Who would have thought that Newton’s First Law of Physics was going to be useful in helping to understand the cycle of depression? But his Law of Inertia is often a good way to comprehend how depression can take hold of us.
Depression uses two ways to keep us in it’s grip. One is through isolation; it likes to isolate us from the activities we like to enjoy and the people we like to spend time with. The second way is that depression kills effort; we often feel a change in our levels of motivation when feeling blue. Take isolation and no effort and we have the perfect recipe for disengagement.
What is interesting about this, is that disengagement itself can lead to feeling blue. If we purposefully stayed in bed for days (when we weren’t in a depressed state), we would soon begin to experience the symptoms of depression! And so we can turn to Newton for some advice when it comes to beating the blues – get moving! Get up, get showered, make plans, get outside (even if you don’t feel like it); for a body in motion stays in motion and you will feel better for it at the end of your day.
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@melanie_kreutz