Day Ten (extra content) -- Five Minute Friday: Care

Do you eat every day?
Do you sleep enough at night?
Do you exercise regularly?
Do you exercise at all?
Do you brush your teeth?
Do you shower or bathe regularly?
Do you spend time talking with friends and family?
Do you pray or meditate?
Do you read?
Do you attend worship at a church of your choosing regularly?
Do you do stretches?

These are all questions that a therapist might ask you if he/she is trying to find out how your depression is affecting you. If there is a significant lack of activity in these things, it may be a clue that your depression is interfering with your regular life. These are basic self-care activities and while it may seem like a no-brainer that you would do these things, for someone who is depressed, these things may be almost impossible.

I have struggled with a number of these. For me, the two big ones are eating and sleeping. Because depression so profoundly affects my appetite, I have been known to go multiple days in a row without eating anything and as a result, wind up nearly passing out from low blood sugar. I had one session with Pendragon where I'd not eaten in about two days and I'm pretty sure I was darn near incoherent at times. Sleeping is another common one. For me, I do good to get about 5 hours a night but most nights it's closer to 4. I do try though and Pendragon has, at times, made it a therapy goal for me to try and focus on self-care.

Self care is very important for healing and can make a huge difference between a delirious fever sort of suicidal fog and being able to convince yourself to put one foot in front of the other and live another day.