People have shared a lot of their metaphors for depression with me over the years. Some have described it like a fog. Others say they feel like a ship taking on water. One author describes depression as the "black dog." Whether your depressed feelings seem like a fog or a dog, I have found the most important issue to be how you respond to those feelings. When the dark feelings are particularly out-of-control, knowing that you can choose how you respond may be-to use another kind of metaphor-a ray of light.

Follow the Light!

Try to focus on things you can control. The key to beating depression is taking many small steps and these are often things that are right in front of you that you know how to do already.

When feeling depressed it can be easy to compare yourself to others that don't seem to need to "work" at generating positive feelings. This isn't a fair comparison. Upon closer inspection you will find that "non-depressed" people are constantly directing and re-directing their energies toward many small things in which they can feel successful. Taken cumulatively, these small efforts become quite significant. 

Taking Care of Yourself

You might laugh at someone who tells you to take a hot bath to help your depression. But the name of the game at beating depression is to do everything possible to take care of yourself. Mild depression has the potential to become more debilitating when your depressed feelings turn off your natural compass that tells you what steps to take to feel better. Use the toolkit below to stimulate your own ideas about enjoyable activities you may have stopped doing and find ways to weave these back into your life.