Setting New Year’s resolutions can be a good thing for people who are on a journey to mental healing and recovery, including people who are diagnosed with depressive disorders. So, if you’re struggling with depression, you may want to consider setting some goals for yourself in the new year. It’s important to understand that your goals should be reachable and realistic so that they can help to empower your healing journey rather than hinder it. To help, we’ve conducted a list of helpful and manageable New Year’s resolutions for people living amid depression.

Some healthy, realistic, and achievable new year’s resolutions for people living with depression to consider include:

Give Yourself Positive Assurance

Assuring yourself in positive ways can greatly improve self-esteem and self-confidence, which is something that people living with depression often struggle with. Symptoms of depression are sometimes negative self-thoughts that can lead to spiraling, self-defeating emotions. But, positive assurance can help to fight off these negative thoughts and stop them in your tracks. So, it can be helpful to make yourself a new year’s goal to assure yourself positively more often. For example, resolving to give yourself positive affirmations every day and taking a specific time out of the day to do so. Some examples of positive affirmations and assurance can include telling yourself things like “You are worthy of love”, “you deserve to have a good day”, “you are a good person”, etc.

Don’t Resonate on Things That are Out of Your Control

People living with depressive disorders understand that the way that you think impacts the way that you feel and behave. So, it’s important to combat negative emotions and behaviors by first identifying and changing how you think. This includes modifying your thinking when thoughts become about things you can’t control. When you focus on things that you aren’t able to control, this can lead you down rabbit holes of feelings that can impact how you behave. For example, if you start obsessing about whether or not a person you work with likes you or not, you may start feeling that you aren’t worthy of people liking you at all. As a result, you may behave differently at work or even isolate yourself from others. However, how people feel about you isn’t something that you can control at all! So, if you experience thoughts about things you can’t control, it can be easy to begin to get caught in these thoughts and have trouble focusing on anything positive, or anything else at all. The best thing to do is work on dropping thoughts about things that are out of your control so that you can focus on the things that you can control in your life. A good way to work on this is to set a resolution to identify these thoughts and work on letting them go so that you can better focus on things that can change your emotions and behaviors for the better.

Reach Out if You’re Not Getting Better

Unfortunately, so many people who struggle with depression don’t get the help they need. Don’t let this happen to you this upcoming new year. So, make a resolution to reach out for help when you need it if you’re in crisis in the upcoming year. This can involve reaching out to loved ones who are there for you and have your safety in mind. It can also mean reaching out to a depression treatment provider to get help through therapy, medication, and other treatment services.