This article teaches how-to recognise and get out of depression using a strategy called ramping. Depression is frustrating: it draws my energy away and eats up whatever momentum I had. Depression is a landscape of heavy gravity, inertia, and greyness. Depression in the media is sometimes portrayed as deep sadness but for me it is more of a nihilistic numbness: my world feels small, dark, and utterly inconsequential. Depression shuts us up in a shoe-box inside our own heads so that we can’t see the world outside. Our confidence dries up, social interactions become ordeals, workdays drag and scrape. Our energy vanishes into some black hole within us and suddenly we are full of resistance when just weeks or days earlier we had been full of exuberance. It isn’t just happiness that disappears: self-worth, productive energy, sex drive, empathy, motivation, and compassion all suffer within us. This is why it is crucial to learn how to recognise depression within ourselves quickly and learn how to build a ramp out of it. If you also want information on managing manic episodes, check out our article on learning to BAIL.
First step: learning the warning signs of depression.
Depression is intangible and pervasive in modern society: earlier in 2017 the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that depression was the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide, affecting over 300 million people (that’s roughly equal to the population of the USA). I won’t reinvent the wheel here about how to identify and qualify depression as there are many capable resources available that do just this (see link below).
Link to depression symptoms and warning signs.
Learning to recognise your mental and emotional state is an extremely powerful skill. What is even more useful is developing the sensitivity to see the waves of depression (or perhaps mania) before they hit. ‘Looking ahead’ in this way can enable us to take action to reduce the impact: batten down the hatches before the storm breaks.
Take our Phase-Finder quiz to learn more about your current emotional and mental state.
Second step: learning to build a ramp out of depression.
When we are manic we can jump walls (literally and figuratively). When we are euthymic we can accomplish a series of steps towards a goal. But, when we are depressed we need those steps to be really small and smooth and easy to achieve: ideally a ramp. For me, beating depression isn’t about making big changes or doing anything ambitious. I don’t try to ‘change my life’, I simply try to do just one little human thing at a time that I know will make my day better – because depression has to be dealt with day by day. I am actually depressed today, as I write this, and I needed to ramp up to writing this article.
When it is hard to get out of bed in the morning I will watch a comedy video to make me lighter. As soon as I am up I’ll shower and dress so that I won’t just end up back in bed. I’ll consciously put the kettle on and walk outside to look at the day for a few minutes (I find that getting outside of the room helps to get out of a depressed mindset). Next I’ll make something reasonably nutritious for breakfast and clean the kitchen. Now I have achieved five positive things: I am up, well fed, clean and dressed, the house is looking better, and I have ventured outside. This is my morning ramp, and it’s built on ordinary things. This works for me because none of the activities involve fighting myself or going head-to-head with my depression, but each step improves my day. It proves to me that I have the power to make myself feel better and this is psychologically very powerful.
Third step: Rise And Make Progress.
On a normal depressed day I will feel terrible in the morning, much better by the afternoon, and then maybe my world will begin to close in a bit at night. I am used to this pattern and I accept it. I know that if I keep doing little things each day then the next morning I will probably wake up feeling slightly lighter. I know that at some point the pattern will change so that I will start to feel hopeful at night, and that tells me that the depressive episode is almost over. This is what I mean when I talk about developing sensitivity to yourself: getting a perspective on where your emotions are at. I used to have ‘mood notebooks’ where I could keep track of this more easily and I still use them for tracking major depressive episodes, that was just part of that ramp. It gets easier and simpler and more effective with practice.
The main thing is to keep doing little things for yourself to improve your day. Get up, wash, dress, eat, go for a walk, do some work, get some exercise, eat again, drink lots of water. Depression doesn’t react well to interventions or bold gestures, it takes lots of little things to dispel the dark moods. It is totally okay to feel good about doing ordinary things as well, or saying something nice to yourself if you feel like it. Lastly, the world can present you with opportunities to feel better but you need to be open to them. I always get out of the house for a walk (I have dogs so they force me out) and I am often surprised and gladdened by wonderful little things I might observe on the walk that make me remember it’s not all bad after all.
For an integrated approach to managing bipolar please see Stability One: A Practice-Based Cure.
I hope this article is useful to you, thank you for reading it! I believe that these articles will help to educate people with bipolar and give them skills for a future of mental wellness, not mental illness. Please consider Supporting KindBipolar and joining our email list (we never send spam). Be kind to yourself and have a great day.
