It's appropriate to focus on the importance of routine self-care in our depression recovery since International Self-Care Day was this past Tuesday, July 24. This kind of self-care includes daily tasks that are important for our health and hygiene, but we often find these seemingly basic activities overwhelming with depression. What are some of these routine tasks? Why are they an integral part of coping with depression and how can we find the motivation to complete these routine self-care tasks?

Talking about depression isn’t always helpful. Please know that I support movements to talk about our mental health. (If you haven’t yet, please read my previous post, part one of this two-part series, titled When We Need to Talk About Depression.) Good things happen when we talk about our depression. There comes a point, though, when the scales begin to tip and when talking about depression isn’t helpful.

Coping with rejection is difficult for most people, but it can be especially painful for those of us who have depression. We tend to internalize things so rejection often leaves us feeling as if we've done something wrong or plagues us with incessant negative thoughts. So, how can we accept the experience and begin coping with rejection in a healthier way?

While it can be difficult, there are times when we should talk about depression. We may feel embarrassed or ashamed to admit our depressed feelings to ourselves or others, but there are times when talking about depression is urgent, critical, and needed. 

Those of us with depression will often experience situations that can trigger depressive episodes. Since we can expect these events to occur, we need to have some effective coping strategies in place. What effective strategies can we use to cope with these triggers?

Depression is a treatable mental illness. Yet for many of us who deal with depression, we will experience depression relapse. While there are things we can do to help prevent depression relapse, sometimes, despite our best efforts, we will still relapse with depression. If that time comes, here’s how to cope with depression relapse.

The depression battle is fierce, as those of us with depression know. How can we win this battle and conquer depression? I have discovered three effective strategies that are helping me win the depression battle.

We can do things to help prevent depression relapse. I’ve relapsed with my depression more times than I can even count. I was first hospitalized for depression when I was 12. The second time I was 25. My last hospitalization was a little over five years ago, and I have had a few episodes of major relapse in between those hospitalizations. There’s a good chance that I could relapse into a major episode, even one requiring hospitalization, again. While this might sound depressing and discouraging, I choose to believe that this awareness allows me to safeguard against future major relapses.

Expressing ourselves through poetry helps depression, and, at the same time, it can help eradicate the stigma surrounding depression. Many of us find that it is easier to express our feelings, experiences, and struggles through creative expression than it is to express these things through dialogue or even direct writing. Also, writers have a way of conveying messages through poems that people are able to understand; through poetry, the reader often feels empathy for the writer.