How to move away from dark thoughts despite trying exercise my usual coping strategies

It sounds as though your depression is causing you to have sad thoughts and your usual coping strategies aren’t working right now. There are emotional consequences in not feeling happy which you are trying to work through with exercise. Exercise will help as it deals with the chemical aspects of depression, however, the emotional aspects go unresolved. Journalling can be useful in exploring thoughts, but it might also compound you feeling stuck if you cannot find a way out of your thinking. The most important thing to know is that this is how you feel, it is your reality, and it is valid. At the moment, working out why you feel this way and how to change it is hard, which is why counselling can help. It might be a number of smaller factors contributing to how you’re feeling, which may also be why it is tricky to work out why you are feeling how you do.

 

It might be you don’t think you can talk openly about the thoughts and emotions that are occupying you; from the past, present or future, with the people around you, particularly if you feel your thoughts are dark. If you don’t feel you have the right words to explain how you feel, why would anyone listen? This is where therapy can help. Counsellors provide a third party, non-judgmental approach to what you are feeling, so you can find a language to help express yourself.

 

Making time for self-care and listening to yourself is an important part of life. Not taking care of your needs can cause problems of self-worth which could also impact feelings of depression, too. Thinking about how to find motivation to self-care when depressed is hard, though and it might be helpful to consider the following:

• Sleep is often the first thing to change or deteriorate when we are struggling. Ideally, aiming for 7-9 hours’ sleep is important. If you are having difficulty sleeping, a counsellor can help you explore why this might be and how it could improve.
• Being active can improve physical health and mental health as well. You said you find exercise helpful and there are lots of things you can do to depending on how much energy you feel you have, including brief activities whilst the kettle boils or dinner cooks.
• Maintaining connection with friends and/ or family can help. Humans have evolved as sociable animals, meaning connection helps us feel grounded and connected to what is happening around us.
• Creativity is also important- a favourite piece of music, art work or expressive art can reduce anxiety. Writing, drawing, creating for yourself has been shown to connects you with more positive emotions, plus gives you something to look forward to and activities that aren’t the main stress factors of your life. Some music won’t help of course- fast and irregular tempos as in dance music or aggressive lyrics may (but not always) make things worse.

As part of your journaling, it can be helpful to think about the things you can control in each situation. Taking action to control how you respond to dark thoughts is a good example of this. You can control how you respond to people and yourself. Counselling can help with this, as certain types of therapy can help empower you to see the choices you do have and explore why you are feeling depressed right now.

 

By focusing to what you can and are able to do, this moves the thought processes away from dwelling, to actively doing what you can. There are situations you cannot control, for example, you cannot control people. We also cannot control how others respond to us, though in both cases, we can control our emotional and thought responses to them.

 

Actively working with how you feel, and your emotions is important. How you feel right now, is how you feel, it is important you work to avoid suppressing or avoiding this, which will only increase your belief your depression is getting worse. Even if the situation is not one you can control, you can still work with your emotions to address how it makes you feel. This can reduce depression symptoms and dark thoughts.

 

It might help to think how you see yourself and who you prioritise. For some people, taking care of others might come first. Have a think about if you put the needs of others first and if you struggle to make time for yourself. An aspect of this might be people pleasing. You may feel that making others happy makes you happy, too. When this is the case, working with a therapist can help explore the barriers to supporting yourself as well as you do those around you. Often, when you feel it is OK to meet your needs, you become better able ask for help and support others, too.

 

It is important to remember that everyone needs support sometimes and care always, including you. Sometimes social media can impact this. Be mindful how much time you spend on there and what type of accounts you follow. How people present themselves is often different to their life- they present their best or worst parts of their day, but rarely show everything, particularly the mundane or things that won’t get them ‘likes’. It can cause comparative behaviour, where one never scores higher than the ones that seem ‘perfect’ or like they have their lives together.

 

It can also be helpful to notice when your depression starts and the need for coping strategies begins. The physical signs, the things you notice in your body, tell you when thoughts are becoming irrational. Sickness, tension in muscles and headaches can be a time to notice what action you may need to help alleviate how you are feeling. It is important to allow yourself to feel the effects of your thoughts and work through them. It may feel uncomfortable, and it will pass eventually. It can be helpful to think of ways to find it believable that the discomfort will pass, too. Focusing on the present, what is going on around you, will help you feel and experience the what is happening in the present rather than your thoughts about it. Staying present, or grounding, is a group of techniques that can be learnt either through counselling or internet tutorials, to help with this.

 

Depression and dark thoughts are not easy to experience, but they can appear every day- focusing on yourself, what you can make certain, can challenge and can feel are all important strategies in preventing how you feel when thoughts overwhelm you.