Thinking about fun activities and ways to be active when you are going through depression can feel a bit like someone telling you that you should eat a large and heavy meal when you have the stomach flu. But with depression, forcing yourself to be active can actually help you to heal and start to feel a little more like your old self again. Many doctors agree that forcing yourself to be more active, even if you do not want to, can do a lot more good than it can harm.
Stop Hiding, Start Doing
During active depression, you are very likely to withdraw from the responsibilities and activities that you either need to be doing or once enjoyed doing. You are much more likely to keep away from people because of your low mood and your lethargy. It may seem like the best move is to stay at home and hide, but it is not actually going to make you feel better. Continuing to be active and forcing yourself to participate in healthy activities is one of the only things that can interrupt the negative spiral of inactivity, bad moods, decreasing energy levels, and guilt in which you will find yourself.
Signs And Symptoms Of Depression
In people with depression, they often lack the energy, the motivation, or the desire to get up and do much of anything. When the opportunity for an activity arrives, the depressed person turns back to the lethargy and the lack of motivation and does not participate in whatever the opportunity may be. One of the best things you can do when you are depressed is to go to a movie with your friends, go to a ball game with your family, go have dinner with your in-laws, and force yourself to do it. Do not stay home when these opportunities arise. Staying home means that you are missing out on the chance to have an enjoyable experience, to get energized, or to feel the pleasure of doing something fun. Staying home will be allowing yourself to dig a little deeper into that hole of depression and negativity.
Avoidance of responsibilities can also contribute to the aforementioned hole of depression and negativity as well. When you are feeling depressed, it is usually easier to avoid the responsibilities of your home or your job. It is easier to walk through the messy living room, ignore the mounting emails, and forget all about the piles of paperwork in favor of going back to bed or sitting and watching TV. Unfortunately, these neglected responsibilities have a habit of coming back with a vengeance or building up to the point where the guilt is overwhelming. As the evidence of your neglect builds up, the worse the backlash will be when these tasks remain uncompleted or the bigger the hole you have dug for yourself gets. Making yourself take care of your responsibilities before they get out of hand is part of staying active. If you take care of things right away, there is no way for them to pile up and become overwhelming to the point where you are no longer able to deal with them.
Remain Patient With Yourself and Stay The Course
It will not happen immediately, but making these small changes in your life can make a big difference in your depression. As you work in more activities that you find pleasurable and meet more and more of your responsibilities, you will find that you will start to feel better about yourself. The enjoyment and the energy and the satisfaction that you get from these activities can go a long way toward reversing the spiral of depression and toward giving you a more positive mental landscape. There is not a magic cure for your depression. You cannot expect that doing one activity is going to change your depression overnight. However, the more you force yourself to do and the more you talk yourself into, the better you are going to feel. There are lots of meaningful ways that you can remain active, but the first step is to say yes to that first activity.
