How to Motivate Yourself When You’re Down In The Dumps with Depression

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Have you ever experienced a loss of motivation? Loss of pleasure and not enough concentration or focus to get things done around you, no matter how trivial the task might be?

What is Depression?

If yes, then perhaps you’re suffering from depression or a dopamine deficiency as clinical psychologists put it. According to a study published in the JAMA Psychiatry people suffering from clinical depression have lower brain levels of neurotransmitter dopamine and thus suffer from loss of pleasure and motivation; they demonstrate the characteristic slowness that is evident in people with depression. Depression isn’t something that can be taken lightly. Those suffering from depression need immediate help. Because  of its extremities depression can be so much as a life threatening condition.

Depression is a shapeless mass that you will never ever get hold of. It’s weird; it’s crazy; and it’s downright scary. When you’re depressed, no matter what you do, none of your goal seems worthwhile. You cannot plan; you don’t feel inclined to do anything and prefer that catatonic, trance like state that shuts everyone and everything out.

How to Cope with Depression

Everyone is troubled with today’s fast paced modern lifestyle and its overpowering demands. However, those who outshine and become successful have nothing to do with their overwhelming power to succeed, and everything to do with how to find motivation for self improvement and to cope with depression or depressive moods.

According to Dr. Gabriela Cora, MD, managing partner of the Florida Neuroscience Center and also a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, when someone has depression, there needs to be much more than just finding the motivation to come out of it. Professional help and medication is needed to diagnose the cause and treat it at its root cause. However, finding motivation can help tackle the depression and make these episodes comparatively lesser.

Clinically Proven Motivational Tactics

In good hopes and good spirits, here are a few clinically proven motivational tactics provided by Dr. Cora that can help you get out of depression and achieve something:

Just Get Out Of Bed

Making an effort to get out of bed is the first step towards achieving the motivation to fight off depression.  The small steps accumulate together to create a huge victory against depression. Just get out of bed, take a shower, dress up and lock it as your first positive activity in the morning.

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Exercise

Medical science has proven exercise to be a vital mood booster. It is therefore very much important that you push yourself to exercise once you’re up and about so that you break the chain of the not-motivated mindset.

Take One Thing At A Time

Breaking down tasks into achievable smaller goals can give you the motivation that you need. Taking things one at a time will make you realize you’re accomplishing something rather than considering yourself a failure by not achieving a set goal in a short period of time.

Love Is Power

You need to know that you have your family on your back, especially when you are experiencing a depressive episode. During such an episode its very easy to lose sight of the fact that you are loved and get under the blanket. But it is essential that you reach out to your family for help even when you won’t resist their approach for every possible reason.  You need your family when it comes to dealing with depression. The family provides the tough love that is needed to get through anything.

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Find Positivity From Small Developments

Finding motivation when you’re depressed is really tricky, but if you’re determined to stay optimistic and positive you can get the good vibes from small things like bright colors, good music and anything that you just might like. You may start slow but gradually you will begin to recapture the motivation that you seem to have lost.

Cognitive Therapy for Motivation to Cope with Depression

Often doctors prescribe medications to help people with depression. However, there is an underlying problem with the medication prescribed for depression. It will just cure the symptoms of the situation and not motivate you from within. Perhaps you will get back to being depressed once you stop taking the prescribed medications as well. It is essential to find the right motivation that can help you overcome depression for good.

Instead, you mght want to try using natural remedies like taking tumeric, which is known to improve mental health.

According to Clinical Depression Learning Path UK, counseling from a psychologist can be one of the best therapies to help regain the motivation one loses when depressed. Yes, you might have close bonds with your loved ones, but you need a therapist trained in counseling to help you overcome depression for good. You need to be able to challenge your depressive thinking and its related behavior to find the motivation to overcome it. Good depression counseling can help you learn the much needed skills to lead a confident depression-free life.

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You will need to receive behavioral and cognitive therapies to help you fight depression and get the motivation you need to step out of it. Behavioral therapies focus on behaviors that make people feel miserable and depressed. Therapists work with individuals to change their behavior and help them overcome negative perceptions and thought processes so that they can combat their depressive episodes.

Cognitive therapy for depression will help you learn to catch your thoughts and then challenge them so that you feel different when a depressive episode strikes. Cognitive theory believes that thoughts affect emotions and hence cognitive therapists will work with those suffering from depression to uncover motivational thoughts from their everyday routines.

What you need to understand is that depression is a menace and nothing other than your self-determination to fight can help you overcome it. You need to steal yourself against depressive thoughts and feelings and extract even the tiniest scrap of motivation that you can find from within yourself.

Remember it’s all within you and only you can help yourself fight this menace.