SELF HELP

Engaging in self-help starts with accepting responsibility for your own life and wellbeing.  For many people this will come from the realisation that they have much to gain through actively working towards recovery.

Self-help is any activity that you can do either by yourself or for yourself that allows you to manage your depression, and promote and sustain recovery. Self-help activities and techniques generally involve the development or re-enforcement of life skills that help you to live your life in a more positive way.

Self-help is not a quick fix and it can be difficult. It involves learning about yourself and your condition, and you will need to invest time and energy. But engaging in self-help enables you to develop both your understanding and coping strategies, providing useful tools to help you to bring about your recovery and possibly prevent future relapses into depression.

What Self-Help Can I Do?

Activities

Engaging in activities can be a very rewarding and positive experience and is good for both your mental and physical health. Activities can lead to the development of existing or new skills, encourage self-discipline, create a sense of achievement, increase self-esteem and provide a distraction from your worries.

Information Gathering

Learning as much about depression as you can is one of the most important and valuable things that you can do to help to promote your recovery. It will help you to understand your own feelings and reactions, recognise your triggers, make sense of your experiences, evaluate treatment options, and identify issues that have caused you to become depressed or are contributing to your depression.

Seeking Support

Actively asking for support can be difficult, even when you are well. When you are depressed it may be even harder but is extremely worthwhile. Having a network of people who can offer support and understanding when you need it most is an important part of managing depression and promoting recovery.

Managing Symptoms

The symptoms of depression can be totally disabling. They can feed into the depression and keep it ongoing. Taking steps to control these symptoms can help you to feel better and give you the strength to work towards recovery.

Tackling Existing Problems

Most peoples’ experience of depression is in some way connected to the things that are going on in their lives or have gone in their past. Added to this, problems can arise as a result of your depression that make you feel even worse. These issues can create massive obstacles to achieving recovery and can keep you depressed, so recognizing and working to remove them is a very positive step.

Looking After Your Health

Physical and mental health are very closely linked: it is very hard to conceive of having one without the other. Feeling better physically can improve your mood, boost your self-confidence and help you feel more able to fight the depression.

Try to pay attention to the following areas: physical activity, healthy eating, relaxation, sleep, taking time to enjoy yourself and getting out and about.

Learning New Coping Strategies

Everybody has coping strategies to deal with difficult situations, some of these are helpful and some unhelpful. Challenging those that are unhelpful, such as self-medication, and learning or developing helpful strategies such as self-monitoring or action planning is a vital part of self-help.