If you're reading this from the couch, wondering whether you could even follow through with therapy right now, this post is for you.
A lot of people avoid starting treatment for depression because they assume it will ask too much. Exercise every day. Get out more. Overhaul your routine. When you can barely get through the basics, that sounds impossible.
When I interviewed Jill Hasso, LPC, on October 2, 2026, about how she uses behavioral activation for depression, she kept coming back to the opposite idea. Start small. Smaller than you think.
Is starting small just settling?
No. It's strategy.
In behavioral activation, activities are built on a hierarchy, from easiest to hardest. "You're not starting with those activities that are, like, ten out of ten, like, really hard for you to do in the very beginning," Jill said. "You're starting with those, like, smaller activities."
How small? "Maybe it's just, like, spending an extra five minutes, you know, making yourself a cup of coffee or something like that," she said. "Maybe you spend an extra five minutes in the morning making yourself a cup of coffee because that's something that you enjoy, and that's something you're not normally doing."
And it doesn't have to involve leaving home. "You don't have to go outside your house either," Jill said.
That might sound almost too easy to matter. But when you're depressed, the problem usually isn't that people aim too low. It's that they aim too high, crash, and then decide nothing works. Starting small is how you build something you can actually keep doing.
How does a therapist figure out what's small enough?
This is where working with a therapist really helps. "Small" isn't the same for everyone, and it changes from week to week. Here's how Jill and other therapists who use behavioral activation tend to figure it out.
They rate how hard it feels to you
Jill talks about activities on a scale, with ten out of ten being really hard. The rating isn't about how hard a task should be. It's about how hard it feels to you, right now.
For one person, calling a friend is a 2. For someone else, it's a 9. A good therapist doesn't assume. They ask, and they start near the bottom of your list, not someone else's.
They look at where you're starting from
If you're barely getting out of bed, a 30-minute walk isn't a first step. It's a leap. Your therapist looks at what your days actually look like right now and picks something that's a small stretch from there.
That's also why "just go for a walk" advice can backfire. We wrote more about that in why "just go for a walk" can make you feel worse when you're depressed.
They pick something new, not something you already do
Small doesn't mean routine. Jill noticed that clients sometimes try to schedule things they're already doing. The goal is something a little out of the ordinary. If you already make coffee every morning, the small step might be trying a new flavor, or sitting down to drink it instead of carrying it around.
They tie it to something you care about
A small activity works better when it connects to your values. It "doesn't have to be, like, these big activities each and every day," Jill said. "If one of your values is that you enjoy spending time with your family, maybe one of those activities is that you... have a movie night with your family in the evening."
Small and meaningful beats big and generic.
They adjust based on what actually happened
This might be the most important part. Each week, Jill looks at what you scheduled, whether you did it, and what got in the way. If something was too much, "we can also slow things down a little bit," she said.
If you didn't do any of it, that's not a moral failing. It's a sign the step was too big, or something got in the way, and the next step needs to be smaller.
What does a hierarchy actually look like?
Here's one example, built around something Jill and I talked about a lot: coffee. Your list would look different, because the steps and the ratings come from you.
About a 2 out of 10: Spend five extra minutes making coffee and sit down to drink it
About a 3: Try a new flavor or a new mug
About a 4: Drink your coffee outside or by a window with music on
About a 6: Drive to a coffee shop and get something just for you
About an 8: Meet a friend for coffee
You'd start at the top of this list, not the bottom. Once the first step feels doable, you move to the next one. Your therapist helps you decide when you're ready.
What if even five minutes feels like too much?
Then the step gets smaller again. That's okay.
Some weeks, the plan falls apart. Something unexpected happens, your energy crashes, or the day just gets away from you. Jill's approach is that even if you don't do the specific thing you planned, "you're at least doing something." If your calendar gets flipped upside down, you can still pick one small thing.
And when you don't get to it at all, she treats that as information, not failure. "That can be seen not as, like, you did something wrong," she said, "but these are the barriers you're encountering here. And what can we do to fix that?"
If you're in a stretch where everything feels like too much, these may help too:
What to do when depression makes you want to cancel everything
How to create momentum when depression makes everything feel impossible
Can something this small really help?
It can, especially over time. Small steps build on each other. Jill's goal is to help you "start small and start building up that tolerance first before you get to some of those harder activities."
We also see it in our data. Among 40 of Jill's clients who started therapy with at least moderate depression, average PHQ-9 scores dropped from 16.5 to 6.7 by week 20. That's a real-world average, not a promise, and everyone's pace is different. And in behavioral activation, that kind of change starts with something small. We share more about those numbers in what behavioral activation actually looks like in a therapy session.
Begin Counseling for Depression in Missouri
At Aspire Counseling, we believe in doing what works. We don't just ask you how your week was every week for a year with no big changes. You can do that with your friend. What you're paying for when you come to counseling is our expertise, our knowledge, and therapy that moves the needle to really help you get out of this funk.
Different therapists in our practice use different treatment modalities to treat depression. Jill sticks really closely to Behavioral Activation. Jordan uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Samantha uses Dialectical Behavior Therapy to treat serious depression often with self harm and/or suicidal thought. But all of them have this element of how to help you stop just pushing through and get you re-engaging in life in a meaningful way. Any of our therapists who routinely treat depression will help you figure out how to use the very limited energy you have left in a way that will help you start to feel more like yourself again.
Start by calling our office at (816) 287-1116 (Lee's Summit) or 573-328-2288 (Columbia), scheduling a time to chat with our intake team, or emailing us through our contact page. We have offices in Lee's Summit and Columbia, or we can meet with you online from anywhere in Missouri.
About the Author
This blog post is one of a series that grew out of an interview on October 2, 2026, with Jill Hasso, LPC, one of our Missouri depression therapists who is especially passionate about Behavioral Activation. Jessica Oliver, MSW, LCSW, our clinic founder and director, who also has 15+ years of experience treating depression, led the interview and wrote this blog post. So it's a true joint effort, representing the expertise of two experienced Missouri therapists who are passionate about helping people get unstuck and make meaningful change when they've been depressed.
