Coaching practices for Values and Depression

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Values and Depression, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I can make myself do the easy little pick-me-ups, but they feel hollow and don’t really stick
• Even the things that used to be fun feel completely flat now, so chasing fun is pointless
• Things that used to be nothing
• I’ve got a few options on the table but I keep drifting toward whichever one scares me least instead of whichever would actually fix things
• Looking back, every day just feels like it was uniformly awful from start to finish

Practices that may help

1. Anchor activity to personal values
   Choose pleasant activities that also connect to what genuinely matters to you, not just what is easy.
   Pleasant Events Scheduling, Made Practical
2. Connect activities to values, not just pleasure
   Select activities that align with what matters to you, not just what feels good right now.
   Behavioral Activation: Acting Your Way Out of Low Mood
3. Grade activity difficulty upward gradually
   Start with the easiest feasible pleasant activity and increase demands only after success.
   Pleasant Events Scheduling, Made Practical
4. Evaluate solutions against costs, benefits, and fit
   Rate each solution on likelihood of success, personal costs, and fit with your values.
   Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical
5. Track mood alongside activity
   Record mood ratings before and after activities to identify what genuinely lifts versus drains you.
   Pleasant Events Scheduling, Made Practical
6. Valued living audit: how much are you actually living your values?
   Rate both how important each value is and how consistently you have been living it — the gap is where to focus.
   Values-Based Action (ACT), Made Practical
7. Activity monitoring: track what you do and how it affects your mood
   Log your activities hourly for a week alongside your mood — to see what is actually helping or hurting.
   Behavioral Activation: Acting Your Way Out of Low Mood
8. The Absent But Implicit: What Problems Reveal About What We Value
   Every problem story implies a violated value — surfacing that value reveals the person’s strengths, not just their struggles.
   Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
9. Decentering: "Thoughts are not facts"
   Treat thoughts as mental events to be observed, not truths about yourself or your situation.
   Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Made Practical
10. Self-Discrepancy Theory, Made Practical
    E. Tory Higgins’s self-discrepancy theory holds that specific emotional consequences follow from specific gaps in the self-system: falling short of your ideal self produces dejection and depression-like states, while falling short of your ought self (duties and obligations) produces agitation and anxiety-like states. Identifying which gap is active allows for more targeted interventions.

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.