In this article I aim to give free advice to help people who are depressed. I am sure that most of us become quite low and short of self-confidence from time to time, I know that I do, the advice I am going to write about comes from my own personal experiences. I hope it is of benefit to some of the people who read the article.

It might sound strange but one of the best forms of stress relief and ways out of depression that I find helps me, is sleep. If I have had a restless night for whatever reason, such as my dog continually barking throughout the night or one of my children keeps waking up with nightmares, I always seem to find that I am feeling quite low and down on the next day. It is as if my brain is unable to think in a positive way and that the lack of sleep has affected some kind of chemical balance. I then start to worry about the smallest of things and about aspects of my life that may or may not happen in the future. This then affects my work and social life as I am basically feeling drained and not up for it, some would say that I am feeling quite lethargic.

This is an example of what happens to most people from time to time but has in a way taught me a lesson about how I should react when I am depressed. What I basically attempt to do is to sleep my way out of the depression. Some of my friends think that I am a bit mad but my family now understand that it is not that I am just being lazy but that I am trying to make myself feel better. I might say to my wife in the afternoon that I am going upstairs for a sleep, she of course knows me very well and will no doubt have noticed throughout the day that I am not my normal self. She then realises the reason why I am going for this short nap.

This may not of course work for everyone but when I wake back up I always feel a whole lot better and able to think more pro-actively about things.