Five One-Minute Activities to Reduce Symptoms of Depression

one thing I've said on here many times and I will say it many more times because I think it's an incredibly important framework for you to understand and organize your life around is that managing one or more chronic mental health conditions is a full-time responsibility and if you do not treat it as a full-time responsibility if your mental health is something you put on the back burner or something you put very low on your priority list it's going to be very difficult maybe even impossible for it to improve to the degree that you'd like to

see it improve now the flip side to that which I completely understand is that you have other responsibilities and obligations too many of you watching or listening to this probably have careers or are in school to hopefully have careers someday or have children or in some cases all the above and so I know that your time and your energy and your attention are already very limited resources as is and are very in demand and so me telling you hey here's one more thing you should be doing more more of I understand that that can feel

a little toned dep without context especially given that many mental health interventions are very timec consuming therapy is very timec consuming right probably an hour a week we know that physical activity exercise is a really effective mental health intervention but that's also pretty timec consuming most of the things that you've probably been told you should be doing more of take time or energy or attention in some cases that you probably already feel like you don't have and so it feels like someone telling you to do something that just doesn't fit into your life and so

today I want to talk about some brief interventions that you can work into the really short pockets of time in your day those one to five minute periods where you don't really have any immediate obligations or responsibilities it's really easy to squander these moments because they're so short it often seems like there's probably nothing valuable or useful I do with this little moment of time here and so when we when we see our time in that way we tend to use these little pockets of time very mindlessly most common culprit there is probably scrolling on

your phone all kinds of other things we could do but it's easy to waste them and again I don't want to sound judgmental but it's easy to use them on things that don't actually help us maybe because we think there's no other options these moments in your day think of them as being kind of like the spare change of your life if you just look at one you know if there's a penny on the ground and you don't pick up the penny is is that really going to move your bottom line no but as you

probably know when you go through your whole house and find and add up all the spare change that's been sitting around for however long it adds up to a substantial amount you often can pay a bill or go out and buy something you've been wanting with all that spare change combined take that approach to pockets of time in your life and try to use them for things that are actually positive or beneficial for your mental health I'm going to cover my top five today and my number one is stretching or posture work we know that

depression in particular really affects physical functioning depression tends to have this like very compressive effect on our bodies it sort of makes us condense and compact ourselves it feels like there's this invisible weight pressing down on you or like pulling you down into the Earth at all times longterm depression can actually affect your posture and your physical functioning this is really unfortunate because it creates a feedback glop because things like poor body image or chronic pain increase our depression and if our depression gets worse and that increases our body image struggles or our chronic pain

that creates a feedback loop that's very difficult to get out of and doing with stretching exercises or posture work can really help you get out of this and this doesn't have to be something that you invest 30 or 60 Minutes you know consecutively into during your day you do one or two minutes of stretching here and there consistently your body will feel a bit different over time now I can't advise you on specific exercises to do I'm not a personal trainer I would recommend talking to a personal trainer or or Consulting some kind of professional

if you want to know what should I be doing you know for my specific body for my specific aches and pains but stretching or posture work is a great way to spend a three minute or two here and there and it's usually one of my favorites to work in throughout the day the second way that you can spend these little moments of time that tends to be really effective and really beneficial for your mental health is doing some kind of breath work so this again relates to how depression and anxiety and other mental health conditions

affect our body our nervous system our physical functioning when we're not in a good place mentally it tends to affect our breathing specifically our breath tends to get rapid and shallow when we're experiencing heightened mental health symptoms and this too creates a feedback loop because when our breathing is more rapid and more shallow our our lyic systems in our brains interpret that communication from the nervous system as a sign that we are in some type of trouble or danger because rapid shallow breathing is part of the activation of your sympathetic nervous system which is what

mobilizes your fight ORF flight response so we get in these chronic you know hypervigilant stressed out ragged uncomfortable disengaged States and breath work can be a part of that again you don't have to do any special kind of breathing exercise here with breath work people tend to get really hung up on the technique and like you know should I hold my breath or not hold my breath or how long should the breaths be really don't worry too much about that stuff unless it gives you a structure that's easy to follow then that can be beneficial

but don't get too stressed out about how you should do your breath work because anything that helps your breathing become slower and deeper is going to move your nervous system more towards that parasympathetic state that rest and digest mode and is going to calm the turmoil the cognitive and emotional turmoil in your mind that comes with feelings of depression and anxiety or even trauma triggers and it can help even just a minute or two here and there can really help diffuse or undo some of these chronically distressed emotional states that we find ourselves in the

third exercise that you can do in a minute that can actually move the needle at least a little bit with regards to your mental health is to practice some sort of gratitude exercise whether that's just something you know if you really have like one minute literally probably just do it in your head right because the act of getting out your phone or getting out a piece of paper just adds a little bit of time to the activity that you don't have but taking a moment to just practice some sort of gratitude for the things that

you have in your life that matter to you that bring you Joy that balance to is incredibly important because depression can rob us of our ability to recognize and enjoy those things at anything beyond a cognitive level that's something I see happen a lot to people is they it's not like they literally forget like oh I have people that love me or I have a house or whatever it's not like you're actually ignorant of that it's just that for that to move from a conscious mental recognition to an actual emotional felt sense of gratitude ude

especially when you're depressed it's not automatic like you can remember that you have those things and feel nothing from them and although it does not work 100% of the time having a gratitude practice can be a great way to move your awareness of some of the good things in your life from just a cognitive mental awareness to an actual emotional and physical sense of gratitude one thing I would say in this now I have I had a whole video on effective gratitude practices so if this is something that you really have a tough time with

would recommend you go back and watch that whole video but one quick tip that I will give you right now is that gratitude work is more effective especially when you're depressed when you try to be as specific as possible and that's where I see a lot of people I think get tripped up in their gratitude work is they try to express gratitude for things that are very broad like if I say I'm grateful for my health that to me at least when I say that it doesn't really register with anything like health is such a

broad concept and a my health is not perfect so a part of my brain instantly goes yeah accept your knees or like whatever whatever the part of your health you're not happy with is but even that it's like it's so broad that it really doesn't connect with any emotional experience for me to just say like hey I'm pretty healthy but if I try to be more specific and I think you know I am thankful that I don't have any heart problems right now man that would be that would be a scary and depressing thing if

I were having heart problems right now so I am very grateful that my heart appears to be working as well as it ever has and is not causing me any problems when I when I narrow it down to like a specific thing that I can really kind of think about and conceptualize that tends to actually produce an emotional response in me it's like like man I am glad that my heart's working good not everything in my life is great right now but my heart is good and that's obviously if your heart isn't good don't pick

that one this is just a random example example I'm coming up with but try to be as specific as possible you know if you say I'm grateful I'm not homeless again that's that's really broad right and it's valid but try to be more specific you know maybe think like I'm grateful for my bed because my bed is really comfortable and I enjoy sleeping again if you have insomnia maybe don't pick the bed right use strategy here be wise about your choices but be specific when you're trying to practice gratitude because these really broad kind of

big picture gratitude exercises not to really connect with anything emotionally the fourth thing you can do in these really short periods of time that is actually beneficial for your mental health is in some way shape or form recognize your own accomplishments now just like with the Gratitude act activities if you really have like literally one minute probably just try to do this in your head if you've got five minutes maybe do this on paper or a a Notes app on your phone or something like that most of the things you do in a day can

only be recognized by you like the majority of your achievements and accomplishments are invisible to other human beings because a lot of them are only internal or you did them without an audience um a lot of them involve you not doing things right and and no one knows the unhelpful behavioral impulses you had throughout the day that you didn't engage in no one's going to be able to say hey that moment when you thought about drinking and didn't drink good job because they don't even know you were thinking about it or that moment when you

were about to get on Amazon and impulse buy something and then you talk yourself out of it man that was you that was some nice work you did right there no because they don't know you had the impulse so the only person who can really celebrate or appreciate the majority of your victories is you and I think this is another core core idea I come back to a lot I really think that's all most of us want we're all out there working very hard to try to have a good life and to try to get

things done and I think so many of us just want some someone to see how hard we're working and to say to us I see all this effort that you were putting in and I know it's not always producing the outcomes you want but I see how hard you're trying and I see what you're doing and I just want you to know I appreciate it I know you're really doing your best out there I think that's all most of us want on most days but most of us can only get that from ourselves and most

of us do not give that to ourselves so if you can get in the habit of just taking a minute or two here and there and really highlighting a couple pieces of positive feedback that you think might be worth giving yourself on that day it can really really boost your mood especially if you're in a really depressed state where it feels like you're not accomplishing anything or nothing you do matters that recognition piece can get you out of that mindset and the fifth idea is to text somebody or or message on social media or what

it doesn't literally have to connect with somebody I should say in a way that can be done in a minute or two depression is such an isolating thing and it it it's so much especially if you get severe depression and you get like derealization depersonalization dissociation it can really disconnect you from the world it can make you feel like you're alone and your little prison in your glass box no one sees you no one knows no one cares no one's out there and just taking a moment to connect with someone even if it's just casually

it doesn't have to be like hey I'm having a severe dissoci episode right now and just be like hey how you how are you doing today or I'm having kind of a rough day today just the simple Act of staying connected with people even just little like minuscule interactions here and there can be so beneficial it can really be a Lifeline when you are struggling with depression remembering that you're not alone there's people out there who care about you there's people out there who want to help support you and want to help you in this

fight try to stay connected to those people and there's ways you can do that in a minute so those are my top five ideas one last idea I want to leave you with here to make sure you understand how powerful these little moments can be and how important it is that you do not squander them I did the math on this one and if you spent one minute every waking hour so I only did this with a 16- hour day I'm not expecting you to wake up every hour when you're asleep to do these things

that would obviously be very counterproductive but if you spent one minute every waking hour doing one of these things over the course of a year that would add up to 97 hours of mental health positive activities and this is what I was getting at when I said these things are like the spare change of life if you skip one is that going to change your life no it's absolutely not but if you consistently build in some of these activities some of these interventions as habits or as routines for yourself 9 seven hours a year of

breath work stretching gratitude connecting with others and recognizing your own accomplishments do you think that can make a difference in how you feel I sure think it could in fact I would be shocked if it didn't I think that it is virtually guaranteed to move the needle so don't waste these moments don't spend them on nothing when you could spend them on something that could actually help you in what I think will probably be the greatest fight of your life I hope these ideas help and I will see you guys next time take care