10 Ways to Fight Depression

T.S. Eliot famously quipped, “April is the cruellest month.” But good news, chronic depressives! May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

Unfortunately, depression can crush your sense of awareness about how to handle even basic situations. Was it appropriate to wear all black to this wedding? Were you supposed to do something today besides lay in bed sobbing? How long can you really get away with not showering before your friends abandon you?

But the hardest issue to be aware of when you’re depressed is how to treat your depression. If you’re feeling lost, try giving these techniques a shot. Sure, they might sound obvious, but we also live in a world where we’ve designated a month “Mental Health Awareness Month.”

A serene walk through the woods

Drive to a nearby nature preserve, where you have space to think. Try not to think about how many murdered people are found in woods or the fact that this year’s drought may have left bobcats hungry enough to eat humans. Use this moment to face these irrational fears head-on, so they don’t come out like they did at last week’s pitch meeting where you snapped at your client, “Maybe Stacey doesn’t want to smile when she eats at Rally’s; maybe she just wants to make it to the next meal!”

Read a book you love

As a lifelong depressive, your favorite books include Crime and Punishment, Infinite Jest and the young adult novel about suicide that you remember fondly curling up with during your parents’ divorce. Any of those should work fine.

Listen to calming music

Those CDs of nature sounds fill you with rage when they automatically play as you walk by their store shelves, and the metal albums that comprise most of your music collection aren’t good picks, either. Try asking a sympathetic friend to make you a mixtape. It will probably have two Taylor Swift songs and that Black Eyed Peas hit you blacked out to at a frat party in 2007, but you can at least enjoy the peace of mind from not having to make a decision about what to listen to.

Medication 

Just because the first five antidepressants you tried didn’t work doesn’t mean the sixth won’t. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box by going off-label. Did you know blood pressure medication can soothe anxiety? The wooziness and tinnitus they cause will distract you from the nagging feeling that your career has reached a dead end. Reconsider what your alt-lit friend Jax37..++ told you about the time he took eight hits of acid and his dead grandmother chased him with a power saw. He said it was the worst trip of his life, but that it helped him confront his grief. Never mind that the only time you smoked weed you panicked for six hours you had misaligned the Big Dipper. Psychedelic self-medicating could work for you!

Do something with a friend to take your mind off things

Tell your friend what’s on your mind. She’ll suggest a movie. Unless it’s Oscar or summer blockbuster season, you’ll go see a genre movie with: a starlet 10 years younger than you, two 45-year old men acting like your ex-boyfriend, or a thriller whose dialogue is 80% lines like “OK. Let’s do this.” Go for the last option. You could be a screenwriter – it must be easy! This gives you hope.

Therapy

So the last few psychiatrists you’ve visited haven’t been great. One had a flock of parakeets. Another kept spinning the ring on his finger while repeating that women’s problems boil down to the Elektra complex. The last one you saw handed you (after you tearfully combed through diary entries detailing fights with your religious parents) a copy of televangelist Joel Osteen’s book Your Best Life Now and assured you that not all Christians are crazy. But don’t get discouraged – your next therapist might be the right fit!

Join a religious community

So you finally gave up on temple/church/thetan audit after the last service you attended was led by a man whose “sermon” was a 30-minute rant about “spiritual deficits extinguishing our inner stars.” Whoa! But your atheist friend has invited you to a gathering called “Sunday Assembly.” He has assured you that in place of religious hymns, you will sing “Yellow Submarine.” Yikes! You hate that song. Yelp Unitarian churches. Look for one with a website designed after 2002 and a photo featuring anyone under 50. Desperately attend that church on a Sunday you aren’t hungover.

Practice mindfulness

Keep in mind that this will all pass. Though it may feel like you are in the middle of a hurricane right now, remember that it’s actually worse. Depression will go away, but then it will come back again, like El Nino. Except that at least El Nino rears its head every two to seven years, and depression is going to be a permanent fixture for you. Depression is more akin to the deadly weather patterns that will be a mainstay after humans raise the planet’s temperature another six degrees. Anyway, just try to observe these thoughts without dwelling on them.

Suicide

Come on, you wouldn’t even know how to pull that off.

Reach out

Sometimes the only way to ease depression is to find out other people feel like you do. You’re not alone. Really. That’s actually true.

Amanda Lowry is a writer and stand-up comic living in Chicago. She is a graduate of The Second City’s Writing Program.