Kaveeta Sunan lives with depression and anxiety, as well as pulmonary hypertension and congenital heart disease. Here, she shares some techniques that have helped improve her mental health.

Have you ever felt so low that you just cannot pick yourself up and whatever you do, you feel like you are just sinking more and more into emptiness?

I had suffered from depression and anxiety for many years and to be honest I do still have my bad days. But I have learnt how to deal with the feelings, and I wanted to share some of things that have helped me over the years.

Self-help books: There is one book in particular that has truly changed my life; ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne. It is about the law of attraction and the theory that if you think positive things, then positive things will happen.

For so long I was thinking ‘why am I in such a dark deep place?’ and I used to question why I was so negative. Why do all the bad things keep happening to me?

When I realised I could change the way I thought about things, I discovered I could be happy.

I also kept a journal listing all the things that I was grateful for in my life and I wrote down clear visions and goals of where I wanted to see myself in the future.

Meditation: I would meditate every day and it would really me to relax. It made me feel super calm and also helped me with my anxiety.

Learning to be by myself: I think for me, most of my problems came from caring about what other people thought of me and the way I saw myself. It took me a long time to truly feel happy about myself, and I am still working on this, but learning to be by myself taught me that I can enjoy my own company without having people around me all the time. 

Doing what I love: I started taking up art classes and I found this was very therapeutic. It made me forget about everything and calmed my mind. I also bought myself adult colouring books.  

There is so much help out there for us and I want everyone to know that you are not alone. For me personally, depression was a hard thing to overcome – but I believe the one person that can change your thoughts is yourself.

  • Kaveeta keeps a blog to help raise awareness of long-term health conditions. You can follow her posts at breathlessnessbeauty.com and on Instagram at breathlessness_beauty