9d • Tools That Help
Chess — Training Your Mind to Keep Moving
When you’re surviving depression, it’s easy to feel like your brain turns against you.
Simple tasks feel overwhelming. Small setbacks feel catastrophic. The idea of progress — real, steady progress — feels impossible.
That’s why you need ways to train your mind to move again. And one of the most underrated, accessible ways to do that is chess.
I found chess as a child. It isn’t as complex as people make it out to be. I can’t remember who taught me, but the rules are no harder to grasp than any other game when you’re starting out. I didn’t play much growing up, apart from Battle Chess in the late eighties on an Atari ST. I knew the rules, enjoyed the occasional game, but hardly anyone around me played.
I signed up to play chess online in 2014 and barely touched it. During lockdown, though, I became addicted. I was drawn to it because, much like jiu-jitsu, you can never fully master it — there’s always another level. In many ways, chess is the closest thing to jiu-jitsu I’ve found. You can’t go all out recklessly. You need caution, backup plans, and patience. You have to think.
A Puzzle You Can Actually Solve
In life, problems are often murky, and solutions uncertain. In chess, the rules are clear. The aim is simple: protect your king, defeat theirs.
It’s a game of small problems, one after another, each demanding focus and a plan. Even when you lose, you learn. Even when you make a mistake, you can trace it, understand it, and do better next time.
When you’re fighting depression, it’s hard to trust that effort will be rewarded. Chess rebuilds that trust.
You put in effort. You improve. You see the results.
Daily Mental Workouts
Playing chess daily — even just a five-minute game — becomes a mental gym session:
- You practise patience.
- You work on foresight.
- You manage frustration and impulsiveness.
- You learn resilience after mistakes.
Just as training your body strengthens muscles, working through chess problems strengthens the mind. It becomes easier to stay focused on difficult days. Easier to pause and plan before reacting.
These small mental habits start bleeding into everyday life. The mind is a muscle. Chess is one of the best training programmes you can put it through.
Progress You Can Measure
One of the worst parts of depression is the feeling of being stuck. Stuck in your job. Stuck in your body. Stuck in your life.
Chess gives you a way to measure progress, even when everything else feels static.
You start at the bottom, losing a dozen games in a row.But slowly, you improve.
You start seeing two moves ahead. You start spotting traps before you fall into them. You even start setting traps for others.
Every rating point gained, every hard-fought win, becomes proof that you can still improve at something.
It’s not about becoming a grandmaster. It’s about reminding yourself: I can still grow.
In Conclusion
Life is chaotic. It's full of random cruelty, unfair losses, and situations you can’t reason your way out of.
Chess isn’t like that.
Chess is pure cause and effect. Mistakes have consequences — but so does improvement. Your next move always matters.
When the world feels overwhelming, sitting down at a chessboard — even a virtual one — is like telling yourself:
I can still think. I can still plan. I can still move forward — even if it’s just one square at a time.
That’s not just a game. That's hope, disguised as strategy.
Chess for Mental Health: A Starter Guide
If you’ve never played before — or haven’t touched a chessboard since childhood — don’t worry. Chess isn’t about being a genius. It’s about showing up, practising, and learning one small thing at a time.
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Chess — Training Your Mind to Keep Moving
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