When you recognize that you are suffering from depression, you have to deal with it.The symptoms can be different for everyone but there are certain recurring characteristics that can be used to identify if you’re suffering from depression. You might be depressed if you:
1) Don't feel happy doing the things that you used to;
2) Have started to eat too much or too less and can’t control it;
3) Constantly feel annoyed or irritable;
4) Have started to develop irregular sleeping patterns or insomnia;
5) Feel worthless, helpless or hopeless for no reason in particular and can’t seem to shake it off.
Some of the above mentioned symptoms can help identify depression. Once you have done that, it is time to start acting upon it. You have to understand that it won’t be a cakewalk. Depression tends to drive people into inactivity, where even the thought of doing something productive or helpful can make a patient feel stressed. But you need to act if you want to get better. So it will be difficult and exhausting at first. But none of it is impossible, and you will start feeling better soon. Believe me, I know exactly how you are feeling about this at this moment in time.
Start out small and aim for a few small goals every day. Depression can make you feel drained of all energy, but whatever little amount of it you have, use it to do something positive for yourself. Talk to a loved one, take the dog out for a walk, or go get some pizza from the restaurant two blocks away. These are a few things that will help you break the monotony of inaction.
Take baby steps at first and once you start getting your energy back, step it up a notch. The way that I did this was setting myself small tasks that I knew that I could achieve. Don’t do huge things. Think of little things that you can do that make you feel better about yourself. For example, when you are in depression, you may not bother looking at yourself in the mirror. Brush your hair, clean your teeth and get back into the habit of gettng dressed every day, even if you are no intending to go anywhere. Stop lying about on the sofa and fight negative thoughts. Every time I found myself having a negative thought, I set myself a task and I gradually worked around ahving negative thoughts at all, but it’s going to take time. Start with these tasks for example and every time your thoughts are negative, do something positive:
•Clean the fridge.
•Clean the kitchen floor
•Clean out one cupboard in the kitchen
•Bake a cake for a neighbor
•Make a happy phone call to someone you have neglected and don’t talk about you.
•Volunteer to help someone that deserves it.
People don’t like negative people. They always try their best to avoid them. They get fed up of listening to their woes and you can’t blame them. If you replace negative thoughts with positive actions, you begin to feel a little better about your day and you actively take a role in how fast you recover.
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