If YOU Feel Depressed, Do THESE 5 Things!
Bad mood? Help yourself out! If you find yourself thinking gloomy thoughts from time to time, it's all too human and therefore quite normal. No one lives exclusively on the sunny side of life, and sometimes the shadows manage to settle on our minds like a heavy fog.
If you experience these feelings frequently or can't seem to get out of your emotional low, please seek professional help immediately before depression takes control. If your mood lows are intermittent and you'd like to actively counteract them yourself, we have five simple but effective suggestions for you in this article.
1. Look at the good in your life
When the bad threatens to take over, orient yourself to the good things in your life. Sit in a quiet place with a cup of tea or coffee and make a list: What have you accomplished in life so far? What were the professional and personal milestones? What people have you delighted, inspired, or helped time and time again?
What talents were you given for this life, what are you particularly good at, what distinguishes your personality? We don't have to walk this earth as superheroes. Most of us are happy to cope reasonably well with the challenges of everyday life. Nevertheless, everyone has a few things on his or her list to be justifiably proud of.
2. Get out into nature
When you notice dark mood clouds looming on the horizon, put on your hiking or running shoes and get outside. It doesn't matter if you're exercising or settling somewhere sunny and cozy. The most powerful ally in the fight against depressive moods is the sun, and that's without a prescription. Sunlight stimulates the production of vitamin D in our body, which subsequently helps to release serotonin.
This messenger substance is not called the happiness hormone for nothing. But it influences our mood not only directly, but also indirectly. Serotonin has a satiating effect and thus prevents cravings, which would lead to a blood sugar roller coaster and in turn give us mood swings. It also ensures that our body gets into its ideal day-night rhythm.
Healthy sleep has also been shown to be important for balance and our physical and mental well-being. If you want to maximize the effect of being outdoors, go to the forest or along a river.
3. Seek contact with others
Even if you don't feel like it during bad times, go out and try to talk to people or pick up the phone and call loved ones or family members. If you're a regular customer at the bakery or other store, go and have a quick chat with the staff there. They're happy to hear kind words, too, you can be sure.
Walking around often provides nice, casual opportunities to talk to people. These interactions don't have to last long at all. Compliment someone and go on your way, and you'll see that the pleasure comes right back to you. However, if you have an increased need for conversation that you don't want to bother anyone in your environment with, there are now numerous contact points where you can turn to discreetly and even anonymously.
These include various chat or discussion boards, telephone counselling, psychosocial services or crisis telephones. The possibilities are really very numerous. The Internet can also serve you well if you want to talk to others without getting into personal contact. But maybe just buying a magazine or a bar of chocolate and having a quick chat with the clerk is enough.
4. A bad day doesn't make a bad life
Even if emotional troughs can feel like the end of the world right now, they're not. People who are never in a bad mood, moody or depressed are few and far between. A variety of factors are decisive for our emotional life and mood. These include the weather - the winter blues really do exist - our sleep, our diet and, of course, the everyday events we have to deal with.
Trouble in the relationship, family and job or just in traffic. All this affects our well-being. To question your whole life because of it would be like lighting the proverbial house on fire when all you want to do is make yourself some toast. The best way to face a bad day is with both feet on the ground.
Acknowledge its existence and add in your mind that it's fine the way it is, and most importantly, that tomorrow will be better. Sleeping on it for a night takes a lot of the terror out of pretty much any adversity.
5. Get to the bottom of your dark thoughts
They can sometimes be our toughest adversary, our negative thoughts. Such thought patterns can come in many forms, some involving the familiar all-or-nothing thinking also known as black and white thinking. Often, a single negative experience is immediately generalized. We then focus exclusively on the negative and ignore the positive. But how can you break free from these thought patterns?
You simply pick them apart by questioning them in as much detail as possible, for example, what evidence is there that these thoughts are true? What would I advise a friend who holds such thoughts? Is there an alternative view of my current situation or a logical explanation for it? Imagining advising someone else on their current personal situation is helpful in that we often find it easier to support and advise others than ourselves.
This allows us to take a kind of bird's eye view of our thoughts, which also occurs in mindfulness practice. The more intensively you can think about your negative thought stream as objectively as possible, the faster it will dissolve into thin air. You simply take away its power, as if you were depriving fire of oxygen.
Today’s Conclusion:
Life is not always radiantly beautiful and carefree. However, if tragic events and life-changing disasters are not just around the corner, there is absolutely no reason to despair. A bad day in between can even be quite healing. We then appreciate the good things more again.
Our most powerful tool in the fight against bad moods is the sheer willpower that Mother Nature has given us. Those who can and have the strength to do so don't let their lives be spoiled by gloom and weird thought patterns that our brains have stored away at some point. Ups and downs are quite normal. In most cases, they are manageable and can be seen as a challenge from which we emerge stronger.
As humans, we will never be perfect, but that's not the point. What matters is progress and constant evolution towards the best version of ourselves. We owe that not only to ourselves, but most importantly to those people and higher powers who have honored us with the gift of life. That's it for today.