Cardio helps a lot for me personally. I'm a firm believer that most people (myself included) don't get enough exercise when compared to hundreds of years ago. It gives me a dedicated hour or two block of time to listen to podcasts, and exercise in general is healthy anyways so its a win-win.
I eventually started doing Ironman triathlons. There was something different about those compared to other things like marathons.
But I also wasn't as depressed as a lot of clinically depressed people are. But it could literally be a matter of volume.
But I learned a lot about myself, and once you do an Ironman even once, you have some confidence about doing something really really hard, and you have a (minor) superpower while you're in shape to do one.
So it might be a matter of volume. It might be a jog doesn't sufficiently trigger a subconscious feeling of accomplishment that a longer distance will.
It could be triathlons give you Napoleon Dynamite skills in more that one thing. Nice thing with exercise: you can do lots of things to get it, so try branching out from running. Lift a bit, yoga bit, bike a bit, swim a bit, X-C ski a bit, shoot buckets, trail run, etc.
Become a triathlete. Swim, bike, or run, usually something will work if you're injured somewhere. Each of course have their own idiosyncracies and overuse injuries.
I skip rope. I like these muay thai-style jump ropes[0] with thick pvc-tube because I find it annoying when a slim rope gets tangled and I have to stop and start jumping again.
Maybe not the best style if you have knee issues though...
I eat a good steak. I'm not kidding or trivializing. But if I get busy and I'm always stressed out maybe trying to cut calories, after I while my mood gets dark. Sometimes, I have found its not just stress. I just need a good steak or burger. My metabolism does NOT liking going more than a few weeks without a serious protein hit. And it needn't be an unhealthy frequency or amount.
So YMMV, but sometimes a big part of metal health can be adjusting what you eat and drink.
Get professional help if possible: Get meds and find a good counselor
Get the Big Three in order (Food, Sleep, Exercise): Eat healthy (e.g., DASH diet), get 8-9h sleep, get daily aerobic exercise (with a little anaerobic) and at least weekly strength training.
For me, exercise and trying to re-frame my situation helps. I believe even if your exercise is just a 30min walk, it's better than sitting at home ruminating about things.
By re-framing I mean trying to rethink my situation from a third party or what I'd say if a friend told me about their life and how they feel. I think for a lot people, they can be their own worst critic.
I have used meditation in the past with Headspace. It helped me a lot during some really low points. I started therapy a few weeks after meditation and my therapist was very supportive of it. I'm not going to claim mediation is a cure-all but it definitely helps the "re-framing" and rumination.
Also if you have some friends or family to hang out with, try do it. Even if you have to force yourself to go and you don't interact with them much, I believe it's better than being alone in your darker times.
Some advice here, such as exercising is good for the overall health of a human being, but depression isn't simple as this. Other advice is quite sad, such as "I eat a good stake" to avoid having a "dark mood". Depression is a serious mental issue that needs proper treatment, it isn't a joke.
A professional will be able to give you better guidance about this, with therapy and medicine.
I found these articles incredibly helpful in learning to help myself. I have no idea if they are factually correct, but the writer's way of reframing depression as a process or system was a great way to get some distance from my personal feelings in the moment, and allowed me to bring to bear familiar mental tools to help get a feel for the complexity.
I hope they help. For me the main take-away was that your brain needs rest, which is not the same as recreation. Be kind to your brain and digest in manageable chunks :)
The question is why are you depressed before the question is how to deal with being depressed.
For me, I was socially isolated, failed out of school, bullied at school, home and work, unsuccessful with friends or women and kept getting laid off, fighting with my coworkers and managers.
It wasn’t until I learned about Aspergers and did a detailed study on all the problems people with Aspergers have that I understood all of my problems stemmed from me likely being on the spectrum. Once I learned that, I was able to understand why I was being targeted and why most people seemed to hate me immediately within one conversation despite me thinking I did nothing wrong. Then I was able to make adaptations for how to structure my life around the fact that I was different.
If your problem is a minor chemical imbalance and you just need some vitamins, a jog and rest - To me this isn’t really depression, as someone who was on and off suicidally depressed for a decade.
For me: I was depressed because my life sucked. I could make the depression go away temporarily but it always came back. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy really
Helped me.
After being told by teachers, my family, coworkers, people at school that I was stupid, unlikeable and ugly etc it took me a long time to undo that because I really believed it. CBT is about arguing with invasive negative thinking and changing your filters into better ones.
When I get depressed now, I write down a plan to stop being depressed and go through all the steps sequentially from simple to hard. Usually works, but only if I start with easy things first.
Honestly, I'm sorry people treated you that way. I actually know the cause of my depression and it's something I can't really solve at the moment unless a miracle happens (that is if miracles exist). Thanks for your response
Assuming you’ve tried conventional anti-depressants and you’re in the US, have a look into ketamine treatments. Studies show dramatic results for a good percentage of people and a good safety profile (shorter term at least). They are expensive.
One thing that's helped me is journaling. I used to write by hand, but find doing so too slow, even when I type.. so in recent years I've taken to recording my thoughts in on a voice recorder (though a smart phone with a voice recording app would probably serve just as well). What I say is completely private, and meant for no one's consumption but my own, though I very rarely even review what I said. I talk about what's been happening in my life, my concerns, and my thoughts on various subjects.
It's much like therapy, though of course without a therapist's comments or insights, so it's not quite as good, but I still find it very helpful to talk through what's been going on with me.. and sometimes I even come to novel conclusions and insights through this process.. thoughts and perspectives I did not have before I started.
Othre things that help are listening to positive, energetic music, going outside on bright, sunny days, spending time in nature, eating a healthy diet (including supplements like D3 and B12 that I don't get enough of in my life otherwise), and exercise. Talking to interesting, friendly people helps, as does having a fulfilling job that pays enough to pay for the basic necessities and keep me from living on the streets. Occasional treats that make me feel better afterwards (as opposed to ones that feel good in the moment but awful or guilty afterwards).
I like to visit libraries a lot (particularly academic libraries), and often feel at peace there, lost among the greatest minds the world has ever seen, all at my beck and call, willing to share their experience and wisdom as I become ready to learn what they have to teach.
Computer games can also be de-stressing and distracting, thought when they're really good it's too easy to slip in to addiction, which could have adverse consequences if one plays them to the neglect of other important aspects of one's life.
Something else that helps is meditation (of the simply focusing on one's breath type). Avoiding toxic people who try to drag you down with them helps. Learning to enjoy your own company and like yourself instead of loathing yourself helps.
Sometimes talking to someone at a crisis hotline helps (if you're lucky enough to get someone good on the phone). Finding a good therapist you like, respect, and trust, and to whom you can do the hard work of opening up to is of course wonderful as well.
That said, some days nothing helps (or you are just too depressed to do any of those things that help, or forget about them), and you just have to ride out the feelings and try to take comfort in the recognition that those feelings are not permanent, and you will feel better sometime in the future. Having ridden out many such days in the past helps. As the saying goes, time heals all wounds.
Lots of exercise. Gets a whole bunch of chemicals in your brain to flow again. Some of those chemicals cause depression. But they need to come out of the system (eventually).
Lots of water. Drink water when you are tired. When angry. When sad. When bored. When excited. When energetic. Removes toxic chemicals in the body.
Good thoughts. Great thoughts. Speak to a psychologist. Read a book. I did.
Arrogance hides away anger. Anger hides away sadness. Sadness hides away attitude of helplessness. Helplessness is lack of resourcefulness. So be resourceful.
Forgive. Forget. Move on.
Lower expectations of yourself.
Increase appreciation of others, and of yourself.
Lots of sleep. Depressed people sleep a lot. But your sleep needs to be strictly regulated.
I think that this kind of advice is based in stuff that's actually helpful (like taking care of your body) but is ultimately useless to anyone who is actually struggling with depression.
> Good thoughts. Great thoughts. ...
> Arrogance hides away anger. Anger hides away sadness. Sadness hides away attitude of helplessness. Helplessness is lack of resourcefulness. So be resourceful.
I examined the rhythms of my depression and left Seattle for a much less expensive, and much sunnier city. The number of times I have to take that little inner voice who thinks suicide is a valid solution to my problems, pat her on the head, and say "thank you for your lovely contribution, I will treat it with the same seriousness I treat all your other suggestions"* has dropped from one or more times a day to... I think maybe once or twice in the entire half a year since I left Seattle?
A sun lamp helped some. So did lots of vitamin D. So did exercise. Pole dance, to be precise, I need to get back into that now that I'm settled. But it helped less and less every year, to the point where I felt like I only had a few years left before I'd be at serious risk of acting on that voice's suggestions.
Previously I also dealt with depression by staring my gender dysphoria in the face and taking a lot of hormones to persuade my body to get to the point where nobody thinks twice about giving me my preferred pronouns. Things were pretty good until I moved to places where there was Real Winter.
Dissect your depression. Analyze it. Listen to it - maybe even name it, that suicidal urge had a name borrowed from an old RPG character who did a lot of self-harm stuff. When you come to the conclusion that a lot of your depression comes from trying to deal with a particular Horrible Thing, then work on changing your life so that Horrible Thing is not part of it any more.
Oh yeah. Meditation can be valuable too. Just sit and watch your thoughts pass through you, if you catch one running away with you then just shrug, remind yourself "silence!" and get back to trying to empty your mind. Do it every day, or as close to every day as possible. This will give you a lot of training in recognizing different parts of your brain, detaching from unwanted trains of thought, and otherwise managing your brain. You will probably suck at first. Allow yourself to do this, celebrate getting better.
* which is to say "dismiss it and get on with my life as best I can despite being pretty miserable"; this little mental exercise of treating that urge as a separate personality and telling her that I did, indeed, hear her idea helped me dismiss it when it came up instead of spending ages going around in a mopey rut.
edit: Eases up the mood swings (TBH, I'm probably just in a stable phase (which gave me the will to stop coffee in the first place), but stopping wild upswings in mood with coffee cessation seems to have greatly muffled the back swings. touch wood touch wood touch wood.)
I'm also in the process of quitting coffee, I used to drink coffee very heavily (3-4 cups per day) and lots of soda, but it was affecting my mood too much.
Cocoa in hot water with stevia. I still need something black in the morning. Cocoa does have caffeine, but it's really not that much, even compared to tea.
I'll also have a tea in the middle of the day if I start feeling super dopey. The problem, as far as I can tell, isn't the caffeine, it's the amount in single+closely followed consecutive doses... I guess.
Other than that, Camomile and mint. There are a bunch of other fancy herbal alternatives but, those three are a good enough variety for me.
I found David Burns' 'The Feeling Good Handbook' an invaluable resource while coping with depression and probably the factor that helped the most. Others probably were removing stress (changed from a job which was just not working for me), getting longer sleep hours, regular exercise, getting more sunlight, 5-10 minutes meditation and reading books encouraging a positive outlook and gratitude such as 'Search Inside Yourself'.
Very broad question. Go to therapy or call a hotline and see if it helps you.
What worked for me is letting go of therapy and focusing instead on what matters to me, or my self/character/personality/whatever you want to call it. There are some things in the world you can't control so focus on what you can control. Win your own small battles one at a time, they build up.
114 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadBut I also wasn't as depressed as a lot of clinically depressed people are. But it could literally be a matter of volume.
But I learned a lot about myself, and once you do an Ironman even once, you have some confidence about doing something really really hard, and you have a (minor) superpower while you're in shape to do one.
So it might be a matter of volume. It might be a jog doesn't sufficiently trigger a subconscious feeling of accomplishment that a longer distance will.
It could be triathlons give you Napoleon Dynamite skills in more that one thing. Nice thing with exercise: you can do lots of things to get it, so try branching out from running. Lift a bit, yoga bit, bike a bit, swim a bit, X-C ski a bit, shoot buckets, trail run, etc.
Maybe not the best style if you have knee issues though...
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Fairtex-Thai-Style-Jump-Rope/dp/B009Q...
So YMMV, but sometimes a big part of metal health can be adjusting what you eat and drink.
There are other ways to cope with depression (alcohol, for instance), but these are the healthy ones.
Get professional help if possible: Get meds and find a good counselor
Get the Big Three in order (Food, Sleep, Exercise): Eat healthy (e.g., DASH diet), get 8-9h sleep, get daily aerobic exercise (with a little anaerobic) and at least weekly strength training.
just kidding, same. it's hell.
By re-framing I mean trying to rethink my situation from a third party or what I'd say if a friend told me about their life and how they feel. I think for a lot people, they can be their own worst critic.
I have used meditation in the past with Headspace. It helped me a lot during some really low points. I started therapy a few weeks after meditation and my therapist was very supportive of it. I'm not going to claim mediation is a cure-all but it definitely helps the "re-framing" and rumination.
Also if you have some friends or family to hang out with, try do it. Even if you have to force yourself to go and you don't interact with them much, I believe it's better than being alone in your darker times.
drawing is also therapeutic.
Some advice here, such as exercising is good for the overall health of a human being, but depression isn't simple as this. Other advice is quite sad, such as "I eat a good stake" to avoid having a "dark mood". Depression is a serious mental issue that needs proper treatment, it isn't a joke.
A professional will be able to give you better guidance about this, with therapy and medicine.
In my personal life: A combination of medication(light dose Adderall and depakote), exercise, and appropriate sleep. See a therapist weekly.
I'm diagnosed bipolar and spend almost all my time in depression.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050527074357/http://www.kuro5h...
https://web.archive.org/web/20050601015240/http://www.kuro5h...
The ASCII graphs on the 'stress system' are fantastic, the rest IDK. Caveat emptor.
For me, I was socially isolated, failed out of school, bullied at school, home and work, unsuccessful with friends or women and kept getting laid off, fighting with my coworkers and managers.
It wasn’t until I learned about Aspergers and did a detailed study on all the problems people with Aspergers have that I understood all of my problems stemmed from me likely being on the spectrum. Once I learned that, I was able to understand why I was being targeted and why most people seemed to hate me immediately within one conversation despite me thinking I did nothing wrong. Then I was able to make adaptations for how to structure my life around the fact that I was different.
If your problem is a minor chemical imbalance and you just need some vitamins, a jog and rest - To me this isn’t really depression, as someone who was on and off suicidally depressed for a decade.
For me: I was depressed because my life sucked. I could make the depression go away temporarily but it always came back. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy really Helped me.
After being told by teachers, my family, coworkers, people at school that I was stupid, unlikeable and ugly etc it took me a long time to undo that because I really believed it. CBT is about arguing with invasive negative thinking and changing your filters into better ones.
When I get depressed now, I write down a plan to stop being depressed and go through all the steps sequentially from simple to hard. Usually works, but only if I start with easy things first.
Strange and useless.
I probably have "proper" depression because of a chemical imbalance. Nothing to do with vitamins or a quick jog.
It's much like therapy, though of course without a therapist's comments or insights, so it's not quite as good, but I still find it very helpful to talk through what's been going on with me.. and sometimes I even come to novel conclusions and insights through this process.. thoughts and perspectives I did not have before I started.
Othre things that help are listening to positive, energetic music, going outside on bright, sunny days, spending time in nature, eating a healthy diet (including supplements like D3 and B12 that I don't get enough of in my life otherwise), and exercise. Talking to interesting, friendly people helps, as does having a fulfilling job that pays enough to pay for the basic necessities and keep me from living on the streets. Occasional treats that make me feel better afterwards (as opposed to ones that feel good in the moment but awful or guilty afterwards).
I like to visit libraries a lot (particularly academic libraries), and often feel at peace there, lost among the greatest minds the world has ever seen, all at my beck and call, willing to share their experience and wisdom as I become ready to learn what they have to teach.
Computer games can also be de-stressing and distracting, thought when they're really good it's too easy to slip in to addiction, which could have adverse consequences if one plays them to the neglect of other important aspects of one's life.
Something else that helps is meditation (of the simply focusing on one's breath type). Avoiding toxic people who try to drag you down with them helps. Learning to enjoy your own company and like yourself instead of loathing yourself helps.
Sometimes talking to someone at a crisis hotline helps (if you're lucky enough to get someone good on the phone). Finding a good therapist you like, respect, and trust, and to whom you can do the hard work of opening up to is of course wonderful as well.
That said, some days nothing helps (or you are just too depressed to do any of those things that help, or forget about them), and you just have to ride out the feelings and try to take comfort in the recognition that those feelings are not permanent, and you will feel better sometime in the future. Having ridden out many such days in the past helps. As the saying goes, time heals all wounds.
Lots of water. Drink water when you are tired. When angry. When sad. When bored. When excited. When energetic. Removes toxic chemicals in the body.
Good thoughts. Great thoughts. Speak to a psychologist. Read a book. I did.
Arrogance hides away anger. Anger hides away sadness. Sadness hides away attitude of helplessness. Helplessness is lack of resourcefulness. So be resourceful.
Forgive. Forget. Move on.
Lower expectations of yourself.
Increase appreciation of others, and of yourself.
Lots of sleep. Depressed people sleep a lot. But your sleep needs to be strictly regulated.
> Good thoughts. Great thoughts. ...
> Arrogance hides away anger. Anger hides away sadness. Sadness hides away attitude of helplessness. Helplessness is lack of resourcefulness. So be resourceful.
This reads like Trump and Yoda merged into one.
A sun lamp helped some. So did lots of vitamin D. So did exercise. Pole dance, to be precise, I need to get back into that now that I'm settled. But it helped less and less every year, to the point where I felt like I only had a few years left before I'd be at serious risk of acting on that voice's suggestions.
Previously I also dealt with depression by staring my gender dysphoria in the face and taking a lot of hormones to persuade my body to get to the point where nobody thinks twice about giving me my preferred pronouns. Things were pretty good until I moved to places where there was Real Winter.
Dissect your depression. Analyze it. Listen to it - maybe even name it, that suicidal urge had a name borrowed from an old RPG character who did a lot of self-harm stuff. When you come to the conclusion that a lot of your depression comes from trying to deal with a particular Horrible Thing, then work on changing your life so that Horrible Thing is not part of it any more.
Oh yeah. Meditation can be valuable too. Just sit and watch your thoughts pass through you, if you catch one running away with you then just shrug, remind yourself "silence!" and get back to trying to empty your mind. Do it every day, or as close to every day as possible. This will give you a lot of training in recognizing different parts of your brain, detaching from unwanted trains of thought, and otherwise managing your brain. You will probably suck at first. Allow yourself to do this, celebrate getting better.
* which is to say "dismiss it and get on with my life as best I can despite being pretty miserable"; this little mental exercise of treating that urge as a separate personality and telling her that I did, indeed, hear her idea helped me dismiss it when it came up instead of spending ages going around in a mopey rut.
Also CBT/ACT are worth studying. (Cognitive behavioral therapy/ Acceptance and commitment therapy). I’ve written a little bit about them here: http://wiki.secretgeek.net/cognitive-behavioral-therapy
It's hard to be depressed when you are doubled over with laughter?
edit: Eases up the mood swings (TBH, I'm probably just in a stable phase (which gave me the will to stop coffee in the first place), but stopping wild upswings in mood with coffee cessation seems to have greatly muffled the back swings. touch wood touch wood touch wood.)
I'm also in the process of quitting coffee, I used to drink coffee very heavily (3-4 cups per day) and lots of soda, but it was affecting my mood too much.
I'll also have a tea in the middle of the day if I start feeling super dopey. The problem, as far as I can tell, isn't the caffeine, it's the amount in single+closely followed consecutive doses... I guess.
Other than that, Camomile and mint. There are a bunch of other fancy herbal alternatives but, those three are a good enough variety for me.
He explores the new and old science behind Psychedelics and their ability to cure depression, addiction and other aliments of the mind.
Another active study in this field; Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) https://maps.org/
What worked for me is letting go of therapy and focusing instead on what matters to me, or my self/character/personality/whatever you want to call it. There are some things in the world you can't control so focus on what you can control. Win your own small battles one at a time, they build up.
Once I was getting enough sleep, I could sort out my eating/weight and had energy to exercise, which were big contributing factors.
Then meditation, to learn "you are not the voices in your head" and a touch of stoicism to put your feelings in perspective.