as a therapist and someone who's experienced depression multiple times in my life here are the five simplest fastest easiest things to help you feel better no matter how severe your depression I am psychologist Dr Ali matu helping you find compassion gain courage and get connected to the things that matter there are lots of reasons why people get depressed but depression always does the same thing it makes you lose interest in life this makes you less motivated then it gets harder to do anything now even if you go through the motions of doing something you used
to enjoy you don't get much pleasure out of it I call this the black hole of depression because it reminds me of that black hole and Interstellar this gargantuan thing that feels inescapable it messes with gravity and time and it distorts just everything in your life I went through this in the first half of the year when my second child was born I was looking forward to this and then when he came everything became so much harder my routines were completely obliterated I felt so alone so exhausted sleep was so bad and I became really
irritable for example there was this one time when my friends were going to see top gun Maverick and I couldn't go because I had this new baby and then I was so mad about that and a few hours later I just started crying about it because I felt like I was missing out and then I felt really guilty and ashamed and mad at myself for being so upset about Top Gun because like here I am with this new kid like I should be happy what's wrong with me if depressions are like a black hole then
habits are like a rocket these powerful things that when you turn them on at first it looks like nothing's happening like look closely at this rocket it's turned on and the ship is not moving yet but if you stick with it habits can help you break that powerful force of depression sure Rockets move in seconds and habits can take days to work but the principle is the same I used to believe motivation leads to action and The more I've worked with depression the more I found the opposite is true when we find ways to take
one small step forward towards some type of action that feels good and the more you do that the more you want to keep doing that again action leads to motivation that's a whole idea behind this book overcoming depression one step at a time which is based on behavioral activation my favorite way to treat depression so here are five powerful simple one-minute habits that will help you achieve some escape velocity from depression they might not cure your depression but they'll definitely help you to feel a little bit better some things to keep in mind focus on
the things that you might be able to do often if you can do them often they're more likely to become a habit and if they become a habit they're going to have a bigger impact on your depression it's also best to do these habits before you do something that might make your depression worse so if your depression makes you want to take a nap and sleep away half the day do these things before you climb in bed if your depression makes you want to sit on the couch and ruminate about how horrible life is do
this before you sit down on the couch if your depression makes you want to just binge watch all of YouTube do it before you fire up the YouTube app unless of course you're binging my stuff no just kidding don't watch my stuff if it's making you feel worse the last thing to remember is to fully throw yourself into these actions for that one minute period of time think about nothing but this thing that you're doing don't worry about your thoughts at this time if they're saying this isn't working this is dumb I don't want to
do this just notice those thoughts don't fight with them don't argue with them just kind of notice them and come back to this thing that you're trying to do just remind yourself that these thoughts are part of that big Distortion the black hole of depression creates number one clean clean yourself take a shower brush your teeth change your clothes do some laundry tidy up your desk pull out weeds from the garden whatever it is that takes a minute and helps you to feel a little bit more put together because that a black hole of depression
robs us of motivation it becomes easy to stop caring about the basics but so often doing something for yourself or your space can make a complete difference in the course of your day helping you to feel a little bit more accomplished and a little bit more put together when I was going through that period of postpartum after my son was born I ended up going days without showering and I felt so disgusting but also the longer I went without showering the harder it became to shower and the easier it was to avoid it so I
ultimately got to a point where I would just do really really fast showers one out of necessity but two just felt like an easier goal get in get out and it actually ended up making me feel a little bit better number two go outside the worst days I've witnessed for myself as well as my patients are those where nothing really happens we've been in the same small confined space all day long and if you stay inside it's easier to stay in your pajamas and not clean yourself up so for just one minute go outside walk
around the block take out some trash check your mail I know for some of you it'll be very difficult to go outside for a wide variety of reasons and if that's the case you can also think about just changing your position in your home if you're in a dark and closed space go to a place by a window if you've been sitting for a long time try standing if you've been standing and pacing try sitting and doing stretches if you haven't been active at all do a minute of jumping jacks number three interact with one
living thing whether it's an animal or a human find a way to interact with some type of life for one maybe it's talking to the person at the corner store or going to a dog park texting a friend chatting with people on your favorite Discord server or seeing the reptiles at the pet shop interacting with other life can help you to feel more connected to that larger world that exists outside your head when I'm depressed what's important for me is to interact with people outside of my family and I love my wife I love my
kids at the same time when I'm interacting with people outside my family it helps me to get a break from the stress and obligations of being a dad number four check off one thing find something you've been meaning to do that you can accomplish in one minute maybe it's opening your mail paying a bill returning a message finding a recipe for dinner or folding laundry if everything seems overwhelming maybe you can find a way to break it down to just one very small little step forward and if that feels overwhelming you can also just spend
one minute making a checklist of things you have to do when I was depressed this year everything just piled up the sink was full of dishes there was Dirty Laundry everywhere the fridge needed to be cleared out and looking around it was just too much it was just overwhelming the one minute thing I knew I needed to do but kept avoiding was asking for help there were a few friends and family members I knew I could count on who would help bring order to all this chaos and when I finally found a way to ask
them for help they came cleaned everything up and then it became so much easier to maintain that level of order number five treat yourself the technical term for this is self-soothing but I like treat yourself better depression can make you so irritable like when I was rage crying about Top Gun it's a fun movie but it's really just Star Wars Meets Mission Impossible anyways you could take a warm bath get a coffee sing a song you love look at beautiful pictures light a candle buy one beautiful flower watch a video from your favorite YouTuber make
some tea eat a peppermint candy cuddle with the stuffy drawing has become one of my favorite habits for self-soothing because it's something I can do with my daughter we fire up art for kids Hub the YouTube channel and do one of those drawings together and it's quick easy it's fun and it makes me feel like a good dad it can be tricky to figure out what is self-soothing versus what is a black hole depression avoidance makes everything worse thing so if you're unsure try it out and track how it makes you feel afterwards if it
makes you feel worse it's a depression black hole thing if it makes you feel better it's probably a self-soothing thing now what I want you to do is pick something from this list and try it out experiment about three different times to see if this thing can help you now what I haven't talked about yet are habits to help you with bipolar disorders so if you want to learn more about that check out this video right over here
