- What's a good daily routine to fight off depression?
Mended Light.
(gentle music)
Welcome to Ask A Therapist in this segment.
You all sound off in the comments.
Let me know things you'd like me to respond to,
questions that you have.
Today's question is
what is a good daily routine to fight off depression?
So, something to recognize about depression
and then I'll answer this question,
but I have to set the stage.
Gotta set the stage.
Depression, we often feel pathetic because tasks that seem
easy for somebody else
for us just feel like climbing a mountain,
just getting outta bed some days, right?
Just taking a shower and we beat ourselves up and we say,
what is wrong with me?
It's just a shower.
It's just getting out of bed.
It's just making breakfast.
It's not a big deal.
Anybody can do it.
I'm so weak.
I'm pathetic, I'm a loser.
And you gotta get rid of that guilt
and that self-shaming.
Like, just clear it out.
And I'll tell you why.
I want you to imagine that I pour several bowls
of cereal and set them around a table and I invite you
and three friends to come and enjoy the cereal, right?
Frosted Flakes.
Come have some Frosted Flakes.
So, you come, you sit down, pour the milk,
they all start eating.
And as you're about to eat, I say, hold on.
And I strap 30-pound arm weights
or 30-pound weights to your arms.
And I say, go ahead.
What's up with this?
No, just, just go ahead.
You try and eat and 30 pounds is a decent amount.
If you're big and strong like me,
you can do quite a few of those.
I'm just messing with you.
I mean, I can.
I can do 30 pounds all day, anyways.
But you start going and the longer you go,
the more your hand starts to shake, right?
And the more it starts to get difficult.
And then you're trying to get to the bottom
of this bowl and you can't really lift your arm anymore
and you can't finish.
And everyone else is long since done.
They ate their frosted flakes and went on with their day.
Now, no one would say in that circumstance,
what is wrong with me?
Because it's clearly not you.
It's the weight.
Depression is the exact same way.
Trying to do things when the gravity of depression is just
keeping you held down and you don't wanna move
and you don't care about things you used to care about
and you're not passionate
about the things you used to be passionate about.
And you have a non-stop stream of negative thoughts
about yourself and about the world you live in.
And it feels like there's no hope,
there's no drive, there's no motivation.
It's hard and it's real.
And it's a very real weight that you didn't choose.
Of course, things are easier
for people who aren't held down by that weight, but the fact
that it's psychological doesn't make it any less real.
It's like when Harry Potter says to Dumbledore,
is this real or is it just happening in my brain?
And Dumbledore says, well,
of course, it's happening in your brain, Harry.
Why on earth should that mean it isn't real?
Depression is a very real weight.
So, what's your routine?
First thing's first.
Be realistic.
Don't set yourself up for failure and then you'll feel
like a failure and then you'll stop trying, right?
Don't set these lofty, ambitious goals.
It's better to start with something small
that you think is probably too small and then do it.
And it's either, okay, that actually wasn't that big a deal.
So, tomorrow I'll go bigger.
Or, oh, that was a harder thing
for me to do than I thought it would be,
but I was able to accomplish it, right?
You want to push yourself and challenge yourself,
but you don't want to, baby steps, right?
Baby steps moving forward.
So, the first thing that I tell people, if you're depressed,
they come to therapy and they want help with depression.
And I ask them about how they're eating,
whether or not they're getting enough sleep
or too much sleep
and whether or not they're exercising.
And then they'll say, my therapist thinks I'm vat
and he wants me to work out more.
And I'm like, you know, it's got nothing to do with that.
I want you to exercise for sanity, not for vanity.
It's not about appearance, it's not about washboard abs,
it's about dealing with all that crap inside of you,
all of that anguish, all of that weight,
all of that heaviness,
because exercise releases endorphins
that are feel good, right?
They're very positive.
So, how does that play into the routine?
Well, in order to exercise, you gotta get outta bed.
And for some people,
that's enough for the day.
I did it.
I got outta bed for something other, I did it.
I got outta bed for something other than the toilet.
So, here's what I recommend.
Shower, shower and dress.
You want a routine to fight depression,
shower and dress.
That's it.
Start with that.
Because if you shower,
one, the hot water can loosen things up
and just give you kind of like a tactile reset
of your brain and your body.
I can't tell you how many mornings I wake up grumpy
and exhausted and I take a hot shower
and I'm like, I'm okay.
Take the hot shower.
The reason getting dressed is so important.
If you get up and you shower and you get dressed,
not in pajamas, but get dressed for the day.
Do your hair, right?
Do you makeup, whatever.
Even if you're not going anywhere, just do that.
Number one, it gives you the feeling
of I did something that I didn't want to do
that was difficult for me, but I did it.
And psychologically it's like,
if you're in a slump,
if you're a baseball player and you're in a slump
and you just keep getting struck out, just connecting once
with that ball, the good line drive can break
you out of that slump,
just from feeling like, oh, I actually can, I can do this.
In college, I dated somebody, it was crazy about her,
wanted to marry her, didn't work out.
And I was in a funk for like three months.
And then there's a young woman in a class I was in
who, you know, we flirted with each other.
Nothing big, just college kids.
Simple, innocent flirting.
But it made me feel good and I felt attracted to her.
And just the feeling that I could feel attracted
to somebody else kind of broke me out of that slump.
Like, okay, I can can feel this again.
It's not like I had my one shot of love and I blew it.
Similarly, if you get up
and you get dressed and you do this hard,
you shower and you dress it
and you didn't want to do it,
it can start to break you psychologically
out of the slump, like a baseball player,
I finally connecting with the ball, I did this much.
I wonder what else I can do.
And some days it'll be nothing.
Some days if I were your therapist, he'd be like, Jonathan,
I showered and I dressed and it nearly killed me.
And but I sat on top of my bed
and I was on my laptop or I was on the TV all day.
And I'd be like, nice, you did it.
It's a big first step.
And there's probably,
you just need to maintain that for a while.
But a lot of people find when they're depressed,
they have a whole list of things in their mind
that they need to accomplish that they're not accomplishing.
'Cause they're spending their days just in bed
feeling defeated and feeling like there's no point.
And if they shower and they dress,
they're more prone to be like, well, I mean,
I'm already dressed, I guess I could go do some stuff.
And they grab their keys and they go
and then they start to do.
So, my advice is shower, dress, right?
And then start to incorporate, okay?
Incorporate exercise
and incorporate something called enlightenment time.
Enlightenment time.
This comes from a program called who I really am.
Enlightenment time is,
I'm gonna take some time in meditation
or I'm gonna take some time in reading
or I'm gonna take some time watching a TED Talk,
but something that's good for my brain
and something that's good for my soul.
I was in Egypt with my family last year,
met a Muslim man who just talked
about how much the Quran meant to him
and how much it centered him
and how it brought him peace and how it gave him guidance.
And I'm not promoting Islam
or any other religion on Mended Light.
I am saying for him
that was his enlightenment time.
And his enlightenment time,
that is what grounded him.
Like, he took that time
and then he felt every day like he had a purpose.
So, what can you read, watch, listen to,
meditate on, journal, right?
What can you do that gets you thinking through things
and not just getting stuck up here
spinning your wheels,
but processing those thoughts and moving through them.
Make yourself food.
Two weeks ago I was very depressed.
I had a don't want to get out of bed day.
And so I didn't, I stayed in bed all day.
I was on my computer, I was working
and I was watching Netflix or whatever
and but I didn't eat.
If I had had food by the bed, I would've eaten.
But I didn't feel like getting out of bed to go get food.
It was like 30 feet away, 40 feet away.
And it finally, in the evening, I was hungry enough
that I went, I got up and I fixed myself something simple.
And it was amazing how much happier I felt
and that the world wasn't hopeless
and that everything wasn't purposeless.
And you know, just because I ate,
make sure you eat and not crap.
I mean, there's a time and place for Doritos,
but give your body what it needs.
Fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, whole grains, protein
in particular will help you get up and get moving.
There's a strong connection between mind and body.
And then make sure you go to bed early.
A lot of times we're depressed,
we stay up late just trying to distract ourselves
from the nothingness of it all.
And then we sleep in and we wake
up feeling sad and sluggish and we just keep it going.
Go to bed early, get up early, reset, right?
Reset your routine.
So, these are my stray thoughts
on a daily routine to combat depression.
I hope you found them helpful.
If you dug this video, I've got another Ask A Therapist
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So, go check that out, mendedlight.com.
How do you work through depression?
What's your routine?
Let us know in the comments below.
We'd love to learn from you
and for you to learn from one another.
Until next time, folks,
keep shining because we need your light.
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