DEPRESSION

Thirteen Easy Ways To Give Yourself A Break

By Richard Zwolinski, LMHC, CASAC & C.R. Zwolinski
Have you been working hard on yourself, mind, body, and soul? Therapizing? Talking? Discussing? Meditating? Self-assessing? Introspecting? Exercising? Volunteering? Self-esteeming? Motivating?
Good.
Now, give yourself permission to take a break.
By the way, the idea for this post and nine of these ideas on this list were given to me by a client with bipolar disorder. And most of them are low-cost or free.
And just reading the following list doesn’t work, you actually have to do one of them or use one of your ideas.
1. Choose some really catchy, upbeat music, the kind that you’d be too embarrassed to let anyone know you like, and listen to it while you’re doing chores like laundry.
2. Take an eight-year old to a museum. Or a six-year old to a zoo. Borrow a friend’s kid if you have to. (Yes, of course ask permission).
3. Create a treasure hunt. Invite your most fun-loving friends. Or be brave, and invite everyone in your family to participate.
4. Pack a bag of stale bread and go feed some birds or ducks in a nearby park.
5. Leave your phone, pad, tablet, and all devices at home every time you go out. For at least 24 hours.
6. Dance. Barefoot. If possible, on a trampoline.
7. Create your very own comic strip. Post it on social media or your blog.
8. Create your own Powtoon.
8. Make a scrap-book about your friends or family.
9. Plant a terrarium and get a pet frog.
10. Spray paint a boring piece of furniture a non-boring color. Or graffiti it.
11. Do this with a friend: Buy/rent a small helium tank and a package of 40 or so balloon. Fill them and hand them out to people on the street.
12. Write 2 dozen hilarious predictions. Make fortune cookies. Give them out to people you work or go to school with.
13. Memorize 5 jokes. Tell at least one joke to every person you come in contact with at least for one day.