Last week we looked at how depression can attack your life, you feel that you can’t tackle anything and you don’t have the energy anyway. Looking at your life I asked you to look for the one thing you wanted to keep, perhaps it was a partner or a pet or a precious object and perhaps it was something entirely different. The point of the exercise is to show that even in our darkest moments there can be things that are right in our lives. If you genuinely thought that there was nothing you would want to keep, what would you want to have? Perhaps its something simple like to get out to the park or to have a better day.

Sharing these desires with someone can get you help in achieving your goal, perhaps you have a friend or a family member, perhaps you have support from facebook or an on-line forum or a support group. You may even have gone to see a counsellor. You can share your dream.

This weeks exercise is about starting to take care of yourself. Its easy when we are down to take less care of ourselves. We don’t feel we are worth it or we can’t be bothered. On the flip side if we take care to wash our face and brush our teeth. Put on our best clothes, shine those shoes. We start to make a statement about ourselves being worth the effort, even if we are only doing it for ourselves as we work around the house.

Of course that is our physical appearance, we also need to take care of our emmotional ‘appearance’ as well. Try to do some of the things that you enjoy. Let the washing up pile up for once and enjoy a relaxing bath. The grass can be cut next week, listen to your music or read a book you enjoy. You could use a journal to note what works and doesn’t work for you.

Next week we’ll look at nourishing our bodies inside and out