 Hi and welcome back. In today's video I'm talking about the importance of routine when you are managing depression and this is something that's really important no matter what age you are and the video will be helpful whether you are managing your own depression or whether you're supporting someone else to manage theirs. You might be their teacher, their friend, their co-worker, their doctor, whatever. So routine absolutely vital. Depression hates routine and yeah, it really helps us feel better if we get one in place. So when we're thinking about routine there are a few simple things that we can put in place. So number one and you might like to watch my other video about the importance of sleep and getting a sleep routine in place. So number one is sleep having regular go-in-to-bed times and regular get-up times. This can be really difficult, but one of the first things that falls out of kilter with depression is our sleep. We might want to spend like all day in bed or we might find it really hard to sleep at night or kind of both. But if we can get ourselves going to bed and getting up at a regular time, if we do nothing else, getting the sleep sorted can be a massive, massive thing that will improve our emotional resilience and improve our ability to fight against depression. Number two is as part of your routine trying to commit to as many of the following as possible. Getting up out of bed, getting washed, brushing teeth, getting dressed, those kind of, you know, these things that sound really basic, but are like the most gargantuan tasks when you are right in the grips of depression. So having that as part of your routine, perhaps setting yourself a time limit for that if you don't have anywhere that you need to be. And that kind of act of self-care forming a key part of our daily routine, if possible. Number three is to try and regularise our meal times. So again, another thing that can fall completely out of kilter with depression is our eating. So sometimes we comfort, eat a lot and we overeat and we eat lots and lots of unhealthy foods, which can often make us feel kind of bloated or guilty or just generally a bit rubbish. You know, when we eat junk, we don't feel great or sometimes we can feel really depressed and kind of unmotivated to eat at all. And neither of those things are good for either our sort of energy levels or our kind of physical wellbeing. And remembering that our physical wellbeing underpins our mental wellbeing. If you don't have other things to structure your day around, then meal times can be a really good starting point. So trying to have regular breakfast, lunch and dinner time can be really, really helpful. And if possible, trying to think about having those meals as something which is a little bit healthy, if possible. This can be really difficult and it can be really good if you can work with someone to maybe eat together or prepare food together or have someone kind of helping checking in on you. The other thing you can do is to do things like think a little bit ahead so that you don't have to, you know, you won't have to worry about a meal time. If you are in a particularly difficult point there, it might be that you pre-prepare meals and things like that. And yeah, planning that in for your day ahead or week ahead can be a really good thing. And if you're supporting someone who's struggling with depression, helping your friend, your colleague, whoever it might be to think about their meal times can really, really help. Number four kind of goes a little bit with number three and also with number one. I guess it goes with everything. But this is if you are taking medication for your depression, which not everyone will. And this isn't the place to discuss the pros and cons and all the rest of it. But if you're taking depression for medication or other illnesses, then try and get into a regular routine of when you're going to take that. There's lots of good reasons for doing that. The key one is that it will stop you from getting. So depression can make you just be all over the place. And even if you don't have anything that you need to be doing, you might be signed off from school or work and not have kind of specific kind of loads of things to do. But however many or few things you have to do, it can be quite difficult to keep on top of them. And taking medication is just one of those. Doing it at a regular time each day means you're much less likely to forget. And with lots of medications, it also means that they're more effective. It means that they're kind of spaced out appropriately. And it means we can also think about things like if they need to be taken with food or before sleep. And that sort of thing, we can get a good slot for doing that. So again, a really simple thing, but something that can make quite a big difference. Number five is within your daily routine, trying to think about how you might get a little bit active. Can you get outside the house? Really great if you can leave the house. Can you get a bit of exercise, even if you don't feel up to leaving the house? Could you do something like my husband and many, many millions of people are great fans of things like yoga with Adrienne, which is a YouTube channel where you can do yoga in your own home. You don't have to get out. You don't have to talk with anyone, but it might just help you feel a little bit better and gives you a little bit of gentle activity. But yeah, thinking again, within your day, how might you introduce a little bit of activity? Potentially getting outside if you can to help you feel a bit better. Again, always remembering that our physical health, so good sleep, good food, having a bit of an active lifestyle underpins our mental health. And when we have those basic, basic physical health things in place, that kind of really boosts our emotional and mental resilience and makes us much, much more able to kind of fight the depression. And the final thing is when we're thinking about our routine is that if you are currently employed or at school or college or university, then you will have certain parts of the week or term where that routine kind of has to happen because you've got to get up and you've got to go out and you've got to do things and you've got to be with people. And that just has to happen because because of work, because of school, because of college and in that case, you need to really plan ahead and be careful of things like weekends and holidays. So in those instances, you want to be thinking about right, how am I going to protect myself from falling down a hole at the weekend? Or when the holidays come around, how am I going to make sure that I don't just spend three weeks solid in bed? And it's really worth planning ahead for that because what we find is that things can spiral really quickly. However, if you think about the things that I said in the video and you put them in place, even if you're watching this while you're having a really, really bad time and you maybe have barely left your bed for some great period of time, I've been there, I've been there. It's hard, but you can also get going on a really positive upward cycle relatively quickly by trying to put some basic fundamentals of routine in place. So yeah, protect against the difficult times, protect against the weekends and the holidays by thinking proactively against them. And don't lose hope if you're in a difficult place right now because you can with teeny tiny achievable steps begin to work your way out of that cycle and you'll find that as you begin to creep out of that hole, that it gets easier and easier to get out of it. Not necessarily easy and it will take maintenance, but it gets easier. OK, good luck. I hope you found some of this helpful. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below with anything that you want to add, anything you think I missed, anything you find helpful. And if you would like to see more from me, then please subscribe. And then you'll get alerted as I'm going to make new videos. OK, take care. Good luck. And I hope this helped. Bye.