Depression is a mental illness that impacts millions of people around the world. While others are coping with their symptoms of depression, those who feel debilitated by it can feel isolated, helpless, and hopeless.

Practicing self-compassion and self-acceptance is crucial for decreasing depression levels, anxiety levels, and increasing your general well-being – making you less likely to isolate yourself when you’re struggling. Here are some useful steps to help you be more self-compassionate and self-accepting in your journey with depression management.

Self-Compassion

Self-compassion, defined as the ability to treat oneself kindly and with understanding in instances of perceived failure or inadequacy, is an important coping style for those who experience depression.

In contrast, self-criticism is a vicious and debilitating cycle that tends to lead to further negative emotions, such as shame and guilt. When you engage in self-destructive behavior in response to depressive symptoms, it makes sense that you would feel badly about yourself.

To practice self-compassion, start with your words. By replacing self-criticism from your daily vocabulary with encouragement and understanding, you can coach yourself through difficult moments. For example, instead of saying “why am I not good enough?”, think to yourself “let’s take it one step at a time.”

In addition to words of encouragement, another way to practice self-compassion is through physical touch. If you’re someone who tenses your shoulders or clenches your jaw during depressive episodes or anxious moments, do your best to soothe your stress by rubbing your shoulders or gently massaging your head to release tension.

Self-Acceptance

Both self-compassion and self-acceptance can involve being self-critical, but they involve these judgments in very different ways. Self-compassion involves caring and concern for yourself in response to painful experiences, while self-acceptance involves the recognition that you are flawed.

Lack of self-acceptance leads to a negative view of yourself and causes your self-confidence to dip – increasing your depressive condition. To embrace self-acceptance, you must be open to embracing your values, setting healthy boundaries, and forgiving yourself among other things.

By identifying and embracing your personal values and beliefs, then acting on those values, you’ll strengthen your identity over time and improve self-respect. Then, by setting healthy boundaries for yourself in various aspects of your life, you can prevent mistreatment from those around you.

Most importantly, forgiving yourself for past mistakes and learning from those mistakes are a huge step towards self-acceptance and understanding your journey. Acknowledging a mistake is good, but don’t berate yourself over it. In addition, learn to recognize that you are not the cause of all things negative and instead evaluate other factors that play a role in your situation.

Find a Psychologist for Managing Depression

Working on self-compassion and acceptance will help you overcome the stigma of depression. Both are a far cry from the critical overly judgmental voice that is typical of depressed people who like to tell themselves: ‘you’re worthless; why don’t you just give up’.

With time, plenty of patience (also hard work on your part) combined with strong determination, there is hope for eventual success. And the thing is, you don’t have to handle it on your own. Consider reaching out to a psychologist for depression. Most psychologists are very compassionate, understanding, and they want to be supportive of you and your attempts to conquer depression.

In Nashville, TN? Call Dr. Phil Chanin, a licensed clinical psychologist, for an appointment.