Your journey to living a better life has just begun. It’s important that you continue to use what you have learnt so that you don’t fall into old habits of thinking, feeling and behaving. Now we are going to look at evaluating your goals and give you some advice for the future.
Evaluating your goals
It’s too early at this point to evaluate whether you have reached the goals you set to overcome depression. We would recommend that you actively work with these tools to overcome depression for some time before evaluating your improvements. But by all means, if you feel that you have achieved great progress in overcoming depression already, please compare your achievements with your initial goals.
When you decide that it’s time for you to evaluate whether you have reached your goals, you have to be aware that there are things effecting whether or not you have reached a goal:
- Have you worked in a wholehearted way? Have you put the time needed into all the relevant worksheets?
- Have your life circumstances changed in a way that has helped or interfered with reaching the goal?
- Have the goals been realistic or unachievable? Have you set goals that are in line with this self-help program?
Now is also a great time to write down new goals in overcoming a different aspect of your depression. Maybe you will realize that some of the problems you identified in the beginning but set aside to focus on your most significant problems really aren’t problems anymore!
Evaluating my goals (and setting new ones)
Depression Setbacks
If you feel that you have completely overcome your depression and that you don’t need to read this part, you are on the wrong track. Most people will experience some setbacks before they are totally fine and cured of depression. During your whole life you have unconsciously processed negative automatic thoughts and you can’t realistically demand of yourself to unlearn this thinking and the problematic behavior following it.
This doesn’t guarantee that you will never feel depressed. This is normal since what you are going through is a sort of healing process, which takes time. When we hurt ourselves physically, it takes time for the scars to clear up; it is just the same with emotional problems. Recovery takes time and you will not be cured overnight. What’s important if you experience setbacks is that you get back up in the saddle and especially work on not falling in to bad habits like avoidance. You have to keep exposing yourself and confronting former distressing situations. If you experience setbacks, stop and think about the situation and see if you can find what triggered you feeling depressed again. Use what you have learnt to analyze your thinking, feeling and behaving and find a better way of reacting.
We sincerely hope that we have helped you move forward, and that you can use what you have learned to manage your problems better, but realistically this takes time, effort and a lot of motivation.
Never be afraid to ask for help
Sometimes, no matter what we try alone, it’s just not enough. If you feel like this, then perhaps you need to try some other things. Self help is a great therapy for everybody at some stage, just maybe right now is not the ideal time. Luckily there are many other options, and if trying to sot through your depression yourself only made you look for some other help – then we have still succeeded.
Speak to a professional such as your doctor or your psychiatrist if you need more extensive help in overcoming depression. You really do not need to be afraid of them because they are there to find ways to help you that work. These can be medication, therapies, group work and some these days even advocate techniques such as acupuncture in relieving depression.
Our last piece of advice for everyone is that life is a journey, and it’s a journey of constant change. As we move forward, good things, and inevitably bad things as well, happen to us. There is no way to avoid that – the only thing we can do is be prepared for the bad, and enjoy the good. By working through our depression, we can ensure that when we reach those bad patches, and life throws us a curveball, we are ready to take it in our stride. Good luck and all the best!
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