🌿 5 Gentle, Simple Things That Actually Help Me When I’m Depressed

I am still here. 💚

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🌿 Hello, lovely! I’m Nospheratt and this is Joy Every Week - a weekly quest to find joy in everyday things. You’re receiving this either because you subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. Enjoy! :) 🌿

It finally happened.

I’m kinda surprised it took this long, to be honest.

Depression got to me again.

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I’ve been dealing with depression and anxiety since… I honestly don’t remember how long.

But way before I even knew those things had a name. Decades.

Therapy and medication allowed me to find a functional, happy, mostly healthy baseline, but I still have bad episodes now and then, and that’s where I’ve been: deep in the pit of depression.

It’s not the first time, and I know it won’t be the last. It’s just part of life, for me.

Like the rain and the seasons.

It’s been weeks (months?!) since I was able to write anything. I’m only now starting to feel better. To me, a depressive episode is akin to falling into a deep, dark pit; it takes time and a lot of patience and effort to climb back up.

I am slowly making my way back up. I’m not back to my normal baseline yet, but things aren’t looking as bleak to me as they did a few days ago.

I was lucky. I realized pretty early I was down the pit again; I’ve been through this so many times, for so long, I am now able to recognize the symptoms and seek help before it gets the worst it can be.

So, I’m on the mend. And I’m sorry for going MIA, but there wasn’t much else I was able to do.

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I hope you’ll never have to deal with something like this, but in case you do, here are a few things that are helping me. ¹²

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🌿Getting up.

One of the first and biggest symptoms of depression for me is: I don’t want to get up in the morning. I don’t feel any motivation at all for getting out of bed, and since I don’t have a 9-to-5 job, I don’t have anything that can make me get up when I don’t have the willpower to do it.

So I asked my husband to help me — to make sure I am up and out of bed before he leaves for work.

If you don’t have someone in your home to help you with that, a call from someone can be just as helpful. Just a check-in to see if you can get your day started.

Did I go right back to bed some days? You bet I did. But getting up some days was still helpful — staying in bed all day aggravates my depression, so any day I can avoid that is good.

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🌿Less Pressure

I just paused and stopped everything I could.

Overwhelm is a big stressor for me, and the more things I have to do and can’t do, the more I feel like a colossal failure, which, you guessed: makes the depression worse.

So I just… stopped.

I let a few people down, and I’m really sorry about that. I’m also sorry that I haven’t been here, writing for you as promised. ³

But stopping everything — when I didn’t have energy or mental bandwidth to do anything else anyway — allowed me to get a lot of rest and recover a bit.

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🌿The Things That Always Help

Going back to the things I know help me maintain balance and a functional baseline, like meditation, yoga, stretching, very, very, very gentle movement; taking regular breaks, early bed time, resting, hydrating, going for walks. I’d been working non-stop and neglected all those things, which definitely contributed to my slide down the pit.

Once I realized I hadn’t been doing the little things that keep me going, I restarted all my practices. I’ve been calling this my “self-care hour” because I do most of it in a chunk of time. And it helps, a lot.

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🌿Finding Joy

You knew this one was coming, right? 😄

It’s way harder to find or feel joy when you’re depressed. Some days, it’s impossible.

I still look for the smallest, easiest joys I can imagine, because it really, really helps.

For me, the easiest way I could — can — access joy is journaling. Crashing all my feelings and emotions into paper, letting them out. No judgement.

And making art of it — coloring, highlighting, cutting, scratching. Using stickers and scraps of paper, glue and ribbons.

I’ve been spending a lot of time journaling, and I am honestly amazed at how deeply soul-healing it is.

Other joys? A walk in the woods. Listening for birds at the park. Time to enjoy the quiet of the morning in the kitchen. Ice cream. Banana muffins. Writing fiction just for fun. Meeting with friends when I felt up to it. Watching movies — Thunderbolts* gave me SO MUCH joy. 😍

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🌿Being Patient

There’s this voice in my head telling me that now that I don’t feel so horribly bad, now that I’m not feeling sad 24 hours a day, I should quit whining and go back to work, start again doing all the things I was doing before.

The truth is, it doesn’t work like that, as much as I’d like to just “get back to normal already.”

A depressive episode is just like any other illness, or an injury: if you restart your activities too soon, you’ll have a setback. Sometimes a big setback, one that will take even longer to heal.

Ask me how I know this. 😅

So I am being patient, and pushing back on my own shoulds.

I’m doing the best I can, and that’s enough.

Sometimes it makes my anxiety spike up — omg, I am not doing this and that and that and theworldisgonnaend — you probably know the drill.

It’s not easy.

Still better than pushing myself too soon and crashing way down again, tho.

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Also on the personal stuff front: I am moving by the end of the month. This move came somewhat unexpectedly, which means a lot of chaos and logistics and figuring things out. 😩🥲

So instead of coming back next week like I initially planned, I’m taking an official break. I’m taking the next few weeks off, and I’ll be back with new quests in mid-August / early September.

In the meantime, I have an invitation for you - a small thing that I’ve dreamed up so we can keep looking for joy, every day, together. 🌱

I’ll tell you all about it next week. Don’t miss it! 😊

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That’s It For Today!

This is not a proper quest, I know. I hope it’s useful somehow anyway.

At the very least, you know why I’ve been AWOL.

Thank you for not giving up on me. You are the reason I won’t give up, either. 💚

Until next time. —Nospheratt 💚🌿

1. Besides therapy and meds, which are, for me, the most powerful weapons in the fight against depression.

2. I’ve also stopped reading the news. I know. I know. At the moment, I just can’t deal with it, and trying to keep on with it was undermining all the other efforts to claw my way out.

3. If you’re a paid subscriber, don’t worry - I’ll comp you the time I’ve been absent once I come back. It’s only fair. 💚