What is the best actionable advice for someone who is struggling with depression? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

Do not struggle with depression alone. See a clinician early and often. However you can, connect with friends and family.

Depression is a paradoxical disease; it systematically impairs one’s ability to help oneself, which is why it’s always important to lean on others as a first line of defense. It is often (though not always) an illness of paralysis. In my experience, it can sometimes feel as if the blood is slowly filling with a thickening sludge, a wet concrete.

One of the most effective and immediate interventions for depression targets this defining symptom by asking you to do precisely the thing you feel you cannot do, and least want to do: act. Thus, the most actionable advice I can give for anyone with depression is to just act, however you can.

The goal is to get you to pursue at least some activity, starting with things that are easiest and most accessible. For instance, if you’re stuck on the couch ruminating and you find yourself unable to do anything except watch Netflix or read Quora, your first goal might be to just go outside and walk around the block. Physical activity of any kind can be especially helpful. It can help counter some of the psychomotor impairment that often characterizes depression.

It is immensely important to have someone to hold you accountable to these behavioral goals. It can be very hard to do these things on your own. Better yet is to make plans in advance when you’re feeling well. I recommend creating a short list of activities that you think might help you in the midst of a depressive episode. You can entrust this list to your friends and family so they can easily refer to it when you’re not feeling well. Here are some of the activities on my list:

* Eat spicy food. Nothing stops rumination in its tracks quite like a mouth full of chilis!

* Pet a dog. Any dog will do, but for me, the most potent antidepressant is a Labrador retriever.

* Go swimming.

* Say ‘hello’ to someone. Maybe it’s someone at work, maybe it’s the cashier at the corner store. Social interaction of any kind can be a helpful way to get out of your head.

* Help someone else. I’ll have more to say on this below…

In addition to pursuing reinforcing behaviors, it can sometimes help to target one’s thoughts as well. Depression is associated with repetitive, negative thoughts about the future and the past. This phenomenon is called ‘rumination’ (from the word ‘ruminant’), because you’re essentially chewing your thoughts over and over without really getting anywhere (much like a cow chewing its cud).

Cognitive therapy has a whole suite of tools and techniques to help manage rumination and dysfunctional thoughts. Just as pursuing positive behaviors helps dampen negative thoughts, adjusting negative thoughts can help make it easier to pursue positive behaviors. Combined, these techniques can help break the vicious cycles that so often ensnare those who suffer from depression.

However, cognitive techniques can be quite difficult to use when you’re feeling depressed. They require poise and creativity, faculties that often elude us when we need them most. In his memoir on depression, Andrew Solomon takes a light jab at CBT for this reason. He writes:

"It’s hard to wrestle with your consciousness, because you have no tool in this battle except your consciousness itself."

Also, the more we fight our thoughts directly, the more helpless we sometimes become. Steven Hayes, founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, likens this phenomenon to being stuck in quicksand; the more you struggle, the deeper you sink. Sometimes it’s very helpful to just put down your weapons and embrace your negative mood. As soon as you reach out with open arms, despondency tends to slink away, like a guilty thing.

Meditation can help reinforce the idea that thoughts are just thoughts, not pure reflections of reality. Once you adopt this meta-cognitive stance, it’s easier to let your ruminations pass by like clouds in the sky.

These are some common suggestions, but it’s important to connect with a therapist to find out what kinds of immediate strategies might be most helpful for you.

For me, I find that helping others is the quickest, easiest, and most sure-fire way to avoid sinking into depression. I find this works especially well if I’m just teetering on the edge of a depression and haven’t yet fallen into the abyss. When I first starting working on Koko at MIT I was surprised to find that the part I liked most was helping others, not necessarily getting help myself. I can now go onto Koko and help others rewire their negative thoughts and feelings anytime I like. Anyone can do this, by the way. You don’t have to be a therapist or a clinician. The service provides training wheels and all interactions are moderated by machine learning algorithms.

But you don’t need a platform like Koko to help others. There are opportunities to be kind wherever you go. In short, whatever you can do to get out of your head and into someone else’s life is probably the most best advice I can give.

This question originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Quora:

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