Being depressed can make you feel helpless. You can also be suicidal in extreme cases. It always feels like there is nothing you can do to fight depression. To overcome it effectively, you have to understand that depression is not ‘laziness’ or a physiological response to grief and prolonged frustration. In many cases, depression is characterized by unrealistically low self-esteem and excessive guilt over what has happened or ‘might’ happen.
Changing the way you think, how you lead your lifestyle, your physical activity, and your behavior are all ways to fight depression.
Here are 5 ways you can fight depression without medication
- Stay In Touch With The World
Most depressed individuals tend to withdraw from social life and close themselves off completely from the world. When depressed, or when exhibiting depression symptoms, maintaining touch with friends and your social networks is one of the most natural ways to fight depression. Staying in touch with the world – your family and friends – means you have someone to talk to whenever you feel low. Staying in touch is also a natural and priceless guard against self-harm thoughts.
2. Improve On Physical Activity
Physical exercise has been proven to stimulate the release of feel-good chemicals called endorphins. The exercise does not have to be strenuous or lengthy. You can start with a 20-minute walk daily and then upgrade to jogging for a few hundred meters. Experts say physical exercise can help the brain to be wired positively. The most important thing concerning exercise is to try and keep moving. This can also include actively cleaning your house and releasing some of the tension.
3. Challenge Yourself More
When depressed it is often the case to pull back from taking on responsibilities at work, at home, and in life generally. When you do that, you are harming yourself even more. To fight depression effectively, you need to stay involved more and maintain an active lifestyle that will counter any negative tendencies. Executing even the minutest of tasks can give you that sense of accomplishment and help you stay on course. You can consider volunteer work at church or within the community if what you do does not give you the expected satisfaction even when you try and challenge yourself. Remember, standing up to situations will always make them easier. Do not recoil.
4. Challenge Negative Thoughts
The genesis of most forms of depression is negative thoughts. It is almost always about the fear of what might happen or the negative consequences of what we do daily. Regardless of what you engage in daily, there is a lot of thinking and mental work that generally goes into how to do what you do. When depressed, you will always want to jump to the worst possible conclusions. Challenging negative thoughts, therefore, is one of the most effective and universal ways to fight depression. You might feel worthless, you might feel hated, and you might also feel incapable of doing anything of value. Whenever you have these thoughts and feelings, always challenge them with positivity and logic. Ask yourself whether all the bad things you feel about yourself are true; also ask yourself what the best alternative to what you feel is. Challenging negativity takes time but you need constant practice to reach there.
5. Avoid Drinking Too Much and Drug Abuse
For many, drugs and substance abuse are a way of hiding emotions and filling gaps within their times. Many people who exhibit depression tend to turn to alcohol to deal with a variety of symptoms. What many do not know is that long-term alcohol abuse could lead to a permanent change in how the brain works. Multiple fun activities will be an ideal substitute for alcohol and other substances. Try them out to fight depression successfully.
Practicing the above will give you an upper hand to effectively fight depression. Many depressed individuals tend to avoid the above completely. No matter how bad your depression is, practicing several of these activities every day is vital to overcoming depression. While some may take time to show concrete results, starting early will give you a bigger advantage.
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