Anti depressant Activities are a core part of therapy. There are many different treatments that can help us to feel better when we are suffering from depression. We should not under estimate the importance of diet, sleep, exercise, the role that talking therapy can provide or for some medication may be helpful.
Anti Depressant Activities refer to activities that used to bring us pleasure such as sports, art, listening to music, being out in nature etc, that we tend to do less of or not at all because of feeling depressed. This will be different for each individual. It may be that because you have felt so low for so long you may have forgotten what you enjoyed. This is when it can be helpful to use your support network or what we refer to in IPT as your recovery team.
It may be difficult to begin with as depression tells you not to do these things and it may seem hard to have the motivation to get started. Depression can leave us feeling lethargic and having feelings of hopelessness about the future and that nothing will work.
Remember depression is an illness and that when we are ill there may be some things we do less of such as chores, to allow us the time to recover. There are some things we need to keep doing such as getting up each day, eating, washing etc. There will be things we need to do more of with support and these included anti depressant activities.
Please see the list of suggestions of things to get you started, remember at first they may only bring you little pleasure however don’t give up, keep going and I'm sure eventually you will start to notice the benefits. Its kind of like "fake it until you make it!"
Good luck I know you can do this.
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