What are some self-treatment methods for mild depression?

As a common mental illness, depression causes great pain to many patients and their families, and even poses serious risks to the patient's life safety in the later stages. So are there any self-treatment methods for mild depression?

1. Keep exercising:

Especially in the morning exercise, many patients with depression are slow, sloppy and lazy. This condition will not only seriously damage the body function in the long run, but also aggravate the negative emotions of patients with depression. As the saying goes, a day's plan begins in the morning. The morning air can be said to be the freshest time of the day. It can fully mobilize the potential of the human body and activate the body's cells. When the body is relaxed, the mind will slowly relax, and the mood will naturally be relieved to a certain extent.

2. Socializing:

Locking oneself at home and avoiding contact with others is a common symptom of depression patients, and this is the first thing they need to change.

Depressed patients often show negative symptoms such as low mood, low self-esteem, inferiority to others, and inability to do anything well. These feelings lead to their lack of interest, withdrawal, reduced social activities, and isolation. This puts depressed people in a vicious cycle and constantly strengthens their self-symptoms.

The prerequisite for changing this vicious cycle is to force yourself to go out, meet more friends, participate in social activities or go out for travel. Although it will be painful at the beginning, as long as you persist for a period of time, the negative emotions will be slowly dissolved by the external environment, and your self-confidence will be rekindled.

3. Breath Contemplation:

Breathing is one of the methods of mind reshaping therapy to purify the mind. The quality of breathing represents the quality of life. Breathing accompanies the beginning and end of life. Inhalation and exhalation are called "breath".

Psychologically speaking, focusing on breathing is a mind-body unity exercise that can allow the long-separated mind and body to begin to merge, eliminate the inner conflict of thoughts, and return to the true self. Medically speaking, breathing, heartbeat, and gastrointestinal motility are controlled by the autonomic nervous system, or the vegetative nervous system. Focusing on breathing training can repair the higher nervous system, which is something that no other medical means, drugs, or supplements can achieve.

Patients with depression can practice breathing observation in the morning and evening. When practicing, gently close your eyes and focus on your breathing. No matter what thoughts come up, you must accept them without pushing, resisting or entangled. All you need to do is simply observe your breathing, with legs crossed, for 20 minutes as the basis. After half a month to a month, you can extend the practice time to 40 minutes to one hour.

4. Meditation:

Meditation is a very good practice of mind-body spiritual cultivation and has been widely used in psychotherapy and spiritual growth activities. Meditation can reduce emotions such as tension, anxiety, and depression. Regular meditation practice can enhance awareness and help depressed patients gain enlightenment.

Professor Li Hongfu pointed out that although it is meditation, there are many methods. What is proposed here is a simple meditation practice. Depressed patients only need to determine their own vision map in their hearts. It can be any theme, based on the depressed patients' own feeling of calmness, relaxation or happiness, and then imagine and realize it in their brains. The more they can focus their emotions on this vision map, the better the effect will be. This exercise should be repeated continuously.

5. Organize your feelings:

Depressed patients are more often immersed in their own negative feelings. Although they sometimes think that their thoughts or emotions are irrational at the cognitive level, they are still unable to get rid of them. One way to truly change this cognition is to organize your feelings in a special notebook. No matter how absurd or ridiculous you think they are, all you have to do is to organize them completely in the notebook. Don't rush to analyze or recognize them. You can look at them after exercise or when your physical and mental state has eased. You must know that you don't need to analyze them just by looking at them, because this is not to train your ability to analyze and recognize, and you don't lack this ability, and you will definitely have different feelings.

6. Refusing to take a seat according to the number:

There is already a lot of information about depression, but there is very little information that can really help or is valuable to patients with depression. Since patients with depression do not have good inner defense capabilities, they often compare their own conditions with others, causing greater inner pressure. What's worse, some people initially only have some depressive emotions, but in the end they strengthen them into depression. Therefore, it is very important to reduce the understanding of information about depression or other psychological symptoms.

7. Reading books:

Reading is beneficial. Reading more books on psychology, philosophy, Taoism, and Buddhism can improve our wisdom, allow us to have a deeper understanding of ourselves and life, and transcend the limitations of past thinking.

If you can complete the above self-treatment action plan, you will definitely be able to get out of your depression. If you read this action plan and think it makes sense, then take action, because only physical practice is the only way to get out of depression. If you only stay at the thinking level, then no matter how effective the method is, it will not help you. Take action, you can be the master of your own mind.