How to Enjoy Activities of Daily Living While Depressed or Living in Uncertainty

Well Staff writer

Activities of daily living, like showering, brushing teeth, getting dressed can feel impossible when Clinical Depression takes hold.

Living in uncertainty can create stress, which manifests differently in everyone, as does Depression. You may notice fear or worry about concerns that feel “illogical,” changes in your usual patterns of eating or sleeping, trouble concentrating, worsening of mental health conditions or chronic health problems, or an increase in tobacco and/or alcohol use, among other things. Our bodies respond to stress and depression (or both) differently, and it is useful to practice forgiveness and patience with yourself even when you just feel off, even if you don’t understand the cause.

Joy and achieving joy can look different when we cope with depression or stressful living (or both at once). Oftentimes, we burden ourselves by attempting to overcome rather than practicing things like distress tolerance This practice helps us to become better able to process difficult emotions and is a key skill that therapy can help develop. Alongside or outside of treatment, though, it can be rewarding to recalibrate how you find joy in everyday life.

When we look to find joy it’s important to meet ourselves where we are, and to practice radical acceptance of our current situation. By accepting reality, we can better address the situation at hand. For example, if you find that you respond to stress by shutting down so that everyday household tasks feel overwhelming — or if your depression manifests similarly — it is important to accept this response, and work to address things from where you are. Rather than adding stress by creating expectations that you won’t be able to meet (“I need to clean these rooms, cook myself a balanced meal, take a shower, do the dishes, do laundry, and pay the bills for the month”), pivot instead to accepting these stresses as reality and scaling back to address them.

Rather than trying to complete all the household chores at once, focus on one, for instance, and focus on breaking down that one into smaller tasks. As an example, if you close to clean a room, start by sorting objects, perhaps into categories like “trash,” “dishes,” “clothes,” “things that have a home,” and “things that don’t have a home.” Then, deal with each group individually. Find music or a podcast to listen to, if that’s something you enjoy. Take breaks if you need to rest. 

Once you’ve finished with what you feel capable of doing, allow yourself to stop — unless you feel really motivated, don’t push yourself to complete every possible thing, and instead do what we often don’t allow ourselves to do: have a sense of accomplishment, a sense of calm. Accomplishing something, big or small, should give us joy! Too often we fall into the trap of internalized stigma that tells us that unless we complete every possible item on a to-do list we are a failure, while also not giving ourselves credit for the things we have accomplished. Finding joy shouldn’t require being perfect, but rather it should come from being accepting of ourselves. 

Small steps also make a huge difference, and we should not scoff at them. For example, gum disease (periodontal disease) is linked with coronary artery disease — people who have gum disease have two to three times the risk of having a stroke, heart attack, or other serious heart issue. As such, brushing your teeth can do your body a whole lot of good!

At the same time, it is also important to know that one “bad” day won’t undo all the “good” ones: if you brush your teeth for six days in a row and don’t brush them on the seventh day, this doesn’t erase the previous six. Finding joy in the everyday has a lot to do with not holding yourself to account only for moments of disappointment.

Rather than focusing fully on tasks to find joy, it may also be helpful to find joy from taking breaks — whether that looks like taking a walk, ignoring your phone notifications to watch a good television show, or taking a nap. Often, we feel guilty for taking breaks, particularly if internalized stigma says we don’t “deserve” them. It’s important, though, to give yourself time to enjoy time off, rather than feeling guilty about “doing nothing.” Remember, be forgiving of yourself, accept your own needs, and look to find joy where you can.

Seeing a therapist can also help hone these skills and help you to develop new skills like norming neutral emotions, as well as some discussed above, like radical acceptance and distress tolerance. Overall, don’t look to match an ideal, and find what works for you.