AKA please, don’t tell me “get professional help”. Poor people can’t afford it anyways.
I found the book “Feeling Good” by Dr. David Burns to be extremely helpful. It teaches you the most common method therapists use (cognitive behavior therapy). Like therapy, you need to continually practice it for it to be useful.
Practicing mindfulness can also be very beneficial.
If it’s available in your area, Ketamine therapy (not recreational ketamine) has been shown to act as a rapid antidepressant. In the US, there are at home ketamine providers that you can consult online. There’s a popular low-dose provider that includes provider visits and medication for $129/month, if you qualify.
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Go on a run a couple times a week. I honestly hate running, but I always feel loads better after going on a run. Just start with 6 stints of 30 seconds with a 2 minute break in between and build up from there. It might not be a long term solution, but will definitely help get you through some tough days.
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Online there are also lots of free resources available. There are a lot of chatrooms and phone numbers available for people that are struggling. Even if your particular country doesn’t offer any, you can always just chat/call with foreign resources.
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Try mindfulness. At first it might take a couple tries to find what works for you, but there are many apps and videos online that all have a different approach. I personally use the Balance app for the free year they offer and found that 3 or 4 of their mindfulness exercises really help me out every time I feel depressed or anxious etc.
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I used Ai to vent my problems to, and binged research papers. Read up on cognitive behavior therapy and the mechanics of depression.
I also made some big life changes and cut WAY back on drinking, but it took months and years to ease into the changes. Im still having shit days often, but can actually troubleshoot my mood and see why I’m depressed.
Half if it is don’t dwell on the bad things and that is damn hard. You got to catch your brain thinking something like “im a fuck up”, or “I get no benefit from $hobby”. Once you catch it stop or distract the though, literally tell the thought to fuck off if that works for your head.
Once your ready start stacking little things like showing and walking a few laps around the house over time. Its sound like bs but it helps.
Do you think you would be not depressed if there was something different about your life or yourself at they are right now?
Yeah, if I was born rich. You CAN buy happiness
Mindfulness, if you can get your hands on it, read Why Buddhism is True.
This might be a weird one, but it is helping me a lot.
My deepest spirals into depression and alcohol abuse happen in the evening and at night.
I switched to waking up early (5am), focused on experiencing and enjoying sunrise as a kind of meditation, then going about my day. I’m off to bed by 8pm.
There’s still days where I can’t catch sleep for hours, mind racing. But hours past 8pm is still only 2am.
I found that a five minute session on a Muse 2 device (essentially over the counter neurofeedback training via a small consumer headband) kills my insomnia for at least a week.
Thank you for the suggestion. I’ll look into that
Exercise.
Cardiovascular and resistance exercise both release a chemical called BDNF, which causes hippocampal neurogenesis, which causes a decrease in depression.
After being on medication and in therapy for years, I basically lost my medical care and has to figure out a fallback strategy. Learned about this exercise connection, and changed my running habits from:
- About a mile
- About once or twice a month
To:
- About five miles
- Three times per week
The effect on my depression was profound. It was far more powerful than the medication and therapy
And if exercise makes you miserable?
That may indicate HPA axis dysregulation depending on the timescale.
When you exercise, how long is the miserable period afterward?
I had a dysregulation of my HPA axis that resulted in a cause-effect function like “ten minutes of vigorous exercise results in a week of insomnia, headaches, panic attacks, and muscle rigidity”.
Is it like that? Or do you just mean exercise isn’t fun during the exercise? Or something else?
I strongly dislike being sweaty and, if exercising, even walking somewhere, outside, dislike being at the mercy of the elements.
There’s also that one cannot simply exercise. There are necessary activities that need to be performed afterwards if not before.
Some people take jumping into a shower for granted, for example; they don’t even think about it, and just do it and it’s done before their brain even engages. For me that takes a lot of mental energy, which brings me onto another point:
I do not know how much mental stamina I have for a day, so I could start an activity and run out of steam before I’ve had chance to get to the end of everything, making for a very uncomfortable hour or two as I drag myself miserably through whatever else needs to be done.
As such I tend to want to avoid that happening, and it’s on my mind the whole time I’m doing something that takes time.
Throwing exercise into the mix only guarantees less time to be able do the things I need to, even if there are still many hours left in the day.
I figure this could be a case of needing to somehow force myself to do it anyway, but I do not know how to do that. And there’s that I would then need to keep doing that every day forever in order not to fall back to where I am currently, which seems both unsustainable and unpleasant.
Probably best to start with a small amount of exercise then. Like one to five minutes.
You certainly don’t want to deplete your resources to the point of making the rest of your life undoable.
One thing I’ve found useful is to study the different resources that the body uses. This can be abstract concepts like “willpower” down to concrete molecular energy reserves like “glycogen”. Both the concrete and the abstract concepts have been studied by science, and there are models of how they work.
In my own day to day, I pay attention to:
- Willpower
- Hydration
- Sleep
- Mental conflict such as results from unresolved moral conundrums
- Potassium
- Glycogen
- Total calories
It’s also a fact that exercise will, over time, tend to increase the capacity of the various “energy” stores one has access to. It will improve willpower, concentration, flexibility, glycogen, oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, mitochondrial health, etc.
But doing too much (which at the beginning can be just a little bit) can definitely cause problems. Especially if that willpower budget is small.
If I were in your situation, where exercise was likely to push me over the limit and deplete my willpower budget (and other resources) to the point where I failed in other parts of life, I would start extremely small with the exercise routine. Like one push-up. I mean tiny.
People ask “what’s the point” to something that small. The point is that it’s a stepping stone to being able to do more.
Of course, you also gotta make sure you’re eating enough, getting plenty of sleep, getting all the nutrients you need, etc.
Also (and I know this comment is all over the place) meditation can increase willpower budget over time.
Big, drastic changes can be overwhelming and can set a person back. This is why baby steps are recommended. “Baby steps” means basically tiny steps. Tiny changes. One push-up per day. Maybe curl 1 lb, once a day.
Baby steps are steps that, themselves, don’t change one’s life. But what they do is they open the door for larger steps that can change one’s life.
That’s the neat part, I don’t.
You post stuff like this a lot. You keep talking about being lonely, or about being sad, or things in that same spiral. You clearly know what the answer is, but you refuse to listen to it or accept it, but you STILL ask the question. At a certain point, I have to wonder if you LIKE being miserable.
As harsh as it is to say, I think you need to get over yourself.
Get help. If you can’t afford a pro, get an amateur to talk to. There are low-cost helplines and support groups around the world. Don’t just come up with a reason why you can’t do it. You can. All that remains is whether or not you will.
Lame.
Incorrect and no, your solutions are not available for me.
Why not?
Also, I’m willing to talk to you so long as you promise not to dox me.
Telling myself: “There will be better days ahead”. Repeating that motto in the darkest moments helped a bit. Reading the stories of people who experienced depression but pulled through. And lastly, keeping busy. It’s not ideal, but doing anything that requires focus kept me from introspecting. And that ended badly generally.
Honestly, running, walking alone in the park, listening to music, reading about depression to comprehend if what I am feeling is concerning.
Running: As I run, I try to focus on my pacing, my breathing, and I stop when I get tired, when I’m DONE, that I think helps because all of the endorphins released. Walking alone in the park: This also helps me because I get to see nature, watching birds or squirrels going about their business relaxes me, and also I try to treasure those little moments as mine. Listening to music: And I mean REALLY listening to music, focus on the whole song or different parts of it makes me appreciate it more and it can make me feel immerse in it.
To me it’s not a magic cure to depression but it helps a lot when I’m feeling down, I know everybody is different but this is what helps me.
If you try to battle depression and can’t for some reason, looking for professional help is key, don’t let it grow or it will consume you.
Stay strong my friends.
Listening to music: And I mean REALLY listening to music
Amen. I’ve been listening to the same album since february. Trying to decypher every baseline, every cymbal.
Brings my mind to a happier place.
Sometimes I listen to 1973 by TH White in repeat in my car.
I don’t know what that is. Please, tell me all about it
1- Exercise - I generally think that walking or running on trails in nature is one of those generally free beneficial thinks you can do for depression. Worse case scenario, you improve your fitness and feel better about the shape of your body.
2- Sleep - Yeah, this is a massive one, aim for at least 7-8 hrs. Regular exercise will help, but try to keep a relatively even sleep schedule (schedule yourself to be in bed without your phone by 10pm is a lazy but easy way to help).
3- Limit doomscrolling - Looking at the latest news about what craziness is happening in world probably isn’t that amazing to do that often, so limit it a bit.
4- Diet - I’m vegetarian, and when I started years ago I noticed it really seemed to make my bouts of depression easier to handle. That being said, at the very least make sure you aren’t eating too much junk food and try not to drink. If you aren’t getting enough of a particular nutrient, take a multivitamin (magnesium is a pretty common deficit for most, and can affect your sleep).
5- Meditation - The act of breathing can occasionally give a bit of a break from the spiral of depressed thoughts, so it’s no wonder that a lot of therapists tend to recommend it. Just start with 10 min a day and see if that helps any.
6 - Atmosphere - I know his can’t always be helped, but just adjusting your living environment can make a tremendous difference. Try taking a day or so just to thoroughly clean your room/apt/house. Personally, my advice is to clean like you are trying to truly help someone you love/respect so that at the end you feel like no stone was left unturned.
7- Music - Kinda try to find some music you like that is soothing and try to like, and limit depressive or harsh music. Sounds stupid, but it helps some.
8- Psychodelics - A bit controversial, but I personally use shrooms long term to handle depression. They honestly have been the best long term depression maintenance I’ve found for the price. But truthfully, most of what they do is give you a few hours to step out of your emotions, and force you to actually look at yourself. They are basically just making you acknowledge the above for the most part, and after a trip if you don’t make changes, they won’t really help that much. Pro tip, a notebook to capture your stream of thought can be very helpful for post trip integrations.
Shrooms are definitely dangerous, especially for people who are prone to schizophrenia I’ve read.
Personally, they made me realize my mind is capable of being content. No longer full blast, spinning plates all of the time.
That experience made me realise change is possible, and I got professional help a year later. Turns out I’ve been living in C-PTSD since I was 5.
Schizophrenia is the only reason not to take psychedelics. Your first sentence could easily be misinterpreted as a lie that tries to falsely apply that danger to other areas.
All the usual “be safe, feel safe” advice applies no matter what!
I’d argue that shrooms themselves aren’t a huge deal, but pre-existing conditions for sure have accounted for (if you are schizophrenic or have bipolar disorder, please be careful/don’t take them), correct dosages for different strains should be taken, and you should do them in a safe environment. Shrooms themselves can’t directly kill you, unlike some stronger psychodelics (lsd, research chems, etc) which is why I generally recommend them (and not mushroom chocolate bars, which are usually research chems even if they say otherwise).
Either way, glad to hear that you seemed to get the benefit of change!
Everything (except 8, obviously) is pretty standard practice for CBT as well. In terms of self-help, I’d also definitely add
9: Find nice people/a nice group to spend time with. Doesn’t really matter what it is: sports club, theater, study group, board game club, garden builders. Just follow your interests.
I think many people dismiss the incredible value friends bring to our life and the stabilizing effect it has on out mental health. Loneliness is one of the deadliest causes out there (some studies say it’s as harmful as smoking daily), so make sure to have people around you whom you like spending time with! And no, digital groups are not the same as real-life ones. Body language is incredibly important in communication, and with it missing orr brain processes information differently.
Tl;Dr: Get out there and find nice people.
Excellent post.
On the topic of shrooms, the 50-100mg of Golden Teacher or Penis Envy have worked well for me. Every other day for 2 months. Then take a month off.
If you have the ability, OP, you could adopt a pet. It helped me a lot to have someone to keep me company and that I was responsible for.
You can’t just lay in bed hoping for tomorrow when you got a terrier yapping at you to get up and play with him.5-HTP serves me well. It’s got a similar serotonin impact without the tripiness of shrooms.
Glad it helps, I was kinda in the same situation as op as few years ago (depressed, broke, and living with my parents), although I was in the US. I don’t personally recommend having a pet when depressed, I’m thankful that my dog wasn’t cared for by just me at the time as I suspect that I wouldn’t have gone great. I personally try to fully trip every 4-6 weeks, but the more time passes the longer I find I don’t need to trip that frequently. I take a pretty high dose, have to schedule out a full day to get through it. I haven’t really tried much in the way of micro dosing, but I’ve heard that they work for a lot of people.
You really shouldn’t fight depression solo. We’re social creatures. Trained therapists aren’t the only people who can help you, even a trusted friend or a random stranger in a free support group can do wonders.
Local support groups probably exist in your area. Sometimes they aren’t very visible, and being depressed certainly won’t help you find it.
I didn’t know about any in my area, since when I’m depressed I’m unable to look for those groups, and when I’m fine, i have no need to look. But after joining a local mutual aid board, i found out about quite a few resources that were fully free or extremely cheap (less than $50 us) when others asked for them.
If you are queer, a lot of queer support groups often have resources to help you out.
As for how I treated mine, exercise and hiking, finding scenic areas, avoiding alcohol (which i was bad at), and trying to live more “intentionally” and not getting into patterns that left me feeling hollow. For example, i tried spending less time gaming, and substituted that time with reading, since that made me feel less like I was wasting time and my life. I also tried learning to cook, since having good meals was great, and not constantly eating shit from a local fast food joint helped me stop rapidly gaining weight, which was certainly making things worse.
I also have a trusted friend who i talked to about some of my problems, and he helped me get through the worst parts. This was probably the most important part, and it got me on the path to getting out of that depressive episode.
imo, it takes a kind of effort to be constantly “aware” and “battling/ avoiding” depression. it would be nice if the brain just auto-switches in battle-mode but that’s not its natural state.
As for how I battle my own, I do hobbies like plants, walking and reading; and sleeping. Sometimes I do cheat days.
Save your energy, reduce sugar and glutene, sleep well, reduce distractions, exercise.
Also what you said to not tell you.
