Winter is coming. This, in combination with a pandemic, means working at home. It isn’t the best thing ever, but with this blog, I hope I can help you feel a little bit better.

A few weeks ago I had a lecture about treating depression. We talked about behavioural activation and why this is so important. I won’t bore you with the whole story (if you like clinical psychology as much as I do, you can read my summaries), but I believe some aspects of this therapy can help also you feel less blue in these dark days.

What is behavioural activation? Well, as you would probably have guessed, this means just being active. It is so simple, yet so difficult. A thing you can notice about yourself (and I have noticed about myself in yet another wave of corona), is that if you begin to feel blue, you don’t want to do anything. And, if you stop doing anything, you keep feeling blue. Most of the time, you will just have a bad day. It isn’t fun, but we have all been there (except if your extraordinarily happy, good for you). If you take a closer look at such a day, you can notice an very important thing. Namely, does lying in bed, feeling blue, really makes it better? In my experience, it doesn’t. If you keep doing nothing, there is nothing that makes live rewarding, and in that sense, fun. A second problem is that if you don’t do anything fun, you won’t ‘feel like doing anything’ again. It is a downwards circle.

To break this circle, the solution is to become active. This is all too simple, and all too difficult. Think of lying in bed and don’t feeling about doing anything, why would you come get up? The thing is, most people wait till they ‘feel like’ doing something. The problem here is, you can wait a long, long time until you feel like it. If you begin doing an activity, you slowly begin to enjoy it and ‘feel like it’. The circle is the other way around. Of course, there are days you hate everything you do and just want to pretend you are a blanket-taco in bed. But if you want to end such a day, you will have to get up.

If you think ‘you fool, I will never enjoy getting up at all’, there is a simple trick you can do. Think of what activity you want to do, but don’t feel like. Write down on a scale of 0 (the most horrible thing ever) to 10 (it will be amazing) the amount of pleasure you think the activity will give you. After you do the activity, write down the amount of pleasure the activity actually gave you. Most of the time, it will be a bit more than expected. And, if you see this, it might motivate you to do more. In the worst case it will be as bad as lying in bed thinking about searching literature, and in every other case it will be better.

Here are some other tips that may help you

• If you don’t know what activity to choose because you hate everything now, think about what you liked before corona. These may be a good starting point
• Another starting point is to ask yourself if there is something you always wanted to learn. Now is your chance to learn France or bake the best bread ever
• Even though it is really hard to socialize, you can do social activities. Think about doing a writing contest with friends via Zoom or teaching each other how to paint. Sometimes, you have to be creative.
• Not all activities have to be extremely fun. Doing the dishes (not world’s greatest activity) can give you a sense of satisfaction that is also worth something
• If you can’t motivate yourself, schedule the activity at a fixed point (like 2 pm) and give yourself a reminder. Also remind that you will ‘feel like it’ once you start the activity. If you just wait you can wait a long time
• If you keep feeling blue, it can be an idea to go outside (taking a stroll far away from people or chilling at your balcony). A lack of vitamin D can cause sad feelings
• If you generally just feel depressed all the time, there is nothing wrong with seeking help. Take care of yourself, you deserve it.

I hope you enjoyed this blog :)

If you want to know more about therapy or depression, you can read the articles linked to this blog. The main article is in Dutch. If you don’t speak Dutch (I don’t blame you), you can read about this sort of therapy in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Theory and Practise by Beck.