Coping with depression involves adjusting your expectation to the reality of where you are at, rather than the “reality” of where you think you should be. If a man is depressed but doesn’t know it, he may become increasingly frustrated with himself as makes different vain attempts to feel better. His old bag of trick for keeping himself upbeat just isn’t working. He may try very hard, but he cannot meet his expectations for himself.
This can lead to more depression.
Successful coping with depression, on the other hand, involves realizing that you are not only in a ditch, but you are tangled up in bushes that are making it really hard to get out of the ditch. How does this help? It helps because you immediately stop being depressed that you are depressed. You change your expectations for how long it will take you to get out of the ditch. Even more importantly, you will be coping with depression by starting to think in terms of a realistic strategy for breaking free from whatever is holding you down.