Depression Recovery: 13 Ways Therapy and and Small Moments of Hope Can Save a Life

This longform article summarizes a conversation on the Giving Voice to Depression podcast hosted by Terry McGuire. In it, Terry speaks with Belfast-based guest Cara Mclean (with reflections from co-host Dr. Anita Sanz) about surviving the darkest stretches of depression and how therapy and small, ordinary moments can keep a person alive and moving forward.

Depression rarely presents as a neat problem with a tidy solution. As Terry emphasizes, it’s messy, cyclical, and honest conversations about it matter. Cara’s story captures that complexity: years of unnamed suffering, attempts to make the pain stop, a courageous return to therapy, and a practice of noticing brief “flashes” of goodness—like the feel of a warm coffee cup or the kindness in a stranger’s hug. Those fragments, combined with skilled support, became her rope out of the pit.

Below is a comprehensive, skimmable list of insights from the episode—a guide for anyone living with depression or supporting someone who is.

1. Name the Illness Clearly

Terry frames depression not as a character flaw but as a real illness that affects thoughts, energy, hope, and motivation. Cara recognizes this now; she once believed her sadness and numbness were simply normal.

As Cara explained:

You know it can really impact everything in our lives. So yeah I think you know it is an illness just like just like you know we have physical illnesses, we have mental illnesses and one of those mental illnesses is depression.

• Why it matters: Naming depression as an illness invites treatment and compassion.
• What to watch for: Flatness, hopelessness, or a “gray tint” to life are symptoms, not failings.

Try this: When self-blame shows up, gently remind yourself: “Depression is an illness. I’m not weak for having symptoms.”

2. Validate the Past

In therapy, Cara finally called her experiences trauma—after years of minimizing them. Naming the pain shifted her sense of self-worth.

Cara reflected:

It was a validation of it because in a sense I was sort of underplaying it and minimizing it. But I think someone saying to me that, you know, that is trauma. It was difficult to accept, but I think I feel better knowing that, you know, that it was traumatic.

• Key insight: Validation doesn’t glorify pain; it locates it.
• As Terry observed: We don’t need trauma to grow, but we can grow through it once it’s acknowledged.

Try this: In therapy or journaling, finish the line: “What happened to me was real. It affected me by…”

3. Expect the Mess

Terry compared therapy to cleaning a cluttered drawer:

When you decide to clean out a drawer, you got to take all this stuff out and you make a bigger mess before you can put it back. With therapy, sometimes when you have to unpack what you didn’t even apparently identify as traumatic, it's going to be a mess until it's not.

Healing is messy. Feelings surface. Life looks worse before it looks better—but that’s progress, not failure.

• What to expect: Temporary chaos and emotional fatigue.
• What to remember: Messiness means you’re doing the work.

Try this: When things feel harder, tell yourself: “This is the drawer-on-the-counter phase. It’s messy, and it’s temporary.”

4. Notice the Light

Cara described how joy feels sharper after deep depression:

The happiness after the darkness is like more euphoric each time. I experience like debilitating sadness, but then also like really amazing happiness on a really heightened level where it is euphoric.

When you’re in an episode, it’s easy to forget that joy exists. Recording moments of happiness helps remind you later that light returns.

Try this: Create a “hope file” with photos, notes, or voice memos of times you felt even a flicker of peace.

5. Keep the Ask Simple

At one of her lowest points, Cara didn’t overthink reaching out—she simply Googled “counselors near me” and sent an email.

As Cara recalled:

I just researched on Google, you know, counselors near me and I just emailed a counselor. I didn't really think too much into it. Something within me was saying, “No, you don't deserve this, Cara. You need someone to guide you through this. It's too difficult to go through it alone.”

• Lesson: The simpler the step, the more likely you’ll take it.
• What helps: One small action—email, text, or call—is enough.

Try this: Use a ready-made outreach message:
“Hi, I’m looking for help with depression and would like to schedule an intake. My availability is ___.”

6. Hold On for One Day

Cara’s advice for enduring the hardest moments is simple and powerful:

Please just hold on… Don’t think too far in advance because you'll just think ‘but I can't live like this for years.’ Just say okay so I'm just going to hold on until tomorrow. Set yourself a goal for that day and then hold on for the next day and the next.

Dr. Anita added:

Force yourself as hard as it is because who wants to stay in the present moment when the present moment is awful, but we can handle the present moment.

Focus on the next 24 hours, not the next decade. Tomorrow is far more achievable than forever.

Try this:

1. Today: Sit up in bed.
2. Tomorrow: Brush teeth.
3. Next day: Step outdoors for two minutes.

7. Record the Good

Cara makes a point to document joy, not just pain:

My happy days I make sure to journal about it because I think we tend to journal whenever we're in darkness which is great but let's also journal whenever we feel good because then it'll remind us that it's possible. Take pictures of something that made you happy… coffee, my dog, whatever it may be.

• Why it matters: Depression erases memory of joy. Writing it down creates evidence that good exists.
• Simple shift: Let your journal hold proof of both darkness and light.

Try this: Start a “10-second contentment” page. Record brief moments that felt okay—no matter how small.

8. Reframe What You See

Dr. Anita noted how Cara interpreted small moments differently:

When she saw someone, a couple kiss, it would be very easy in depression to think, “Oh, they have what I will never have.” As opposed to the way she interpreted it, which was as proof that there is love in the world.

Terry added her own twist:

I like the ‘I deserve it’ better. I think I would be more able to say that to myself than, “Oh, it's possible.” But yes, to say like, “I do deserve that,” you know, that would be a bit of a balm.

• Skill: When your thoughts say, “That’s not for me,” try replying, “That exists—and I deserve it too.”
• Why it works: It shifts envy to hope.

Try this: Replace “never for me” with “someday for me too.”

9. Expect Ups and Downs

Recovery rarely moves in a straight line. Terry put it this way:

You see what people think recovery looks like—here’s the problem and here is the recovery from it and there's that lovely straight line between the two. And then what it really looks like is just this tangled ball of yarn with ups and downs and backs and forths.

Cara agreed:

One week I went in and I was feeling great… and the next session I just bawled my eyes out. It just shows the bumpiness of it and paying gratitude to the happiness, but also knowing that in the really dark times that you've felt happiness the week before—and it's not impossible to get back to that.

Recovery looks like waves, not a ladder. Feeling bad again doesn’t erase progress.

Try this: Track your mood daily for 60 days. Watch for overall improvement, not perfection.

10. Speak the Hard Truth

Cara shared how deeper honesty made therapy transformative:

I've been to therapy, but this was sort of the first time in therapy that I talked about what I needed to talk about… it was the first time where we validated that, the word trauma. It was quite a difficult year, but therapy has really been one of the things that has saved me throughout the darkness, 100%.

Healing begins when you speak the truth you’ve avoided. Real change follows transparency.

Try this: Write an uncensored page before your next session. Read it aloud to your therapist.

11. Don’t Believe Depression’s Lies

Cara offered a life-saving reminder:

Don't believe everything that your depression tells you, please don't believe it. And yeah, you are a human being and you deserve to live and you deserve to have a happy life.

Depression’s voice sounds convincing, but it lies. You don’t need to “feel” hopeful to act like hope is possible.

Try this: Prefix painful thoughts with “My depression is telling me…” to create distance from them.

12. Borrow Strength from Others

Terry explained the importance of peer voices:

A reassurance like that, a message of hope from somebody who's been hopeless, just carries a different weight.

Cara agreed and added:

Everybody told me this… “Cara, you know, this is going to get better” and I almost rolled my eyes at them and I was like “You don't know that.” But it does. I don't know when, I don't know how, but it really, really does.

Hearing lived experience creates believable hope. Connection is medicine.

Try this: Listen to a lived-experience podcast or join an online support group when you feel isolated.

13. Find Stillness in Small Moments

Cara shared how small, sensory experiences remind her that peace still exists:

Whether it be you see two people hug on the street and that just gives you a wee bit of hope that love is possible or you're sitting drinking a coffee and all you're kind of thinking about is the actual coffee and nothing else and you say to yourself, I was actually content there for 10 seconds.

• Why it helps: Depression drags you into past regrets or future fears; the body brings you back to now.
• Practice: Let sensory awareness become your refuge.

Try this 5-5-5 reset:

1. See five shapes.
2. Hear five sounds.
3. Feel five points of contact (chair, air, clothing, floor, heartbeat).

Final Thoughts

As Terry reflected after the interview, Cara’s story reminds us that recovery isn’t about eliminating pain—it’s about remembering that joy can coexist with it. The flashes of hope, though brief, are proof that light always finds its way back.

As Terry expressed:

One of the things I've learned from our guests is, we as humans—not even just humans with depression—tend to find what we're looking for. If we look for reasons that our value in the world is affirmed, we can usually find something. And if we look for ways that we have been made to feel worthless, we will find those too.

Through therapy, honest dialogue, and gentle awareness of life’s smallest moments, Cara demonstrates what it means to hold on—and how, even in the darkest hours, hope can quietly begin again.

Key Takeaways

• Therapy is messy but essential. Progress often looks chaotic before it becomes clear.
• Validation heals. Naming trauma and depression breaks cycles of shame.
• Small joys are lifelines. Ten seconds of peace matters.
• Take one day at a time. Tomorrow is more achievable than forever.
• You deserve light. Love, connection, and happiness belong to you too.
• Peer voices empower. Hope resonates most deeply when spoken by someone who’s lived it.