Try This Mindfulness Technique to Ease Depression

Sometimes you pass through a season so filled with sadness and setbacks that depression sets in. My sweet friend, you are not alone. I’ve been there and I imagine most people reading this would agree. That’s why I’m sharing what especially helped me and hope you will try this mindfulness technique to ease depression in your life.

Welcome to Mindfulness Monday! I’m excited to share a simple technique with you today that helped me during a difficult season in my life a few years ago. I’ll describe the method in detail further on in the post, it’s appropriately called the GLAD Technique. Created by Donald Altman, a psychotherapist and author of “The Mindfulness Toolbox”. He developed this technique to encourage people to focus on the positive things in their lives that often went unnoticed.

As many of you know, I strongly value a mindfulness practice; you can check out this post for some of the reasons I feel that way. However, I didn’t always feel that way. Among other things the GLAD Technique helped win me over. It is simple enough for anyone to try, which is so helpful when you’re depressed. Once you understand the process, I hope you’ll try this mindfulness technique to ease depression in your own life.

don’t take depression lightly

Before I go any further, I need to emphasize that for the purposes of this post, my discussion refers to the occasional depression that many of us experience. I am not qualified to address clinical depression or major depressive disorders. These conditions require medical intervention and I don’t mean to imply a “quick fix” mentality for a serious medical condition.

The depression I refer to in this article, is the occasional result of an extended season of sadness, grief or life difficulties. Please be aware of the following symptoms of depression and if these persist longer than a few weeks, please discuss your symptoms and situation with your doctor.

Symptoms of Depression

• sadness
• tiredness
• lack of focus
• anger
• irritability
• loss of interest in previously enjoyable activities
• sleep issues (too little, or too much)
• anxiety
• isolation

How Mindfulness helps depression

Mindfulness is about focusing and keeping yourself in the “present” moment. While everyone can benefit from this skill, it proves especially helpful to those suffering from depression and anxiety. We can think of these two conditions as “disorders of time”. Anxiety results from a forward, future focused mindset and depression results from a backward, past focused mindset. Mindfulness forces you into the present and away from either extreme.

Either way, learning to stay present will relieve the suffering of these two conditions. Even though I received relief from anxious thoughts using mindfulness, I remained skeptical that it could help lift the depression I felt. I generally don’t default to a depressed mood, but I encountered a particularly heavy and emotional time in my life. It began with the full term stillbirth of my precious granddaughter, Indigo Evangeline. I don’t think anything can prepare you for this type of loss. One month later, on Valentine’s Day, my husband suffered a major heart attack and 2 weeks after that, my beloved dog, Golda lay dying.

“The journey isn’t about becoming a different person, but loving who you are right now.”

a simple mindfulness technique

This article from the American Psychological Association discusses the growing evidence of the benefits of mindfulness to ease and prevent the relapse of depression. In addition to bringing the mind into the present, mindfulness teaches you self awareness, emotional regulation and compassion for yourself and others.

The simplicity of the GLAD Technique offers those overwhelmed with depression an easy option to begin to change their negative past focus. While it certainly falls into the category of cognitive behavioral therapy, it feels anything but that for the person trying it. When one of the physicians I work with suggested it, I was eager to try it because it seemed non-threatening. It is composed of 4 simple tasks related to the acrostic GLAD. The four components are: Gratitude, Learn, Accomplish and Delight. We’ll discuss these in detail below, but I do hope you will try this mindfulness technique to ease your depression.

getting started with the GLAD Technique

The best time to practice the GLAD technique is at the end of the day. You can take as long as you like, but depending on how you may feel, 5-10 minutes is all that you should need. I know when I first started it felt “hard” to review my day, thinking through each word in the acrostic. So start slow, and keep your expectations low to avoid overwhelm. This can be an extremely helpful tool, but not if it causes overwhelm.

While you don’t need a fancy journal, I do recommend a simple notebook. One benefit of the technique is the ability to see your progress. This was crucial for me, because some days felt so dark and hopeless, I felt like it wasn’t working until I looked back at previous days’ entries. I found it so encouraging on the days when I struggled to think of anything to write down to see what I wrote previously.

the steps to the glad technique

• Gratitude- Write down one thing for which you are grateful. It can be large or small. Don’t be too hard on yourself, some days all I wrote consisted of “I’m thankful for food.” The importance lies in the “noticing” of things you typically overlook, especially when depressed.
• Learn- Write down one thing you learned today. It can be a simple task, a new fact, or information about someone or something. Again, keep it simple. Sometimes this was hard for me, I didn’t feel I “learned” anything. But then the beauty of this process was it challenged me to learn something everyday.
• Accomplish- Write down one thing you accomplished today. Anything, large or small. When you feel depressed just getting out of bed is an accomplishment.
• Delight- Write down one thing that delighted you today. Something that made you laugh or smile. I confess I struggled with this one often in those dark days. But honestly, by sticking with this, I started to notice things that did delight me! Sometimes a stranger’s smile (ever notice how hard it is not to return a smile?) or a verse from my Bible reading.

The best mindfulness technique to ease depression

I have to say when I first started the GLAD technique, my skepticism hindered me. However I’m happy to report that even in the first few days I felt my mood elevate and I started looking forward to this practice at the end of my day. I did struggle with a couple of the elements on and off, but since I experienced relief from my depression, I determined to stick it out. As a result, I was able to see the positive things in my life, which strengthened me to go on.

Ultimately, nothing changed in my situation. What did change was my perspective on my situation. Depression keeps us in the past, reliving the painful moments over and over. The GLAD Technique pushes us to move into the present, see the positive, and the many blessings that depression keeps us from seeing. This results in depression no longer holding us captive in the dark, we can now move into the light of the present. Because mindfulness teaches us to view our emotions without judgement, we can then correctly view the balance between the pain of negative emotions and the joy of positive emotions. This allows us to perceive life more fully instead of the one-sided way we tend to view it.

Free Printable

I’m so excited for you to try this mindfulness technique to ease depression, I made you a free printable with the steps to the GLAD Technique for you to print out. That way you can keep it in your notebook as a reminder or share it with a friend!

Feature Image Photo by Rowan Heuvel on Unsplash

Hand holding daisies image Photo by Sabrina May on Unsplash