self help for depression

Getting to the other side of depression

1) Know about your condition – what you know about your depression will have an effect on how well you respond to treatment. Start with self-help.

2) Get deep rest – It may not feel like it, but depression is exhausting, where over-dreaming caused by depressive thinking styles, doesn’t allow the body to recover correctly. So it’s very important to  relax correctly and deeply. Getting back your energy and understanding how the body works are vitally important. 

3) Search for ways how to help yourself with your depression to lessen the impact of the outward emotions of it, such as anger and anxiety. Together with getting proper rest, being able to relax is really important. Much harder than it seems, and Self-Hypnosis can teach you maintain a regular routine of relaxation both mentally and physically.

4) Look for ways to assess and monitor your depressive periods – The way depression makes us adopt an all or nothing thinking, is a unique and important part of understanding depression. The way depression makes us generate seemingly hopeless outcomes to situations, can make it almost impossible to see how we can get out of it.

5) Find ways how to help yourself with depression by assessing your depression. This will help to show the shades of grey that will ultimately beat the black and white thinking on which depression thrives. This can often done in the form of a diary, where you grade how bad your days are on a  1 to 10 scale, where 1 is the worst and 10 is the best. Then, after 14 days or so, you can  revisit and see how things have altered over that time.

6) Take exercise if you can. If you can increase the amount of physical exertion you get, it can be a great self-help for depression. The results of the physical exertion will give you a break from your depression for a while at least, in addition to the other benefits you will get by exercising. (As always, consult your doctor before starting any strenuous exercise regime.)

7) Cut down on rumination. Do anything you can to lessen the amount of rumination you are doing.  If possible, make a decision to put off difficult decisions for 7-14 days while you get your energy back.

Ways to cut down rumination are to:
a) Read books when you have nothing else to do, to occupy your mind. (Make them exciting novels, not romance or self-help books!)
b) Do exercise (see 5 above)
c) Work if you can.

Basically, anything that keeps your mind focused and away from your problems for a while. This is not ‘avoidance’; it is simply giving you a chance to recover.

8. Do what you like doing.
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Do what you used to take pleasure from, even if now is not particularly the right time. Even finish small tasks at home if you don’t feel like meeting other people. Seemingly mundane tasks, if they have an end result, can leave you feeling satisfied, and actually increase your serotonin levels!

Relaxing therapies help in overcoming some of the other issues that can happen with depression. The effects of anxiety attacks, anxiety and anger, etc can be lessened and overcome with the ability to relax correctly.

Remember, Self-Hypnosis is a strong self-help tool for implementing changes within your life. It is easy, effective, and non-invasive and produces long-term changes, and can be used by almost all of us.
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By using self-hypnosis pre-recorded material such as a CDs and mp3 download, you will always have a full Hypnotherapy session available that can be used whenever needed, as often as you need to. It’s as easy as that.

​Take a look at our Self-Hypnosis session for Depression HERE

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