Little victories

I was asked a few days ago if there was some way that a depressive can help themselves cope with depression so here's my answer to that.  Of course there is a way, I call it 'little victories against the darkness'.  What do I mean by that?  Well, you need to find some way of building up your self-esteem and the way to do that is to set yourself small achievable goals, things that your depression makes it hard to achieve so that when you are successful in that goal you can feel proud of yourself.  For someone who is so bogged down in depression that they feel that they don't want to get out of bed, a little victory could simply be managing to beat down the feeling of wanting to hibernate enough to actually have the strength to get out of bed.

Little victories don't even have to be goals that you set yourself.  Sometimes just grabbing hold of something that you've been offered that seems achievable for you and running with it can also provide those little victories as long as you don't take it to excess and overloading yourself.  For me little victories have come in the shape of a couple of public poetry readings and the chance to write a blog column for Your Thurrock's blog page.  I also pushed myself a little harder by organising a depression awareness event at the local adult college where I am a Community Co-option governor although I do admit that it was probably pushing myself a bit harder that I should have.

So if you suffer from depression, why not try to set yourself a little goal and start to win some of those little victories today?