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Meet Will
After several separate episodes of depression and anxiety starting when his parents split up, part time postgraduate student Will has learnt to accept his depression as a part of him that he needs to learn to live with and manage.. more >>Picture of Hiresh
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“Having been forced (eg by a deadline) to put in some effort, when you see a result you can't be so hard on yourself. At least you're up a notch in the way of your emotions. Then if you're up a notch, it gives you a reason to celebrate. So you do something nice for a few hours, and come out realising you actually had fun. You want to repeat that, so you end up doing a course of three things that make you happy. And before you know it, the voices aren't there, and you aren't so depressed...” Fayola
Students Against Depression
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Reverse Spiral
This website offers a wide range of strategies for tackling depression. The more strategies you try, the more chance you have of finding what works for you in turning the depression spiral around. Some of the easier, most quickly effective steps are pointed out in the section menu.
Every person is affected by depression differently, so some strategies will work better than others for each individual person. Understanding your own depression story better (see why me?) may help you decide which strategies would work best for you. See also the framework for tackling depression applied to Anna's story, for more ideas.
Don't be all-or-nothing about the strategies, though! Plan small steps at first. Because of the mutually-reinforcing effect of the depression habit spiral even very small changes can set off a chain effect that can make a big difference...
Ask yourself:The answer to this will be different for everybody.
Imagining your depression-free life is another useful strategy:
As you try out strategies and start to turn things around, you will have better and worse days. When you've started to feel quite a bit better for a while and then depression sneaks up on you and you have another low day the contrast can be particularly painful.
You might find yourself all too easily persuaded by the old all-or-nothing depressed thinking - "You're back to square one. You've been kidding yourself. Nothing works. What's the point?"
Getting to grips with depression - like most things - is not an all-or-nothing thing. It may not be possible to eradicate some of the factors making you vulnerable to depression (eg. a genetic tendency to low serotonin levels). But building new constructive habits into your daily life can offer significant resistance to depression.
Changing a habit does take time. You won't shake off all your depressed habits without time and effort. But, however low depression has brought you, it is absolutely possible to get into more constructive, happier habits and to find the right strategies for you to make sure that depression affects you as little as possible from now on.