Get It Done When You're Depressed (36 page)

Creativity is often significantly shut down with depression, along with other kinds of cognitive processes. Creativity is not just thinking in clever ways; it’s also having emotionally charged thoughts. These creative thoughts are felt as enthusiasm or excitement and often become blunted during depression. That’s why the
desire
for creativity is absent. You can get past this by sitting down and doing what you used to do. This can often spark a creative thought, and the process can move forward.

Some writers, poets, and artists express their feeling through their work and may capture the essence of how they’re feeling. The act of writing or painting in itself can help some people when they’re depressed. Creativity can be a way of self-expression or a way to become clearer about the issues that are troubling them.

Create, create, and create some more. Use color in a new way. Take a picture from a different point of view. Write in a different genre. Compose music that represents your mood. You don’t have to feel well to do some beautiful work. Depression makes you feel that you’re artistically limited, but you’re not.

Here are some other thoughts to consider:

Remember:
Don’t wait until to feel better! Create something now! When you’re better and you look at the work, you’ll see that you are just as creative as always.

PS:
I had no desire to write today. I’m depressed and felt scattered and uncreative. So I wrote about not being able to write. This is the result, and I think it’s pretty good! What are you going to create today?

When you’re depressed, it can feel impossible to find the words you need to praise yourself. The personal and negative depression onslaught you face is often very hard to fight. And even if you only slightly believe what the depression says, you still get in a cycle of doing what needs to get done and then having your efforts shot down by the negative words of depression. Self-praise can be hard even for people who don’t have depression, so go easy on yourself if the words don’t come easily for you when you’re having a tough day.

The real you, outside of depression, probably likes you a lot and wants you to do well. If you think rationally about the thoughts you have when you’re depressed, it’s easy to see that they’re often ludicrous and so unrealistic that you could laugh at them if they weren’t so painful:
You will
never
be a success. You are a
terrible
parent. Your art is
worthless. You would (hopefully!) never talk to another person this way, so don’t let depression talk to you this way, either.

Nothing is as black and white as depression makes it seem. Ever. You have to start exercising your self-praising ability. It’s probably very rusty at this point, but you can change that, no matter how long depression has said terrible things about you. Remember this and praise yourself all day, even if the best you can do is to get up from a chair and make lunch. Saying “Good for me! I did it!” will become natural over time, and you might find that eventually self-praise pops out when you least expect it!

Consider the following signs you need to take over and praise yourself:

Learning the language of self-praise may be difficult if your kind words feel stuck in your throat. That is just from lack of practice! The more you try, the easier it is to get the kind words to flow naturally.

I honestly have trouble finding the words to praise myself when I’m depressed. My brain won’t form them. It’s not that I don’t want to break through and praise myself. I literally
can’t
. I find it easy to form words like
failure, worthless, ugly, stupid, lonely, disliked, hated,
and a lot more. But words like
productive, good worker, great colleague, fabulous tennis player,
and
that was fun
just refuse to form. It’s like I’ve had a stroke in the positive words part of my brain.

I now force myself to use positive language, and I say it out loud and rather forcefully. “Good job! I’m so glad you did that, Adam! I’m proud you did that even when you’re depressed.” It’s very uncomfortable, but it’s a lot better than the easily formed negative words.

I spent most of my adult life getting down on myself for being a failure. I never got things done the
right
way. I never met my potential (as so many people so kindly pointed out for 15 years). I was never
enough
. I had thoughts of being ugly and fat, a bad friend, a terrible worker, a dumb decision-maker, a bad singer, a terrible daughter, a rotten partner. Nothing was safe when I was depressed.

I tried to fight this, but really didn’t know how. This led to my moving around, changing jobs, and becoming extremely negative when faced with difficult situations. From 1995 until I started to use the strategies in this book, I can’t recall very much self-praise. I remember crying a lot and losing friends. I didn’t know that I could change my entire life by being nice to myself.

I just finished writing this section, and my brain immediately—and spontaneously—said, “Good for you, Julie!” The self-praise is slow to show up on the dark days, but I still try. Even if I go for days without being able to praise myself the way I want to, I keep trying. Eventually I get there.