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How to engage with life when you feel down | Psyche Guides
Behavioral Activation Action Mode
- Ensure variety in the activities, and strike a balance between pleasurable, routine and necessary ones.
- Avoid prolonged inactivity periods and remember that challenging activities provide a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, boosting one’s mood.
- Carry out the activities even if you don’t feel like it, and let the body cure the mind.
- Do self-evaluation on a daily basis and be patient with yourself.
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Action has the power to improve our low mood
We normally think our mind makes our body get into action, but the reverse is also true: Action has the power to improve our low mood.
When one is down in the dumps, even simple chores need a lot of effort. The ongoing global crisis has had many activities that one enjoys to be indefinitely cancelled, leading to withdrawal.
The Depression Cycle
Depression can be distilled down into a problematic cycle due to reduced activity and low mood: when there is less activity, the person becomes withdrawn or isolated, and new opportunities become less likely, leading to a downward spiral.
Prolonged isolation and inactivity make previously enjoyable activities challenging or unappealing, making people withdraw further.
Behavioural Activation
The Behavioral Theory states that positive reinforcement acts as oxygen for the body/mind/soul, and makes the person break the cycle of negativity and depression.
The depression cycle of inactivity can be broken by Behavioural Activation which is an effective depression therapy in psychology. The depressed people are made to engage in activities they have stopped doing or are reluctant to do now.
Behavioral Activation Action Mode
- Ensure variety in the activities, and strike a balance between pleasurable, routine and necessary ones.
- Avoid prolonged inactivity periods and remember that challenging activities provide a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, boosting one’s mood.
- Carry out the activities even if you don’t feel like it, and let the body cure the mind.
- Do self-evaluation on a daily basis and be patient with yourself.
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Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT)
It's one of the most widely used and well-known talking therapies. It is based on the assumption that the way a person feels is closely related to the way a person thinks and the way they behave.
To change a person’s feelings, a psychologist providing CBT will help that person engage in different activities that can help to change thinking and behaviour patterns.
Acceptance&commitment therapy (ACT)
ACT targets a person’s tendency to avoid things.
- It introduces the idea of achieving a state of mind where people are able to notice the problematic thoughts, feelings, or behaviours but not be overwhelmed or consumed by them (the “acceptance” part.)
- It encourages people to identify values that are important to them and figure out ways their day-to-day life can reflect these values (the commitment part).
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Mindfulness is the act of being aware of our present experience in real-time.
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One Medicine Many Cures
Mindfulness can be practised to:
- Manage pain, anxiety, stress, or mood swings.
- Provide the body and mind an oasis of calm in between a hectic lifestyle
- Reduce suffering, distress and trauma caused by pain and depression, along with the negative emotions that come with life-threatening diseases.
The Space Inside Us
Mindfulness opens up a space inside our minds that helps us respond to outside situations with ease, instead of just reacting impulsively.
We become aware and are able to detect our default setting, which is our ‘driven-doing mind’, and catch hold of it before any impulsive reaction is acted upon. It also helps us arrest our cycle of negative thoughts.
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Tsundoku
Many of us have a desire to read. We buy books, but then the demands of work and family catch up with us, and we never get round to reading the books. The Japanese calls it tsundoku
Finding the time for books
To give books the attention and time it deserves in your life, you need to make it a higher priority. It means you have to change your habits and routines to allow more reading.
Sometimes, your reading needs only a little encouragement to displace something that should be lower down on your list. For example, to forgo watching television and reading a book instead.
The reading habit: Succeeding long-term
- First consider why you want to read more books. Reading should be enjoyable for you because you find them entertaining, calming, stimulating, and fascinating. Once the habit is set, you can also read other things you "should" read.
- Change your surroundings to make it easier for you to grab a book. Reading apps can be prominent on your phone. Physical books should be in places that you most often frequent.
- Create modest reading goals. Permit yourself to start with reading one page a day. Once the habit is established, you can increase it.
- Once you have laid the foundation for your new reading habit, create an action association, such as reading on the train to work or with your mid-morning coffee or dinner.
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