Feeling depressed in '22? What can you do until the therapist has time? Find out which 6 lifestyle habits won't help and what you can do instead!

What can YOU do?

2022 seems like a bad year to deal with depressed feelings. The waiting lists are so long that even the news reports about it. What should you do while you are stuck in this desperate situation and need help, but you're not getting it (yet)? The good news is: you don't just have to sit there waiting. There are things you can do. And things you can stop doing. I would like to show you 6 life habits that do not help with feelings of depression.

If you manage to get rid of just one of these 6 habits this month, that would be a first step in bringing relief to your heart. Because that's what your heart desperately longs for: relief.

God your therapist?

Don't be surprised, however, if God somehow appears in almost every point. He created your heart and therefore he knows best what makes you sick. So you could call him the best of all therapists.

Not only did he make you, he also loves you extremely and wants to have a relationship with you. While you might feel like a dried up garden, he desires to fill your heart with life and new growth.

Is the topic affecting you right now and are you suffering from depressive feelings, but haven't gotten any help yet? Or are you just looking for answers by yourself?

Then join me to think about which 6 life habits make you actually worse and which opposite habits on the other hand will bring you relief.

Finding hope

I'm not a psychologist and I certainly don't want to pretend that I know exactly why you're suffering on the inside. Also, I don't want to tell you that you simply have to avoid these lifestyle habits to get healed from depression.

But I am convinced that it makes sense, especially in desperate situations, to think about God's thoughts on us humans. He has personally given me such good advice on so many occasions that carried me through good times and bad.

Maybe this can be more like a conversation between friends or siblings. I would so love for you to get better. So, make yourself a nice cup of tea and sit down with me to think about how your heart can be relieved even just a little.

Because every small positive change is better than no Change at all!

Detox your heart!

I recently read a book about how to detoxify your liver. Because some physical complaints can be improved in this way. The liver is the body's main detoxification organ. It has an important job, but we pay very little attention to it these days.

Another organ that isn't quite organic is your "heart." So not your heart organ with all the blood in it, but your heart, which is also called soul or spirit.

I don't know how you grew up and how much attention your heart got or gets. But just like the liver, your heart is the "organ" responsible for detoxification. Your heart absorbs all the stimuli of your inner and outer world and tries to process them.

When the liver is overloaded with poison, the liver fails and the human becomes incredibly ill. What happens to your heart when it is overloaded with poison?

What poisons your heart?

Unfortunately, there is no blood test that can determine what exactly is poisoning your or my heart. But there is wisdom for that. This is what psychology itself is based on: recognizing through observation and wise conclusions what is making the human psyche ill.

Wisdom is also a big theme in the Bible. God, as he introduces himself through the Bible, has many suggestions on how you can live your life wisely and well. And if you live your life according to his values of love and honor it often lead to a (sometimes slow) improvement of the situation. And if not the situation, then at least your heart.

So question these points and think about what makes sense in your case. It's not a "do this and I guarantee" kind of thing. But it's an invitation to take baby steps out of the fog.

Where does your poison come from?

When I have a physical problem, it obviously helps to understand where the pain is coming from. Then I can better assess the problem and consider how to react.

The same is true with the heart: It helps to recognize what could be responsible for the poisoning. For example, the cause may be how others treat you; or an overwhelming everyday life. Maybe you find yourself in a stressful extreme situation.

But whether your heart copes well or poorly with these challenges has a lot to do with how you dealwith the poison. How do you, when others treat you badly or problems come your way?

Depressed feelings? So here are the 6 lifestyle habits that don’t help:

But now to the question: what really does not help when your heart suffers from poisoning and you are struggling with depressive feelings?

1 - don't spend time with your designer!

That just has to be the first point. Because it has the biggest influence, although it might seem so irrelevant. Maybe you're not "believing" in God at all? I'm convinced you definitely believe in something. At least you are believing that there is no God. Whether you believe in him or not yet. It's definitely a big mistake not to spend time with him. ;-) Nobody knows you better than him.

He has been looking for you for a long time and is waiting for moments of your attention. Not because he's so lonely and poor, but because he's so strong and passionate.

I don't know anyone who encourages me like he does. Granted, he's often a silent friend, but what a friend he is!

Sit down with him once or twice a day for a cup of tea instead of going through everyday life without him.

Imagine his friendship through pictures: He is like a river that flows around you with peace. When you're in the flow of his love you can't help but get wet.

He is like a tree, you are like the fruit. Connect with the tree and its life force will flow into you.

It's like the water you drink. Without water, you'll get headaches and then worse. Without God your soul dries up. You often just don't realize that you miss him. He wants to fill you with his life and power. You just have to open up to him and be patient.

But if you really don't want him in your life, that path remains closed.

2 - wait until the next vacation to recharge!

It's a mistake to think that you can once a year catch up on the peace and recharging that you've missed out on every day! Every day is incredibly important to keeping your heart healthy or experiencing improvement.

So don't wait until the weekend or your next vacation. Structure your day with breaks. Maybe an emotionally fit person needs fewer breaks than you do now. But if you're not feeling well, it's not only okay, it's absolutely essential that you treat yourself kindly and compassionately.

Do you secretly wish that someone would come up to you and say, "Sit down, take a break and I'll do this for you," but that person never comes? Then you be this person for yourself!

fail to plan - plan to fail

Start today to slowly rid yourself off excessive performance demands. Do you think it is impossibleto schedule a break in your everyday life? Then change something in your daily routine. You can certainly not determine everything in your everyday life, but your 24 hours of life today are still yours. Yes, there are elements that can't be removed, but there are definitely also flexible ones. Start planning your days consciously. If you don't plan, your time will be planned for you. If you can't do this on your own, ask someone for help. It's so worth it.

3 - fill your breaks with garbage like scrolling on Facebook, Instagram, news, messages and Co.!

If you take breaks, maybe even long ones, it's a very bad idea to fill them completely with garbage. Music with bad or meaningless lyrics can be nice. But it can also drag you down or at least not lift you up.

If your heart feels healthy, chances are you'll just listen to the music you like. But if your heart is burdened, treat yourself to lyrics that will lift you up. God gives us so much encouragement, and it is precisely this encouragement that is expressed in songs that people write with and for God.

News can be like an infusion of poison. Reduce this input radically . Watching the news once a week is more than enough. You cannot save the world by knowing about all the problems. But you can save your world if you don't suck up the world's troubles.

Is your life the worlds dumpsite?

You're not letting everyone deliver their garbage to your property! The same must be true of your heart and mind! The burden of the world is far too much for your heart which is your internal property.

Therefore, fill your free time with good things that calm your heart - for example with nature, plants, sports, friends, but that can also mean watching a film together or alone. At a time when I was very exhausted and just surviving the day, watching an episode or two with my husband in the evening was just what I needed. I just had no energy for conversation or activities. ... what is good for you and what is not? Listen to your heart.

4 - don't accept your human limitations!

When I mix concrete with my hand mixer, I don't have to wait long for it to break. But you as a person and you specifically, with your name and your story, have your limitations and can't do everything.

Do you love yourself even though you have these limitations? God loves you with your limitations. Live within your boundaries. You are wonderfully made and must not only grudgingly accept your limitations but celebrate them. You are well made even if you are weaker than others.

It also helps your stress level to accept the limits of your fellow human beings. It's ok if your husband doesn't do everything perfectly. He's also only human and different from you. I have to learn this again and again: my husband is just often tired. When the kids were younger, it was harder for him to get his sleep. But even now I have to make a conscious decision: I want to give him the rest he needs. Getting angry about it brings stress – not only to him but to me as well. You can ask him how well I can do it... Well, we are all in a process 🙂 In order for it to work better, of course I also have to give myself the rest I need.

5 - see everything and everyone critically. Forgive yourself and others no mistakes!

If you want to build yourself a prison, then see everything critically and do not forgive others. Only you can release yourself from this prison. God encourages you very seriously:

"Don't stay in this prison! Change how you think. Otherwise it won't end well." Today can be the day you slowly change your thinking.

If you would start walking bent down all the time, your flexor muscles would start to shorten; your extensors, which bring the body into the upright position, would start to weaken (to put it simply). It takes a lot of practice and training to bring you back to the upright position. And the more time you let pass, the harder it gets.

Apply the picture to critical thinking and the refusal to forgive: This attitude to life means that you only go through life bent over and can no longer live upright.

It takes practice to get out of this position. At first it might hurt and be very tiring. But it's not impossible. However, the longer you stay in this position, the more difficult it becomes.

Therefore, avoid talking bad or critical about yourself, others or situations as much as you can. Be kind to yourself and others. Ask God for help. He can and wants to!

6 – be ungrateful!

Maybe there isn't much reason to be thankful in your life. Then I'm very sorry. It's not nice when your life is filled with a lot of suffering and sad experiences.

But look at gratitude as something that makes beautiful things become visible again. Bad experiences cause the things that are still good in life to disappear from your vision. This is how darkness wins: first bad things come in your life and then the good thiings disappear from your sight.

Look around you today and try to thank God again and again for something you take for granted. The fresh morning air, the sunset, a baby... I think it's important to say thank you to God. After all, that's where the joy comes from.

If my children say thank you for something I have done or given them, adressing the atmosphere instead of me, what is the value of this thank you? Do I rejoice in their joy? Do my children enjoy my happiness?

Thanking has a lot to do with relationship with your God. And joy comes from the relationship, not from just thanking. Because if you start thanking him, God will start being able to show you more and more beautiful things that he has prepared for you, even though your life is difficult right now. He's just waiting.

Depressed feelings? These 6 lifestyle habits will help!

These were the 6 habits that definitely make your life harder and don't help with feelings of depression. To put it all positively, here it is again vice versa. These 6 lifestyle habits maybe won't cure you, but they can hopefully help you feeling less depressed:

1. Spend time with God every day.
   It is as important for your heart to be with him, as it is for your body that you drink and eat.
2. Set up times of recovery and peace in your everyday life.
   Start today. If that does not work, change something! Don't make excuses that you can't change anything.
3. Fill your breaks with meaningfull and hopefilled music, less social media, news and meaningless rubbish.
   You're not letting the world around you dump their garbage in your yard! The same must be true for your heart and mind!
4. Accept your limitations as a human - God created you really good - but limited.
   You don't have to be able to do everything and you don't have to be perfect. And you don't have as good, strong or amazing as ... (enter a name that pops in your head;-) )
5. Forgive yourself and others.
   Instead of thinking critically, practice having kind thoughts about yourself and others.
6. Be thankful to God.
   If you start doing that, God can show you more and more beautiful things that you couldn't see anymore. He's really good at it.

Which of these 6 habits do you think you should start working on? Is there one habit that you would like to hear more about? Just dm me on Instagram or write me an email!

Anita