when a person's depressed it's not uncommon for that person to feel stuck
in their depression in this video i'm going to be talking about some practical steps
that you can take to get unstuck from depression
hi everyone in today's video we're going to be talking about depression and some practical steps
that you can take to begin the process of digging out of the depression pit to begin the process of
getting unstuck from the inertia and the hold that depression can have on you but before i
get into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over i'm a registered psychologist in the province
of british columbia canada and this video is for informational purposes only it is not intended
as a substitute or replacement for advice from your doctor or mental
health professional now with those things out of the way let's start talking about depression
now one of the things that people who are often experiencing depression
will fall into is this sense of being stuck or feeling trapped in their depression it's
one of the most common things i hear from my clients when i first start working with them
when they're suffering from depression is that in theory they know the things that they need to be
doing to feel better but they just feel stuck they just feel like they can't get
any forward motion they can't get moving at all and so this video we're going to talk about six
steps that you can take to really begin to start that process of overcoming depression and getting
unstuck getting out of that inertia and beginning to move forward uh with recovering from depression
so the first thing to do the first thing i will get my clients to do if they're
experiencing depression is to work on what i call the problem list essentially to sit
down and to start to write out a list of all of the problems and things that you would like to
change in your life so all the things that aren't going well all the things that need
to change and so you might want to think of these in terms of different categories so things like
work relationships friendships personal health and self-care finances related engagement in
recreational activities um essentially think of the various categories of things in your life
things that you do relationships that you have that aren't going the way that you want them to
go and to take some time with this and to really think through all of the problems and all of the
things in your life that aren't going well now you might be wondering why in the world would i
do this if i'm feeling depressed why should i be focusing on uh all of the things that are going
wrong shouldn't i be trying to focus on things that are more positive rather than just focusing
on problems well the issue is you can't really take any steps to address problems or to make
changes in any of these areas unless you're aware of what the problems are so by writing out this
problem list what it can do is it can help you get a much better sense of what are the problems
what are the things that aren't going quite well in my life that are contributing to me feeling
really down contributing to my depression so it can help clarify a lot of these problems because
for a lot of people with depression it just feels like everything is a problem that nothing is going
right so this gets out of the realm of everything and nothing and gets to the real specifics of what
are the problems that i am facing now the other benefit of this problem list is that
sometimes when i'm working with my clients they'll tell me things like everything in my
life's going wrong and my problems are infinite there's no end to my problems
and so i challenge them okay spend some time on this problem list it may take two three four pages
but eventually you're gonna run out of things to write down and so what that means is that
your problems are finite they don't go on forever and by working on this problem list and running
out of things to write down what you begin to see is that your problems don't go on forever
that there is a limit or an end to the problem and it begins to to chip away and to challenge
some of those um incorrect beliefs and assumptions that we have about ourselves and our depression
that my problems go on forever well if i run out of things to write down it means that my
problems don't go on forever so that's the first step is to work on this problem list
so you might be saying okay well that's great ramy i've got this list of problems
what do i do with it now so the second step is to pick one of the problems
forget about all of the rest of them just pick one so for example uh suppose that
one of my problems is that i've gained a lot of weight and i'm not feeling very good about the
way i look i'm not feeling very good about my body and uh i'm just not feeling very healthy
so that's the problem that i select now the key is it's important to to only pick one problem because
we're typically not very good at multitasking we're typically not very good at trying to solve
multiple problems all at once and so if you're trying to solve multiple problems all the same
time chances are you're not going to be successful in solving any of them and so our focus here again
isn't on resolving all the problems our focus here is just on getting unstuck and beginning
the process of moving forward and digging out of the depression pit so we select one problem
so after i've selected the problem about my weight and not feeling good about my weight
the third step is to break down that problem into the various bits and pieces
that are contributing to that problem so uh not all problems are just kind of one amorphous entity
uh problems are often comprised of multiple little problems in that bigger problem so
for the example of me having gained weight and not feeling good about how i look
it could be that there's lots of things that are contributing to that so things like my diet
isn't very good or i'm not eating very healthy foods i could be snacking a lot at night right
before bed i could be eating food to help numb or uh sort of neutralize negative feelings so
i i eat to try and feel better it could be that i have a very sedentary job and that i
i don't move very much i spend most of my day sitting it could be that
i'm no longer riding my bike i'm no longer going to the gym i'm no longer playing sports
with friends so the idea is to think about and to write out all the little bits and pieces
that might be contributing to this one problem that i'm focusing on so now i've i've broken
it down a bit i can see various different components to this problem the fourth step
is to try and generate some possible solutions to one or two of those various components
so for example i've picked the two components of i have a very sedentary job and
my diet isn't very good i don't eat very healthy food well think about possible solutions for
those bits and pieces so maybe with the sedentary job issue i could focus on you know working on
taking my breaks and going for a walk during my breaks at work i could buy
a fitbit or an activity tracker to keep track of my steps and if i'm not getting
enough steps to try and make some efforts maybe to go for a walk at lunch it could be
asking a friend at work to go for a walk regularly and we can talk about some aspects uh of work
while we're on that walk so some various uh possible solutions for that aspect with regards to
eating healthier could be that i order takeout too much and so maybe i plan to not order
take out or limit how much i order take out every week it could be that i want to try and eat more
salad because i'm not eating salad very much so i'll eat more salad or i'll make an effort to
buy more vegetables when i go to the supermarket so that i have more healthy options at home
available when it comes to eating or snacking so in this fourth step what i've done is i've started
to brainstorm and generate possible solutions to these little bits and pieces and so the fifth step
is to pick just one of those possible solutions so i'll pick the solution of uh eating more salad or
making an effort to eat more salad because again we're not good at doing multiple things at once
we're only going to aim to do one thing so that's the one solution that i pick because it seems
uh practical it seems like something that i'm going to be able to do and the sixth step
to getting unstuck from depression is to take this planned idea and to make it a goal
and i've done an entire video on goal setting and how to set goals and how to set goals in
a way that you pretty much guarantee that you're going to succeed at everything you do
and the idea is to pare down this solution into a real practical goal and the four features of goals
um that i talked about in the previous video and i'll make a link to the the video up above also
i'll leave a link in the description down below there's four features of goals and so you want
the solution to meet these four features so the goal has to be specific so i need
to know exactly what it is that i'm doing the goal has to be defined in terms of my behavior
so what i'm doing not how i feel not the behavior of someone else the goal has to
have a clear end line in other words will i know exactly whether or not i've accomplished
the goal and the goal has to be realistic am i 95 certain that i'll be able to accomplish this goal
and so in this case maybe the goal that i come up with in the end is to
eat salad with dinner at least two times this week and so if you see what we've done we've taken
a list of problems all of these things so many things so many big topics so many big things
that are going wrong in my life and what we're doing is kind of funneling them down
into something very practical and very doable that i can do this week in order to begin the
process and begin to start digging myself out of the depression right and it may seem small it may
seem like well how is eating salad two times a week actually going to help with my depression
well it's not going to fix the depression this week but what it does is it starts to get me
unstuck it starts to get me moving forward and so the idea is you set these weekly goals
making sure that they meet those four criteria and you work towards something and you begin to
start making some forward progress and you begin to start experiencing positive spirals to get out
of the depression as opposed to being stuck in those negative spirals that drive the depression
so if i'm eating more salad maybe i start to feel a little bit better about myself
that i'm actually doing something to feel better i'm actually doing something to start to tackle
my concerns about my weight or how i look and as i work more and more on that then
maybe i introduce exercise and maybe as i'm introducing exercise uh it reintroduces
playing sports which is uh bringing in more fun into my life and maybe as i start doing that it
means that i'm having more social connections and you can see the spider web begins to expand
out and these positive changes lead to more positive changes and lead to more positive changes
and really begin to move you forward and get you out of the depression pit
so this isn't an instant solution it isn't a you know one simple step that you can do to get out
of depression quickly that's unrealistic there's nothing that can do that what this is is about
getting unstuck and when i begin to start working with my clients that's the key goal that i want
to accomplish with them i just want them to get unstuck and to feel some positive movement going
forward and feel like they're doing something and making some progress and and having some successes
that moves them forward with their depression so i hope that makes sense i would love to hear some
of your thoughts and ideas about this so please leave me some comments in the comments section
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thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one