group that is relevant to your needs; go to a counsellor or psychotherapist, talk to your religious minister/priest/rabbi/imam for personal advice if you are religious or otherwise just someone whom you respect as being wise; If you have legal/financial or other similar problems go to the Citizens Advice Bureau, but whatever your situation remember that the old adage that a problem shared is a problem halved is very often true.

Two Simple Golden DON'Ts in Overcoming Depression

1. Brood Not! Always remember to avoid negatizing thoughts and behaviours. You can talk about them in counselling and in gaining advice, but otherwise put past problems and failures behind you to a healthy degree. Instead of brooding or ruminating over those things like you used to you can choose to focus upon doing things that increase your feelings of well-being and focus upon looking after yourself and moving forwards in small day to day ways. If there is ever a good reason for you to think about your 'problem situation' then focus upon limiting this to a certain and timed limited time of day and in that time write down your thoughts feelings and solutions neatly on a notepad during the allotted time.
2. Don't Go Shy! It is important for people who are suffering from depression that they avoid reducing social contacts. Social contact and support is a key weapon in the battle against depression. People who feel down and lethargic sometimes feel less socially confident and thus they stay at home where they feel safe as much as they can (typically eating comfort foods, watching TV and using the internet), but in doing so they are cutting themselves off from the basic human need of real human company and social interaction and they are almost certainly missing out on good experiences that would be helpful to them. If you are depressed get out there and seek pleasant, healthy and beneficial social activities. If you used to do particular favoured pastimes take them up again, if you didn't then now is the time to take them up depending on your needs and individual situation. There are a plethora of potential hobbies, pastimes, adult education classes, sports, voluntary, religious or community activities that you can beneficially engage in and remember that the human warmth that comes from engaging in human social activities can be a great weapon against the 'coldness' and lethargy of depression - even a mere friendly hello or smile can often have powerful healing effects.

Q&A

What is Depression?

Depression is an emotional-thinking condition that is often characterized by negative feelings of sadness, lack of pleasure, sleep and appetite alterations, low energy levels and lethargy, difficulty in thinking, a lack of hope and most notably cyclical negative thoughts and negative cognitive distortions. Depression is one of the most common emotional illnesses and it may be a chronic condition or just last for a very short time. Depression is generally linked to repeated frustrations and patterns of learned helplessness, which lead to self-defeating negative evaluations of the world and life in general.

What are the Types of Depression?

There are two main types of depression:

A. Endogenous or 'neurotic' depression in which a person has no major situational problems, nor have they experienced any major trauma in the recent past, and they are suffering as the result of a constitutional depressive attitude towards life, or as the result of subconscious emotional issues etc.

B. Exogenous or reactive depression in which a person has become depressed as a reaction to traumatic events or a series of emotionally challenging situations.

In both forms of depression the best way forwards for sufferers often includes a broad spectrum approach of medical assistance along with counselling and/or hypno-psychotherapy. Counselling and other talking therapies have been demonstrated to provide effective help for people suffering from depression and studies have demonstrated that through approaches such as CBT the vast majority of sufferers may be helped to overcome it. Skilled counsellors and hypno-psychotherapists may help clients who suffer from depression to re-evaluate their self-image, increase their coping skills, overcome cognitive distortions and make positive lifestyle changes, whilst physicians may help people suffering from depression by prescribing them effective medication. In most cases these two approaches work best together. Depressed people should always consult their GP, even if they are already seeing a counsellor as sometimes depression has an underlying physical cause that can be easily treated with medication.

What are the Levels of Depression?

Depression is not a fixed thing and a person with depression may find that it fluctuates during the time that they suffer from it, but generally it be classed according to two levels of severity. These are:

1. Severe, major or clinical depression has a combination of symptoms that interfere with the sufferer's ability to live a normal life. They find working difficult or impossible, social and fun activities un-pleasurable and they are severely disabled by their depression.
2. More commonly people suffer from milder depression, in which they are still able to function in their everyday lives. Mild-medium depression may be experienced as dysthymia (a more long term form of depression in which although a sufferer is not disabled they neither feel well or happy and nor do they function effectively in the work and personal lives) or as a brief episode of depressive feelings.

What are some of the main Theories that help us Understand and Overcome Depression?

Depression is something that may occur when situations perceived as being adverse come together with certain types of thought process in an individual. All schools of thought in psychology look at depression from a slightly different angle, but three of these understandings may be particularly helpful to help people understand what is going on in depression.

Cognitively research has lead to the development of the understanding that depression is just as much something that people do, just as much as it is something that people feel. Cognitive research has demonstrated that depression is linked to and often caused by depressogenic thinking (a cycle of negative appraisals of reality in which a cloud pessimist cognitive distortions means that the individual notices negative things whilst blocking out positive ones). This is why many eclectic therapists help clients to explore and overcome the cognitive distortions that may be a major cause of their depression. Through appropriate therapy the individual may be helped to develop a healthier, more functional, empirical and positive attitude to everyday events.

Humanistic psychology tends to explain depression in relation to an individual being detached from the true feelings of their organismic self. The Rogerian concept of organismic self refers to the natural and true self of a person - the part of them in which their genuine feelings, natural wisdom, likes and dislikes reside. However, during their lives many people have been trained to ignore their true feelings and to deny them, to the point that they get out of touch from their organismic self. When this happens they are often unable to know what they like or what will make them happy. Such people may (to one degree or another) spend their lives in activities that they truly find unsatisfying or even unpleasant, yet they are unable to change their lives in satisfying ways, because they don't know what would make them happy. Happily it has long been demonstrated that people in this situation can be helped to get in touch with their real feelings and get to know their likes and dislikes through sensitive and empathic counselling and/or therapy (such as taught by Carl Rogers and others).

Psychodynamically depression is often considered to be caused by feelings of upset, anger and/or frustration, which have not been effectively expressed in a psychologically healthy way (on that would allow emotional catharsis or release). Thus where it is appropriate the eclectic therapist may often help clients to deal emotionally with notably relevant past events that the client brings up in during therapy. This is because it may often be the case that the subsequent expansion of conscious awareness allows recognition and expression of repressed feelings that can be very helpful for the client in overcoming their situation.

Quite simply, depression may be seen as a 'situational-thinking-doing-feeling' problem pattern that may lead a sufferer experiencing regular sadness and pessimism, which in turn temporarily alter the balance of the neuro-chemistry in the brain in a way that may sustain negative feelings and self-defeating behaviour patterns. To overcome depression using the biomedical model of health a GP or Psychiatrist will prescribe anti-depressants to help a depressed person to feel better and to avoid the lows of their symptoms. This approach works directly upon the neuro-chemical elements of depression and it may give the sufferer a cushioned time in which to work out their issues. At the same time a counselling/therapy approach helps the client to overcome negative 'thinking-feeling-doing' patterns that are supporting the depressive state, whilst also helping them positively to come to terms with and overcome any traumatic memories or neurotic problems that may have lead to the depression in the first place.

Whilst both counselling/psychotherapy and antidepressants have been clearly demonstrated to help people overcome depression in numerous studies, a combined approach in which the client/patient receives the benefits of both approaches at the same time has the advantage of the partial respite provided by the anti-depressants and the emotional healing and personal growth promoting qualities of counselling/psychotherapy.

This article was written by Patrick JM Nelson for the Fellowship of Eclectic Therapists and it is the property of that organization, but please feel free to copy and use this information for any beneficial purposes.

Find a FETT therapist