Depression – When You Just Don’t Want To Get Better

You can be free from anxiety!

You don’t have to feel depressed anymore!

There are things you can do to get better!

Is that annoying? It can be, even though it is the central voice of my blog (cough) cause it’s true (cough, cough) –  but, I know that often times when we are going through a darker season, these ra-ra-ra statements can make us even more depressed. We know that we can, or we know that we need to start trying,  but sometimes we just don’t want to.

So, what do you do when you KNOW you should work to try and get your head above the depression waters, or your feet planted on steady ground BUT you just don’t want to?

I know the days of not wanting to get out of bed, having no desire to pull myself up or “snap out” of anything. When we are a bit more level headed, we can see past our depression or anxiety just a bit to desire to be set free, but once the mind takes us into those gloomy places it’s really hard to climb out.

Losing weight is similar in a way,  you know you need to lose weight, but you just don’t have the motivation to get started.  Using this as a metaphor for mental health, we all know that once we finally do get started, commit ourselves to small goals, and then reward ourselves for good behavior, we seem to gain a momentum that wasn’t there before.

All this applies to getting our mental health back as well. The motivation may not be there initially, but we can take little steps to kick start our will.

Here are a few small steps that I can think of to help, feel free to leave a comment below on any others you can think of.

Goal Setting
Maybe you will set a goal to walk 10 minutes – rain, sleet or hurricane every morning. Maybe you will plan one coffee date with a friend once a week for community. Set some small reasonable goals to get you started.

Accountability
Asking someone you trust to challenge you on doing necessary steps to get better. Maybe even someone who really keeps you in line when they see you speaking negative thoughts out loud, or falling back into isolation habits, or coping habits. We all need people in our lives who can speak the hard truths and keep us moving towards our wholeness.

Check in Points
Setting a reminder on our phone every so often to remind ourselves to care for our mental health can interrupt the bla feelings and remind us to take care of us.  – Did you take your vitamins, did you walk today, did you call a friend, did you dance?!

Ask God to Increase Your Want To.
I had to pray and ask God to increase my desire to want to change and get better. God wants us to come to Him with these requests, and He will be faithful to answer them.

Don’t Add To It.
During this time, it is so important that you are surrounding yourself with good things, people, media, and more. It’s funny how our depressed minds can often crave depressing themes in what we read, and watch. So that’s a bit of a battle in itself.  Making a commitment to guard our eyes and ears, will protect us from heading further under.

All that said, this won’t be you forever, and you will get better, just keep taking small steps forward on days you don’t want to, and big leaps on the days you can see a bit of light. It all makes a difference in the long run.

2 thoughts on “Depression – When You Just Don’t Want To Get Better”

  1. The Baby Mama says:

    Beautifully written. I think, for me, is to say out loud – so I can hear, and think, the words:

    God did not give me a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind.

    I repeated those words over and over and over (and still do on some not so good days) in my darkest days. I started by replacing the lies I was believing with the truth of God’s word. It takes a very long time, and sometimes just one verse a day was all I could manage. But, it was a step – a step in the right direction.

    1. virtuouswomanx says:

      That’s so good and proof that The Word Of God is Alive and Active!

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