Depressive episodes often start with nothing more than a bad day or two. We don't feel like ourselves so we don't engage in our normal activities. After a few days of just "getting by," our perception of ourselves starts to change. We find it harder to keep the negative thoughts and feelings at bay as the evidence against the shame and the worthlessness feels further and further in our rear view. We begin to align with the beliefs imposed upon us by our depressive thoughts, and every day feels a little bit darker and a little bit heavier. This is a depression spiral.
The way we spend our time when we feel depressed is often an attempt at damage control or harm reduction. We feel unable to do the things that normally provide us with feelings like joy, connection, or accomplishment. We lose our ability to move forward and we cling desperately to whatever progress we've made since our last depressive episode, trying with all our might to avoid sliding back into that pit. But when we're depressed, neutral days are losses because of the pessimistic, nihilistic mindset forced upon us by our unrealistically negative mindset. We need to achieve positive moment to get out of the rut.
In order to kickstart your recovery from a depressive episode, you need to start making time investments. When we're depressed, we often make the mistake of trying to do whatever feels best in the moment because we're desperately searching from some degree of positive emotion. While completely understandable, these behaviors are ultimately ineffective because they often do little for us in the moment anyway as we are unable to enjoy them due to our anhedonia, but they also give us no momentum or challenges to the depression the next day or the day after. They do nothing to interrupt the spiral. In order to get out of the backslide you need to engage in behaviors that will pay off today, tomorrow, and into the indefinite future and you need to stack as many of these as possible until your depression finally relents under the weight of your opposition.
