Geeks Vs Loneliness: putting something in your diary

Hello and a warm welcome to Geeks Vs Loneliness, our spot on the site where we try and talk about things that may be affecting you, or people around you. Our ongoing rules are there’s no magic wand, and not every article works for every person. But we’re here every week with ideas that may help.

This week, though, we’re cheating. Earlier this week, we interviewed Matt Lucas on the site, and at the end of the piece – that you can see here – we asked him what his advice would be for those going through tough times. We had such a response to his words, that we thought it right to give them their own post.

Without further ado…

For me, it’s a hard piece of advice because the thing I’m going to suggest is not necessarily an easy thing, inactivity is the enemy.

I think you if you’re feeling very down and you only stay in bed, only stay in your room, you probably won’t feel any better. Sometimes you do need that time, but actually, a different way of dealing with depression is to say you know what, I’m going to start to put things in my diary. I’m just going to do it, and sometimes I won’t want to see people and sometimes I will. But I’m going to start to get back into the world. Try and stay in the world if you can. Sometimes you can’t. We all get days where we just want to close the curtains, and it’s okay to have days like that. But you don’t want weeks and months like that, or years like that.

If you’re a smoker, you don’t smoke 200 cigarettes a day. There’s a limit. If you’re like me, and you like to eat, I can’t eat endlessly, there is a limit. Similarly, with staying in your room, there is a limit. But the other thing I would say to anyone with depression, and I followed this when I was grieving, is give yourself something to look forward to. It could be a really big thing like I’m going to a football match, or it could be a tiny thing, like I’ve got a Twix in the fridge and I look forward to having that later. But every single day has to have something that you’re looking forward to.

If you look at your diary for the following day, and there’s nothing at all in there that you can look forward to, then change it. Move things around, cancel things. Change it, and put something in that you look forward to every single day of your life.

Huge thank to Matt Lucas. And you all stay awesome. Thanks for reading.