How can you activate yourself to get anything done when you’re depressed? Several readers have asked about this basic need to keep functioning when your mood, mind and body do not want to cooperate. I’ve written before about working when depressed, but it’s not only about work. It’s about self-starting when depressed so that you […]
Self-Help
Becoming an Active Partner in Depression Treatment
Most stories about getting life back from depression describe how each person had to become an active partner in treatment in order to recover. I know it’s not easy to think about being active when you’re deeply depressed, but there’s a lot of support for the idea. Dozens of research studies indicate that if you can take a leading role, your chances of improving are better. There are at least three ways an active role can help you.
Coping with Stress in Depression
What’s the best way for coping with stress? Sometimes, when I’m starting to feel overwhelmed, it’s easy to forget everything I’ve ever learned and every skill I’ve ever mastered to stay sane. So then I have to retrace my steps and go back to first principles. It’s like being a musician who practices scales every […]
Overcoming Resistance
Writing is a way of reclaiming my mind from depression, but there is a darker side to it called resistance. I won’t call it writer’s block because the same thing stands in the way of any purposeful activity or major life commitment, including the process of recovering from depression. It usually begins only after I […]
Beyond Depression to Guiding Values
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy reminds me of the tense time I spent learning how to drive a car. Venturing onto a two-lane highway, I fixed my mind on the big worry – how to get where I wanted to go without crashing into anything along the way. The most important thing was to stay in […]
Before ACT – Doing Depression Right
When I started learning about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), the idea that I was doing depression rather than having it as an illness didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I could understand that avoiding painful situations could worsen depression and that I often acted in self-defeating ways. But weren’t those the effects […]
