Wondering how to help yourself when you’re feeling blue?
It’s hard to imagine that you’ll ever get out of a funk when you’re in one. You’re so low it would take a spatula to scrape you off the floor. So, given that you can barely move, how can you learn how to help yourself?
Yes, you can take magnesium. This supplement will help relax you, make your bowel movements more regular, and also protect your heart.
And, yes, you can also meditate, which is a practice that helps body, mind, and soul.
Doing art can also help you help yourself when you’re down.
But there’s another way.
Feeling overwhelmed
The other day I woke up squarely on the wrong side of the bed.
I was exhausted from driving nearly ten hours roundtrip to Atlanta to get my false eye resized. (I was diagnosed with ocular melanoma at the end of April and had my left eye removed at the end of July). What’s more, I’d slept badly the night before. And I was stressed out about all the work I had to do and deadlines I needed to meet.
Grousing at my sweet service dog, who didn’t deserve to be the butt of my unhappiness, I felt embarrassed and ashamed.
Disappointed with myself.
Mad at the world.
After my last work meeting, I took Serenity for a walk. I tried to swim through the mud of my discontent to appreciate the mild day, the palmetto trees, and the happy looks on the faces of cyclists on the Spanish Moss trail.
I was doing my best. But it wasn’t really working.
Then, while we were walking, my friend—who I’ll call Tillie—phoned.
Tillie said she had extra local vegetables and invited me to pick some up. Serenity and I had planned to go to the grocery store, where food costs have skyrocketed so much I feel sticker shock at the sale prices, after our romp. Instead we headed to Tillie’s house.

The cost of food is so high that it can make anyone struggle with feeling blue. Here’s how to help yourself when you’re depressed. A surefire cure. | Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D.
Doing kind acts for others
“Americans throw everything away,” Tillie sighed. She’s 76, volunteers at the Salvation Army, and has a home and yard so full of junk, rotting furniture, and broken appliances that her homeowners’ insurance canceled her recently.
I took three boxes of vegetables: one for me, one for my neighbor, and one for a friend.
After I loaded the produce into my car, I unbuttoned the sleeves of my flannel shirt, rolled them up past my elbows, and started to work on Tillie’s yard.
She did her best to stop me.
“It’s too much,” she said. “Another time. Not today.”
Tillie’s stubborn. The last time I’d tried to help her, she successfully shooed me away. But she’d met her match this time. I didn’t let her scare me away.
So, while Serenity nosed rotten vegetables, chased after squirrels, and gnawed on a discarded rib bone she found among the piles of trash, I worked.
As I explain in this Substack article:
I didn’t ask her what she needed done. I just started doing it.
I opened bags of expired food, put the plastic in the trash, and put the food in the compost bins.
I took the stickers off mounds of rotting fruits and vegetables and put them in the bins as well.
I emptied out a bag of rancid turnips and shoveled them into the compost along with a little dirt, put rotting wood, wet paper, and half a dozen unusable cardboard boxes into the burn pile, knocked over the buckets of standing water where mosquitoes were going to start breeding, and stacked plant pots neatly underneath an outdoor table.
Tillie fired up the burn pile and added bags of accumulated junk mail onto it.”
The surefire way to help yourself when you’re feeling blue
It felt good to be outside, to be cleaning, organizing, and beautifying Tillie’s yard.
“I think God sent you to me,” Tillie said quietly.
But the truth is that God had sent Tillie to **me.** Helping her was a blessing.
The number one, hands down, best way to help yourself when you’re feeling blue?
Help someone else.
Acts of kindness make the world a better place. They also make you feel better about yourself.
Try it.
It works every time.
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