Depression is a condition that takes over your life. Even if it is just mild depression, it still consumes much of your life, affecting how you live it and how you see it progressing. For example, you may feel that life is generally not worth living, but because you have only mild depression, you have some days where it lifts to an extent, and therefore seems a little more bearable. You still have the bad days to come, and these can be pretty awful. Depression is nothing to treat lightly, and people have to work very hard to overcome it.
Will power alone will not help you to beat depression. However, with some good support and treatment, you should find a way through the problem and eventually see yourself making progress. The irony is though, that many medical professionals will suggest that you take action if you want to overcome depression. However, taking action in any regard may well be the very last thing you feel like doing when you are depressed. Your energy levels and general spirit may be so depleted that you may feel that it is as much as you can do to get out of bed in the morning.
The key is to take things very slowly, and to have small goals that help you to make progress very slowly, but without the disappointment that comes with goals not being met. With quick and relatively easy rewards that come through small goal accomplishment, you should be able to feel that you are making general progress overall, and this will pay off in great dividends.
Build relationships
This is one of the very best ways to make real progress against depression. The key here is to work very hard on making sure that you have people and groups around you that offer you clear and reliable levels of support. The main issue here for many depressed people is that they feel there is some sort of stigma connected to being depressed, so they don’t often ask for help. Instead, they allow the depression to get worse simply because they cannot ask the right people for the support they need to get better.
Some small steps are important here. The first clear thing you can do is talk to someone who you love about your depression. A good and frank discussion with someone who loves you, for example, can allow you to feel that there is more love out there than negativity, which is a great boost for your emotional coping system.
You could also volunteer to help some people as part of charity work. This has incredible benefits for anyone who is suffering from depression, because it simply allows you to see how people who have other types of problems cope with their life. Helping out at a homeless charity, for example, is a very powerful way of seeing how some people suffer outside of your own personal experience. It also allows you to meet new people too.
You can of course also meet new people by joining a class or a club in the local community. This takes relatively little effort to start with, and all you have to do there is turn up and people will generally start talking to you.
Get rid of negative thinking
This is a powerful method that you can use to overcome depression. Your aim here is to reduce the amount of negative thinking you have in your life. While this may sound initially like it is a tall order, if you work hard at it you should make progress relatively quickly.
Get objective. Ask yourself the simple question: would I express these thoughts I have about myself to someone else? If the answer is no then you are wasting your time. If you cannot even face the possibility of expressing the thoughts you have about yourself to another person these thoughts are really negative and indefensible. This means that you should gain a perspective on how you are behaving, and this will at least allow you to see that your thoughts are not really appropriate.
You need to accept that you cannot achieve perfection. Many depressed people are actually trying to hold themselves to standards that are impossible to reach.
You can keep a journal, and inside this journal write down any of the negative thoughts that you have. Doing this achieves a couple of objectives that make it easier to stay focused on getting through the problem. Writing down all of your negative thoughts allows you to keep on top of the problem. You will see how your thoughts are developing, and having them written down on paper also allows you to stay a little distanced from them.
Look after yourself
Get at least eight hours of healthy sleep every night. There is no excuse for not being able to do this. Make it a part of your everyday routine by ensuring that you orgainse your evening so that you get to bed at around the same time every night. This way you have a guarantee of getting those eight hours. This amount of sleep allows you to become refreshed and ready to start the next day. It also allows your body to become fully rejuvenated. This will give you much more ammunition to deal with depression symptoms.
Take time out to enjoy things that you like doing. Even if you feel that your life is not what it used to be, and that you cannot enjoy the things you used to, try again. Maybe you used to enjoy going to the movies. If this is the case, pick a movie and go see it. The more the older, happier you is allowed to shine through, the quicker your recovery from depression.
There are many ways in which you can start, naturally, to overcome depression. Just remember that it all takes time, and it could be some months before you make real progress. It is worth the effort if you are able to lift the cloud of depression from your life.