Empowering Yourself
Mental health conditions like depression can make you feel powerless or hopeless about the future. Simple, effective strategies can help you regain confidence and a sense of empowerment.
Champion your mental health needs
Empowerment means taking an active role in your recovery. It’s about meeting challenges with patience, self-awareness, and compassion. By staying involved in your care and building healthy coping skills, you can feel more confident managing your mood.
Take an active role in your treatment
Everyone’s mental health experience is unique. Becoming an active participant in your care helps you find what works best for you. You’re the biggest expert on your own experience. That’s why your input matters.
Learn as much as you can about your condition, your treatment options, and how your body responds to stressors. The more informed you are, the more confident you’ll feel making decisions with your health care provider.
Advocate for your needs
You have the right to ask for what you need — at home, at work, and from your health care team. Speaking up is a form of self-advocacy that can improve your treatment and strengthen your relationships.
That’s why it’s so important to communicate your thoughts and needs clearly and respectfully. It’s normal to struggle at times and to ask for help when you need it.
Build resilience
Resilience is the ability to recover from challenges and adapt to change. Small, consistent steps can strengthen resilience over time.
Here are practical ways to build resilience:
- Use past experiences to your advantage: Reflect on what has helped you navigate tough times in the past, and apply those same strategies again.
- Set meaningful goals: Choose one thing each day that gives you a sense of purpose or accomplishment.
- Accept that change is part of life: When you expect and prepare for change, you’ll adapt more easily and feel less overwhelmed.
- Trust yourself: Believe in your ability to solve problems and make decisions.
- Keep things in perspective: Try to view stressful events in context rather than letting them dominate your thoughts. Stay focused on what you can control.
- Take care of your body and mind: Enjoyable activities, rest, and healthy habits make it easier to handle stress when it arises.
Set realistic expectations
There will be ups and downs throughout your mental health journey, but each step forward counts. Setting realistic expectations for yourself and others helps you stay grounded and patient during the healing process.
These facts can help keep things in perspective:
- Recovery takes time: Medications and therapy often take several weeks to show results. Progress may feel slow, but it’s happening. Be patient and stay with your treatment plan.
- Setbacks happen: Depression and other mood disorders can return even after periods of progress. Keep working with your provider, maintain your routines, and use the tools that help you find balance.
- Your treatment plan may change: Adjusting medication, therapy approaches, or self-care routines to find the best combination is common. These changes show that you and your provider are actively fine-tuning your care.
- Some people won’t understand: Stigma around depression and other mental health conditions still exists. You can decide when (or if) to share your story. Focus on people who support your recovery.
- Be part of the solution: Your participation is everything. Even when you doubt whether treatment will help, keep showing up.