Happy Monday and welcome to your mental health mini this. Week is. A solo and we are talking all things. Depression. I wanted to share a couple of things about depression, and these are kind of like insights that I now have that I didn't have when I was struggling. But if you're struggling, if you relate to this, I think they'll be really helpful to hear.
So the first thing is that depression, a lot of the time, when we look at it from a psychology perspective, when we look at the research, when we look at how people talk about their experiences, at least part of the time it's about a wrongly pessimistic outlook. That was true for me. I believed that I would be forever depressed for the rest of my life. I was constantly looking for circumstantial evidence that I wasn't good enough, that I was
unlovable, that my life sucked. And I found that because that was all I was looking for, that pessimistic outlook added to my mood. And so in general, when we can get out of that pessimistic outlook, that's not necessarily accurate. Things usually are or will be better than they seem right now in this moment.
So if you're struggling, if you're at that extreme low, if you're unconsciously looking for all of that circumstantial evidence that supports what you're feeling, I promise you that things are better or they will be better than they seem right now in this current moment.
The next thing is that when we look at emotions across your lifespan, when we look at the research that's been done there, how people rate their joy, their feelings of like living their life worth living, people are happier across time just in general, their happiness tends to trend upward over time. So if you're at your extreme low right now, if you're like, things cannot get worse. I hate my life in general. The trend is that that will change, things will get better.
They have to. And one mantra that I really love is that life is impermanent and that impermanence will be on your side. So even though you might be at an extreme emotional low right now, you might be suffering. No emotion, nothing in life is constant. That extreme feeling of suffering cannot persist forever. It has to shift, it has to change. Something has to give.
And that will be on your side. The pain, the suffering, it'll lift, it will change, it will evolve, and it can't stay as constant and as overwhelming as it is right now. And the future is really difficult to predict, obviously, but from like a personal perspective, when we look at the research on how people forecast their lives, life, and how things will look like five years from now, people really overestimate the impact of what's happening now on their
future happiness. We think that everything that's going on right now in the current moment, whether it's a test, a relationship and argument, is drastically going to impact our happiness in our lives five years from now. Where is five years from now? If you're like, what happened about that test that you took freshman year of high school, you'd be like, what? It's not even relevant remotely
to my life. And so it's important to remember that we're really bad at predicting how much things will impact our lives and our well beings, especially in the future. So if you're feeling really overwhelmed, if you're feeling like you're you're just at rock bottom and things suck and they will suck forever, we're not good at predicting that future. And that really is in your
favor. So I wanted to really quickly dive into a couple of habits that were game changers in my mental health journey that you can implement. So the first thing is sleep. Sleep is my number one mental health tip. Sleep has a huge impact on our mood, on our emotional vulnerability. If you are not getting enough sleep or you're not getting good enough sleep, your emotions will suffer.
So investing in your sleep, making sure that you're getting enough no matter where you're at in your mental health journey will at least somewhat improve your baseline of functioning relationships. When I was struggling, all I was doing was trying to feel loved, connected, supported and validated. So having relationships in your life that allow you to feel that way is a game changing for your
mental health. Having a passion project and something that brings you joy that you can invest in, that's motivating to you is huge. And that today for me is like the podcast, it's school. It's all of these different things that I love doing and they have a huge positive impact on my mental health. Another thing is accumulating
positives. There's this amazing DBT scale where you plan moments of joy throughout your day so that when you have those low moments in mood, you can't get into that headspace of like, everything sucks. The world is terrible because you've accumulated all these different moments of joy. So your baseline is increased. And that's something that I implement on a daily, weekly,
monthly basis. And something that is so easy to do is to back, OK, I'm going to drink my favorite cup of coffee tomorrow and I'm going to sit and enjoy it. Or I'm going to watch my favorite TV show tomorrow night and it's going to be great. Or I'm going to go have coffee with a friend and I know that I'll have have a great time. Like plan those moments, build your life worth living for yourself. And that's something that is
easy to do It's fun. The last two things I'm going to say 1 is just giving myself grace. We all have tough moments. We all have bed days. Our mental health is constantly changing and fluctuating and we can't always be perfect or on an upward trend. And so I give myself a lot of understanding and compassion when I'm struggling or when things don't go my way or when it feels like I don't understand what's going on.
And that's something that I wish I had done when I was really struggling, Giving myself grace and being like, you know what, you're struggling a lot right now. Everything is going on in a really crazy, huge, big way. And so it's OK to feel overwhelmed and it's OK to not know how to proceed and things will change. So really self compassion, giving yourself understanding and I just want to end this by reminding you that you're not
alone. Someone in the world has been where you are and will no one 100% get what your mind is going through right now. People can relate, they can understand, they can resonate, and they can support you. Ask for help, get the support and resources that you are so deserving of and cultivate that self compassion to want to get better because you are deserving of a life worth living. That's just a fact. If you enjoyed this week's mental health mini, you can listen to the.
Full episode It is episode 80 with yours truly. A link to the full episode is in the show notes. As always, make sure to leave a review. Subscribe. Share with a friend or family member and follow. Along and at she persisted podcast thanks for. Listening.