Having Patience With Depression Sucks

Here’s what to do about it.

I’ve been diagnosed with mental illness for 21 years now. As someone with bipolar, I’ve been through countless mood swings where I was incredibly depressed for long periods. I am familiar with the feeling of depression and all it brings.

Because of my familiarity with depression, each new depressive cycle brings with it a mantra: it will be over soon. This too shall pass. Every other depression that I’ve been in has passed after a while, often with help from my self-care routine, and there is no reason that this one will be any different.

So I put my head down, I drag myself through life from one day to the next, and I persevere. Suicidal thoughts may come and go, and I resist them because it will get better. Tomorrow is another day, and by god, I will see it.

It really sucks to do that.

When you are depressed, it feels like nothing is right. All the garbage of the world is being piled on you, and you will never in a million years dig out. All you can do is sit your fat ass on the couch with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and watch Netflix for ten hours. It’s the closest you get to feeling anything.

So, when you engage in positive self-talk, when you hear encouragement from your friends and family that you can get through it, when you say “tomorrow is another day,” it all feels like a lie. You can know with every fiber of your being that you are in a depressive funk that is caused by brain chemicals and it will be over eventually, but hell if you believe it.

Honestly, it’s almost more tiring and depressing that way.

Oh, another awful day that must be caused by brain chemicals? Joy. I guess my brain wants me to be miserable. Why fight it?

I’ve been depressed for three months now, I’ve gained 20 pounds, my work is suffering, and my girlfriend is upset that I’m not calling her more. Yeah, it’ll get better eventually, I guess, but I wish it would get better now.

‘This too shall pass’ my ass. I guess I’m going to be like this forever this time, huh? At least bourbon loves me.

Ultimately, it never really gets much easier. Depression kills a lot of emotions, and hope and logic are some of the first to go, so trying to be objective about feeling better gets hard. Being hopeful takes energy Wallowing in despair doesn’t.

So how do you fight it? How do you persevere when the depression just sucks everything out of you?

Muscle memory.

Build strong self-care habits. Make them part of the fabric of your life. Make it so you always do them, even if it’s just a token effort sometimes. Make it so that they’re a reflex, not a choice.

When you’re doing well, get in the habit of going for a run every day right after you wake up. Do it every single day, unless you’re physically incapable of getting out of bed. When you get depressed, you will likely keep that habit out of pure momentum. It just becomes automatic.

Make healthy habits a fixture in your week or month. Meatless Mondays, Fish on Fridays, weekly hot yoga classes, monthly massages, something that is regular and automatic over some time. Set them up and pay for them ahead of time so you feel less inclined to cancel.

Build up momentum when you are doing well. I often get a motivation boost when I come out of depression; if you are similar, use it to start a habit. You don’t have to do a bunch at once — actually, it’s probably better if you only do one at a time so you can focus your energy on establishing it.

Find a way to keep up your motivation long enough to encode it into your memory. Repetition is key. Do your self-care at the same time in the same way regularly to encode it into your brain’s muscle memory so it becomes automatic.

When you practice an instrument regularly, your fingers seem to remember how to play the notes and do it automatically. When you practice self-care regularly, your brain remembers how to take care of itself and does it automatically.

I’ve talked about passive and active self-care before. Passive is things like sitting on the couch. Active self-care is things like eating right and exercising. Passive will help you manage, but active will get you through.

The thing is, your self-care shouldn’t stop when you’re not depressed. On the contrary, you should invest more energy into your self-care routines when you’re doing well. Learn easy healthy meals. Get in the habit of running every day. Figure out what you can do and do it.

Yes, there is a chance that you will drop the habit when your depression hits. But there’s a chance that you won’t, and it will help you through. Even if you do, you can resolve to pick it up when you’re feeling better, and maybe it will be there for you next time. When you’re doing well, you can afford to have optimism like that.

Being patient with your depression sucks. It’s easy to say that it will be over soon. It’s hard to believe it. If you work on your self-care and work to encode that self-care into your muscle memory, it will help you get through it a little easier.

Don’t get me wrong, it will still suck, and you’ll still feel like crap. But you’ll have one more tool to keep you from falling too far.