How To Tell Depression to Piss Off 40 Ways to Get Your Life Back

Depression sucks, but you don't.

Trying to manage the range of symptoms that depression throws at you is like navigating the dark ocean floor when you are without a torch and don't know how to swim. How do you manage something that feels utterly unmanageable? How do you get through each day when depression is telling you you're a worthless lump of camel spleen? What you need is a guide. A really good one. You need to know what works and what to do.

This book gives you 40 ways to get to a better place with depression. They are born out of the author's personal experience of clinical depression and his many years of working as a counsellor helping people with their mental health. James lives with depression and knows its lies, the traps it makes and how to dodge when it starts spitting bile in your face. Nice, eh?

The ways include:

- Kick your cuckoo. We don't usually encourage violence towards birds, but no cuckoos are actually harmed so don't call the RSPCA just yet. In this chapter you're encouraged to imagine your depression as an external 'thing' (no humans or animals, of course!) and that you can 'kick out', which is great fun.

- Whose voice is it anyway? Spoiler alert! That nasty voice you're hearing isn't you; it's depression. The illness. When you start to recognise its voice you can start swearing back and who doesn't love a bit of swearing?

- Don't listen to the lies. We all tell little lies sometimes, right? But depression is the biggest liar in the whole universe. It makes Pinocchio look like Mother Theresa. Be the lie detector to depression's fibs; call it out on its fraudulent nonsense.

- Do the opposite. Depression will try to convince you to stay in bed, don't go out, don't wash, don't eat, don't phone anyone. Be Contrary Mary and do the exact opposite of what depression tells you because it never has your interests at heart. Plus, doing the opposite feels like you're a rebel, and rebels are cool (see Star Wars).

At whatever point you're at with your depression, this book can help and provide some laughs along the way - hooray! - because you really need it with this bloody illness.

James Withey is the founder of The Recovery Letters project which publishes online letters from people recovering from depression. He is the co-editor of the bestselling book The Recovery Letters: Addressed to People Experiencing Depression.

James trained as a person-centred counsellor and worked in addiction, homelessness and mental health services for fifteen years. He lives with depression and writes and speaks about mental health.