Guide to get out of depression: start to be happy from now

Eliminate negative thoughts from your life

Depression is a serious mood disorder, which involves a loss of interest or enjoyment in things and/or a depressed mood for most of the day, along with other symptoms such as: loss or increase in appetite, feelings of sadness, emptiness and guilt, self-hatred, dysfunctional beliefs, irritability, anxiety…

According to the WHO (World Health Organization), it is a disorder that affects between 8 and 15% of the population throughout their lives, and is more frequent in women than in men. Some factors can increase the probability of developing it, such as: being under 29 or over 55, being unemployed (in these cases the probability doubles), having an addiction to drugs or other substances or Frequent use of alcohol or tobacco.

Luckily, depression is an addressable pathology, that is, it can be treated and combated. In severe cases, psychotropic drugs are used along with psychological therapy, although not all cases (especially those that are milder) require medication. In the case of psychological therapy, this is a tool that will be of great help to us, the most effective therapies to date being cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy.

In this article we bring you the guide to get out of depression that can be of great help, with some tips and keys to start being happy from now on. Do you dare to follow all these recommendations?

5 key ideas to know how to get out of depression

How to get out of depression? The main idea that should be clear to us if we suffer from depression is that it will be essential to ask for professional help and, above all, express how we feel, surround ourselves with our loved ones and support ourselves in that social network. Talking about it, not avoiding it, can also help us a lot. It should not become a taboo subject at all. Mental health is a very important issue and we must naturalize talking about it.

Thus, we know that depression is a serious disorder that requires specific psychological treatment (and in many cases, also pharmacological treatment). Therefore, it is a serious matter. Once this is clarified, through this article we intend to offer some complementary key ideas to therapy, which can help you improve your mood and your apathy at this time, in case you suffer from depression. That is, they are ideas that we can apply at the same time that we carry out a psychotherapeutic process.

1. Analyze how you feel

• The first step we must take is to discover whether or not we really suffer from depression. Depression is not just being sad, or having a bad time. It is a serious mood disorder, necessarily involving a depressed state most of the day (almost every day) or a lack of interest or enjoyment in things, along with other symptoms.
• This should last for at least two weeks, and not be a normal response to loss, as it would be in bereavement. That is, the symptoms go far beyond this. Therefore, the first thing you should do is analyze how you feel and, above all, inform yourself about depression. You cannot self-diagnose, but you can reflect on how you feel and why, to start thinking about seeking help if you need it.

2. Adopt healthy lifestyle habits (improve your quality of life)

Healthy lifestyle habits promote emotional well-being and physical and mental health. Thus, when we adopt these types of habits, our quality of life improves remarkably, and an adequate quality of life can reduce the intensity of depressive symptoms. What do we mean when we talk about healthy lifestyle habits?

• Sleep enough hours.
• Have a deep and restful sleep.
• Take care of schedules and routines related to sleep and eating.
• Plan our day to day well.
• Avoid sources of stress (or try to reduce them as much as possible).
• Follow a balanced and healthy diet.
• Practice physical exercise on a regular basis.

You will see how, little by little, the implementation of healthy lifestyle habits will allow you to have more energy and combat many of the depressive symptoms. In addition, they will help you feel better physically. Remember that you are in a moment of vulnerability, and that energy in these cases is necessary to put yourself before this whole situation: you need yourself strong, and for this you must take care of yourself.

3. Check your thoughts

• Thoughts are directly related to our emotions and our behaviors, and vice versa, everything we feel and do can condition our thoughts. In this sense, we see how thoughts, emotions and actions cannot be “separated”, because each of these elements will influence the others.
• In depression, the so-called cognitive triad, proposed by Aaron Beck, appears very frequently. The cognitive triad consists of three thought patterns characteristic of people suffering from depression. These schemes induce the depressed person to perceive himself, the world and the future from a negative and tremendously pessimistic point of view. As a result, hopelessness often appears, which the belief that things will never change is and a feeling of hopelessness associated with it.
• Going back to Beck’s triad, according to the psychologist, the rest of the person’s depressive symptoms are born through these three cognitive patterns. That is why reviewing your own dysfunctional, irrational or negative thoughts (beyond the triad) will be important to also change our most emotional symptoms. You can try writing them down on a piece of paper and questioning them; ask yourself “to what extent is what I tell myself true?”

4. Look for goals and hobbies that excite you

One of the most characteristic symptoms of depression is anhedonia, which is the difficulty in enjoying things that used to make us enjoy. In addition to anhedonia, there is also a marked apathy, that is, a real loss of interest in things. Thus, the person with depression is unmotivated, nothing makes them excited and they find no pleasure in anything. To combat these types of symptoms, it will be essential to reconnect with the illusion. To do this, look for things that motivate you, even minimally.

It can be anything; a course, a forgotten hobby, taking a short walk… They don’t have to be big things and you’re dying of excitement to do them (we know that this doesn’t happen in the midst of a depression), but you’ll see how, the fact of activating yourself, even if it is in a very subtle way, it will make it easier for you to feel more like doing things. It’s like a vicious circle; if we do nothing, the less desire we will have to do something. Instead, starting to do things, even if they are small actions, will gradually activate us to do more.

5. Get active: programming pleasant activities

• In relation to the previous point, we find this technique highly effective in cognitive therapy to treat cases of major depression. It is about programming pleasant activities, an ideal technique in severe cases of depression, in the initial moments of therapy. It is very suitable for people with great apathy (a very behavioral symptom), who need to be activated in order to work on the more cognitive and emotional symptoms (i.e., deeper ones).
• It supposes the starting point of a psychological treatment for depression; thus, through this technique, it is intended to promote the activation of the person to gradually work on the rest of the symptoms. If this activation does not exist, the rest will be very difficult to work on, because we need the person to get out of that “well”.
• What is the programming of pleasant activities? Basically, it is about agreeing with the person on a series of positive activities for them, which they must carry out weekly. You can start doing this yourself, beyond therapy (which we always recommend); to do this, write down five or six ideas of things that you really liked to do before. Or that they generate a minimum of satisfaction.
• They can be activities of all kinds (cooking, reading, going for a walk, going to visit your parents…). Once you have identified and written them down, start putting them into practice, even if you don’t really feel like doing them at first. You can start by “demanding” yourself to do only one activity a day, for as long as you consider, and gradually do the others as well.
• “You can’t stop the bird of sadness from flying over your head, but you can stop it from nesting in your hair.”