Real Student Stories

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Picture of Anna When depression hit for a second time, postgraduate student Sarah felt like she couldn’t face trying to get better again. Anti-depressants lifted her mood enough for counselling sessions to start making a real difference... more > >

Also in "Tackling Depression"...

“I'm a lot better now. I try not to sit at home and dwell on things. If I have a low moment I try to see friends and just get away from it, because I know it'll go away.” Safa

“I've done support work, both voluntarily and paid, since I was about 20. I can separate off what I feel from what I do at work, because work is work, and that can help sometimes.” Gareth

“I'm a songwriter and this helped me to recover immensely. The song writing as well as writing poetry and free prose was incredibly cathartic. It's a way of pouring out your feelings. In some ways, the negative emotions fuelled my creativity. Something that you enjoy or are talented at is ideal for truly engaging with yourself in a positive way to counteract the negativity of depression.” Fayola

Students Against Depression
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Focusing Outward

Look At Me!

Depression focuses you inward

The depression habit spiral narrows your perspective and works to keep you looking inward. The more negatively introspective you become, the firmer depression takes hold and the more you get sucked into depressed thinking and tunnel vision.

Focus outward to resist depression

Any moment that you can spend thinking about something or someone else is a moment in which depression can't get your attention!

Different levels of distraction

This works on various levels, from very simple distraction techniques right up to much more meaningful ways to engage your time, energy and hope. Start small and choose the appropriate level for how depression is affecting you personally at the moment. Ultimately, beating depression is about being able to invest energy in your life again.

Don't wait until you feel like it!

The key to this strategy is to get on and do the things you have planned without waiting to feel motivated, and without expecting to actively enjoy yourself. It is sufficient at first simply to occupy your mind with something other than depression.

Strategies

Start with simple distractions
- When you are feeling very low, you need to build very simple distractions into your daily life: watching something entertaining on TV, meeting up with someone for a coffee, going to a movie, reading a book, going shopping, cooking a meal with friends, doing an exercise class.
- Do whatever you can think of that will keep your mind sufficiently engaged on something outside of yourself, while remaining reasonably constructive.
Choose distractions carefully
Culturally, "having a drink" can often be seen as a way to forget your problems. But alcohol and drugs can be very useful accomplices for depression, with their physiologically depressant effects giving a boost to the depression spiral. See the checking alchol and drugs page for more on this.
Get outdoors, especially into natural surroundings
- The inward focus brought by depression is often mirrored by a habit of staying indoors. Start the habit of getting outdoors every day. Taking in natural light can be important in setting your body clock and improving sleep patterns as well as helping with seasonal depression.
- Spending time in natural surroundings, in particular, can be subtly rejuvenating and energising. A garden, park, or riverside tow-path may offer an urban alternative to a country walk. Even keeping a plant in your room can make a difference.
Spend time with other people
- Depression can make you withdraw from social contact and isolate yourself. It is therefore very useful to choose distractions which involve contact with other people.
- Even sitting in the park and 'people-watching', imagining stories about the people you see, gives more social contact than sitting alone in your room.
- See the buildng support networks and peer support pages for more ideas.
Build up to choosing useful distractions
- The most effective barrier to depression is one which most thoroughly engages your mind outside yourself, even briefly.
- Doing something which is useful in some way is especially effective: keeping up your part-time job, doing something for a friend, volunteering to help those in need (most student unions will have info about student volunteering schemes).
Find a creative outlet
- Channel some of your feelings into a creative outlet, like writing, painting or making music. It doesn't have to be for others to see. Focus on the therapeutic freedom of creation, rather than on whether it is "good" or not.
Look at your university or college work in a new light
- Your studies often suffer when depression takes over. But university or college work can serve as a very useful "distraction" if managed in the right way.
- Check whether depressed thinking is affecting your attitude to your work. Perfectionism and all-or-nothing thinking can mean that your thoughts are focused on the doing of the work (how well you're doing it etc) rather than on the work itself.
- Get truly immersed in the subject itself, for its own sake. Forget about whats expected of you for a moment. See what it feels like to do some work for its own sake, and see how well it might engage your brain!
Work towards considering the "big issues" of life
- Depression works to drain away the assumed meaning of our lives. Some people would say that depression can serve as a constructive "wake up call" alerting us to take stock and reassess our lives (see ways of seeing depression).
- It has been said that it is up to each person to make the meaning for his or her own life (see depression and the meaning of life). Some find meaning in religion or spirituality, others in working towards their own set of ideals. What will it be for you?
- Don't wait for the meaning of your life to be handed to you on a plate. It's up to you to go and make your life meaningful!