How to Fight Depression and Loneliness without Outside Help

Depression and loneliness are common feelings, but sometimes those feelings can become overwhelming. There are steps you can take on your own to control those feelings. These include correcting dysfunctional thinking, structuring your day, and paying attention to your health. Keep in mind that depression is a very complex illness and you may still need to get outside help to significantly improve.

Part 1

Correcting Dysfunctional Thinking

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   Recognize common types of dysfunctional thinking. Dysfunctional thinking is a way of framing the world so that you feel you’re always fighting an uphill battle. Some common examples include:^[1][2]

   • Polarized thinking: Not allowing for any gray areas in life, or thinking in “black and white.”
   • Filtering or discounting the positives: Focusing on the negative of a situation and ignoring any positives.
   • Fortune-telling: Thinking that you know what will happen in the future.
   • Mind-reading: Thinking you know that others are thinking badly of you or that you are responsible for their negative feelings.
   • Overgeneralization: Thinking that one bad experience guarantees more bad experiences.
   • Blaming: Blaming yourself for things you are not responsible.
   • Emotional reasoning: Thinking with emotions or letting emotions affect how you perceive an event.
   • ”Should statements”: Using terms such as should, must, and ought to in your thinking; this is a form of judging yourself.
   • Magnification and minimization: Thinking that make issues seem larger than they are or trying to ignore issues.
   • Labeling: Using terms that diminish your whole self-concept by being known as a certain trait or mistake.
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   Find a journal to write in. Journaling can be a useful tool in order to analyze your own thoughts without outside help. Journaling can help you identify and change the way you think and behave. This practice has also been shown to help decrease stress,^[3] which can be a byproduct of depression and loneliness.

   • Find whatever works best for you. This can be a notebook, loose-leaf notebook paper, or your computer.
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   Monitor your emotions in your journal. Our thoughts greatly influence how we feel and how we interpret and perceive our environments, our futures, and ourselves. People who suffer with depression often have thoughts that they are worthless, unlovable, or undeserving, and they often have thoughts that their environments are overwhelming, have insurmountable obstacles, and that their futures are hopeless. ^[4]

   • Many who suffer from depression feel powerless to change how they feel and the course of their lives. Our thoughts greatly influences our feelings and behaviors, which is the basis for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT has been shown to be successful for treating depression.^[5] Relapse depression symptoms were much lower for those who had undergone CBT than for those who were being treated with medications alone.
   • A great way to start this process is to monitor your emotions and automatic thoughts by recording them in a journal or daily record. Start first by noticing mood changes, then begin to analyze what your thoughts had been just prior to feeling differently.
   • For example:
     • Event: I received poor feedback on my presentation at work.
     • Feelings: I felt embarrassed.
   • Here is another example:
     • Event: I forgot to sign the birthday card for my boss.
     • Feeling: I felt regretful and embarrassed.
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   Write down your automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts are the things that pop into your head spontaneously. They tend to pertain to three types of ideas: ideas about yourself, about the world, and about the future. After you’ve identified your emotions about an event where your mood changed, you can start to analyze the automatic thoughts that correspond to the event. Then you can evaluate these thoughts to determine how they are dysfunctional, challenge them by looking for evidence for and against the thought.

   • In your journal, create a chart in which you can record certain situations, their corresponding emotions, and the thoughts you had just prior to your emotions.^[6]
   • For example:
     • Event: I received poor feedback on my presentation at work.
     • Feelings: I felt embarrassed.
     • Automatic thought: I am so stupid.
     • Identify the dysfunctional thought: You are labeling yourself.
   • Here is another example:
     • Event: I forgot to sign the birthday card for my boss.
     • Feeling: I felt regretful and embarrassed
     • Automatic thoughts: I know my boss hates me now.
     • Identify the dysfunctional thought: You are trying to mind-read.
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   Write down rational thoughts to reframe the automatic thoughts. Counteract your automatic labeling with thoughts that are more rational.^[7] Some ways to generate more rational thoughts include looking for evidence for or against the automatic thought, looking to your past for a similar situation in which the automatic thought did not hold true, and analyze the situation for blame and logically redistribute responsibility for feelings and events to others that may have been involved. ^[8]

   • For example:
     • Event: I received poor feedback on my presentation at work.
     • Feelings: I felt embarrassed.
     • Thoughts: I am so stupid.
     • Rational thought: I am not my thoughts or behaviors. I am not a label. I am not stupid. I made a mistake and will do better in the future.
   • Here is another example:
     • Event: I forgot to sign the birthday card for my boss.
     • Feeling: I felt regretful and embarrassed
     • Automatic thoughts: I know my boss hates me now.
     • Rational thought: I cannot know what my boss is thinking about me. It was an honest mistake. I can always verbally tell my boss happy birthday.

Part 2

Structuring Your Day

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   Plan out each hour of your day. Help combat depression and loneliness by keeping structure in your day with a daily schedule. The use of a schedule helps depression by counteracting the loss of motivation, hopelessness, and decreasing time for rumination, which are all associated with depression. ^[9]

   • Rumination is the activity of replaying a scenario or problem in your head over and over, like a broken record. While some people consider rumination as a form of problem-solving ("I'm thinking through this problem from every angle until I come up with a solution"), if the problem is upsetting, you will end up continuing to be upset until you stop thinking about it.^[10]
   • Find a day planner that has space for hourly scheduling. Make sure you plan each hour of your day. Incorporate time for journaling, rest, exercise, relaxation, and self-care. To combat loneliness, schedule time to connect with a social group or a pet.
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   Consult your schedule frequently. Carry your schedule with you so that you’re following it closely. It’s important to follow through with each activity, so prepare yourself by knowing what comes next throughout the day.
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   Track how you felt during the activity. After you have completed your scheduled activities, write down the level of competency you felt about completing the activity, as well as the level of pleasure experienced if any. This record of competency and pleasure can serve you in the future if you are having thoughts about not being able to get things down or being able to enjoy anything.

   • Refrain from evaluating your activities on an all-or-nothing scale. Instead, try to evaluate on a scale of one to ten, with one being low competency or low pleasure, and ten being maximum competency and maximum pleasure.
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   Retrain yourself to be self-reliant. Self-reliance training is sometimes needed for persons with depression when they have become reliant on friends or family members to take care of daily needs. The process of self-reliance starts with taking back responsibility for self-care. ^[11]

   • It is important to begin in one area, scheduling this daily. For instance, you can start with being responsible for showering. You can also record your level of mastery in being responsible for showering. For instance, starting out, you may indicate that you were only able to get out of bed for the day and not shower. This may seem like no mastery at all, but it is more mastery that you previously had. Use your planner and feelings of competence to build yourself back up in self-care. Once you have taken on showering, you can tackle making the bed, then cleaning, etc.
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   Plan a set of “go-to” distractions for overwhelming times. It is important to know how and when to use distraction as a helpful method to combat rumination and intense emotions. Have a set of ‘go-to’ distractions that you can use if you are ruminating, feeling overwhelmed, or feeling lonely. ^[12]

   • Some examples include: exercise, having coffee with a friend, painting, reading, meditation, prayer, or playing with a pet. Write down these distraction methods in your journal or planner. Consult them frequently so that you have a reminder about your distraction plan.

Part 3

Overcoming Loneliness

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   Think about the similarities between you and others. Oftentimes, loneliness stems from the thought that your own experience is drastically different from that of others. But we all experience the same emotions, from joy and love to disappointment and anger. Consider how the human experience is universal.^[13]
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   Make small-talk with people you interact with. If you're feeling lonely, it can help to have a brief conversation with the grocery store clerk or the bank teller. This will help you feel a connection with someone, even if you don't have a lengthy conversation with this person.^[14]

   • Even a simple act like saying hello to your neighbor can help you feel more connected. This might even be the impetus you need to start a conversation that will result in a lifelong friendship.
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   Put yourself out there. You might feel lonely because you're shy or because you're new to a school. One of the ways to overcome loneliness is to be brave and take a risk. Put yourself out there by starting a conversation with someone who seems interesting.^[15] Or, ask an acquaintance if they'd like to go on a hike with you. You never know. This person might feel just as lonely as you and might appreciate your invitation.
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   Connect with people with similar interests. You may feel lonely because you have specialized interests. Perhaps you're really into mountain biking, but you don't know anyone else who does this too. Search online for a club in your community that does this activity. If you can't find someone in your local area, chances are you will be able to locate a group that gathers virtually.^[16]
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   Volunteer in your community. When you feel lonely, you tend to focus on your own feelings and how your needs are not being met. If you turn your attention to the needs of others, you can redirect your emotions.^[17] Find a nonprofit organization in your community. You can volunteer at an animal shelter, for example.

Part 4

Improving Your Health

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   Regulate your sleep schedule. Recent studies have shown that when you sleep, your brain gets a deep cleaning. Your body uses this time to flush out toxins and other dangerous material. When you don't sleep enough, this puts you at risk of mental stress, because that buildup makes it hard for your brain to work properly.^[18]

   • Make sure that you get enough restful, continuous sleep to ensure that your brain has its best chance.
   • Most adults will need around 8 hours of sleep, but plenty of people need more while some people may need less. Experiment to find what works for you.
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   Get plenty of daylight exposure. Sunlight exposure can play a role in controlling depression.^[19] For some people, it's possible to suffer from a condition known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is when the lack of sun during the winter season throws you into a deep depression. For others, staying inside too much may be the root of the problem. Whatever the case, try to make sure that you get some sunlight each day.

   • You can take your lunch outside, even when it's cold.
   • Try walking to work or school, at least part of the way as another way to fit more daylight into your day.
   • You can also invest in a sunlamp or get one covered by your insurance with the help of a doctor.^[20]
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   Incorporate exercise into your life. When you exercise, your brain releases chemicals called endorphins and serotonin. These chemicals help you to not feel the pain of the strain on your muscles. They also do something else: they make you feel happy. An inability to regulate these chemicals has been implicated in studies of depression, and many depression medications work by controlling them. This means that exercising really can help you manage your depression.^[21]

   • One good way for you to exercise while also managing the feelings of depression is to go for a jog or a swim. Both of these exercises are known for helping you clear your mind, as you focus on your environment and the physical sensation of what you are doing.
   • Work up to exercising about 35 minutes every day or one hour three days a week. These have been found to be the most effective exercise schedules for combating depression.^[22]
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   Eat healthy, nutritious foods. What you eat can affect your brain in a lot of ways. Studies show that certain ingredients in our modern diet, like gluten and sugar, can lead to depression.^[23] Try to eat plenty of nutrient-rich vegetables and fruits, whole grains, and proteins to adequately nourish your brain.^[24] Reduce your consumption of refined sugars, processed foods, and fried foods.
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   Increase your intake of omega-3 fatty acids. These play a role in brain health. There is some evidence that a diet rich in this nutrient can help improve your mood.^[25] Good sources of omega-3s include fish and eggs. You can also take fish oil supplements.

Part 5

Deciding to Seek Outside Help

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   Recognize what “outside help” means to you. It is important to understand for yourself what “outside help” means to you, as well as knowing when you need to access it. These are all personal choices, similar to the choice we have in any of our healthcare. However, it is important to realize that not wanting outside help, even from friends and family, can be symptoms of depression in which a person isolates themselves because they feel like a burden or feel weak for having depression.^[26] Some different definitions of “outside help” might be:

   • Some people might consider “outside help” to include the use of psychotropic medication to help depression
   • Others might still seek therapy but otherwise will go the “all-natural” route.
   • Others may not want to see a therapist because they feel stigmatized, crazy, or burdensome.
   • Some people may not even want “outside help” from friends and family.
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   Try not to avoid social support. It’s important to realize that depression is not who you are. It is an illness like any other. Do not let the dysfunctional, automatic thoughts about being a burden or being weak deter you from engaging socially with friends and family and seeking their support when you need it. Social support is a critical, protective factor against depression and loneliness.

   • In fact, research shows that having social support decreases stress^[27] and can help find solutions to problems, especially for those who are struggling with depression.^[28]
   • Furthermore, social support is the number one way to combat loneliness because is help you feel connected to others and connected to life.^[29]
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   Make a safety plan. Possibly you want to feel like you have the power to combat depression and conquer it alone. While this is admirable, remember that your mental health is your first priority over your mastery of fighting depression.

   • Pinpoint who you will call and have a plan about which kind of outside help you will seek if you do reach a point in needing acute care for depression. This type of plan is a safety plan and will include names of friends, family, doctors, and emergency numbers to call if you need help.
   • For example, you can type up a list that includes several important phone numbers: phone numbers for your mother, your best friend, your doctor, and an emergency nurse or hospital.
   • Also include the National Suicide Hotline number (1-800-273-8255), and the phone numbers for local police and 911.
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   Tell your contact people about your plan. Tell them how they can help if you do call in the future. Give them specific tasks that may be helpful to you, if you are not in immediate danger. For example, they could just keep you company until you feel you are not a threat to yourself. In other cases, you may need them to contact your doctor or take you to the emergency department for an evaluation.
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   Get immediate help if you are suicidal. If you have thoughts of suicide, or you can no longer function in daily life, resolve to seek outside help.