hey there everybody and welcome to this presentation in which we're going to be
talking about 11 tips to cope with high-functioning depression. I know
11 tips I tried to make it 10 but I really thought that we needed that 11th
one in there and that for some reason bugs me I like to have round numbers or
whatever but you know we're just gonna deal with 11 there are a lot more
information on our YouTube channel but this is just hitting the highlights if
you are clinically depressed right now this is not a replacement for therapy by
any means but these are some tips that you can add to your therapy to help
recover more quickly and these are things that you can do when you are
feeling well to prevent or mitigate the onset of another episode so the first
thing that we're going to talk about is sunlight and circadian rhythms and
quality sleep they all kind of go together because when we are exposed to
sunlight it helps set our circadian rhythms sunlight tells our brain it's
time to wake up and darkness tells our brain it's time
to go to sleep which helps regulate our cortisol and a bunch of other hormones
that help us know when it's time to be awake and when it's time to have energy
and when it's time to eat all of that contributes to quality sleep if our
circadian rhythms are out of whack then we are likely not going to get
tired at the right times and we may not get good quality sleep we know that when
we are sleep-deprived our threat response system our HPA axis is
activated which contributes to anxiety and distress and potentially depression
so believe it or not good quality sleep at the right times is really important
to coping with depression hydration is another really easy intervention when we
get as little as two percent dehydrated we start having difficulty with energy
fatigue concentration and decision-making staying hydrated is not
hard to do keep a cup with you or a water bottle with you you're going to be
more tempted to sip on it throughout the day eat colorfully is the third
suggestion our body makes the hormones and neurotransmitters that we need to
feel happy and healthy and energized from the food that we eat a lot of
people aren't into counting calories and macros and my
this and that and the other and that is fine that is totally cool a dietitian
friend of mine suggested to my class one time to eat colorfully if you can aim to
have three different colors not different shades of white or brown but
three actual different colors on your plate at every meal you're probably
going to have good nutrition if you are a vegan it is possible to get very good
nutrition being a vegan you have to be a little bit more attentive to what you're
eating to make sure that you're getting all of your essential amino acids but it
is definitely possible minimize stimulants when we are depressed we
often feel fatigued foggy headed have difficulty concentrating and we reach
for those stimulants to help us phos focus and have energy and maybe feel
just a little bit better but those stimulants are basically just turning up
our threat response system turning up our HPA axis which means we're gonna
have just like when we eat sugar we're gonna have a harder crash at the end
additionally stimulants tend to stay in our system for a while caffeine being
one of the worst it stays in our system for up to 12 hours after we consume it
so what you're consuming at noon may still be impairing your sleep quality at
ten eleven o'clock at night minimizing stimulants is going to help
you in the long run don't go cold turkey you'll probably
have headaches and all kinds of other things and you're gonna really hate the
notion if you're going to minimize them start weaning off slowly if you need to
connect with your doctor to see how to do this effectively do so if you tend to
have migraines definitely consult with your doctor before you start altering
anything about your nutrition including your including your ingestion of
caffeine or or nicotine number five is something we forget to do and it's add
in the happy and what I mean by that is we need
actually proactively do things that make us happy in order to prompt our body to
secrete those happy neuro chemicals the dopamine the serotonin the things that
we really want to feel add in the happy pay attention to your senses what do you
smell that makes you happy what things go to Target or Walmart or one of those
places and smell some of the little wax tarts and see which ones that you smell
that make you go oh that smells good that's adding in the happy that is
triggering your brain to send out relaxing neuro chemicals you can look at
essential oils if you want to you can go into your kitchen and smell certain
spices that you have for me cloves is a big one when I was a little kid we used
to take oranges and put whole cloves and cinnamon sticks in the oranges and make
Christmas ornaments so the smell of citrus and cloves together reminds me of
a happy time in my life you may not have that same experience it's important for
you to know what smells make you happy look for things that make you happy that
are sights what kinds of memes what kinds of
pictures do you have on your phone maybe you have pictures of your kids or your
dog sir flowers whatever it is that makes you
happy keep a online scrapbook if you will it may be in your google photos of
memes and pictures and things that make you happy
add things in your environment your car your home your office if you're allowed
that you can look at that are present for you that you're noticing on a
regular basis throughout the day that make you smile that is gonna be really
important you don't have to do anything you know super extravagant just pictures
memes smells sounds what sounds make you happy I love the sound of Eastern
to--he's and Black capped chickadees I love the sound of their calls
so having bird sounds on back makes me happy makes me even
happier if they're actually birds at the feeder at the window those are things
that I do to make me happy what makes you happy
increasing the happy triggers in your environment is going to prompt more
calming chemicals throughout your body eliminate depression anxiety and anger
triggers and in the next video we're going to talk a lot more about triggers
but you know it's important to remember that when we look around there are
things that we see here smell do that can trigger depression and a sense of or
anger or anxiety and a sense of hopelessness and helplessness all of
those things may make depression worse or may make you feel increasingly
overwhelmed so eliminate some of those things for me having chaos having piles
of stuff everywhere increases my sense of being overwhelmed which can make me
feel a little bit depressed or edgy or irritable sometimes it's important for
me to keep things organized in our house we call it flat surface itis where if
flat services start to swell with crap mommy tends to get a little bit stressed
out we have bins I am NOT you know one of
those that is super organized but I want things to stay in their appropriate bins
and just not pile up everywhere smells that irritate me animal pee our dogs
right now for some reason are going through a territory dispute and when I
smell that it makes me frustrated and upset I just don't like that smell I
would much rather smell something that makes me happy the news turning on the
news right now is almost guaranteed to be a trigger so I eliminate that as much
as possible from my daily life and some days I'll be honest I don't even check
the news most of the time I do once a day because I feel like it's my duty as
an American to be informed but you know that's 30 minutes and then done
get physical or get a physical you can't get physical - exercise increases
serotonin and dopamine as well as your endorphins you don't have to exercise
hard going out for a walk they've actually found that exercising at forty
to fifty percent of your target heart rate which for me would be like 90 beats
a minute it's not like you're working hard at all it's walking the dog
actually reduces cortisol and reduces your stress chemicals which can be
helpful so I'm not when I say exercise I'm not saying you have to go to the gym
you can if you want that's gonna give you a bump of endorphins but if you just
want to reduce cortisol do something mild clean the house pet play with the
dog play with your kids do something like that you can do a lot of things to
play with your kids that are fun like playing hide and go seek or tag or
getting a balloon and trying to keep it from hitting the floor believe it or not
the amount of activity in trying to do that is probably gonna get your heart
rate in that 40 to 50 percent zone which helps reduce cortisol plus you're doing
something fun which increases the positive chemicals my kids are too old
they think to play those balloon games anymore so I play them with my dog my
dog loves balloons and we have a lot of fun but what I meant to say here was get
a physical a lot of times not all the time but a lot of times there are
certain physiological causes for depression such as low thyroid or low
low testosterone or altered levels of estrogen or progesterone those are easy
to test for in a blood test low levels of vitamin D can also contribute to
depression so if it's been raining for a long time or if you're in an area like
Alaska where you know it may be dark for a long time or you work in an
environment where you go into work and it's dark and you come out of work and
it's still dark that will potentially mess with your circadian rhythms but a
physical can rule out any physiological causes of your depression
and you know isn't it better to address the root cause then you try to start you
know guessing let's start with the basics is my body machine functioning as
it should in order for me to feel happy and if so then I need to look at what's
causing this me to feel the way I am spend 10 minutes a day 10 minutes that's
not that long spend 10 minutes each day journaling or
reflecting on the positive if you drive to work or ride the subway or whatever
it is that you ride you probably have 10 minutes that you can think through the
day and reflect only on the positive think about what happened during the day
that went well that you did well that made you feel good or even just things
that you're seeing as you're driving that make you happy I was driving to
work yesterday and I saw a little baby groundhog I loved groundhogs they're so
cute and this one wasn't much bigger than a squirrel and he was just sitting
up like a little meerkat so cute and that made me happy reflecting on the
positives for the day makes your brain switch gears it doesn't mean work
ignoring the negative all day long we're not just ignoring the threats to our own
detriment but we have to force ourselves to also notice the positive and this can
help us become more psychologically flexible and able to notice both the
threats as well as the safety and positive factors in a situation and in
an environment check for medication side effects there are a lot of medications
out there that do have mood side effects and they just put out an article today
from the FDA and I can't remember the name of the medication but it's one
that's used for asthma as well as allergies that has been shown to
contribute to increases in depression and suicidality in a fair number of
people and the FDA is now requiring them to add a black box warning on it just
like they do on some of the antidepressants so you wouldn't have
thought that a allergy medication could make you
depressed blood pressure medications statins your cholesterol medications
there are a lot of different medications that can contribute to depression so how
do you find that out well the easiest way is to go online and search for the
name of your medication and the word depression to see if is associated or
searched for medications associated with depression site of depression
side-effects and that will tell you if people commonly have depression as a
side effect of that medication another one that often causes people depression
is the Dramamine so if you're taking drama means some people will find that
contributes to their feelings of depression be aware if you're taking
something sporadic like Dramamine and you notice that when you take it you
feel really awful well that's what we call a clue and you may want to talk to
your doctor about alternatives for that kind of medication finally address-
extreme or personalized thinking styles when we are in a negative mindset when
we are seeing the world as dangerous scary threatening we feel helpless and
hopeless you know what we notice the negative we are on high alert trying to
protect ourselves from that big bad world
we're not noticing the positive things it is important to address those
negative thinking styles and look for the facts if I feel like this is a
particularly dangerous situation or a particularly depressing situation what
are the facts for and against it what is positive in my life there are a lot of
different ways to address negative thinking styles extreme thinking is when
you use words like always all never none everybody
rarely are things a hundred percent one way or another so whenever you start
using extreme words replace them with more mild words
people instead of everybody and look for examples of exceptions to when this
happened instead of saying everybody always leaves which is one of the
favorite phrases of one of my best friends thinking about who has left and
who has stayed and do they always leave and and generally you know if you find
somebody who has stayed then that disproves both aspects of that extreme
thinking now many people could leave but does everybody always leave so we want
to address this extreme thinking in terms of right now the corona virus
that's going around I've heard a lot of extreme thinking and extreme statements
like everybody is eventually going to get it or everybody who gets it gets
super ill and that's just not the case if you look at the fact if you look at
the actual data there's thousands and thousands of people who've gotten this
virus and haven't gotten sicker than anything except for like a mild cold and
they there are also a you know probably tens of thousands of people who've been
infected whose symptoms were so mild they didn't even get tested we do want
to pay attention to our extreme thinking and see if we're catastrophizing or
confusing something that is low probability with something that is high
probability a lot of times when we use extreme thinking we start thinking that
things are probable that this is probably gonna happen when in reality
it's possible you know just about anything's possible but the probability
is pretty miniscule and finally those personalized baking styles where we take
everything personally it's my fault or they did it because they don't like me
or they are angry with me or think of three examples whenever you have a
personalized thought like that that's negative think of three examples or
three explanations of why that might have happened that had nothing to do
with you absolutely nothing to do with you this helps you become more
psychologically flexible and consider all the options and it can help you feel
less hopeless and helpless and finally one more I guess I could have put in 12
focusing on what you can control two of the key features of depression are
feelings of hopelessness and helplessness well when we feel helpless
we're going to probably feel hopeless it's important that we focus on aspects
of the situation that we have control over you have control over some aspects
of virtually every situation and figuring out what you do have control
over and those aspects you didn't you can't get to tied up in that tornado
just came through Middle Tennessee I had no control over that tornado you know
there was nothing I could have done about that what was I able to do I was
able to get my family down into our safe space before the tornado came through
those are things that we want to focus on what are we able to do I wasn't able
to prevent the destruction and loss of life and that is devastating to me
however what can I do in this situation I can help the survivors rebuild
remembering to focus on have the courage to change the things you can I hope
those 12 tips were helpful for you and I will see you in the next video