Coping with depression...

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Voluntarism can help. Tutor or read to a kid. Deliver meals to shut-ins. Work at an animal shelter. Help at a food pantry. There are plenty of opportunities out there. Giving time freely to others who need help can sometimes distract us from worrying about our own plight. Plus, the people involved in charity work are frequently some of the most inspiring & optimistic folks you could ever hope to meet.
 
You need to see a medical professional (MD). There is help for you just have to see the right people. Super frustrating I know. Good luck to you.
 
When I feel a little down I make a daily to do list for the following day. I usually have five things and it can be as simple as
1) take out garbage
2) clean the grill
3) go to gym and walk on treadmill for 20 etc..

You get the point. I usually combine it with house hold chores and something to get me out of the house and I always make it the day before. It lifts me, gives me a feeling of accomplishment and pulls me out of my funk.
 
One thing I’ve observed helping a close relative cope with depression is the way a person can often beat themselves up for being depressed, sort of feeding the depressive spiral. Like you, he has used exercise and positive changes in personal habits to help cope. Unlike you, he has not discontinued alcohol use though has it much more controlled now.

I’ve worked with him about identifying and that behavior and trying to control the self-flagellating behavior, not trying to control the feeling itself. Being depressed is not a personal failing for which you should punish yourself. I have encouraged him to try to identify when he is thinking self-loathing thoughts or blaming himself for how he feels to try to have a counter-trigger — use that to focus on individual moments of joy or accomplishments or just moments in life that made him laugh for no reason.

Basically, he has had some success managing depression by not feeding it with self-directed negative feedback. It takes a kind of intellectual discipline to grasp a memory of joy or accomplishment at a moment when you maybe can’t FEEL that so much as visualize it, but I think part of the goal is just to keep contact with the light in your life, not top the summit every time you feel down. It makes the return trip much shorter and more bearable, and if you can cycle down like that perhaps you start to get more time in between descents.

Anyway, obviously from the above, I am no professional in the field, just sharing one experience from spending decades helping someone close cope.
 
UNCMSinLS said:
Voluntarism can help. Tutor or read to a kid. Deliver meals to shut-ins. Work at an animal shelter. Help at a food pantry. There are plenty of opportunities out there. Giving time freely to others who need help can sometimes distract us from worrying about our own plight. Plus, the people involved in charity work are frequently some of the most inspiring & optimistic folks you could ever hope to meet.
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You're not wrong about this. I volunteer whenever I have time. Monday through Thursday my teaching schedule prevents anything but the basics. I teach from 9am to 2pm and then from 6 to 1030. In the break, I do an hour at the gym, walk the dogs, start dinner, etc. I also walk after the night class to chill my brain. Then I'm up at 7 to rinse and repeat. My time to volunteer is on the weekends and I do so when I can.
 
Outside of the therapists who frequent the board, I probably have more experience with this than anyone here. When I saw this, I DM'd the OP to reach out and offer thoughts and gather a bit of information. The DM remains unanswered. His other posts on the thread have been defensive and not indicative of someone genuinely looking for assistance -- although in fairness, much of the advice was nonsense about using drugs to cure depression. He seems to want to complain, which is fine but the thread title should be edited to more accurately capture what the thread is actually about.
 
nycfan said:
I have encouraged him to try to identify when he is thinking self-loathing thoughts or blaming himself for how he feels to try to have a counter-trigger — use that to focus on individual moments of joy or accomplishments or just moments in life that made him laugh for no reason.

Basically, he has had some success managing depression by not feeding it with self-directed negative feedback. It takes a kind of intellectual discipline to grasp a memory of joy or accomplishment at a moment when you maybe can’t FEEL that so much as visualize it, but I think part of the goal is just to keep contact with the light in your life, not top the summit every time you feel down. It makes the return trip much shorter and more bearable, and if you can cycle down like that perhaps you start to get more time in between descents.
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You are right that feedback often makes these problems worse (technically, the feedback here is positive, though the signal itself is negative), and I'm glad this counter-trigger strategy has worked for him. I am skeptical, though, of its general efficacy. Generally speaking, I don't anticipate "think happy thoughts" is likely to be an effective strategy for most people. I don't say that to denigrate or mock. That's what therapy is all about -- finding individualized ways of coping, often based on a therapeutic model but one that is loosely defined in most cases (not CBT but I don't think that's in the mix for this posters). I am skeptical that this advice will be generalizable but it's not wrong to mention it or describe it.
 
superrific said:
Outside of the therapists who frequent the board, I probably have more experience with this than anyone here. When I saw this, I DM'd the OP to reach out and offer thoughts and gather a bit of information. The DM remains unanswered. His other posts on the thread have been defensive and not indicative of someone genuinely looking for assistance -- although in fairness, much of the advice was nonsense about using drugs to cure depression. He seems to want to complain, which is fine but the thread title should be edited to more accurately capture what the thread is actually about.
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You're a real piece of work. There's a reason I've told you before that I don't engage with you.
 
superrific said:
Outside of the therapists who frequent the board, I probably have more experience with this than anyone here. When I saw this, I DM'd the OP to reach out and offer thoughts and gather a bit of information. The DM remains unanswered. His other posts on the thread have been defensive and not indicative of someone genuinely looking for assistance -- although in fairness, much of the advice was nonsense about using drugs to cure depression. He seems to want to complain, which is fine but the thread title should be edited to more accurately capture what the thread is actually about.
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Man, I learn a lot from your posts but your self-scouting seems to take a hit amidst heightened rhetoric, and subsequently makes me want to tune you out. I recognize you approach with good intentions. From my perspective, the assumption of good intentions deteriorates by trying to control the narrative and processing of long established, good faith posters - especially with respect to their health.

This post is less than 24 hrs old. The OP may intend a substantive response to your DM (which I appreciate you doing, fwiw, bc you indeed know a lot about this subject), and circumstances haven’t allowed the time nor psychological space to do so (or this, or that, or whatever). OP may not appreciate your DM, and thus has no desire to respond; that’s perfectly appropriate, too. Neither of the above is plausible, too. Irrespective, you trying to control isn’t helpful, again, from my perspective.

Also, complaining is a coping strategy.

ETA: this post was effectively written simultaneously to OP’s response.
 
HeelingAg said:
Man, I learn a lot from your posts but your self-scouting seems to take a hit amidst heightened rhetoric, and subsequently makes me want to tune you out. I recognize you approach with good intentions. From my perspective, the assumption of good intentions deteriorates by trying to control the narrative and processing of long established, good faith posters - especially with respect to their health.

This post is less than 24 hrs old. The OP may intend a substantive response to your DM (which I appreciate you doing, fwiw, bc you indeed know a lot about this subject), and circumstances haven’t allowed the time nor psychological space to do so (or this, or that, or whatever). OP may not appreciate your DM, and thus has no desire to respond; that’s perfectly appropriate, too. Neither of the above is plausible, too. Irrespective, you trying to control isn’t helpful, again, from my perspective.
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The poster is free to do whatever he wants. If it were me, I would at least say "thank you" even if I didn't want to engage. And what narrative am I trying to control?

Here's how I look at it: you can't make progress without accepting your position and condition. My post was designed in part to root that out. If the poster wants to address his depression, then he needs to a) accept that he is a depressed individual and then b) take measures that depressed individuals take to help themselves. Otherwise, he's just complaining (which is actually a terrible, terrible way of coping with depression).

This is exceedingly common behavior, of course. My wife sees patients all the time who give some variant of the "nothing ever works for me; I've seen MDs before and it was useless." And it turns out that the MD recommended one drug, it didn't work very well, and the patient decided to bail on the whole process. Or the patient didn't take the medication regularly, and then bailed. So on and so forth. I did some of that when I was really struggling two decades ago.

What every depressed person needs is someone who will kick their ass asking them if they want to get better. Ideally, that someone isn't posting on a message board. I don't think I'm the best person to deliver that message. But if it's not delivered at all, then there will be no progress.
 
SmilingJack said:
I'm in a men's group and one of the participants is going down to Jamaica for a supervised psilocybin therapy session. His brother in-law who's a type A straight laced guy told him it changed his life and really helped. Maybe worth a look?
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No, no, no. If you are traveling Jamaica for a mental health treatment, you're not doing it right. In part that's because it's difficult to distinguish feeling better from just being in Jamaica.

Psilocybin therapy has some potential but it's novel, not well understood, and has not been approved in the US for good reasons. Also, there is no reliable training for "supervised shroom therapy" because, again, it's not well understood how it works. What I've heard is that the "supervised therapy" is often little more than trying to prevent a bad trip.
 
wmheel1287 said:
You're a real piece of work. There's a reason I've told you before that I don't engage with you.
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What you're looking for is a piece of work. You aren't going to find solutions to your problems from people who have never had an emotional disturbance in their lives.

It's no sweat off my back. Your loss. It's not as if I was charging for the advice.
 
Just about everything is a fraud in this country and most other countries when it comes to making $. Mental healthcare is one of the biggest frauds there is along with chiropractic care.

"Chemical imbalance" is a fraud and only occurs after the doctors and big pharma gets you on their poisons.

Pill use and suicides have increased all over the world. Should make any person question it, but crutches are so much easier to believe in.

Wishing you the best wm
 
I've had more than a half dozen major emotional disturbances in my life by any standards. I'd not dream of telling anyone else how they need to handle things. The most damaging of those disturbances was when in the midst of another serious one, my wife and I thought that we had a right to tell each other how we should handle things. It almost broke our marriage and 40 years later we still have the scars.

I've battled chronic depression with acute episodes for over 50 years. I've done therapy and self medicated. The only way I got through it was focusing on getting up every day with at least one thing I was determined to get done. I failed a lot during the bad times but kept trying. Unfortunately, the way I finally came to grips with it was a realization that when I get up in the morning that no matter how shitty the day is, I've probably made it through worse.
 
finesse said:
I've battled chronic depression with acute episodes for over 50 years. I've done therapy and self medicated. The only way I got through it was focusing on getting up every day with at least one thing I was determined to get done.
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This is, generally speaking, a good strategy (though one that won't work for everyone).

It's worth adding that it doesn't really matter whether the thing is important. I had a NYC therapist once recommend to me that I take a dollar bill to the Village and go into every single store asking for change. A bill into quarters, Quarters into a bill. Up and down the block. The reason was to make me do something that was uncomfortable. That was the whole point. Sometimes, that's the point that's missing.
 
superrific said:
You are right that feedback often makes these problems worse (technically, the feedback here is positive, though the signal itself is negative), and I'm glad this counter-trigger strategy has worked for him. I am skeptical, though, of its general efficacy. Generally speaking, I don't anticipate "think happy thoughts" is likely to be an effective strategy for most people. I don't say that to denigrate or mock. That's what therapy is all about -- finding individualized ways of coping, often based on a therapeutic model but one that is loosely defined in most cases (not CBT but I don't think that's in the mix for this posters). I am skeptical that this advice will be generalizable but it's not wrong to mention it or describe it.
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Reducing my post to "think happy thoughts" is actually denigrating and basically ignoring the substance, but fine.

Which doesn't mean anything in my post is particularly valuable to the OP or anyone else, just an honest response.
 
nycfan said:
Reducing my post to "think happy thoughts" is actually denigrating and basically ignoring the substance, but fine.
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I didn't mean to denigrate; I was using shorthand. You were in fact talking about thinking happy thoughts, literally -- and I was merely using that for a reference point. I get that there's more to it than mere flippancy. And if it has worked for some people, good. That's the thing about mental health. Treatments can so often be highly customized that they sometimes seem not to be treatments at all.

That said, I don't think the strategy you suggested is likely to be effective for most people. For one thing, people who are depressed often have trouble even accessing those memories. Like, there have been times in my life when I can't think of a single good thing that happened to me. I'm aware that they occurred, but they are suppressed or, in some cases, reinterpreted.

I think what your approach amounts to is "act opposite," which is a part of several effective behavioral therapy frameworks. There is value in that, especially when you're acting opposite to a dysregulated mental state. But usually you want "act opposite" to be more concrete. Instead of thinking about a happy memory, do something that you like. Indulge yourself in a way that would normally not do. The advantage of doing rather than thinking is that the doing is less interrupted by the cycle of depression itself.
 
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