The title of this blog is taken from a useful self-help book “How To Tell Depression to P*ss Off: 40 Ways to Get Your Life Back” by James Withey. There are a lot of good tips in this book, I am going to focus on a small number of them

The first one is: celebrate your small steps. Write them down – maybe in your Moodscope “comments” after you’ve done your daily Test? I think this is so important: when I am in a really low mood, I often feel like I never achieve anything. It helps a lot to remind myself of the small achievements of the last day – I look at my calendar, my emails, the Things To Do list I keep next to the computer, and there’s almost always something positive to report. Try it – you might be surprised how much you’ve achieved in the last few days.

The second one is: “Ditch your crap friends” (Mr Withey does like to put things bluntly.) A good way to tell who these are is to see how they respond to you when you tell them you are depressed; replies like “I get depressed too – every Monday morning” or “Just snap out of it” are not helpful. Maybe this is a bit too black-and-white;  some friends can be good in many ways but have some real blind spots. Maybe “ditch your toxic ‘friends’” would be a better chapter title. And there may be some you need to distance yourself from, too.

It’s not always easy to dump old friends, or even distance yourself from them, especially those who you’ve known a long time, but sometimes you owe it to yourself.

Do you have any toxic friendships? People who make you feel depressed or inadequate every time you see them? If so, what are you going to do about it?

Best regards

Oldie But Goldie

A Moodscope member.