Five Coping Strategies for Depressive Episodes.

Sometimes my depression disappears like an insolent teenager that is truant from their classes.  Other times it’s as inescapable and frustrating as a screaming baby in an airplane.

On those days that my depression takes a backseat I feel amazing and I can function with relative ease.  Those days make me feel like a normal person.  I retain hope that my whole life will be like that eventually, but in the meantime I have to be prepared for when my depression takes a swing at me.   There are plenty of ways to cope with depression (hello, Netflix), but I’m focusing on ideas that are a tad bit more healthy and useful.  Here’s what has been helping me lately:

 Always have a frozen pizza.  Or four.

A common issue for those suffering from depression is the inability to do the smallest things – and I don’t consider cooking a meal to be a small thing.  In a perfect world we would eat healthy food all the time and it would help improve our mood… but in my world I just need to be able to eat on my worst days.  The good thing about a frozen pizza, or other forms of prepackaged meals, is that it requires minimum effort.  I just have to unwrap it and put it in the oven.

Find a way to improve your morning.

It helps to have something to look forward to when depression has you in a stronghold.  I really enjoy having a cup of coffee in the morning but I gave up that daily habit for nearly five months because it made my anxiety worse (although for the last month or two it was mostly because I couldn’t find coffee creamer in Germany).  Eventually I realized that the benefit of giving up coffee – a small decrease in anxiety – wasn’t worth the loss of contentment that accompanies a morning cup of coffee.  I decided to start drinking coffee again (although I make it weaker now to try to keep a handle on the anxiety inducing effects) because it inspires me to get out of bed in the morning.

Don’t ask too much of your significant other (especially if this is new to them).

It’s very tempting to ask Mr. Meena to bring home takeout or something from the store because I think it will improve my mood.  Or to ask him to devote his whole evening to spending time with me because it will make me feel better.  I want to make these requests because I’m unhappy and my heart and mind are seeking comfort.  It took me a long time to realize that my depressive episodes are very difficult for my husband to deal with, and he can’t always provide for me while I’m going through them.  A year and a half ago, when I first started having serious symptoms of depression, he would come home and feel like he didn’t know me anymore.  Even though he wants to, he can’t completely understand what I’m going through or why I can’t always talk to him about how I’m feeling.  The changes in my behavior were strange to him and he had to work through his own frustration at the new challenges in our lives.  It took more than a year of communication and learning from each other before we were able to get through a depressive episode peacefully.  It’s still hard to us to work through; depression is inconvenient and can be draining on a marriage.  Mr. Meena has to put limits on how much and how often he can sacrifice for my benefit – he can’t always be everything to me and sometimes he needs distance to care for himself in order to make it through the harder times.

There are definitely times when you have to ask for help, but asking for it too often from your spouse (especially when you’re in the early days of dealing with depression) can cause problems for both of you.

Find little ways to be productive.

Even when I am hardly able to do anything, I still need to get up for a drink of water and use the bathroom.  So I try to do something small every time I get up.  First I’d pick up my shirt off the floor and put it in the laundry basket.  The next time I’d wash a couple dishes.  Later I’d throw out some trash.  It’s much easier to do one thing each time than to try to tackle a list of chores when you’re not feeling up to it.  You will feel accomplished each time you do something, even if it’s small.

Play the waiting game.

I tend to get frustrated when I realize a depressive episode is hitting me.  I don’t want to be this person that stays in bed and feels kind of hopeless, but I am sometimes.  When I get angry it only makes it worse and can even prolong a depressive episode.  I’ve learned to find a good TV series or a book and focus on that while I ride out the worst of the storm.

How do you cope with depression?

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Photo by Dominik_S licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Above photo modified by My Meena Life.

Featured photo by Vladimir licensed under CC BY 2.0.