In early November, I went to bed for a month. I have a pre-disposition to clinical depression, although nowadays it is something I usually manage successfully, lovingly packing my citalopram tablets into every handbag like a diabetic who’s careful with her insulin. Winters are often hard, and this autumn there had been a few stresses among my friends and family. But, first and foremost, I was in a state of political despair.

I am not the only person, by a long shot, who was left despondent by the world in 2016. Unlike most of my friends in the arts and media, I wasn’t floored by the vote of the British people to leave the EU: I had friends heavily involved in campaigns on both sides, and while I have a bourgeois aversion to self-administered economic shocks, it is hard to shed tears for a corrupt bureaucracy.

The murder of Jo Cox MP, a week earlier, felt like more of a seismic shift. With Jo’s death, we became a nation that kills our representatives – not, as when Ian Gow was killed by the IRA in 1990, by an organised insurgency, claiming allegiance to a foreign identity – but by a bubble of anger, the decentralisation of hate. For every woman who works and writes in the public eye, the reports of Thomas Mair’s online activity looked like something that had crawled out of our inboxes and our Twitter mentions, out of the morass of rape threats and hacking attempts, and picked up a gun.

Other people will have different reasons for finding it hard to go on last year. For some, the massacre of 50 people at a gay club in Orlando revived their worst memories of vulnerability; for others, the images of Raqqa are burned into the brain.

World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Show all 29 1 /29 World reaction to President Trump: In pictures World reaction to President Trump: In pictures London, England AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures London, England Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Manila, Philippines Getty Images World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Manila, Philippines Getty World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Mosul , Iraq Getty World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Manila, Philippines AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures New Delhi, India Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Karachi, Pakistan EPA World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jakarta, Indonesia Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Lagos, Nigeria AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Kabul, Afghanistan AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jerusalem. Israel Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Moscow, Russia Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Seoul, South Korea AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Lagos, Nigeria AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Peshawar, Pakistan EPA World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jakarta, Indonesia Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Hyderabad, India AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Kolkata, India AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Sydney, Australia Getty World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Sydney, Australia AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Aleppo, Syria Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Mexico City, Mexico AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jerusalem, Israel EPA World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Baghdad, Iraq Rex World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories Rex World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Tokyo, Japan Rex World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Mexico City, Mexico Getty

For me, November marked the crash. In Syria, Russian rockets blasted into the last remains of Aleppo, a city whose citizens I have spent three years working with, crying with, futilely trying to help. In the US, the land in which I spent my formative college years, reports swirled that Russian hackers had helped propel a demagogue into the White House, a man whose traffic in hatred is matched only by his intellectual instability. It seems this is Putin’s world. We just live in it.

If you’ve read to this point, I’m not sure if my litany of despair has done you much good. Perhaps it’s made you angry. Anger can be useful, channelled into action; it can also lead to more destruction. The German theorist Fritz Stern has laid much of the blame for Nazi success on the depressive inertia of nation’s most prominent cultural philosophers – conservative Jonahs whose loud lamentations for the decline of German creativity only generated self-loathing, rather than renaissance. His 1961 book, The Politics of Cultural Despair, makes uncomfortable reading in 2017. Despair is not always helpful.

It can be particularly dangerous among instinctive conservatives like myself. You don’t have to be a typical leftie to be appalled by Trump: not-so-secretly, I’m convinced that John McCain would have done a better job had he, not Obama, won the White House in 2008. The apparently inexorable reach of Vladimir Putin’s arm depresses me because, for my sins, I still believe that the old Cold War axis, “the West”, offers something unique and essential to the world. Or it used to.

The problem with conservatives, even liberal conservatives, is we don’t believe in progress. So, like Stern’s culpable German philosophers, we’re better at criticising our nations than rebuilding them. Conservative nostalgia is an easy pathway to passivity. It makes us bad activists – successful conservative campaigns, like that to exit the EU, are actually run by utopian libertarians.

What experts have said about Brexit Show all 11 1 /11 What experts have said about Brexit What experts have said about Brexit Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond The Chancellor claims London can still be a world financial hub despite Brexit “One of Britain’s great strengths is the ability to offer and aggregate all of the services the global financial services industry needs” “This has not changed as a result of the EU referendum and I will do everything I can to ensure the City of London retains its position as the world’s leading international financial centre.” Reuters What experts have said about Brexit Yanis Varoufakis Greece's former finance minister compared the UK relations with the EU bloc with a well-known song by the Eagles: “You can check out any time you like, as the Hotel California song says, but you can't really leave. The proof is Theresa May has not even dared to trigger Article 50. It's like Harrison Ford going into Indiana Jones' castle and the path behind him fragmenting. You can get in, but getting out is not at all clear” Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Michael O’Leary Ryanair boss says UK will be ‘screwed’ by EU in Brexit trade deals: “I have no faith in the politicians in London going on about how ‘the world will want to trade with us’. The world will want to screw you – that's what happens in trade talks,” he said. “They have no interest in giving the UK a deal on trade” Getty What experts have said about Brexit Tim Martin JD Wetherspoon's chairman has said claims that the UK would see serious economic consequences from a Brexit vote were "lurid" and wrong: “We were told it would be Armageddon from the OECD, from the IMF, David Cameron, the chancellor and President Obama who were predicting locusts in the fields and tidal waves in the North Sea" PA What experts have said about Brexit Mark Carney Governor of Bank of England is 'serene' about Bank of England's Brexit stance: “I am absolutely serene about the … judgments made both by the MPC and the FPC” Reuters What experts have said about Brexit Christine Lagarde IMF chief urges quick Brexit to reduce economic uncertainty: “We want to see clarity sooner rather than later because we think that a lack of clarity feeds uncertainty, which itself undermines investment appetites and decision making” Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Inga Beale Lloyd’s chief executive says Brexit is a major issue: "Clearly the UK's referendum on its EU membership is a major issue for us to deal with and we are now focusing our attention on having in place the plans that will ensure Lloyd's continues trading across Europe” EPA What experts have said about Brexit Colm Kelleher President of US bank Morgan Stanley says City of London ‘will suffer’ as result of the EU referendum: “I do believe, and I said prior to the referendum, that the City of London will suffer as result of Brexit. The issue is how much” What experts have said about Brexit Richard Branson Virgin founder believes we've lost a THIRD of our value because of Brexit and cancelled a deal worth 3,000 jobs: We're not any worse than anybody else, but I suspect we've lost a third of our value which is dreadful for people in the workplace.' He continued: "We were about to do a very big deal, we cancelled that deal, that would have involved 3,000 jobs, and that’s happening all over the country" Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Barack Obama US President believes Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU: "It is absolutely true that I believed pre-Brexit vote and continue to believe post-Brexit vote that the world benefited enormously from the United Kingdom's participation in the EU. We are fully supportive of a process that is as little disruptive as possible so that people around the world can continue to benefit from economic growth" Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Kristin Forbes American economist and an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England argues that the economy had been “less stormy than many expected” following the shock referendum result: “For now…the economy is experiencing some chop, but no tsunami. The adverse winds could quickly pick up – and merit a stronger policy response. But recently they have shifted to a more favourable direction” Getty

So what is helpful? What’s the cure for political depression? For one thing, liberal conservatives are going to have to borrow from some of the left’s irrepressible optimism. But if my last few months of lethargy and dark doctors’ waiting rooms have taught me anything, it’s that all those in search of a cure for our current political malaise could do well to look at recent advances in the mental health ward. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, or CBT, is today’s wonder cure – but what does it actually entail, and can it save a country as well as it can a person?

CBT is all about breaking unhelpful mental patterns. It’s also about the art of the possible. Under pressure at work? Find one request you can reasonably make of your boss. Determined to run a marathon to feel better about being obese? Start by using the stairs instead of a lift.

In politics, focusing on the big picture can often seem overwhelming. The future is bleak; there are a lot of battles that the forces of liberalism seem unlikely to win. When I think of Trump in the White House, Erdogan imprisoning critics in Turkey, martial law in the Philippines – I could continue – I curl up and go back to bed. When I think about the two refugee friends who I’ve got coming to stay next week, I scurry up and start readying the bed linen.