Life doesn’t always get better. “Things fall apart; The center cannot hold,” Yeats wrote in his poem “The Second Coming.” Sometimes, bad things happen. Sometimes, good things don’t. This is true for everyone, but it might be even more true for people with a difficult condition like chronic depression.
Since life doesn’t always get better, then, we have to get better at life. It’s our job to find within ourselves hidden reserves of courage and strength.
We have to thug it out. We have to build new habits, monitor our unhelpful thinking patterns. Each of us have to persist in our self-help efforts till we find what works for us.
And we have to do these things day after day, week after week, month after month until we don’t have to even think about them anymore.
The good news: When we do, we get better.
The efforts we make aren’t in vain; they actually work. Their effectiveness is well-established, both in scientific studies and in the real world. As a licensed mental health counselor, I have witnessed their benefits time and again. And a person with lifelong persistent depression, I have experienced many firsthand.
My Life With Chronic Depression
Since early childhood, depression has been part of my life. The “black dog” Churchill referred to, though in his case the dog came and went whereas for me, the dog just sort of … hangs out.
It hung out with me during elementary school, when no one seemed to know that anything was wrong, including myself. It hung out with me through middle school, high school and college, in spite of my increasing understanding of the problem. It even hung out with me, to a lesser degree, during my early thirties when I was enjoying a successful career, a healthy romantic relationship and new motherhood. Relief has come slowly and by degrees, and mostly, I’m okay with that.
For a long time, though, I wasn’t. There was a cure for depression, I thought. I just hadn’t found it yet. Maybe it would be religion, or meditation, or exercise. Maybe when I found a partner and had children, I would feel consistently better. Or maybe the change would come when I found a job I loved. One by one, I tried all these strategies for mood management and more, and one by one, I was disappointed.
Why One “Cure” Wasn’t Enough
Isn’t it like that sometimes? Someone–an author, an inspirational speaker–convinces you of the Grand Unified Theory of Mental Health, and your hope rises. Why wouldn’t it? It seemed to work for them. Changing one thing at a time isn’t the worst strategy, and my two decades of near-constant striving wasn’t entirely wasted. But it was far from the solution I needed.
Eventually, though, and fortunately, a shift in my thinking took place. I started to see that while none of the so-called “cures” I had tried worked single-handedly for me, the slow accumulation of a variety of healthy habits had started to.
The Power of Small, Consistent Changes
When in my early thirties I started feeling consistently better for significant (and growing) periods of time, it was a combination of healthy mental and physical habits that together did the trick. Sometimes, these habits felt like a part-time job. Sometimes they were. It wasn’t easy, being okay. But as the habits settled in, it got easier.
As a freelance writer with a self-help focus, I started writing about the need for a comprehensive approach to mental health. Then, just a few months later, after a series of fortuitous events, I found myself enrolled in grad school to become a therapist.
From Living With Depression to Treating It
Becoming a therapist hadn’t been the plan from the start, but helping others with their chronic depression had been. My earliest books were about grief, meditation, friendship, romantic relationships, cognitive therapy and parenting, and all were told from the perspective of a character with this disorder. Now, it seemed, I’d be able to follow my passion for depression treatment in two ways: in my writing and in my work as a mental health counselor.
What I Learned About Chronic Depression Treatment
It seems obvious to me now that my professional studies would confirm my newfound passion for comprehensive treatment. At the time, though, it surprised me–why hadn’t anyone told me this before? I’d been to several psychiatrists and therapists over the years and told each of them about my long-term struggles with depression. None of them presented a plan of action, and most didn’t even notify that the condition was treatable. Some provided talk therapy, but that alone didn’t work for me. I needed steps, plans and goals.
And so, as I scribbled my way through grad school, supplementing my studies with every self-help book that came recommended by my library’s digital loan app, I started collecting depression treatments in earnest.
A Whole-Person Approach to Depression
Being in school raised the stakes for me; I knew that soon, it wouldn’t just be my own mental health I’d be concerned about. Other people would be expecting–or at least hoping–I could help them, too. I wasn’t going to tell them during what could be a crisis point in their lives that they just needed to exercise five days a week, alternating cardio and resistance training (bonus points for doing it outdoors).
I’d tried that, and lots of other stuff, too: meditation, hobbies, medication, vitamin D, a gratitude practice and much, much more. For the first part of my life (an especially long, dreary part) I believed that religion would be a complete answer. This based on the questionable evidence of a few weekends of greatly elevated mood during and immediately following church retreats, as well as the undeniably helpful belief that things would definitely get better someday–even if that someday came after my existence in human form.
What my clients and I needed, instead, was this whole-person approach that my instructors were always talking about. We needed not one treatment, but a whole set of them to choose from. We needed to care for our mental, physical, vocational, relational, spiritual and emotional selves, and we needed clear ideas about how to do so.
After I began seeing clients, I continued adding to and revising my lists of treatments, this time with improvements suggested to me by others. My clients experimented with evidence-based, expert-backed strategies and I tracked their progress. I also maintained my own mental health plan.
Getting Better, Even Without Being Cured
I am in my late forties now, and I am not cured of my lifelong depression; however, what I’m doing is working. For a long time, a single day without depression was rarely followed by another. In recent years, though, days of feeling okay have become weeks of feeling okay, which in turn have, almost imperceptibly, become months-long stretches.
I’ve never been a lighthearted person. Maybe I never will be. But in the mornings, my mood is usually stable and I’m content. I feel, if not happy, then at least at peace. I work hard. I follow my to-do lists. I’m functional and stable and grateful for my life. By evening, my emotional strength has often faded somewhat and, particularly during the winter, I might reach my emotional limit. The fact of my ongoing depression awaits me then, no matter how busy or how relaxed I choose to be. Over the years, though, I’ve noticed something: I am getting better. Little by little, then year by year.
We Get Better at Life
We get better.
This is something I believe now, especially when we consistently maintain healthy behaviors, choose healthy thoughts and practice healthy emotional coping skills.
Life doesn’t always get better, but we get better at life. And when we do, we get better.
Mollie Player is a licensed mental health counselor, a self-help writer and a passionate advocate for practical, solution-focused depression treatment. Her goal is to help people perform feats of great strength—feats like achieving personal goals, managing mental health challenges … maybe even finding inner peace.
You can get her book, We Get Better: 48 Treatment Options for Chronic Depression, on Amazon.
Prospective Washington-based clients can contact her at mollie@