Five Alternative Ways to Deal With Depression and Stress

You know, I hate the cliche tips for dealing with depression and stress. While researching this topic, I stumbled upon hundreds of the same articles and videos that were not telling me anything interesting.

It’s all the same stuff like embrace fear, don’t drink too much alcohol, exercise, eat healthy, sleep well. Oh, come on!

I’m 99% sure that you’ve tried all that and it never really helped you deal with stress or depression because it’s just boring. Well, of course, these tips may work, but in the majority of cases you just give up after the first five minutes of doing that (except for sleep and alcohol maybe)

So, in this article, I’ll share with you five non-boring alternative ways to deal with depression and stress. Enjoy!

#1 ASMR (Autonomous sensory meridian response)

One of the ways to replace medication for depression and just entertain yourself is to make use of ASMR techniques. That is a weird thing if you’ve ever watched it, but it’s pretty cool.

ASMR is a reaction of your body characterized by a static-like or tingling sensation on the skin which starts on the back of your head and moves down to the back and upper spine.

This reaction occurs as a response to different sensation triggers which are divided into 3 groups:

• Visual (relaxing hand movements, “cutting butter” like videos, perfectionism-like things)

• Audial (gentle whispering close to the microphone, hand-rubbing using cream, etc.)
  
  
• Interpersonal relationships (have you ever felt like you’re attracted to a vlogger? It’s like you love their charisma and just feel good watching their videos? That is the thing in the ASMR context)

What is the use of ASMR for depression and stress?

ASMR is directed at causing positive feelings and pleasing reactions as the response to the sensation triggers.

According to PeerJ’s report on ASMR, 98% of participants of the survey who used ASMR videos reported feeling relaxed, 82% pointed out using ASMR for sleeping, and 70% used ASMR for dealing with stress.

Some people even said that ASMR helped them deal with anxiety which was unreachable by medical or other interventions.

ASMR is only getting its momentum and already attracts millions of users around the globe. Sometimes, you may not need medication or therapy to deal with depression or stress. Sometimes, you simply need to feel relaxed and move on with your daily routine. And ASMR does a great job in helping you fight stress.

#2 Gaming

Playing video games is one of the ways to reduce stress. As I mentioned in my video on “How I Beat Depression”, constant stress leads to depression development.

In order to stop getting depressed, you need to reduce stress in life. Apart from watching ASMR videos, gaming is one the greatest alternative ways to deal with depression and stress effectively.

Games are not just for fun and entertainment. Some games have a specific purpose to help people understand and fight depression.

Here are some of the most popular games about depression:

• “Depression Quest” – the purpose is to show depressed people that they are not alone and spread depression awareness across the globe.
  
  
• “Elude” – aims to raise depression awareness and inform the player about the illness.
  
  
• “Flower” – provides a unique emotional experience. The purpose of the game is to cause positive emotions and improve anxiety symptoms.

But do games really help you fight depression?

According to Journal of Medical Internet Research’s study “The Use and Effectiveness of Mobile Apps for Depression”, researches have analyzed 211 participants providing them app instructions and schedule which they had to stick to for the experiment clarity.

Mobile apps for depression had the greatest impact on people with moderate levels of depression. People who had stronger depression did not cure the depression but they were able to improve on their symptoms.

We all know that the right games help you focus, improve your reactions and current mood. They also help you get distracted and relax after a hard working day or just any other bad day.

These are the games that I play to deal with stress:

• Battlefield 2: Bad Company (regularly)
• Dead Island (it’s like when I’m really stressed)
• Assassin’s Creed 2 (just good)

Just pick up your game and beat the hell out of it. It can be Fortnite, Minecraft, CS:GO, World of Tanks, Dota 2, LOL, anything. Enjoy your time!

#3 Laughter therapy

At times, it might feel like you forgot how to smile because you’ve been through all this pain and now it’s just hard to enjoy the good in life. However, you still need to find ways to have a good laugh.

Laughter is known to reduce stress by triggering the release of endorphins. And so, nothing is better than a portion of fresh memes or comedy movies to shake up your internal demons.

In one of the Pewdiepie videos, I saw this thing called “Laughter therapy.” Laughter therapy is directed at causing fake laugh which actually results in a good mood. Here is the extract of the laughter yoga session, and that thing is creepy as hell. But also very funny.

Check this out.

Now, let me break it down for you. However creepy that therapy may look, it’s not just random craziness. Laughter yoga is about establishing the connection, increasing mood, and improving depression symptoms.

You can hear the coach repeating this cult-like, strange phrase “Very good. Very good. Yaaaay.” – that thing helps to have control over the session and keep people’s attention.

The list of exercises for laughter yoga for depression and stress includes:

• Clapping – to warm up
• Deep breathing with laughter
• Playful, childish exercises with laughter (waving, making faces)
• Group laughter (you can be very creative here since laughing is contagious)

The idea is not to focus on the sense of humor or anything that is funny but just to active the instinctive laughter that helps you feel good. Many people point out having positive emotions and feeling relaxed after the therapy. They feel they are not alone and they can always laugh their fears right in the face.

#4 Music

Music for stress and depression can greatly help you ease the pain, improve your mood.

In my list of songs for depression, I’ve already described the power of music and what effect it had on my feelings, emotions, and thinking. Music is very dynamic. It goes from “slow” to “fast” from “calm” to “energetic”, etc., which very well aligned with my emotions and thoughts.

According to Dr. Sandra Garrido’s study on the effect of music on depression and my own observations, here is what I found about the power of music.

Music resembles the dynamic of depression because both of these work in cycles.  Music is a good way to lift up your spirit when you feel down. You go through the journey together with the artist. For example, Disciple – Draw the line. Even though I don’t believe in God, this song is great.

In some cases, music can make you feel worse. According to Dr. Sandra’s study, there are people who deepen into rumination too much which makes them go through negative events again and again, eventually, doing only worse for themselves.

Nevertheless, the power of music therapy can’t be overestimated. Music helps you:

• Reduce anxiety
• Improve your mood
• Decrease stress
• Increase motivation
• Relax

According to the “Individual Music Therapy For Depression” experiment, participants who received music therapy with the standard treatment for depression improved on their symptoms much better than those who received only standard treatment.

#5 Learning cool tricks

When you’re stressed you can try to improve on your fine motor skills. Doing something which does not require a lot of thinking is good when you’re depressed. You can start with something as simple as drawing/writing with your weak hand to learning magic tricks.

Here is a short list of cool tricks you can learn:

• Mirror writing (like Leonardo da Vinci did)
• Roll a coin across your knuckles
• Card tricks
• Pen spinning trick (e.g. object manipulation tricks)
• Drawing/writing with your non-leading hand

These small exercises will help you get distracted from nasty and annoying thoughts and will help you add a spark to your personal portfolio. You can use these skills in the future to impress your friends or partner.

Depression is known to affect your psychomotor functionality and cause psychomotor retardation which means that “patients with depression don’t want to do anything. What they want is to stay motionless and passive.”

Keeping yourself active in different aspects is a good way to improve your depression symptoms and relieve stress.

That’s it. These were the five tips for dealing with depression that you can use as an alternative depression treatment.

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