One of my all-time favourite documentary shows is Air Crash Investigations. Each episode recounts a plane crash and tells the story of the investigation into what happened and why. Time and again, the investigators conclude that it is rarely a single problem that causes an air disaster, but rather a combination or “cascade” of factors.

The same can be said for falling into depression. Lots of seemingly little things can contribute to a personal emotional crash. The good news is that minor adjustments to how you direct your mental energy can go a long way to preventing a nosedive or help with pulling out of one. I use six rules of thumb to help keep myself level when things are difficult.

1. Reframing

Reframing is a technique used in therapy that involves changing the way a person thinks about a situation in order to change their emotional response to it. For a person with depression, reframing can be a helpful tool to challenge negative thoughts and beliefs that contribute to their low mood.

One way to reframe negative thoughts is to identify and challenge cognitive distortions, which are irrational or unhelpful ways of thinking that can contribute to depression. Examples of cognitive distortions include all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralisation, and emotional reasoning.

One of the best books I have read about improving one’s state of mind is Your Brain at Work by David Rock, which has an excellent chapter about reframing (which he refers to as reappraisal). “Kevin Ochsner, at Columbia University, studies the neuroscience of reappraisal… ‘There’s a famous finding in the psychological literature,’ Ochsner explains, ‘showing that six months later, someone who has become a paraplegic is just as happy as someone who’s won the lottery. It seems clear people are doing something to find what’s positive in even the direst of circumstances. The one thing you can always do is control your interpretation of the meaning of the situation, and that’s fundamentally what reappraisal is all about.’”

A therapist can work with a person with depression to identify and challenge their negative thinking patterns and help them develop more adaptive and realistic ways of thinking about themselves and their situation. Additionally, practising reframing regularly can help build resilience and reduce the impact of negative thoughts on mood.

I have found that, in my experience, reframing soon becomes a habit once you know how to identify and challenge the interpretations causing you to feel depressed. Before long, it becomes second nature.

2. Make expectations your friend rather than your enemy

I think of managing expectations as the sister to reframing because it is also about changing the way you think, and it can be just as life-changing.

In Your Brain At Work, David Rock discusses the work of Professor Wolfram Schultz from Cambridge University, who is an expert on the links between dopamine and the reward circuitry of the brain. “Schultz found that when a cue from the environment indicates you’re going to get a reward, dopamine is released in response. Unexpected rewards release more dopamine than expected ones. Thus, the surprise bonus at work, even a small one, can positively impact your brain chemistry more than an expected pay raise. However, if you’re expecting a reward and you don’t get it, dopamine levels fall steeply. This feeling is not a pleasant one; it feels a lot like pain.” Rock refers to other research that indicates “the right dose of expectations can be as powerful as one of the strongest painkillers.”

Clearly, expectations are powerful things, and you can make them either work for you or against you. During my recovery, as I became more mindful of how my brain was operating and learning to correct problematic thinking, unrealistic expectations were an area that required plenty of correction. A lot of this was about tempering my expectations of best-case scenarios that are so often not met.

An object example is watching my favourite rugby league team play. As I watch the match, I am hoping that my beloved Canberra Raiders will defeat the team they are playing. If I am not careful, that hope becomes an expectation, which sets me up for disappointment about 50 percent of the time when the Raiders do not win. So, instead, I have learned to put that hope in perspective by saying to myself: “Yes, I hope they win, but in sport, you win some and you lose some, and both outcomes are just as likely. I want to enjoy watching the game and just let it happen.” I find it also helps to add the bigger picture perspective that sport is a fun activity and not life or death. Ultimately, it is just a game of sport.

This might seem like a trivial example, but when problematic expectations are multiplied across all aspects of one’s life, they can accumulate and have a powerful depressive effect.

So be realistic. It is natural for best-case scenarios to dominate expectations for the routine aspects of life. Average-case scenarios are a much better guide.

3. Identify the spikes

Seeing the bigger picture is important for all of us, especially if we are under stress and tend to be anxious or glum. Think of any given period in your life, whether a day, week, month or year. If you were to plot your feelings on a graph, there would likely be primarily shallow waves, a few highs, and a few downward spikes of distress. How we handle these spikes can greatly affect how things play out.

This is where the practice of mindfulness comes into its own. I found that it did not take long for it to permeate my state of mind, making me far more conscious of what was going on with my brain and body. Half the battle is won once I recognise that I am in a spike of distress. At that point, I can make decisions about how things play out rather than simply letting my emotions run riot.

Dr. Dan Siegel’s Hand Model of the Brain is a simple yet powerful tool that has helped me understand the neurobiology of emotions and how to regulate them effectively. Siegel uses the hand as a metaphor to explain the various parts of the brain and their functions. Imagine your palm as the brainstem (reptilian brain, basic functions), the thumb as the limbic regions (mid brain), and your fingers as the cerebral cortex (upper brain, logic centre). When you make a fist by curling your fingers over your thumb, it represents the brain working in harmony, with each part of the brain communicating effectively.

On his YouTube channel, Siegel says the key to emotional regulation is to prevent your “flipped lid”. In the Hand Model, this is where the fingers lose contact with the thumb and stretch out, which represents the moment when your prefrontal cortex is overwhelmed and quits effectively communicating with the limbic system. When your lid flips, you may act impulsively, say things you don’t mean, or engage in behaviour you later regret.

To maintain control over your emotions and prevent the lid from flipping, Siegel suggests using mindfulness techniques. By practising mindfulness, you can observe your negative feelings as they arise, acknowledge them, and create space between the trigger and your response.

When you pause to recognise your emotions, you allow your prefrontal cortex to come back online and help regulate your reactions more effectively. This way, you can respond to challenging situations with greater emotional intelligence and make more thoughtful choices.

4. This too shall pass

One of the most important insights I can share about handling depression is that how you feel at a given point in time is not a permanent state. Depression has an inherently deceptive quality that tells the sufferer: “How you are feeling now is inescapably permanent, and nothing you can do is going to change that.”

The good news is that nothing could be further from the truth. Abraham Lincoln once said:

An Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’

As a child, Lincoln had very few books available to read. His stepmother said Lincoln sought to learn and understand every detail of the texts. She said that when something was “fixed in his mind to suit him, he never lost that fact or the understanding of it.” It may require some repeating to get through to yourself that “this, too, shall pass.” It certainly took a while for me. It remains one of the most valuable truths I have ever learned.

5. Accept what you cannot change

Over the years, I have wasted a ton of mental energy thinking about something in the past that I wish I could change, or some ongoing reality over which I have no control. I am talking about more than simply wishing something were not so. I mean the stewing or brooding that perpetuates negative emotions like fear or anger. These thoughts and feelings pull me away from the present moment and prevent me from acknowledging that there is nothing I can do about the memory or circumstance, and therefore keep me from being able to move on.

A prayer attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference between the two.”

I appreciate that this is much easier said than done, especially when it comes to life-changing events or developments that lead to hardship or heartbreak. Nevertheless, the sooner we come to grips with our circumstances and consciously acknowledge that we cannot change the past, the sooner we can focus on how to proceed healthily with positive motivation.

6. Things aren’t always as they seem

As someone who has experienced psychosis, you could say I have strong testimony to back up the statement that things aren’t always as they seem. But you don’t need to have been healed from psychosis to embed this truth into your own life and keep it in the front of your mind when the chips are down.

At the outset of the 2015-2016 season, bookmakers gave odds of 5000/1 for the Leicester City Football Club to win the English Premier League. They were a team that had narrowly escaped relegation the previous year, barely avoiding demotion to a lower division. In short, to everyone outside the coach and players, they were losers heading for another season of losing. But that’s not what happened.

Leicester City’s eventual victory in that Premier League season is etched in sporting history as a testament to what is possible, not just in sports but also in life. In the face of daunting odds, unwavering belief combined with positive action can transform what seems impossible into reality.

The application point of this story is simple: things are not always as they seem. You might feel like the odds of recovering from depression and regaining your mental health and well-being are 5000/1, but I can tell you from experience that it’s just the depression saying that. The truth is, with persistence, you can and will recover.

If you want to hear the full story, check out my book Beating Hospital Grade Depression and Anxiety: A Lived Experience Guide to Recovering Your Body, Mind and Spirit or download the audiobook for free here.

Photo by Ross Parmly on Unsplash