Self-Management of Depression

One of life's undeniable truths is that you will face failures. How one deals with these failures depends, among other factors, on one's compassion toward oneself and one's mindset toward adapting to failure. In this context, self-compassion and a growth mindset help you overcome your harsh inner critic, especially when failures lead you to judge yourself harshly, feel ashamed, or blame yourself. This article discusses how to use these tools in these situations.   Self-Compassion Put simply, self-compassion is compassion turned inwards, i.e., how you relate to yourself in instances of perceived failure, inadequacy, or personal suffering. The three components of the compassionate frame of mind are self-kindness, a sense of common humanity, and mindfulness (Neff, 2011). Let’s consider the following situation to illustrate how you can use three components to deal with an adversity that makes you critical of yourself. You couldn’t meet a deadline at work despite your best effor...

When feeling depressed, one often tends to overlook the positive moments that one experiences because negative, irrational thoughts make one  disqualify the positives  in one’s life. However, we can home in on positive feelings and experiences even when feeling depressed by reflecting on and reliving moments of joy and well-being. The three ways you can accomplish this are below: Track What is Working Well You may use a well-being diary  for this strategy. In the diary, you monitor the thoughts and events surrounding periods of well-being for the last 24 hours and record them every evening. This active recording of moments of well-being serves four purposes (Otto & Smits, 2011): With depression making you focus on what is not working well in your life, keeping a well-being diary makes you adept at searching out the good moments. It helps you relive the good moments and feel the pleasure again when you review these moments in the evening. It helps ...

What Constitutes Resilience? When adversity strikes, we are reminded to be "resilient." But what does it really mean to be resilient? For starters, resilience is not a single entity but a broad array of abilities for constructively and positively adapting to risk, adversity, or some monumental negative event (Dunn et al., 2009). Implicit within this definition are the two critical components of resilience – experiencing an adversity and a positive adaptation to it. Positive adaption has variously been defined, and the general consensus is that it connotes not only an absence or low levels of psychological symptoms (e.g., anxiety or depression) but also competence to meet societal and cultural expectations (Masten, 2001). The good news is that resilience is not a personality attribute that is fixed but is a dynamic process that individuals can develop (Luthar et al., 2000). In other words, no one is “born” or “naturally” resilient; it is something you learn and develop o...