I am not a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) guru at all. However, I do find myself using CBT in my practice often, though. One of the best purchases I made early on in my practice was the ‘The Comprehensive Clinician’s Guide to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy’ by Drs. Leslie Sokol and Marci Fox. I find myself referring back to this text often throughout the course of my sessions with clients. One of the resources I turn to regularly is the ‘Action-Oriented Thoughts Coping Card.’

I turn to this resource when my clients tell me they want to do the things we are talking about, but they lack the motivation or the energy to do so. I gently remind them, sometimes we have to act before we feel like acting and it isn’t until we start acting that we will start to actually feel like acting. A simple example of this goes like something like this, client is depressed and they find it difficult to find the desire to complete any tasks other than binge-watching Psych on Amazon Prime. While this is arguably an excellent use of time, a better use of time would be to take a few minutes to get outside and allow the sun to hit your face, to walk to the end of your driveway… even if we don’t feel like stepping outside by forcing ourselves to do so will it will benefit us and will lead to future instances of the getting outside. Action begets action.

This sounds easy. But it isn’t always. Which is why this is a coping card in the workbook in the depression chapter. But why isn’t it easy? It isn’t easy because our actions or ability to act many times is tied to how we ‘feel’. “I don’t feel like getting out of bed.” “I don’t feel like exercising.” “I don’t feel like talking to people.” We don’t always have to feel like doing something to do it. When we say ‘we don’t feel like it’, what we are recognizing is a lack of motivation. It isn’t really a feeling issue, it is a motivation issue.

And this makes sense. Depression steals our motivation. Depression is a thief. When we allow depression to steal our motivation it crushes our will and we don’t ‘feel like’ doing anything.

But we can do things. Action comes before motivation. We can do things, even when we don’t feel like it. We force ourselves to act to battle depression. Action precedes motivation.

Depression is hard. You don’t have to face it alone. Reach out and get help.