Ask Lemmy

Hello. I am 51 and have been battling chronic, often severe, depression since 1989. I also found "professional help" ineffective on the psychology side and ultimately harmful on the psychiatry side (meds)...for me. I understand that they are helpful for most, but no two people are the same.

I have found that there is no one thing you can do. There is no "silver bullet". It will likely take a number of techniques and solutions in conjunction and others only when needed. Here are a few that might help, or might not.

• Fitness and Exercise - Yes, I know. The last thing you want to do is torture yourself further but, the effects can be immediate. Sometimes a strength and cardio workout can give you enough of a chemical kick in the ass to help you through at least part of your day.

• Bullet Journaling - Journaling is the most useful tip I got from a therapist, but it wasn't until I tried Bullet Journaling that I saw its potential. It is very easy to get lost in ourselves and lose all hope of anything ever being better. Keeping a journal, especially one as detailed and focused on your well-being as a bullet journal, can really help you realize tye progress you have made. It can also help you evaluate your past states of mind and possibly find relationships between those states of mind and things you have done. Maybe you notice a pattern between depressive episodes and eating steak or broccoli or chats with your sister, etc. Don't scoff, depression is fucking weird. Anyway, I highly recommend reading The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll. If money is an issue, you can probably find it in you local library system, used book stores, or 🏴‍☠️ if you must. I bought a copy used on Amazon for $6.

• Quit Alcohol - Sorry. Depression and alcohol consumption are besties and every time they get together, you pay the price. Not much more to say than that.

• Microdose - I personally don't think it is a good idea to get full on high. Again, we are not identical robots. Everyone has a different bio-chemical system, but abuse of any one substance never tends to work out well. That said, microdosing weed literally saved my life. I won't go into details but chronic and severe insomnia had me a the edge of suicide. The meds I was being given were not helping and they were literally stealing "me" from myself. Two puffs from a vape pen before bed (not enough to get me proper high) gave me a solid five to six hours of sleep (I was getting 60-90 minutes before).

• Diet - Eat as clean as you can. The less processed food and ingredients the better (looking at you sugar). Eat balanced. Instead of making meat the centerpiece of the meal, try making the enhancement. Lots of greens, legumes, fruit, etc, on your plate to go along with your small piece of protein. EDIT: This one is important not only for nutrition but also because of your microbiome. There is increasing evidence of links between microbiotic gut health and mental health. But also, you need good nutrition.

• Hydrate - I struggle with this one too.

• Interact with others in person - I am not saying that you need friends and family, or that you need to surround yourself by loving relationships, etc. All that sounds great, but isn't on the cards for many people. It also comes with the risk of introducing toxic people or relationships into your life. What I mean is, try to make an effort to engage with the humans around you, even if it is superficial. I small talk with my cashier at the market, my waiter, etc. I try to engage with others as often as I can. It is low risk because if they don't respond you can move on and you will never see them again, and even if you do, they will likely not remember you. Just don't keep trying with that one person if it didn't work previously. Don't be creepy. The point is that our stupid monkey brains need that. We do not do well with absolute isolation.

• Sunlight - You need it.

• Recognize and remove toxic people and relationships from your orbit - The word "orbit" is on purpose. I do mean directly from your life, that should be obvious, but I also mean from your vicinity. Maybe you hang with someone who's nice but they are in a toxic relationship. You don't need that energy around you, especially if that person is just an acquaintance (we overuse the word friend when we often mean close acquaintance). This might sound cold but you need to save yourself before you even think about trying to save others. Otherwise your depressed ass might do more harm than good.

Remember, these are just opinions. No two people are the same. You need to find what works for you.

1. Sadness and depression are chemical events in your brain that you have no conscious control over
2. You can consciously control some of the common triggers that lead to negative thoughts but most people can't completely turn off given thoughts
3. Your brain is like the earth and thoughts are like rivers, the more you think certain ways the more you will continue to think those ways, neural pathways are strengthened by their activations

Learn to redirect, wear a bracelet or similar physical reminder of a specific thing you like, when you experience the thoughts you want to avoid, redirect and focus on the things you like

Change your environment, identify triggers that push you toward depression and avoid them. Some literally cannot be avoided, and some situations are impossible to escape, in those cases accept the associated negativity and redirect

Find people who have the attitudes and feelings you want to emulate and spend time with them, we are social and learn much from our peers

Ingest media that aligns with your desired world view, avoid tragedies, horror movies, gore, popular doom news media, etc. This will force you into an echo chamber but it is a popular coping technique

Most important you are your own person, write down how you feel and what triggered those emotions every day. You can't really know if you're improving if you don't have a record

sing. doesn't matter what you sing or how well.

Maybe see if there are help groups like the ones for alcoholics. I'm sure they also exist for depressed people, or people who procrastinate. Generally they're lead by volunteers and people who suffered through it themselves and not professionals who need to be paid...

Don't do it on your own, do it with other people.

I found that the more time I spent with other people, the less time I was spending beating myself up.

I found gaining an interest in hobbies that are difficult gave me a will to live. I want to experience mastering all of these crafts that take decades to master.

Cooking, drawing, woodworking. Becoming a master of just one is hard enough, so every minute is extremely precious. I try to spend as much time as possible practicing and learning.

I can't think of suicide because I worked so hard to male this much progress, and I still want to experience my other hobbies.

One's craft helps one's life. An old Japanese saying.

It’s so ironic how almost everyone tells you to go get professional help, but I guess that’s the best option.

One simple thing you can do is workout. It’s physically painful so you can forget about the harsh reality for a moment, plus you’ll become (physically) healthier.

Steps

1. Have hope. Believe that it's possible to get better.
2. Practice. Try something, anything, that might actually help.
3. Keep going. Maintain the ritual, show up to practice, keep trying.
4. Reflect. At some point if it's not working that's fine go to step 1.

I don't have depression. Journaling help, saying stuff out loud helps. Seems that antidepressants work. There might be other factors that contribute to the depression and can be minimised to help take the weight off.

You're probably in a better place than most severely depressed people because you think that you can get better! Probably the best thing to do is keep a growth mindset and try to learn as much as you can about depression. Getting over depression is a journey.

Lots of other people have said running & friends, those things help me. But recently/now I am depressed and running 40 miles a week and seeing my friends regularly.

What's a really cheap solution? Pirate some bibliotherapy books! Feeling good by David D. Burns is older, but I'm reading it right now and it seems like a really solid CBT book. I would also recommend "Adult children of emotionally immature parents". It helped me understand why I am the way I am

The hardest part for me is noticing when my thoughts are turning situations from good or neutral into bad situations. Paying attention to your thoughts in an objective way is hard! But some sort of mindfulness practice can help.

Journaling can be useful! You can train your brain to look for good things by writing out 3 good things that happened or you did every night.

You don't have to go to a specialist to get antidepressants; many GPs will prescribe them if you ask. I also see a lot of online clinics offering prescriptions without an in-person appointment, but I don't have personal experience with that. The standard antidepressants are fairly safe and I wouldn't be too worried about side effects to take them without a psychiatrist's supervision. Nothing except antidepressants worked to end my depressive episodes, as opposed to making them easier to bear.

Other than that, what helped me most was realizing that I couldn't trust my own thoughts. It's hard, because generally "X is true" and "I think X is true" are subjectively the same thing. When I went through periods of depression, I sincerely believed that I had never been happy and that my depression would never end, but as a matter of fact I had been happy (or at least reasonably content) for most of my life and prior episodes of depression had ended. Being able to realize that I had actually been happy and probably would be again, despite what felt true in that moment, made depression much more bearable.

Another key intervention for me was moving closer to my family. It felt like a huge defeat (here I was, an adult who couldn't handle living on his own) but I told myself "plan based on who you are, not who you wish you were". Having supportive people around helped a lot; when I'm depressed I don't want to be around other people but that is actually the wrong strategy. "I just want to be alone" is one of those thoughts that I shouldn't trust.

Finally, a really useful mental strategy is to consider what advice you would give to a good friend in a situation similar to your own, and then to act on that advice yourself. My depression was accompanied by a great deal of self-loathing but that loathing didn't extend to my friends (even my imaginary friends). I found that I often knew exactly what advice I would give a friend, and it wasn't to do what I had been planning to do.

I know your point. Access to professional help is a privilege that few have.

I think next best thing is socialising. There's probably groups in your area (see social media for that, meetup, Facebook, forums) that meet up and talk. I highly recommend in-person meetings. Also I tried giving my body some help with food. Carbs give you some serotonin.

Professional help can be cheap! You just might have to look little harder. For a while, I saw a psychologist who had a deal with a church where they subsidized most of his fee. So it was super cheap for me.

One of the most helpful things for me was Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT. I used a workbook that helped me see how skewed and untrue some of my thinking was.

Finally, walking in nature or, even better, exercise! Find what works for you. I like jump rope. Good luck!

Very unsuccessfully, I've been fighting this fight for over 30 years in and out of the care of doctors, luckily right now I have insurance so I'm just out copays and whatever fees the psychiatrist's office decides to send my way but it's worth it because I'm stable. Without professional help I pile on distractions, hobbies, overwork, volunteering, etc. Not a healthy coping strategy, I've tried to kill myself twice (the last time earned me a 4 day medically induced coma) and been put on psychiatric hold. I know you said poor people can't afford it but there are clinics where I live that deal almost exclusively with the homeless, if they can find a way to help them they may be able to help people in better financial positions who still can't afford treatment on their budget.

Edit: to address your question more productively, one of the things I've been doing on my own is writing to myself. I have been thinking about my situation and identifying behaviors that I need to change. When I go through my days I don't really consider my actions but when sit and really think about it I can see what I am doing that is toxic, then when I start to do it again it's easier to identify in the moment and attempt to alter whatever I would have previously done, e.g. when I am frustrated with something one of my kids has done I used to yell quite a lot, now I excuse myself to a quiet place, calm down a bit, and then go back to address their behavior. I haven't even seen my counselor since my last suicide attempt (less than 3 weeks ago) but I found that this has helped me immensely.

I have tried a couple different things, but they haven't really helped me.

I started running back in March. I used a free android app called Just Run and I bought myself a cheap smartwatch to track my distance. Like the app suggested, I take 1-2 rest days in between each run day...which seems to help me stay relatively consistent in doing exercises because it allows for breaks. It was more satisfying in the beginning being able to check off days in the app, but even then it only does so much. It provides a brief distraction I guess. I have tried to continue it because it's supposed to be good for you regardless. Although running really does suck ass haha.

Recently I have been trying to take an OTC supplement called St. John's Wort. It is one of the few supplements that has showed statistically significant results similar to SSRIs in clinical trials. However, do note that if you take literally any other medicine, please do not take it. It interferes with basically every other drug out there. But if you aren't on any meds it might be worth trying. I haven't found a noticeable difference with it either after trying it for several weeks. But I just bought a "better" brand and am planning to increase the dosage a bit (I was taking one less dose than recommended on the bottle), so we'll see if it does anything.

So yeah neither of these worked for me. But I've read that they have worked for others. It doesn't necessarily hurt to try them. Except like I said, please do NOT take St. John's Wort if you are taking any other medication.

Recently someone recommended a book about this topic. I haven't read it (yet), but I found the title quite fascinating. It was in German, so I'm trying to translate:

"Do not believe everything that you think".