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Listening to music, spending time alone and being around my boyfriend usually work for me when I'm stressed or feeling down.

If your feelings of being sad and down, you might want to look into seeing a doctor or a psychologist - maybe it's something worse than just the blues?

I have a very long history of depression and suicide in my family. When I was in High School, my genetics and my hormones formed a super team that just made me hit the floor and stay there. I was never a particularly "happy" kid, but it just went WAY way down. There were whole days when I just wouldn't get out of bed at all. Just wake up and lie there, staring at the ceiling, until I dozed off twelve hours later.

A number of things got me out of it. The first was simply growing up. My hormones went back to normal and that changed a whole lot. But there were also some pro-active things I did that really helped. Getting started was really hard since I didn't have any energy. But that's what Russians are for. My man would literally grab my arm and yank me out of bed and force me to do what was good for me. So it really helps if you communicate your problem and your solutions to people who love you because they can really mean the difference between failure and success.

The first thing I did was move out of my mother's house. My mother's biological rhythm is completly off from mine. Unfortunatly, because she was the owner of the house, I had to follow her. Once I moved out and had the independance to do things at my own pace, I realized just how badly following someone else's pace had messed me up. Everything from time to go to bed to time to wake up to when to eat meals to what to eat for meals, all that stuff was killing me because I wasn't doing it my way.

My diet changed a whole lot when I moved out. I started buying and eating more of the foods I'd always craved (I later found out that they were mostly foods with a lot of iron, so I guess that says something). I started sleeping more (10 hours instead of 8 hours) and that gave me so much more energy during the day. I also broke up my meals. I still eat the same amount, but instead of one small breakfast, one small lunch, and a huge dinner, I now eat one small breakfast, some nibblies, a largish lunch, and then I just nibble for the rest of the day and skip dinner. I find it much easier to fall asleep this way and I lost a ton of weight. And, again, I have much more energy to spend during the day.

The stuff I've mentioned so far was for my personal situation. It's good for ideas, but not necessarily good for you as quoted. What you need to do is experiment and find a balance that works for your individual body. Remember, also, to listen to yourself. If you are craving something (something healthy, not candy or drugs, say), chances are that your body needs to eat that.

And the last thing, and I do believe that this applies to EVERYONE with any kind of depression, eat healthy and excercise. Don't eat junk food or fast food. Start taking vitamins. Eat plenty of greens. If you are a vegetarian, put a little meat into your diet (or a really good meat substitute). What you put into your body determines what comes out.

Excercise. You should be exerting yourself in a regular excercise (like stationary bike, real bikes are ok, but because your terrain isn't probably even, the amount of effort isn't regular) for at least a half hour a day. Excercising does wonders for getting good chemicals into your system and bad chemicals out. It will leave you feeling better about yourself and with a lot more energy.

One final note: People often think of the mind on its own and try to diagnose the mind and treat it as a seperate entity from the body. The mind is part of the body. You CANNOT have a healthy mind if you do not first have a healthy body. Remember that.