Where to Find Help If You're Feeling Down: A Survival Guide for Times of Crisis

What should you do if you're feeling anxious but there's no psychologist or support system nearby?

Clinical Psychologist Yegor Burtsev It shares specific self-help methods for those who find themselves in an emotional rut: from working with AI and art therapy to simple physical exercises and face-to-face interaction. This isn’t a substitute for therapy, but it’s a starting point if things feel overwhelming and you’re on the brink. A simple, honest, and practical conversation—about how to get back on your feet and move forward, even when it feels like you can’t.

Remember: you're not alone, and there are steps you can take right now!

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It’s tough when you need a therapist but there isn’t one nearby. Hi, my name is Yegor Burtsev. I’m a clinical psychologist, and I’ll try to offer you some advice if you’re feeling down and there’s no psychologist around.

Let’s start by talking about how much the world has changed. These days, it’s practically impossible to say that there isn’t a psychologist nearby. Objectively speaking, they’re always there. They’re available online and offline, and psychological support services continue to operate in various languages. And if you look even a little bit, it’s quite possible that you’ll find one. At the very least, you can definitely find some kind of free crisis support and get at least 3–4 counseling sessions.

But people often say that this short-term crisis assistance is not enough for them. What to do in this case? I will offer you a very simple method that almost everyone can use. New technologies may not be available to everyone, but Google is what most of us know and can use. Google now has access to artificial intelligence and gives you a bunch of tips for the simplest query in the search bar. Google tells us in response to any of our requests how to act and what ways we can help ourselves. Of course, if you have been subjected to acute trauma, if you have heavy thoughts or you feel that you are unbearably ill, you need to look for a crisis therapist online or better offline and contact him. But if you have some kind of conditionally slight anxiety, or you feel that you are sad, but do not yet have severe depression, you can try to work through artificial intelligence, through GPT chat, or finally through the same Google. 

Artificial intelligence systems generally suggest appropriate solutions, with rare exceptions. For the most part, they are trained to help; they analyze your situation, compare it to similar cases, and suggest a plan so you know what steps to take next.

My second piece of advice is to keep moving forward. If you’re going through some kind of crisis, you’re probably feeling isolated, not talking to anyone, stuck in your own little world, and not going out anywhere. I don’t want to suggest any drastic measures, like exercise, but I highly recommend trying to change your surroundings. At the very least, go outside. You don’t have to walk for a long time, although that works great. It’s one of the most effective ways to get moving, and it can help you cope with even severe depression—if you can just manage to get up and go. In fact, the first sign that you’re coming out of severe depression is precisely when you get up and go.

Let's say you love coffee. Find a nice coffee shop—just not one right near your home. Choose a distance you can cover without too much effort. Walk there, sit down, enjoy that delicious coffee, let yourself relax and unwind, look around, and watch the people. Don’t get lost in your gadgets; try to keep your focus on the outside world for at least a little while: for example, take a closer look at the walls of the café; if it’s on the street, look at the surrounding nature, the houses, the trees, and observe the people. Try shifting your attention from the usual to the unusual.

Another way to be a psychologist is to remember that everything bad is temporary. If you can't find a psychologist now, most likely, after some time you will be able to find one. Try to just sit down and make a rough plan for yourself of what you would turn to a psychologist with. How can this be done? It is clear that just writing and just thinking is sometimes difficult. But you can use some methods of art therapy. For example, take and draw your current mood. You can draw with spots, lines, strokes. You can just take and depict something that comes to mind. Park, trees, houses, bunnies, something else. Then put the picture aside for a while, look at it with fresh eyes and say, what is drawn on it? What is this bunny? Is this my jumping ability? Is it my need to take shelter? Or is it my desire to jump out somewhere? And so look at each object. Think about what this picture says about your mood, about your condition. Then put the picture aside again, return to it again, and draw those details that it lacks. Psychologists call it a resource, but here we do not have a psychologist, so we will create resources for ourselves. Think about what, for example, would help this bunny to jump out into some clearing that is attractive to him. Well, perhaps some stump or some other incentive will help him. Maybe there are some carrots lying there. And if you manage to find something, it will be a hint for you, you will be able to understand what is happening to you and in which direction to move approximately. 

Another life hack: it is both very simple and very complex. This is communication with people, not necessarily with friends. People are different. Some will listen to all your sorrows and sympathize. But such people cannot always be found nearby or in the public domain. But there are other people who can listen to at least something. For example, there are people who broke up with their family because of a move just like you, and they are willing to listen to you about it. And there are people with whom you can just go, for example, to a café or a bar. And there are those with whom you can go somewhere to relax. People and communication are great. They help to distract yourself, and switch, and look at the problem a little from the outside. 

Another way is to try to look at your life as a path from point A to point B with a stop where you are now. Here it has a beginning, there is a middle, there is an end. You can even draw a line on a piece of paper and indicate where you are. Then go back to the beginning, see what happened there. From the point to the one you have now reached. And after that, you will probably see the segment that will be next. After all, there is something in this segment as well. For migrants, for example, for people in crisis, this is often something related to uncertainty. But if you see emptiness there, try to remember what happened at the point when you were not in a crisis. Most likely, there were some plans, some dreams, some ambitions, which are probably now destroyed or impossible to realize. But at the same time, what do you have left? What stays with you are your values, your hopes, your beliefs, what you love, what you know, the experiences you've already had, the education you already have, the skills you've acquired. It's all still with you. And if you turn to them a little bit and believe that they can still work, you'll feel a little better. 

It’s likely that, as your journey comes to an end, you’ll need to see a psychologist—or at least come up with a plan for how to pay for that psychologist or how to find one. I’m sure you can find a psychologist who speaks your language in practically every country. There are migrant chat groups, chat groups for LGBTQ+ organizations, and other resources available for this purpose. And practically every country has a crisis hotline that offers assistance in English. If you speak English, don’t hesitate to reach out. You’ll definitely be able to communicate and find a way to get the help you need.