Everyday life seems more challenging to a person dealing with depression. Be it socializing, meeting friends, going to work, or even just getting out of your bed may feel like a big struggle.

Here are a few things that you can do to deal with these symptoms of depression and improve your lifestyle.

1.      Have a Support Network

The most essential things you can do to help yourself with depression, except medication and therapy, is to have strong social support for yourself.

For a few, this may be like building stronger bonds with family or friends. Understanding that you can count on caring for loved ones will also help to go a long way towards improving your condition.

For others, their depression support circle can be the key. It can be a social group in your area or an online therapist who meets your needs and understands your concerns.

2.      Reduce Your Stress

When you stress about things, your body creates more of a hormone known as cortisol. For a short time, it can be a good thing as it helps you to deal with whatever is causing you the stress in life.

But in the long run, however, it can cause several harms for you, as well as depression. So reducing stress will reduce your risk of becoming depressed.

3.      Improve Your Sleep Hygiene

Mood and sleep are closely related. As per studies people with major depressive disorder experience sleep disturbances.

Sometimes, you may feel you just can't fall asleep easily. Or possibly you may struggle to get out of bed in the morning as you feel exhausted most of the time.

Maintaining sleep hygiene is the key to improve the quality of your sleep.

Turn off your devices TV or mobiles at least an hour before you go to sleep. Dim light and try to read a book or use any other relaxing activity.

If you do work in bed, or even in your bedroom, it can cause you to connect your bed with stress, rather than comfort.

4.      Improve Your Eating Habits

There is a direct link between your diet and mental health. As per studies improving nutrition can save you and even treat your mental illness.

A lot of brain-essential nutrients can cure depression. For example, a study found that zinc deficiency can increase symptoms of depression. So improving your diet helps you to reduce your symptoms.

5.      Stop Negative Thoughts

Depression just not makes you feel low but also causes negative thinking. Changing negative thoughts, however, can help improve your mood.

6.      Beat Procrastination

The signs of depression, like fatigue and trouble, concentrating, make procrastination tempting.

Putting things off oils depression and can lead to feeling guilt, stress, and worried.

It is essential to fix goals and manage your time. Make short-term goals and effort hard to complete the priorities done first. Every job you complete successfully will help you break through the pattern of procrastination.

7.      Get a The grip on Your Everyday Responsibilities

Depression can make you find it challenging to complete household responsibilities, like doing the dishes or paying your bills.

But a load of paperwork or stack of un-cleaned dishes, and floors hid in dust or dirty clothes will only amplify your feelings of worthlessness.

So without making any delay, take control of your daily tasks. Start with small work first and one at a time. Getting up and moving will help you feel better in itself.

8.      Make Your Wellness Toolbox

A wellness toolbox can help you calm yourself when you feel down.

Think of things that make you happy. And when you feel down, try one of these activities.

Cuddling your pet, taking a warm bath, listening to favorite music, gardening, or reading a good book can be your tools to help feel good.

Create your own list of your favorite activities and try when you feel bad. 

If you are not able to help yourself and depression is making you feel suicidal thoughts, then its time to seek depression counseling professional help, talk to a therapist nearby, or on online counseling as soon as possible. 

Relationships can be assumed as a difficult recipe. A recipe needs certain ingredients essential to create a delicious and excellent dish. While baking or cooking, it is necessary to follow the directions and take the measurements, set forth by the recipes.

If you use the wrong ingredients, or miss any ingredients, or use inappropriate amount, then you are risking messing up the dish. Your recipes will either taste a bit off or totally destroyed, rendering it uneatable. Relationships work same as recipes; they need a lot of ingredients to work and in the appropriate quantity are important.

The incorrect ingredients or wrong mixture of these ingredients can make a relationship unhealthy, unstable, or even abusive that leads to a painful break-up. So people need to be careful about what they put into their relationship to make them healthy and long-lasting partnerships.

Here are some ingredients that are necessary if you want to have a successful relationship:

Communication-  Healthy communication is one of the most important ingredients or component to have a healthy relationship with your partner. Lack of communication or miscommunication may lead to relationship failure.

Communication lets couples to stay on the same page and resolve any conflict in effective and productive ways. Listening to each other’s concern is important to value and hear individual feelings. If you feel you are not able to communicate your concerns to your partner then you can also consider relationship counselling experts to know the effective ways for putting your concerns to your partner.

Trust- Trust is the foundation of any relationship. Honesty, Transparency and clarity are vital to build and maintain trust in a relationship. Trust is built on dependability and reliability and does not come easily, particularly for a person who has been deceived earlier. Trust is fragile and broken once can be very hard to get back together. It is about being there protecting one another’s hearts and keeping promises.  

Intimacy- Physical and emotional intimacies are also important for a healthy relationship. Emotional intimacy helps a couple stay connected and sync with each other. It helps in developing a sense of safety and security with each other. Physical intimacies like holding hands, cuddling, and physical relations should be the top priority to preserve the romance in a relationship.

Working Together and Sharing the Responsibilities – The key to a healthy and successful relationship is to work together share responsibilities of household and parenting. Working together allows couples to create a stronger connection and to get over obstacles and difficult situations together.

Respect- Having respect for each other is significant to develop a healthy relationship. Partners are required to respect each other’s opinions, thoughts, aspirations and dreams. Individuals in a relationship have to respect each other’s concern despite being disagreed with them.

Friendship- Enjoying your partner’s company, laughing with them, and having fun together as true friends help you to build a strong bond with your partner. Building romance and love upon a strong friendship make a relationship, long-lasting.  

Recipes can be complex and challenging sometimes. Even most skilled chefs and bakers use their creativity and instincts to prepare a dish. Relationships are so much like that. Relationships are messy, tricky and complicated. To make them happening these necessary ingredients needed to be present in the right amounts. Creativity and instincts also are an important part to have a healthy relationship as every relationship is different not the same. 

Depression, A stage where a person got himself in between sad or unhappy memories and this time period didn't over for a long time. It can make you feel persistently sad and downcast for weeks or months at a time.

Talking about the numbers of how many people affected depression? The World Health Organization (WHO), 350 million people globally suffer from depression and sadly its increasing day by day.

What Causes Depression?

There could be many things that will be a reason for the depression but here are the top reasons that cause depression.

1. Biological Stressor - Biological Stressor make it hard for your body to take part in regular actions involves illness, inability, biochemical changes in the body, or wounds.

2. Brain Chemistry- It involves brain substances called serotonin to affect our satisfaction and feeling centers in the mind leading to low state and loss of interest and engagement.

3. Exogenic- It occurs due to the presence of an external stressor that can't be controlled by himself.

4. Social Stressor - Social stressor is increasing among the young generation. In this kind of stress, a person can't handle the specific situation and experience stress, as the threat.

5. Environmental Stressor - It can be caused by noise, crowding, air quality, colours, tornadoes and other natural disasters, war and other.

Depression Help - How Does Counselling Help in Depression? 

Counselling provides the best coping mechanism and identify a plan of action to address your problems. Here are some ways that will answer the question How does counselling help depression?

1.  Psychoeducation - It connects to the process of providing guidance and knowledge to those who are seeking or getting mental health services, or diagnosed with mental health conditions. It helps them to understand depression.

2. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) - It is a form of psychotherapy that treats problems and boosts happiness by modifying dysfunctional emotions, behaviours, and thoughts. CBT really help them to deal with negative thoughts.

3. Lifestyle Modification - Yoga, meditation, exercise and other lifestyle changes regarding diet, sleeping patterns are discussed and healthy choices and alternatives are explored.

4. Creative Therapy - Art, music, drama therapy helps the client to form an outlet to express negative emotions like pain, guilt, resentment, anger, shame in a creative manner and leads to self-discovery.

5. Smart Goals - When a person is in depression, small and manageable things start seeming impossible hence small, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound goals are created to achieve goal-directed behaviour.

Hope this article helps you to understand the Depression and how depression counselling can help you to deal with it. Depression can be treated with online therapy and counselling.