In this next video addressing depression and its relationship with ADHD, we're going to look a bit more practically at things that one can do to address it and hopefully alleviate some symptoms. Now, let's start off with practicalities. I want to bring you all back to that CBT five areas model again, and how different situations evoke different thoughts, different thoughts evoke different feelings. Those feelings evoke physiological sensations, and that influences behaviour. Now, if you're constantly having anxious thoughts, that might start to get you down, as well as make you anxious, of course. So depression can often be secondary to just feeling really fed up with your anxiety. But equally, you know, there's that self-esteem aspect, maybe we're just being super self-critical all the time and that's getting us down repeatedly. So the good news is, in this audio package, we've already addressed a number of very practical, helpful strategies you can use to tackle that, you know, that you can use the worry tree to address rumination and what-if thinking.For more complex issues, or more self-critical thoughts or bigger problems, I would draw your attention to thought challenging and just being mindful of your thought patterns, how they might be getting you down by, you know, repeated self-criticism, negative automatic thinking, which is really common, but tends to spiral when we're already feeling low or depressed. So please be mindful of what those thoughts are, and how you can step away and challenge them with helpful thinking. Also, be aware of the possibility of core beliefs and how they might influence how you feel about yourself. If you are repeatedly dwelling on judgment from others, or feeling not good enough, or feeling like you've failed, or you know, the frequent inner narrative is around being stupid, whatever that is.Repeated thoughts are like drops of water on a piece of granite, you know, eventually, over time, it's going to erode that hard surface and make a hole really. So just try to be really careful of that. Remember, also, the thinking errors, the thinking traps that we can fall into as well like the different types of thinking, whether we're catastrophic thinking or whether we're crystal ball thinking and trying to guess what people are thinking about. So we've got a number of techniques you can try to use. So please try to go back over the audios if you wish. That might be helpful, too. And try to remind yourself of how you can use these strategies to alleviate your mood.But for the rest of this audio, I want to focus on a more practical approach. In cognitive-behavioural therapy, we call this behaviour activation. So CBT actually derived from behavioural therapy initially, which was, if you want something different, do something different. Sounds quite brutal, I know. But it can be surprisingly effective. So let's think about that. In relation to a common spiral of depression. We start to get like we're feeling down, a common symptom, ie the physiological sensations in that five areas model might be lethargy, tiredness, exhaustion, the world starts to slow down, and maybe we feel like we're walking through treacle.So that usually means that people tend to stop doing things. Now, that's irrelevant, because, of course, what's going to happen then, is that we experience a loss of pleasure or loss of connectivity with others. We know we stop doing things that ironically give us dopamine and make us lift our mood or bring us closer together with others. So if I just, you know, rudimentary way, if I had a client that came in and saw me and they were horribly depressed, and haven't hadn't done much for weeks, hadn't showered for a week. Think about that as a behaviour, avoiding self-care. What is that behaviour going to do to your thoughts? You're obviously then going to think more negative thoughts like, oh, what's the matter with me, I'm disgusting. Or, you know, I can't even do this.What we do in CBT, often is just tell that person to maybe do the same thing tomorrow, don't wash, notice your mood. And then the following day or that afternoon, go and take a shower, as a behavioural change, take the shower, have a bath, what's going to happen to your thought process, you're going to think, a positive thought or a more helpful thought, "ah I feel better, at least I did that". Now that's only one thing. But if you fan that out into all other areas of your life, the sports club you stopped going to, the social event that you no longer turn up to, the run that you don't do in the mornings. It's that lethargy which makes you do that and I completely understand and appreciate that it can be hard work walking through treacle.But we would encourage you always to try and do what brings you some happiness, gives you some pleasure, or even something that used to bring you joy but doesn't now because at least it's doing something. Sitting in four walls, thinking about how bad everything is, often isn't particularly helpful. So yeah, changing behaviours or going back to old behaviours that you've abandoned because of the Depression. That's a really important step to make.