Doing What Matters – Self-help Techniques for Stress, Anxiety, and Low Mood

We all suffer. At least sometimes. We experience despair, sadness, anxiety, loneliness and a host of other problems. Unfortunately, it can often seem like we are alone and there is nothing we can do. That is true, sometimes, but one thing you can guarantee is that things will change. Eventually. Another truism is: “if you keep doing what you always did, you will keep getting what you always got” (Moms Mabley, the American comedian and social philosopher said that). Because we can get trapped in our own well-worn ways of thinking and feeling, it can be difficult to move away from this and do something different. Psychology and therapy can help. But, and it is a big but, it is difficult to get access to these services. They are expensive, it can be time consuming to get to and from appointments, and publicly-funded mental health services are generally only provided to the most extreme cases; when people are already not functioning well in other areas of life.

One option for making a change is to try using various self-help techniques. This can work, but often fails, or only results in partial success as people have trouble judging what is effective, and keeping on track with what they need to do. This can result in jumping from one book, podcast, or technique, to another.

In response to this, the World Health Organization (WHO) has put together a booklet: Doing What Matters in Times of Stress: An Illustrated Guide on how to manage stress, of all types. It is pretty good. It draws on some effective therapies which I have found to be among the most useful in dealing with a wide variety of difficulties: ACT, DBT, and elements of CBT (that is, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) with maybe bits of MiCBT- Mindfulness Informed CBT).

I hope you find the WHO booklet useful. But, and again this is a big but, to be useful you have to do the exercises. You need to give it an honest try. You have to commit. Just reading about things isn’t going to change much. You have to do something. This booklet will give some good guidance in how you might do this.

Doing What Matters in Times of Stress: An Illustrated Guide. (2020). World Health Organization (WHO). Download at: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240003927