What do you do to cheer yourself up when you're depressed?

[buzzybee]

I'm looking for tips on how to cheer myself when I get a bit down in the dumps. What do you do? All ideas welcome!

My personal tips are:
Have a long hot bath with not too demanding book and cup of tea/glass of wine.
Good chat/talk/moan/laugh/cry with my partner or with friends on phone.
Watch videos of Rising Damp or Porridge.
Put on music and make my boys dance- their silly king fu dance moves never fail to make me smile.

I hope you're not feeling too bad, buzzybee. Have a good weekend

Go shopping by myself!
Sit in the garden on my lounger with an icecream.

Get all my photos out of DD and the family - does the trick for me and helps put whatever is getting me down into perspective when i realise how lucky I am. Corny but true (oh, and chocolate ice cream helps too!)

Go for a walk.

Buy new underwear!

Definitely go shopping by yourself - you don't even have to spend that much money - just the luxury of being able to move around easily without apologising to people as they bump into the pushchair is reward enough!

Or read a book - Jilly Cooper is my personal pick me up

Or have some chocolate which is for you and you alone - i.e. Thorntons Continental

Or spend the day on mumsnet - it always keeps me sane!

buy a packet of fags, I'm ashamed to say....don't copy me buzzybee !!!!!

Flash

ForestFly, you mean you scrub floors with a cleansing infused disposible cloth???

What else?

Got this from a thread called Postnatal Depression Support, that ran about a year ago:

here's a strategy for when you're down: when you're not feeling to bad choose a memory of something that you did that fills you with joy or laughter or pride, anything at all, and think about it so that you remember it. then, when you're really low, take 5 or 10 minutes to concentrate on that memory. i mean REALLY concentrate on it, go throught the event step by step, recall what you were wearing, what you did, what you smelled, what you saw, heard, said.

And I find it does work, as long as you've done the preparation!

ps Cut-and-paste job - plenty more good suggestions in that thread.

buy a lipstick

Cake.

(I know there are lots of other strategies but quite seriously, when I had cognitive therapy some years ago for depression we ended up putting 'cake' as one of my strategies!)

I remind myself I'm not Dottyparker!

Get out my mail order catalogues, make sure the children are out of my hair, put on a good CD, grab something tasty to eat (usually chocolate), and spend an enjoyable time deciding what to buy. Doesn't put a hole in my bank balance, because I never get round to ordering. Takes my mind off things, and I find it relaxing and rather self-indulgent.

Go and get my hair cut. Always works for me!

watch a soppy film

get pissed

go to lidl

not necessarily in that order

I visit Spacemonkey for an 80's night boogie . I wholeheartedly recommend her for a good night out.

oo i didn't think of that lou33, that's the best tonic of all!

i need cheering up today and although theyre all really good suggestions the only one that would work for me is spacemonkeys "getting pissed"

whymummy

you could stage your own DIY 80s night with wham on the cd player, ra-ra skirt and a pina colada?

I force myself to get out of the house and do something--whether that's shopping, a visit to the park with the children, or a trip to a museum. I find that hanging about the house exacerbates low spirits (for me).