Recent Posts
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Picture by LugiL – Deviant art
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June 2, 2026, 9:59 am
Picture credit Destiny Blue, Deviant Art
We re on our seventh week of lockdown, coronavirus has made some of us prisoners in our own home. The novelty has really worn off now, its no longer feeling like a holiday or a few duvet days it feels hard and we are all flagging.
Some of us will be starting to show signs of depression and if we already suffered from depression it will be feeling worse now.
Depression is a constant low mood, often accompanied by a feeling of flatness where the whole world turns grey. Churchill called depression the ‘black dog’ and that is how some people describe it, a black dog that follows you everywhere, turning up on happy occasions and sucking the joy out of them. At its worst depression can be a killer as it makes you feel worthless and feel like ending it all with suicidal thoughts.
There are many symptoms and some people get all of them and some just a combination. The most common symptoms are feeling sad, helpless, guilty, ashamed, irritable, tearful, and anxious. A common issue is low self –esteem, intolerance of other people, and the inability to make a decision. Physically when you are depressed you may feel in pain, lose interest in sex, have no energy, experience stomach issues like constipation or IBS, suffer from changes in sleep (too much or too little), and change in appetite which can increase or decrease.
Lockdown stops us from being in close contact with the people who would have supported us or distracted us from our feelings before. For many of us, we cannot go to work so that distraction and contact are taken away and finally our movements are restricted we cannot go too far to get away from some of the triggers we may have for our depression.
So, what can we do, we need to make sure we take good care of ourselves, eat well, get enough sleep, and stay off stimulants like caffeine and depressants such as alcohol. Whenever possible we should plan our time, creating routines every day that include contact with others (online isn’t great but it’s better than nothing), exercise, and at least one achievement, that can be cooking our dinner from scratch or learning Spanish. We have the time to take stock of our lives, how fare have we got, what have we done, and strong have we been already? Find things to make us laugh, a favourite film or series or book.
Finding things to distract us helps a great deal, but using mindfulness, meditation, or yoga to calm our mind and find a new way of being with our thoughts. Remember just because we think it does not mean its true.
If you feel really low and suicidal remember the Samaritans are there for you 24/7
http://www.samaritans.org, 116 123, jo@samaritans.org