What cured your depression, Veeky Forums? Books? Philosophy? Self-help?

it's freaking me out that whoever made this knew exactly which word salad would activate my almonds. It's like all the words on the right are on the exact cusp between being meaningless schizo and actual ideas.

Holy shit, are you me?

I've been depressed for the past 7 years or so. Whenever I've had a small hiatus it's usually been work, exercise, and no alcohol.

>I decided to mix elements of stoicism with worldly passion and thoughts of death, and I have never felt better.

Can you speak more on this? Sounds interesting desu.

Books alone don't help. Ideas do. Also:

>do work out, it distracts the mind and injects the body with endorphins

>nothing really matters on a cosmic scale, stop worrying about what people say or cringing in the shower about embarrassing moments from the past

>stay busy, this is paramount or else your mind will only focus on negative thoughts like suicide or the meaninglessness of life

Lifting, writing, quitting my job.

Anti-inflammatory diet
Vitamin and mineral supplements
Reading books instead of using the computer.
Cardio exercise for temporary mood elevation
Socialisation, especially multiple sexual partners giving you that sweet, sweet validation
SSRI's
Meditation and Cognitive Behaviour therapy techniques.
Creative writing, singing and playing guitar.

---

Oh, you said cured....

>mfw I'm more sure than ever that depression is caused by how we relate to our environment more so than how the environment affects us - except when our relation is accurate and the environment doesn't allow us to change it or ourselves to overcome it.

A lot of anons said work and it's true lol, getting a job helps out a ton.

Find a strong woman who has her shit together and follow her lead.

Robert Walser taught me about love and what it means to be free

jungian individuation

Experience.

>Books don't help
How many books have you **studied** (not simply read) and of what type

why did he do that? how come his testosterone didnt protect him from such dumb stunt?

It was a disease. Basically everyone in his family shot themselves.

>disease
a meme. an intergenerational meme.

Lifting

sorry i dont know the new slang terms

i tried this simple trick that has doctors freaking out: i was on a crisis, was highly anxious and depressed and simply started recording myself with my phone, on a sort of logbook way, sometimes once a day, sometimes 4 times a day. then i would listen to them and they all were calming, my thoughts started to make sense and not being chaotic anymore. trick is to put everything that comes to the mind, no self censoring, even the dirtiest or most pathetic stuff should be put out on words. it also helped me better my diction, and, managed to record a voice that i knew how it was going to sound (normally you wont recognize your own voice, or will be annoyed by it).

not new, its old family therapy stuff.

I don't understand people saying "getajoblmao".
Ofcourse a job that you are intrested in and passionate about will help. But most of depressed types that post in threads akin to this are likely to end up in some 9 to 5 wageslave hell which will make them even more miserable.

oh man i love the family therapy series

This is correct.

This actually makes complete sense. This is correct as well.

unironically this

I don't know if id want to voice the shit going on in my head. What if someone heard? Fucking NSA is probably listening in too.

the whole ordeal is "get a job and stop living with your parents". then, voila, as an act of magic all the silly manchild stuff that seemed to be super important, wont be anymore when you have to pay for the space where you sleep, the food and the electricity you use.

as a neet, i doubt this will be the case when i finally get that full time position, unless that fulltime position pays min wage, which it won't.

as a neet, your opinion on everything is fucking worthless.

Catholicism

no it isn't, im educated and have worked multiple jobs. I'm just currently down on my luck.

realizing the difference between anticipatory pleasure and consummatory pleasure

ie just do it. if you fake it for long enough you will make it

My depression is incurable, and will be managed for the rest of my life. I will never have the option of any sort of recovery.

get a job.

Vitamin D supplements.

Neets and self employed are on the same level, everyone else is filth. The idea of working for some faggot disgusts me even if I'm making more money

...

The novelty wears off after a few years.

dont work for a faggot then

Also, if you start your own business and hire employees, do YOU then become the faggot?

self employed are gods, wagies just wage, but are good people, citizens that earned their vote. neets are subhuman scum.

Cooperatives are patrician

>a few years.
which are enough to sort your shit out.

This isn't even a meme. Most people who think they're depressed are really just suffering from a deficiency and a week of taking a 1000 IU pill per day will turn them into a completely new person. I really had no idea how tired and fatigued I was until I did it. I have energy and I can focus now.

>tfw you've been suffering from depression since childhood and you develop legit ocd during adulthood

placebo. but good for you.

self employed isnt all its cracked up to be. there's something to be said for the peace of mind that comes with a 5 year contract salaried position

Not really.

>there's something to be said for the peace of mind that comes with a 5 year contract salaried position
cant empathize with that. i like my freedom, im self employed and i work twice as much as when i worked for a salary, but its worth it. that 5 year contract is literally "we own your ass for the next 5 years".

What makes you think vitamin supplements don't do what they're supposed to?

well my job is too sophisticated for anyone to micromanage me anyway. if i was self employed i wouldnt have access to the resources of a firm and i'd be scrounging for cases in order to meet a bottom line. some of my coevals are private practitioners and they spend assloads of time driving across counties in order to maintain a sufficient caseload.

i guess it depends on what business youre in.

they are nowadays homeopathy.

How could books or philosophy possibly help if depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain? It’s not something that can be reasoned away.

most depression is not caused a chemical imbalance

(((((chemical imbalance))))) is a product of the pharma-rhetoric

are you trolling or actually just retarded? Ever hear of an existential crisis? Ever hear of people living ass lives and becoming depressed because of it?

Depression can happen genetically or it can happen by being put through life's meat grinder.

The dirty secret is that there's not a whole lot of evidence for the "chemical imbalance" shit. Sometimes treating patients chemically works and sometimes it doesn't.

>Ever hear of an existential crisis
>most depression is not caused a chemical imbalance
Then it’s just people moping around? I’ve been trying to take depression more seriously but you guys are giving me mixed signals.

mouthbreather detected

fun fact: no one has been able to point exactly where is the (((chemical imbalance))) or any sort of evidence or manifestation of such state of things inside your head.

with the advent of modern imaging devices, all they have proven is that the "depressed" brain has less activity or activity focalized just in certain parts of it, explaining "the tunnel vision" or lack of options described by depressed patients. now, when you put these patients into exercise routines, proper and healthy food, their brains start to glow again. shrooms also do wonders, way better than zombie pills, that fail even against placebo.

The upanishads, nondirective meditation, gnosis, accepting and allowing any negativity instead of fighting it, avoiding all new age mindfulness bullshit and modern psychiatry (talking to a clipboard with a degree doesn't do a fucking thing), reading really good literature nice and slow, avoiding nofap bullshit but also not letting myself whack compulsively, realizing that at the core we are all consciousness/awareness and nothing really matters (doesn't really do anything but is a relief to remember at times), letting go of the hopes of attaining pure happiness, learning not to expect a grand answer to life's questions that will snap me out of this deepening rut and instead listening to my heart and whatever speaks to it.

>I’ve been trying to take depression more seriously
classic. depressives are super serious about their tiny "problems".

It's a useful fiction though, otherwise non-medical types think they're just making it up

>realizing that at the core we are all consciousness/awareness and nothing really matters
i too like rick & morty and bill hicks.

stoicism. Meditations

>exercise routines, proper and healthy food

Ive been injured for fucking years now, which has severely limited my activity. It has definitely made my depression worse.

1) Because I am out of shape and less aesthetic
2) am weak as fuck

these both contribute to my overall sense of a loss of self.

and separately but relatedley 3) i think it has affected the way my body works, hormones, and regulation of my happy chemicals.

god i miss vigorous exercise

3)

It's more a higher chance of a negative reaction to something.

I have OCD and GAD and if I get run down and out of routine I start to obsess to the point of exhaustion about death, existence, meaning of life etc.

Now when I'm in a better head space those subjects still interest me but my brain doesn't send me spiraling into negativity and repeating "what if/can't deal with" over and over in my head.

r u me?

pilates? even the most crippled fucks can do pilates, and can be very hardcore.

Hahaha fuck that

Sometimes people are depressed because their lives suck. Sometimes people let their lives suck and then get depressed as a result. Once you're depressed it's very hard to stop being depressed, but that's more often than not due to the depressive feedback loop that gets established in your mind. You reach a point where you're depressed because your life sucks, but the only reason your life sucks anymore is because you're depressed.

Unless a doctor has told you you have a chemical imbalance you shouldn't assume you do. That's actually a great way of reinforcing and prolonging your depression ("well I can't change, it's physiological"). It's also worth considering how the doctor's examining you. Can they tell you have a chemical imbalance only from talking to you? Seems unlikely. They might be able to say you behave similarly to someone that does, but that's hardly conclusive proof. Given that depression's the only illness that you can think your way into contracting, mindset is really important.

Also the whole "let's destigmatize depression" movement is just serving to normalize and ultimately romanticize mental illness, especially among young people.

you can’t cure depression unless you radically change the structure of the brain ornthe environment, both of which are usually impossible for depressed people

But what IS depression, if not a chemical imbalance? I’m just trying to understand, how does it differ from being really really sad and unmotivated?

depression as a "state" exists, its a point of inertia. you arent sad and unmotivated anymore, you "become" sad and unmotivated, you, via reinforcement, build all these defeatist thought patterns inside your head, which of course have an electro-chemical correlation -synapses are slower and have a shorter reach, thats why it impacts heavily things like creativity-, so even willing to think different, youre pulled into this habit and new way of being, thats why it needs radical intervention.

the time frame and the severity of the depression. being 'really really sad and unmotivated' are part of the diagnosis, but there are other criteria that must be fulfilled to diagnose major depressive disorder. another one called 'persistent depressive disorder' is often a comorbidity of other mental illnesses

>'persistent depressive disorder'
i think thats just a propension for melancholia, which is a nice trait to have, but unmanaged, yeah can be a burden and throw you into depression.

you can cure depression by fucking killing yourself

I believe, based on my personal experiences, that the human mind can only handle true crippling depression or sadness for a limited amount of time before something in the way you think will be forced to change, as some sort of survival mechanism. There's a light at the end of the tunnel for you, OP. Just try to have some fun and not stress about little things.

ill give it a gander, though i doubt it

I had a great trip but afterwards shrooms gave me serious suicidal thoughts and anxiety to the point where I would be throwing up multiple times a day just coping with it. I came out stronger after a few months but it definitely didn't cure anything while also killing any semblance of confidence I had about my mental state. I went from hoping to live until the twenty second century to living with a constant fear that I'll kill myself and ruin my families lives

After a long time looking for certainty in certain thoughts I started to realize that the modality of the thought, the thinking, preceded the thought and made it possible. So instead of trying to figure out what I wanted to think, what form of certainty I wanted, and where I could find that certainty, I started to notice that the first question I should be asking is "why" I want this or that certainty at all, and then why I want certainty at all, why I want anything at all.

Eventually that made me realise that hope is very essential to the possibility of thinking, in a kind of platonist way where hope is hope for the Good in some form or another. I ended up in kind of an inversion of the typical view of Schopenhauer or Buddhism, where instead of taking saṃsāra as futile or cyclical, I take hope and futurity as pointing toward the Good and having some role in making it manifest.

There are enough unanswered questions about why things are as they are, including the ontological status of consciousness or the hard problem of why subjective experience is an ontological property of a universe that otherwise does not "need" it, for me to be hopeful for the future. Likewise for all the concepts and ideas we have, as thinking beings: if the existence of consciousness can't be hand-waved away as arbitrary, how can the features of consciousness, some of the most important of which are hope, love, curiosity, and the desire for perpetual becoming, overcoming, self-becoming and self-overcoming?

I'm still depressed in a way, but I feel it more like duty than listless nihilism now. I would recommend reading William James' "virtual" philosophy of radical empiricism and pragmatic pluralism, Henri Bergson's philosophy of creative evolution, Emmanuel Levinas on "love," and maybe Schelling's 1841 Berlin lectures.

lol. you had to microdose. you microdose to alleviate the depression grip, all while you focus your life into the right direction by acting on it, by doing what you need to do, and stopping doing what is harming you. any type of therapy needs supervision, most people cant do it alone.

its the same thing as major depressive disorder except the symptoms have to last for 2 years rather than 2 weeks

I was diagnosed with melancholia after years of depression by a very reputable psychiatrist in my country, got put on SNRIs and pretty immediately felt better and noticed tangible changes in my emotions/physiology
can it really all just be a placebo effect?

Yea no, I'll rather not have to constantly take psychedelics to not want to blow my brains out, that's just pathetic. And I thought I was mentally weak....

SSRI's worked well for my anxiety. They're sort of the easy way out though as therapy or a combination of the 2 have the best effects (therapy even beating out just the medication in most cases) and I still suffer from panic attacks from time to time.

It's made it much harder for me to go into full blown panic but when I do its pretty hard to undue my circular thinking. I think I may go in for CBT since I've lost control of my obsessive ruminations in recent years.

You don't trip when micro dosing.

Tell that to the crack in the sidewalk that my shoe snagged

simultaneously embodying and understanding the Dao, or what Jung calls individuation
philosophical insight and artistic expression, having things to say and wanting to do them justice
structuring my time in a way I find meaningful, learning not to care about social pressure
figuring out and playing faithfully by my own rules and otherwise allowing things to happen

These are all conceptualization of the same thing, and I'm not really sure which explanatory model is the closest to (((the truth))). Maybe it's even that non of these are true by themselves, and the reality they are pointing to is a higher-level abstraction I'm not really able to grasp, actualizing itself through these different modes.

>inb4 christfags
Jesus was a cool guy, but you aren't going to convince me to believe in literal magic and divine intervention.

Fortunately I never suffered from true depression. I may feel myself melancholic from time to time, and lately very often (my life has been a chore sometimes), but I always was able to get up from bed.
Literature, philosophy and history are the things that lately I only have been truly caring. The writtings and events from past and present when deeply pondered will make you change your views, and will make you change the way you feel in life.
I know very well how science and shiet are important and so on, but I doubt that the greatest mathematical theorem can give the same feeling that one good novel does.
If I am who I am today, is thanks in great part to history, philosophy and literature.

Honestly? A brand new cam girl who was naive and not cut out for it. She cammed for like a month and then stopped, but we kept doing Skype calls (for free, it was just webcam sex at that point) for almost a year. The human interaction got me up out of my cave and back into the world.

The only people I talked to face to face during that time was the cashier at the grocery store during my monthly shopping trips and the pizza delivery guy.

Yikes. See what i said about depression and poor creativity.