The Basics

When it comes to managing depression, there’s a set of basics that everyone tells you are a solid foundation for better mental health. They are things like consistent sleep, eat healthily, exercise, and take your meds. By and large, I am pretty good at these things - I love sleeping, I think my current diet maintains a healthy balance between nutritional value and ice cream, and I take my meds every night because I know that if I don’t, I am going to have a bad time.

There’s a secondary tier of behaviours that are still fairly basic, but I struggle with a lot more. These are things like journaling, meditation and having honest conversations about how you feel (I know this last one sounds like it might be a joke, but it’s not). I can sometimes get it quite a good rhythm with any of these things, maybe managing to do one daily for a month, but I can never make the habits stick, something gets in the way one day and then I lose all momentum.

They are still all good options for having a positive impact on my wellbeing though (although maybe the jury is still a little out on meditation). I’m sure there’s a self-help book out there or ten on how many days it takes to make something a habit, but I want to figure out why these things haven’t stuck previously, so that I might finally master the basics.