A Few Tips for Surviving Depression

A Few Tips for Surviving Depression

Depression is not just some bad mood we get into that we can snap ourselves out of.

We don’t get into depression in a hurry, and we usually don’t get out of it in a hurry.

Depression isn’t a sin. Depression normally comes whenever some major fear comes into our life, or trauma or loss or something else that shakes our world….We become totally consumed with that problem. We give it 100 percent of our undivided attention. Not just for days and weeks, but for weeks and months on end. When we do that, at some point, something changes in our thoughts and mindset.

Now we are no longer just afraid of whatever it was we were afraid of that we couldn’t solve. Now we are having a hard time eating or we are eating all the time. We are having a hard time sleeping or we are sleeping all the time. We are not wanting to be around any of our friends. We are not wanting to do any of the things we used to enjoy because we don’t enjoy them any more.

Because we can’t snap ourselves out of depression, I believe the first and the most important thing we can do is to find a way to survive until we can get out. All I mean by that is this: find things and do things that give you some sense of relief—even though they don’t give you joy and peace—they give you some relief.

For me, it was simple things like driving into town with my family to get something to drink, even though I had that drink in the refrigerator. Something about that ride gave me some sense of peace and relief from the depression. Sometimes it was starting a fire and feeling the heat from that fire, sitting by the water, exercising....So, find whatever it is in your life that gives you some sense of relief. That’s to get you by until you can get out.

This is what gets you out. You get out the same way you got in by giving your undivided attention--not to the fear of loss or trauma--but to love and to truth. For me it was the books of Philippians and James in the Bible. I read these books relentlessly and I wrote down scriptures that spoke specifically to the fears that I had.