Why It Is OK to Not Be OK
If you suffer from depression and have been told to “get over it”, or even “snap out of it”, you will understand how hard it is to regulate your emotions and force yourself to put a brave face on your situation.
Depression is an illness and not an emotional weakness. It is caused by hormonal imbalances, and it should be treated as an illness just like a physical health problem might be. For that reason, not being OK, is OK. If you are suffering from depression, it is not something that you should ever feel the need to apologize, and you should not have to force yourself to wear a smile for someone else’s benefit.
If you are not OK, it is OK. However, self care is important and you should try and do everything that you can to help yourself. Getting into a self care routine is hard and it may not always prove to be the most effective at helping you cope, but it can help to get you out of the worst parts of your depression and allow you to get into a situation where your depression becomes manageable and bearable for your own sake.
Here are a few ways that you could consider when it comes to helping yourself when you experience severe depression in your life.
Reach Out And Get Help
Seeking help for depression is hard. It is not easy talking about how you feel, and even harder when you are not sure yourself how you feel. Depression very often leaves you feeling numb and empty. And without a specific emotion or reason behind it, talking about this can be hard.
Professional therapists understand this, and somewhere like the Front Range Treatment Center will have the team and services that will help you to unpick these emotions. Using techniques such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), it is often possible to help you develop new ways of dealing with your mental health problems.
Practice Self Care
Looking after yourself is always important. This means that you should try and get out for some exercise. Even a brief walk can help you produce some feel good endorphins that will help you to balance out the negative effects of your depression. Eating well is essential too. Comfort eating is a great way of giving yourself a minor lift, but in the long term, fatty and sugary foods can cause you to have dramatic comedowns and will leave you feeling even worse once the short term effects wear off.
Meditation is a good way of helping you to find focus and a sense of balance and calmness. These can all be beneficial to managing your depression, and by implementing deep breathing techniques into your daily life, then you will start to see that you can manage feelings of anxiety more effectively.
Herbal remedies such as St John’s Wort and CBD oil may be effective in helping you to manage the symptoms of your depression too. However, if you are experiencing severe depression, speak with your doctor.