What To Do When You’re Feeling Down

Mental health is a rising topic throughout the world, and especially in the United States. Common mental health conditions include: depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and various eating disorders. Depression is one we will focus on. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) describes the affects of depression, "It causes severe symptoms that affect how you feel, think, and handle daily activities, such as sleeping, eating, or working. To be diagnosed with depression, the symptoms must be present for at least two weeks." This can be caused by a variety of reasons, including a chemical imbalance in your brain. It can seriously happen to anybody, and it is normal to be depressed. It's important to seek help as quick as possible to help get your disorder under control. Also, there are things that you can do to help make yourself feel better other than seeing a doctor, being prescribed medicine, and going to therapy. These treatments may be more short term fixes and not actually fully bring you out of your disorder, but they will help you get an instant serotonin boost. For more information on depression, visit our blog on it here.

The first thing you can do is exercise. Exercise has been statistically proven to help you make you feel better. If you are feeling very down, and have the want to lay in bed and do nothing cloud hang over your head, try your favorite form of exercising. Go for a run, lift weights, do body weight exercises, go on a long walk. These are all things that will get your blood pumping and help you feel better. Although exercise is hard to get yourself to do when you're feeling down, it's worth it. It will help brighten your day.

Listen to music. Not everybody has the same amount of appreciation of music so the effectiveness of this will differ from person to person. It doesn't have to be any specific genre of music, it can be whatever you're feeling at the time. Sometimes music can distract the mind enough to help put you in a better place mentally.

Do your favorite hobbies. If you like to paint or draw, then have resources for yourself to do these things when you are feeling down. There's a peace of mind when we are doing our favorite things.

Everybody has their own thing, just find what makes you feel better or feel happier and take advantage of that. It'll be worth it once you start doing it and begin to feel better.