From Peter Adam
April 2025
I have found these habits useful at times of depression: perhaps they may help you, or prompt you to find your own healthy habits.
These do not remove depression, but I found that they did help me to cope with it, to manage it better.
Depression often influences our ability to relate to other people, and so it also influences our ability to relate to God.
Depression often makes us feel distant from other people, and the help they offer, and it often influences our feelings about God in the same way. So don’t be alarmed that God feels further away. He isn’t!
- It can be so painful to keep on asking God to care for us and heal us. Why not ask others to pray this for you, stop praying it for yourself, and trust that God will answer their prayers?
- Even on the worst of days, think of just one thing that you would like to do, and do it. [Sit in the garden; go for a short walk; ask someone to read the Bible to you; go out for a coffee; listen to your favourite piece of music; do some drawing; look at some nice pictures. Just sit with a friend without talking.]
- Depression makes us feel isolated. I found it a great help to find and read Psalm 88, again and again. The writer of the Psalm is going through a great trial, and, unlike many other Psalms, there is no happy ending. The writer feels separated from God and from fellow-humans. The Psalm ends, ‘Darkness is my closest friend’. I found it so encouraging that my human experience was in the Bible. God recognised it and enabled me to realise that someone else felt like I did; he ‘validated it’ by including it in the Bible; and that he gave me words to say which expressed my deep grief and hopelessness.
- In order to stop my constant self-pity, I would think how I could be worse off. I could have depression and be blind, or deaf, or dumb. I could have depression and also be a paraplegic. I could have depression and live in a society in which the medical profession did not recognise depression, and did not want to treat it. I could have depression, and not be a Christian, or not have friends, or not have enough money to feed myself. [I realise this sounds a bit bizarre, but I did find it helpful!].
- Remind yourself that lots of people have to learn to live with severe limitations in their life, including physical pain and incapacity, bad family background, the consequences of bad actions of others, caring for family or friends who are severely ill, lack of opportunities, or lack of resources.
- God may bring healing, or God may bring some relief. Everyone has prayers to which God has not given them exactly what they want, or when they want it. The unalterable, eternal, perfect and sufficient sign of God’s love is the gift of his Son to die on the cross for us, as his resurrection is the unalterable, perfect, and sufficient sign of hope.
- God loves us not only in the cross of Christ, but also in our creation, when he formed us in our mother’s womb. Our human life is a precious gift of God.
- I remind myself that even if I was to be totally depressed for all my life, my depression will be healed in my resurrection, when Christ returns in glory. And that there many other people with many different kinds of limitations which would also only be cured and healed at the resurrection. There is nothing a good resurrection won’t fix!
- The great benefit of my depression is that I have learnt to trust God’s words in the Bible, and not be ruled by my feelings, however powerful. This is a lesson everyone needs to learn, and I am thankful that my depression helped me learn it. God’s words are sanity in an insane world.
- When I was growing up, mental illness was highly embarrassing, and not to be talked about. I am glad that I learned that it was not embarrassing at all, and there was no reason not to talk about it. I found that talking about it has been of some help to others, not least those who also suffer mental illness.
- If you don’t feel like reading the Bible, ask a friend to read to you, and ask for your favourite encouraging readings!
- Get as much physical exercise as you are able to do. Ask someone to go for a walk with you. Plan to walk to see your favourite tree or garden. Small amounts of exercise are probably easiest to manage. Even walking around the house while listening to music is worthwhile.
- Remember to take your medicine, and of course, get appropriate medical help, and thank God for it!
- Try to get good sleep each night, and try not to sleep during the day if it hinders your sleep at night.
- I found that having music to listen to if I woke up at night was a help.
This is not professional medical advice! These are just a few things which have helped me in times of depression.