I also went through depression with my anxiety and got caught in the cycle of being depressed because I was depressed. I realised that if I was to recover from anxiety then I was to have no self pity, if I felt down then I felt down there was nothing I could do about this, what I would try to do is not be filled with self-pity and make myself worse.
The best thing you can do with feelings of depression through anxiety is to tell yourself the way you feel is temporary and start to invite new things into your day, don’t let how you feel dominate your day. I started to take walks and go for a swim to shake the cobwebs off how I was feeling, this helped me greatly and it gave me another focus to my day instead of focusing on myself. I believe that nature and a natural diet can be great mood lifters and also ease the feelings of anxiety, going out for a run or a walk, taking some daily exercise is far better than sitting at home brooding on how you feel. Exercise in itself releases endorphins which are great for lifting your mood, also exercise burns off all those stress chemicals than can built up through the day.
Your thought pattern is also very important when over coming anxiety and depression, too many people think negatively when they feel how they do, this is understandable but is counter productive and becomes a habit, the habit to always think negative which in turn makes us feel worse and crushes are spirit even more. Watch out for all the negative thinking and try and change your thought pattern, instead of saying ‘This is me now I just want to curl up and hide’ say ‘I don’t feel great at the moment but I am going to make the changes and come through this’ instead of saying ‘I have nothing to look forward to and I hate my life’ say ‘Life is what I make it from now, the only person that can make changes is me, this is just a part of my life that I will come through’. There are many different things you can say to yourself, but the main thing is to try and have as little self-pity as possible, to see the good in the day instead of all the bad, to come through this time a better, stronger person.
I came through my depression and it was because I made the changes above, these changes also helped me after my recovery, I am a far more confident person than I was before my own suffering and I tend to always see the good in my life. This all came about because I understand the importance of being positive, this now has become my new habit and my life is so much richer for it. I am also very proud that I stayed positive and came through this very tough part of my life; this has given me a new inner strength, a strength that I can overcome anything. I now no longer worry about anything I cannot change, if I learnt one thing it is that worrying is the most useless emotion we have and serves us no purpose whatsoever.
Paul David has been helping people understand and recover from anxiety and panic for many years now. He wrote a book on the subject and also has is own website, for more help and advice visit
http://www.anxietynomore.co.uk.
