July 2025 – The Proper Use of Our Depression Tools

It’s been a fairly heady run of Internal Family Systems articles these last months (here), hence I wanted to address something a bit more tangible this month. What follows, then, is talking about the tools for working on depression, although not so much in their particularities (the mood journals, exercising, gratitude journal, etc.) but in how to orient in general towards using them (pacing, selection, etc.). As much as we might want a fix-all device, unfortunately tools do not deploy themselves; we are the ones holding the handle of these tools, and thus how we approach them has a lot to do with how useful they are. So, I hope this gives you a clearer framework, a kind of protocol for using all of your tools.

May your summers be appropriately languid and not ennui-ridden; may the heat be enlivening rather than just wilting; may the river water be refreshing rather than merely cold; and may your connections be heart-lifting and plentiful, and not empty. Where it’s the latter rather than the former, I wish your courage and support to meet the difficulties with effective tools, and a willingness to believe that there’s still goodness in the world.

The Proper Use of Our Depression Tools

A framework of guidelines for using all our depression tools.

Tools to work on depression are essential (here’s a collection of particular ones), but like any actual tool, one has to know how to use them properly. Even something as innocuous as a screwdriver can stab you if you’ve got it the wrong way around. So, in this article, I’ll be talking not about which wrench to use on what part of depression, but rather how to hold your depression tools so there’s the least chance of poking yourself.

First, what do I mean when I say, “depression tools”? Here’s a short list of some standard ones:

• A mood journal
• Thought record sheets
• Rational response exercises
• Gratitude logs
• Walking/exercising
• Box breathing
• Talking with a friend
• Doing art
• Journaling

The point of these tools is to give the individual some control over the intensity and prevalence of depression, rather than to resolve the depression per se. In this sense, anything that modifies the depression in a positive direction is a “tool”. But how one uses them actually influences how effective they are. For instance, the other day I was using a power drill to put a screw into the wall, but when I was holding the drill too loosely, I started stripping the screwhead. However, when I slowed down the drill’s speed and leaned into it, the drill gripped the screw properly. In other words, a tool by itself is not what gets a job done.

So, following are a collection of the core guidelines on how to use depression tools so that they “grip” properly and get the job that they were intended to done. Collectively, they give a fairly coherent and comprehensive “framework for tool usage,” that you can to deploy on whatever tools you have collected.

• Understand what tools are for: Depression tools do not exist to fix or cure depression (as much as proponents often miss this distinction). Their purpose is to modify the intensity and “density” of the depression, and to allow your adult mind to displace your depressed mind. But the roots of chronic depression go much deeper than the surface symptoms, and although tools are necessary to regulate your nervous system (see here) so you are not constantly overwhelmed, they are not the factors (being insight and grieving) that uproot depression.
• Have a full tool bag: Because depression is such a dis-ease of our whole systems—mind, emotions, body function, and social belonging—it requires a bag full of different tools to address it effectively. Plus, depression is a complex phenomenon that expresses itself differently at different points in time. One day could be ruled by the physical symptoms of lethargy, while another day may be characterized by heartbreak. So having a carpenter’s belt of different tools for different jobs is vital; we don’t want to show up at the job site expecting one job and then be presented by another that we’re not prepared for.
• Experiment with our tools: Since depression is multi-faceted and variable, we have to use our tools with some degree of the experimental mind. This mind always asks, “What happens when I do this?”, then collects the results (feedback), and then processes the data to understand why the tool worked or didn’t. If we expect a tool to always work, at all times, when what we’re using the tool on (depression) likes to shift and vary how it shows up, we’re going to be very frustrated. Trouble with screwing a bolt into a wall is one thing, but with depression there’s a problem with despair. Each time we get disappointed with a depression tool, depression will try to use that “failure” to prove that, “Really, when you look at it clearly, it’s just futile to try.” We experiment in order to both learn what works when, as well as to deny depression the fodder it needs for this despair.
• Pace the use of our tools: Tools have a certain rhythm or pacing built into them, just like my power drill. To try to force them is to “strip the screw,” in which case we’ll likely either blame ourselves as failures or think that the tool itself as futile. In both cases, we will lose a tool that, used properly in terms of pacing, can be very helpful. If I “go for a walk” as if I’m at the speed-walking tryouts, I might well get home more exhausted. Although who knows, for one person that could actually be exactly the right pace. So pacing is one element in tool use, and treated experimentally we learn what the right speed and intensity of a certain tool is for our particular person. Tools have to be paced, but it’s who you are in tandem with what the tool calls for that determines that right pacing.
• Don’t create a story about efficacy: When we’re doing a lab experiment, we have a hypothesis, but we don’t have a story. We should use our depression tools in the same way, hypothesizing their use but not building an expectation into a narrative. “When I go for a walk, it should make me feel less depressed” is (because of depression’s variability) going to set us up for a fall when if at some point the tool of walking does not work. Stories are what depression is good at, and if we set one about how a tool will always give us control, depression just waits for a stumble in order to assert its negative story. The experimental, “Huh, I expected a mood lift from that walk, but instead I feel a little worse—let me use something else and try to learn from what didn’t work,” becomes, “See, I never do anything right, and besides, my depression is too tough for any of these tools to work…so it’s all futile.” We need to be very careful about our storytelling.
• Be collaborative with our tools: Per the recent spate of Internal Family Systems articles (here), depression tools are best used collaboratively with our Parts, especially with our Protectors. In the IFS framework, depression as a collection of symptoms is simply something that is used by a Protector, not an entity in and of itself. So, tools will work better when we make them a collective choice (as long as our Adult self is more or less guiding the process). If we are feeling down, we can think, “I should go for a walk to lift my spirits,” and that might help. But it’s much better to hold the thought of going for a walk, and then checking in with our various Parts to see what their opinions are. Sometimes the response will be white noise, in which case we just have to experiment with what seems to have a chance of helping. Other times we’ll hear internally a collective, “Yes!”, and other times, “Absolutely not!” If it is the latter, then the right response is generally to pull a different tool from our bag and present it for feedback, till we get a rough consensus. To not do this is to either default to the loudest, which often is either, “Let’s do nothing!” or, “All of you shut up, because we must go for a walk!” That is, either too slack or too forceful, both of which will make it look like the tool doesn’t work, which almost inevitably drifts towards more despair.

We do not have a choice about using tools when we’re working on depression, because tools are the devices that allow us to affect the symptoms of depression. Without them, we are adrift and it is the “tools” of depression itself (despair, demotivation, hopelessness) which will reign. When depressed, depression is the defined default; if we do not work (through tools), then depression is happy to be in control. But also we cannot get into a fight with depression (technically, with the Protector who uses it) because it is a lot stronger than we are, and also has something important to tell us, particularly about grief (see here).

So, the distilled protocol for tool use is essentially this:

Understand that tools are intended to change the symptoms rather than the roots of depression. Then collect a bag-full of different tools, and engage them experimentally, learning proper application and pacing. As you do so, refrain from telling stories that concretize expectations. And, finally, try to collaborate about their selection and deployment (use the “wisdom of the (internal) crowd”).

If a person can learn this framework for using depression tools, the efficacy of their tools almost inevitably increases.

As much value as there is in this framework in terms of symptom management, something else also happens that pertains to what’s required for pulling depression up by its roots. Because depression pivots on stalled grief (here), that is, on not accepting the things we’ve been attached to that are now gone, this framework for tool use is intrinsically anti-depressive in the deep sense. Experimentation is inherently counter to depression’s logic, being one which is concrete and given, a bleak world that is (supposedly) seen clearly and obviously. Experimentation with tools inherently is storiless, is curious, works with elements like selection and pacing, and practices acceptance of outcomes we didn’t expect or necessarily want. So, the tools themselves are meant to change symptoms, but the way we use those tools either works to reinforce or break down the basic roots of what makes and reproduces depression. The framework I’m advocating is obviously in service of the latter.