The second most important thing to know is that "depression" is a label for at least a half-dozen, probably more, unrelated illnesses. What helps with one does nothing for another.
The third is that no matter what else you do, getting enough (but not too much) sleep, and enough exercise, are essential. Lack of either makes all varieties worse. But if you can't, do whatever you can. Sometimes just getting up is a triumph. Savor each.
Psychiatrists have no other way to determine which kind you have than to try various meds and see if any work. For some varieties no med works. Often a med does no good below a certain dosage level, or until you have been taking it for a month. Some work immediately. Most have annoying side effects that may gradually fade.
Many people have more than one kind, and need to treat both or all. It may be combined with other problems like anxiety.
Exercising, sleeping, and eating right can be hard, even prohibitively hard, when you are ill. Don't beat yourself up over being ill. Do whatever you can, now, and plan to do more when you can.
What people often neglect is that circumstances in your life, sometimes beyond your control, can in fact trap you into "a life you don't want" or the sort of life where you're just existing, not really living. And if circumstances are that powerful, the problems can both seem invisible and insurmountable. Sometimes, we sort of get trained into living in a box! And then keep on living like that even though circumstances may change!
So I believe it's important to reflect on what you really want, what interests you, and pursue that. If that is a big fear to do in practice, no wonder. Everybody would feel stuck if living on false premises, according to others' specifications or avoidance of such. Ultimately, people need to feel in control in their lives, even if just an illusion, when we do what we can we at least feel better about trying. Failing is then part of learning.
Watching movies, playing games, gaming social media, don't really count, as those activities become just a proxy for life if you don't pursue and utilize yourself in some other way that truly count in your heart. And it's a life-long road, where we often don't see the small steps we take into a bold new direction leads.
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.
Meditation, diet, sleep, and exercise can all help, but ultimately it was talking to a professional that made the most difference; all those other things have helped to sustain it since then.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
Talk to a mental health professional.
Take care of yourself.
First what depression was for me was a lack of positive emotion. Not that I felt sad all the time or that I was always down. It was just nothing felt good. I could eat something nice, do something for someone, watch a great movie and I felt nothing.
This was not so bad at first but as the months rolled past it got very hard to live with. Nothing motivated me. I didn't want to get up and do anything. Why do anything there was no positive feedback to do anything.
But I did. For some reason I kept my routine. I worked as hard as I could. Probably about 70% of my normal. But I just kept going. There was something in me that said this can't last forever. I was getting suicidal and was struggling to keep going but I just kept one foot in front of the other. Not thinking about much other than the day ahead.
Relationships were hard, I didn't have much patience for others. But I lived in close quarters with people, kept my job and maintained church commitments. I just kept going.
My hope was that one day things would get better and I didn't want to wake up one day finding I'd walked away from everything just to find things had gotten better. You know what they did! They got so much better. It took a year or so and little things started to feel good again. I was so happy when they did that things just spiraled upwards.
I've learnt a thing or two about my emotions and thoughts. Trying to keep from becoming fed up and down seems to stop me rolling back to that depressed state.
Looking back I think it was the routine that pulled me out. It was the keeping on going that gave me something to think about, instead of the negative thoughts. I couldn't create positive feedback but I could stop the negative (a little bit).
Other people have it way harder than I ever did and I don't want to say they could do the same thing but I do think that there is reason to have hope. Hope wont make you feel better but it can keep you going 'till you do.
I won't tell you what to hope in or how but hope cures depression. And by that I mean psychological depression,as I understand clinical depression has more to do with neurological and biochemical imbalance (for which you should seek out a legitimate psychiatrist).
I was actually thinking of submitting a similar question but about mental health in general(will do that another time).
But yeah,what I've learned is that hope is easy to come by but it carries with it risk where you hope but what you hoped for does not turn out well. If you can accept that risk,it will resolve what most people call depression at it's root where most other medication and therapy address symptoms first and maybe get to the root cause later.
I think educated and technical people are more susceptible to depression because they rationalize and analyze away hope much more readily than less educated people.
Other people mentioned getting enough sleep,excercise,hydration,good diet. And I'd also like to add on that a healthy relationship with your ownself and others. These all help but as someone who has struggled most of my adult life with depression and having desparately tried all these things my opinion is to prioritize hope.
A few years ago I had so much hope and as a result I lost a lot of weight,ate healthy all the time,slept better and relationships with people started to improve. I had a goal,something to look forward to,something I needed to get ready for and improve myself.
It was amazing,I may have had been sad once in a while but the horrible crippling depression went away.
I am not an expert,I just know I spent years isolated,not wanting to clean up after myself or even maintain basic hygeine at some point. It was unreal how this mental issue was causing physical pain and so many other side-effects. And I also saw what helped me,and it turns out actual psychologists also support my hope theory. Even if the hope is irrational ,is rational depression better? Of course everyone has a different story. I hope sharing my experience will help you and do let me know if you have any questions,this sickness stole most of my life,I hope you fight hard so you will never be in my shoes.
Then i remembered a wise one said that opposite of depression = expression.
So when you express yourself fully - depression falls off.
That is exactly what happened to me after ~10 yrs of depression.
First, let me tell you about my living situation and environment. I believe those two are very important in making these kinds of decisions. I live in a very tightly neat society. I meet my parents, and friends most often. But I was really good at hiding my situation. That made my problem worse. Why? Because, no one knew what I was dealing with. Everyone would realize I'm missing for a couple of days but they all figured I was busy. But I was going through hell.
I have tried various ways of threatening myself. Seeking professional advice is out of the question for me as I live an average life in a developing country.
So I gave up. But one day I decided to take a walk. It gave me a breather. So I did it again, this time longer. By the time I came up from my long walks I would be tired so I would eat and fall asleep.
This continued for months and years. Each time making my walks longer and longer, untill I would get so tired that all I wanted to do was eat and sleep.
I have been doing that for more than 3 years now. I feel active now and I have added Taekwando to my exercise too. At the same time period, I got the courage to marry my girl friend. Now we are having a baby.
I don't believe that I don't get depressed any more. Or may be I was never depressed in the first place as bad as other people. But I don't lock myself in my room for days thinking about death anymore.
It depends on how depressed you are and also evaluating whether it's clinical. A combination of medicine and extracurricular activities will get your life back on track!
I know you mentioned that you were looking for non$$ solutions but hear me out:
An overly simplified analogy to depression is like diabetes. Your body does not produce the right chemicals to process things. In the case of diabetes, it's insulin. For depression, there's some imbalance of serotonin or dopamine.
With diabetes, you must control your sugar intake via exercise, eating fewer carbs, fewer desserts, etc. With depression, a lot of same applies such as more exercise, meditation, journaling, etc.
If you had diabetes and all you did was limiting your sugar intake, then most doctors will say that's not enough. You must take insulin. Depression is similar. If it's clinical, behavioral therapy will definitely help, but you need to balance your chemicals.
If you need to chat more, let me know! I don't see a chat feature here, but we can find a way.
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.
This stuff helped very well.
Depression is a biochemical problem in your brain. It needs a biochemical solution. It is impossible to rationalize your way out of a depression. You cannot cure a depression by choosing behaviour.
Thinking about gyroscopes will not enable you to walk a straight line when drunk! Trying to cure a depression by choosing thoughts or behaviour is futile.
Also have a look at Amber O'Hearn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhxeVU-vT3Q Her mood disorder went away when she changed her diet.
https://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/november9/videos/653.htm...
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.
That said, I would do a lot of research before going in, but do see your doctor for sure. I say do research because depression can be a symptom of other things such as Bipolar type II or Cyclothymic disorder. Hypomania is the main hallmark that you would look into with those. I would also read and be prepared to talk to your doctor about anxiety symptoms as well as panic attack or ptsd symptoms. You may not have them but knowing the signs can help as depression can easily present with those, and you may need treatment for more than one thing to feel better.
Knowledge is power in this case. Jobs in IT and doctors are similar in some regards. Someone comes to us with a problem and we need to fix it. The more they know(symptom identification) and the better they can articulate why they think they may have some condition the easier it is to diagnose and fix a problem. Also both professions start with 'safe' treatments. We reboot the computer first, they try for pills or treatments with few to no side effects. We also go for the most obvious diagnoses first before getting into the esoteric,(the power is unplugged rather than the cable to supply power to the motherboard being bad) just like a doctor would go for depression rather than bipolar II for instance as that's the more common path.
I ran across this when I was suffering from some depression and was trying to see how other devs deal with it. It outlines some emotions and feelings about it, but also talks about bipolar type II and adhd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk
I hope this helps and feel free to reach out if you have questions. I'm still dealing with it myself so I get how hard it can be. It's not a failing of character or anything like that. It's a medical condition and should be monitored and treated as such by your doctor.
Hope you feel better soon!
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
For all my adult life I feel like I haven't got a clue why I'm here on this planet, and as a result been just slowly drifting to places in life where I don't want to be. The resulting depressed mood certainly seems to make the world look a lot more bleak than it really is, and making changes to my life has felt like an impossible task. However, these past few years I feel like I've been getting some real progress. I've been trying to follow all the usual advice to a tee, and in my case they have helped:
* precise sleep patterns, 8h of sleep same time every day
* stretching, regular exercise (both cardio and lifting)
* fixing diet: removing sugar, grains, excess carbs, all the common "bad" stuff. Basically something like a vegetarian-mediterranean diet.
* daily 20 min meditation
* daily journaling
* very little alcohol, only couple of drinks now and then and preferably in a social setting
* no smartphone
* no social media
* no porn
* trying to avoid reading news
* spending time in nature when possible
* no cannabis (I tried to use this as a crutch but for me it didn't help, only makes things worse)
* no other drugs[0]
[0] Only exception to drugs has been psilocybin mushrooms, which I microdose when I feel like I'm especially deep in the hole. This really helps for a little while, but I hold no delusions that I could just continue living my life like this and endure it with drugs.
I have never sought professional help, mainly because of the cost, time, and shame. If you can, of course, get professional help, but since you asked me how I treat it, here it is.
First, one of the main reasons why I felt that depression was not meeting my parents' expectations. There is always someone better than me and my parents always compared our successes, directly or indirectly.
Then I had a great religious crisis when I learned about truly evil and disgusting human behaviors. It simply made me lose my faith in God and in humans.
And finally I was never good with the opposite sex. Although I had many friends, I still slept alone.
At one point, in my life I simply didn't see any point in it. I realized that I can never make my parents proud, there is no God and humans are evil, and I will never find love.
I exercised regularly and ate decent. There was no need to add more exercise to fight depression.
I had some thoughts about suicide but nothing serious. It scared me though and I began to enter Buddhism and meditation. But Eastern philosophy did not work for my logical mind. The meditation was too boring for me.
That's when I discovered stoicism, it seemed to click better with me. Almost at the same time, I also found an online CBT software that also helped my anxiety.
Then, after trial and error, I developed an external observer mentality. I think of life as a boring video game. I think of money as points of video games. And I only focus on getting the maximum scores. I know this sounds superficial, but it helps me on difficult days.
Before this mentality, I was changing jobs without thinking about career change in general. Now I am very strategic and I progressed a lot in my career.
I really don't care about my parents' approval anymore and they seem to respect me more. When I stopped chasing the opposite sex, I started to attract them and now I am happily married. I still see the world as a dark place and this is something I still struggle with.
But I have to play this video game, control my character, and try to get a high score. My character needs sleep and exercise to keep its mind sharp for work. My character must do chores and do nice things for spouse or spouse will leave it.
Life is just a video game.
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.
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.
- Regular long distance runs (5-10miles), - morning pages, - meditation, - zinc, magnesium, fish oil, - professional help.
So YMMV, but sometimes a big part of metal health can be adjusting what you eat and drink.
drawing is also therapeutic.
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.
(The less medical-system dependent stuff is in the last section, not that you should avoid the medical system but if you're asking here on HN and not in a doctor's office that seems like what you might be looking for)
If you're depressed with cause, because you're unemployed, in a difficult position, you broke up, a loved one died, you fought with your friend, etc. then the usual advice does actually work. This depression makes sense and is totally normal. First, give your grief time, and second, actually force yourself to smile, go for a walk, or get a puppy. This depression is inherently temporary and you can speed the recovery along.
The thing is about depression with cause is that the cause may be ongoing. If you feel unfulfilled, if you're anxious, if you're suffering from addiction or illness, if people are abusing you, then of course you're depressed. Depression is a symptom. You don't need antidepressants you need to remove the cause.
Depression without cause is completely different which is why most people's advice is bad. They really did overcome depression, but a different kind. If your depression happens for no reason, even when things are going well, just randomly, or on a cycle, then you have to think about depression management. There is no total recovery but you can minimize it until its interference with your life is minimal.
The biology and psychology of depression including the two types above are discussed in Stanford's Sapolsky on depression (50 min lecture on YouTube).
Here's my personal ongoing experience with depression:
medicine worked for others but not for me. The side effects were worse than the depression. Things like sleep, exercise, time with friends, and nutrition seem to shorten the depressive episodes but they do not eliminate them. I plan around my inevitable next episode.
I have leave days set up, an understanding doctor's phone number, and my boss's understanding that I may suddenly take a couple of days sick leave for medical reasons. I call my friends and cancel way ahead of time. I have at-home hobbies to keep me busy. I eliminate my obligations because I wouldn't be able to keep them anyway and failing all my obligations every episode makes it worse every time. If I get depressed on vacation at least I don't feel guilty on top.
Speaking of which I get more depressed during vacations and weekends. Routine and commitments at work generally work against depression. So when I have nothing planned to do and I was expecting to myself to motivate myself to do something fun this is when depressive episodes happen most commonly. So even when I have nothing to do I keep a routine and I create commitments. I know this is in contrast to cancelling all my commitments when I'm depressed but it's true. When I'm not depressed my commitments keep me going so I make sure I'm always committed and I never have to rely on self-drive in the moment. I make plans with friends and book events and schedule things.
Anyway it's an ongoing thing and I've accepted it's never going away. I'm going to try a course of ketamine soon and I'll see how it goes but I'm not very hopeful. Even though I'm not depressed any less, more and more I am learning how to live my life despite depression.
Also, exercise. Do something outside of work that requires physical exertion, even if it's just walking.
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.)