This time of year me, and most of the people I know, are prone to depression. The weather, the lack of light near the solstice, and the stress of the Holidays all combine to push us in that direction. The other day I noticed that it was 11 a.m. and I hadn’t gotten dressed or done anything other than read my book all morning. I thought about it for a minute realized that my lack of motivation was depression. I could feel myself sinking into it. But then something great happened: my training kicked in.
I did about five years of counseling working on depression, anxiety, grief, and adjusting to life with chronic illness. I saw my symptoms and my coping improve over those five years but this was the first time I really saw the whole thing happen in a short time frame. Usually it’s a slower process: I’m depressed for a few days, I do a few things that might help me, use some coping mechanisms, and I can usually get on the road to feeling better within about a week (I also have pharmaceuticals helping me). This time though I caught it early enough that I wasn’t all the way in it yet, and I think that let me respond faster.
Here’s what happened.
I identified the depression. That’s always step one. It can be confusing when you’re dealing with chronic illness to figure out which thing is causing which symptoms. Am I fatigued because of my illnesses or am I tired because of my depression? Am I unfocused because of brain fog or am I unmotivated because of depression? These things have similar symptoms and it can be hard to identify causes.
This time though I felt confident that my depression was the main problem. The first thing I did was assess my basic bodily needs. Had I drank enough water that day? Had I slept enough? When was the last time I’d eaten healthy food? In this instance I had slept enough and my hydration wasn’t far off the mark but I hadn’t eaten anything of substance so far that day. I made myself get up and heat up some leftovers for lunch and refill my water bottle. Then I put on a funny TV show to distract me while I ate. There’s no need to muscle through everything and distractions can be great coping mechanisms when used in short term situations.
After I had eaten and the TV show was over the next thing I did was text a friend about feeling depressed. I find it’s helpful to choose my battlefield so to speak. If I talk about it with someone else then I’ve taken the battle outside my head and into the light of day. It takes away the depressions edge when you make it public. Depression likes to be a deep, dark secret. It has more power when you are fighting it alone. So I always try to let someone know when my depression is acting up. Just to be clear, that doesn’t mean it’s that persons job to fight the depression, it just makes my fight easier if I can do some of it outside my head.
Next I pulled out my Panda Planner. One of the reasons I’ve been struggling more with depression lately is that I’m currently unemployed and so I have a lot of time on my hands. I’ve found productive ways to fill that time but every now and then it still catches up to me. Using a planner helps me to see what needs to be done and then later it helps me appreciate the things I’ve accomplished. The Panda Planner is particularly good for me because it was created by a guy struggling with chronic illness.
The first thing it makes you do is write down things you are grateful for and things you are excited about. I always force myself to write a few things in each spot. There’s a space for an affirmation, it reminds you to exercise and has a box to write what exercises you did and lets you put in a habit or focus you are working on. After that you get to the tasks you need to complete. It only gives you five slots for your priority projects. That makes you focus in on a few things instead of having a mile long list of things you need to do. There is a place for smaller tasks down below with 8 slots so if it’s a quicker thing you can use those spots. There is also a schedule section to remember meetings or appointments. At the end there’s an End of Day Review where you identify the days wins and write how you will improve moving forward. I have found this planner to be exceptionally helpful. It really makes me focus on the most important things (link to the Panda Planner on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2QtMeJ8).
After using my planner the next thing I did was force myself to get dressed. That was a hard one. Why would I put on less comfortable clothes? That just seemed dumb to me at the time. But I did it because I know that it helps to get dressed. I think it just feels more like a new day when I put on non-pajama clothes. It’s also helpful to put on clothes that make me feel good. Things that fit me well or colors that I really like. This is also a good time to use my compression socks to reduce any symptoms of my physical illnesses that might be playing into this.
After all of that was done a friend needed a ride home from work. That worked out well for me since I needed an excuse to get out of my house. I had an errand to run too so I knocked out that errand on my way to pick her up. Double win there. It always feels good to cross that first thing off your checklist. By the time I got home from that I was feeling maybe 50% less depressed than I had several hours earlier. I find that I can’t push the depression out entirely with all my coping mechanisms but I can reduce it, make it easier to beat.
The coolest part was that I hadn’t realized my training had kicked in until I was on the planner stage of this. The first several steps I just did instinctively. That’s when I realized that this is what we trained for. This is what is supposed to happen. I didn’t do therapy for years so that I’d never feel depressed again, that’s not a realistic goal. I did therapy for years so that when depression hit I’d know how to handle it. And I did handle it. This is what we trained for!
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