If 2020 was a terrible year for you and it made your depression worse, please know that you are not alone. Even as a mental health blogger with nearly two decades of lived experience, the past year has been one of the roughest years of my life.

I recently went on a social media break -- no doomscrolling, no aggravating my depression -- and it felt great. Social media is where I get most of my news, and given that the world seems to be falling apart these days, it was a relief to get away from doomscrolling.

Nobody is immune to the pressure to succeed. Whether it comes from family, teachers, bosses, or ourselves, the pressure to "achieve" is something we have all felt. It's not necessarily a bad thing: pressure (or your perception of it) can give you a competitive drive, the impetus to keep going when you feel like giving up, and it can result in great things, both professionally and personally. However, when that pressure to succeed becomes so intense that you lose sight of everything else, it's time to pump the brakes and reevaluate your priorities. Sure, success is great, but not when it comes at the expense of your mental health.

It's been nearly seven months of a dreary, dystopian existence, and this pandemic is worsening my depression. Ever since March 2020, life as we know it has changed forever. Living in this pandemic has been dubbed "the new normal," but there is nothing normal about it.

Overthinking is often held responsible for causing anxiety and vice versa, and it should be. However, I recently realized that overthinking and depression can be problematic too.

Going by my conversations with friends and readers, COVID-19 has given rise to a new kind of depression: quarantine depression. As the term implies, it is a direct result of the quarantine. But like most things in life, there are ways to manage it so that it doesn't consume you. Here are some tried and tested tips that I am using to reduce the intensity of my quarantine depression.

There are some of us with depression who have experienced trauma during our lives. This trauma may have occurred prior to or after our diagnosis of depression. For those who have been through traumatic experiences, these events can have a profound effect on their depression. Armed with this knowledge, what can those of us with depression -- and those close to people with depression -- do with this information? (Note: This post contains a trigger warning.)

Having healthy coping skills and knowing how to practice them can play a major role in suicide prevention. When someone is struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts, the pain and confusion he/she feels is often compounded by misinformation, incorrect beliefs, and unhealthy coping skills. Yet, these are often the only things a person suffering from a mental health crisis has at his/her disposal. It's time to change this now by having educational conversations about mental health, suicide, and healthy coping skills. (Note: This post contains a trigger warning.)

For those with depression, isolation is often something we experience. Many times we don't have the energy or desire to go out and socialize; however, living in isolation is no true life at all. We don't have to allow our depression to keep us isolated. We just need some guidelines so we can tell the difference between isolation and alone time.