Anxiety During The Coronavirus: Part 5 - Depression during COVID-19

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 STAY ACTIVE

Exercise is one of the most effective anti-depressants. I almost did an entire post encouraging you to keep moving during coronavirus stay-at-home orders because it is also important in managing anxiety and frustration. Most of us are getting significantly less exercise.  Even if you never went to the gym, you’re not walking to and from your car, around an office, or around stores. But if you and your brain are accustomed to going to the gym, a yoga studio, or spinning, the drop in endorphins can be a huge mood changer. Unless you’re actually quarantined, most places are allowing outdoor exercise. I think this is best because we get a break from being in our homes, have the added advantage of enjoying nature, and we get Vitamin D (you get more Vitamin D from the morning sun and supplements are relatively safe too) which improves mood if you’re low. If weather prevents or you are quarantined try these ideas: 

  1. Run or walk up and down stairs. 

  2. Purchase a video set or a few videos (variety)

  3. Consider an online subscription like BeachBody or LesMilles. 

  4. Amazon Prime includes some exercise videos free. 

  5. Dance - Turn on your favorite tunes and dance in the kitchen or living room. 

  6. Similarly - Blast the tunes and do some moves that you remember from classes. 

  7. Buy expensive equipment like Peleton, a stair master, stationary bike, rowing machine, etc. 

  8. Buy cheap equipment - for $50 or less you can get a mini-trampoline, a peddler, a set of weights, or a step platform. 

  9. Go for a hike. 

HAVE KIDS??? They love to “make shapes with their bodies” doing yoga with you.  BeachBody has a workout for kids and rumor has it it’s free temporarily. And you can dance with them to some of their favorite songs. Maybe play hide and seek. 

INJURED? If you can, get in a sauna or steam room. Even a hot bath can increase your heart rate and help you to sweat out toxins. If your legs are injured, work your core and upper body. And of course, there’s a plethora of things you can do to stay active if your upper body is injured.

I dragged my mini-trampoline out of the basement, jump/run on it with weights with music on low to keep me motivated while watching NetFlix. I get some free streaming from my gym and have done one class with LaBlast and one with LesMilles.  I take long walks when weather permits and plan to go biking and maybe hiking. 

MANAGE WORRY

It turns out that more often than not, worry is the cause of depression even if you feel more depressed than anxious. The key feature of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is excessive and uncontrollable worry and it usually appears early in life. It puts people at risk for developing more disruptive anxiety disorders like panic and OCD, but it also often winds up leading to depression. You could say that people don’t worry enough about their worry, because they get used to it and don’t realize the havoc it’s causing with more difficult mental health problems. In a recent meta-analysis (study statistically including multiple studies over many years) it was actually found that when cognitive-behavioral therapy is used for GAD, depression improves just as dramatically as when cognitive-behavioral therapy targets depression directly (Cuijpers et al., 2014)! We used only relaxation to treat GAD in one of our studies and depression improved significantly and improved just as much as when they learned cognitive strategies that would expect to help depression even if they got both relaxation and cognitive therapy too (Borkovec et al., 2002). This connection is why I wrote my workbook: The Anxiety, Worry, & Depression Workbook, 65 Worksheets & Tips to Let Go and Feel Better (click on the title to learn more). 

BETTER BUT BELIEVABLE; B3s 

I don’t advocate putting on rose colored glasses because changing your thinking is only going to help if you believe your thoughts. This is why I developed B3s or Better But Believable thoughts. When you’re thinking negatively, think of better thoughts that are believable. So if you are thinking “I hate this stay at home order. I’m so Isolated and I miss my friends and everything I used to do for fun. It’s just awful.” You won’t feel better if you think “I love the stay at home order. It’s great!” Think of what is good about it that you believe is true. Some will feel better and believe these statements for example: I get to spend more time with my pets, I don’t have to deal with traffic and save time I was commuting, I save on gas plus wear and tear on my car, I save time not putting on make up or shaving, I can get up later, I have more time to watch TV. 

Some of my thoughts are: 

  1. Things will get better.

  2. Even if it’s two months, it’s a very small portion of my life. 

  3. I have everything I need.

  4. It’s way better than grad school when I worked 100 hours/week stuck inside.

  5. It’s great that it’s Spring. I can enjoy the outdoors. 

  6. I’ll appreciate socializing more when I can get together with others. 

  7. I’m enjoying playing piano more.

  8. Thank god for video chat. 

  9. Thank god for Netflix.

  10. I am cooking more. It’s better for me and I enjoy doing it. 

  11. I have a sense of purpose in helping others by writing this BLOG. 

  12. I had time to clean out my lazy Susan

  13. I’ll have time to do many of my projects around the house I’ve been wanting to do. 

  14. Less people will die and be traumatically injured in car wrecks. 

  15. It will be safer to ride my bike on the streets. 

  16. It will cut down on pollution. 

For more help with depression, get my workbook and check out my answer to How to Help Friends who Are Depressed on the previous BLOG and apply it to yourself.