7 Mistakes People Make When Managing Their Own Depression

Depression is a serious mental health condition that hurts your quality of life. It affects millions of people all over the world, and plays a role in everything that they do, causing you to lose interest in the activities you love, hurt your relationships, experience low energy for work or pleasure and more.

Depression can be brought on by numerous life events, many of which are beyond your control. But those that suffer from depression and anxiety also have a tendency to perform behaviors that fuel their depression further. For you to be successfully on the road to recovery, it's important that you avoid the following depression-fueling behaviors.

Common Self-Induced Depression Stimulators

• Loss of Goals

Depression has a tendency to reduce your willingness to create and achieve goals. But cutting out these goals is also a potential cause of increasing your depression. Creating goals and achieving them creates a feeling of productivity and accomplishment that is an important part of relieving some of the issues surrounding depression. Make sure that your goals conform to the SMART goal philosophy and create goals no matter how little energy you have to do so.

• Immobility

Depression also makes it hard to gather the energy to exercise regularly, but a large part of that is also the unwillingness to even try. Exercise is a proven mood booster, able to actually lesson some of the symptoms of depression in addition to improving your physical health (which may improve your mental health even further). Remaining active is a vital method of reducing depressive symptoms.

• Watching Scary Movies

For many people suffering from depression, there is this misguided belief that outlets that match your inner feelings are a great stress release technique, and they watch horror movies or engage in fear-inducing activities as  way of relieving some of their symptoms. It is not true. Watching horror movies or any movie that fuels fear and dread will ultimately create more anxiety, stress, and depression in the future.  Refrain from these types of activities and you'll reduce the chances of a depression recurrence.

• Listening to Sad/Depressing Music

Similarly, music has a profound effect on emotions, which is why many people listen to music that matches the way they feel, playing sad songs over and over when they feel sad. But this is not the best strategy. Instead, you should listen to music that represents the way you want to feel. "Happy" music is much better music for those suffering from depression, as is music that feels energetic and active.

• Lack of Social Time

Those suffering from depression often want to be alone. But social support has considerable stress and anxiety reduction properties. The more you spend time with others, the better you feel, especially if you are willing to share experiences with them and engage in enjoyable activities together. Wanting to spend time alone makes sense when you have depression, but it won't make your depression better, and since your goal is recovery, you should avoid alone time when possible.

• Lack of Routines

Routines have received a bad reputation of late because they represent boredom. Indeed, when you have a regular routine that you go through every day, it can often feel like you're stuck in the motions, unable to live an exciting life. But routines also represent comfort for your mind and body, and reduces the anxiety that can create more depression.  Creating some routines in your life – as you get up from the morning, before you go to bed, what you'll do every Wednesday night, etc. – can help to reduce your depression symptoms.

• Shopping

While it's not shopping in general that is necessarily a depression-fueling behavior, shopping does represent something that can create an increase in depression. Many people do a form of "shopping therapy" that gives them a temporary thrill (buying something new) that helps them feel like they're feeling better. But shopping (and other temporarily thrill behaviors, like gambling) do nothing to truly affect depression. Rather, they are like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound – it won't cure the symptoms, and it hurts when you pull the Band-Aid off. Shopping provides highs and lows that create additional depression, rather than solving it.

Looking for Successful Depression Reduction Strategies

It's amazing how often people create their own depression as a result of their own behaviors. While most people do not cause their own depression, many people perform regular behaviors that unknowingly make it worse, and certainly make it more difficult to recover.

Try your best to cut out any behaviors in your life that may create additional depression or fuel your depression symptoms. Only by doing so can you hope to cut back on the amount of depression and sadness you experience regularly and improve the ability for the treatments you use to work.

About the Author: Ryan Rivera had issues with both anxiety and depression and found himself engaging in far too many behaviors that only made it worse. He has tips for those suffering from mental health issues available at www.calmclinic.com.

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