I am diagnosed with crippling depression. Suggest me some books to read

Just don't be "your" self

The doctor used the term crippling?

Don't read

go out in the Mojave desert and drop peyote and pretend you are god.

The Diary of a Young Girl

lemony snickets adventures in pee wee land

Wrong photo

Sit down
cross your legs
put your hands together, thumbs up
set a stop watch
close your eyes
focus on your breathing
when you realize your mind wandered go back to focusing on your breathing
do this for as long as possible
open your eyes and feel weird.

The simplest way is to sit comfy, close your eyes, and focus on your breath coming in and out of your nostrils. Thoughts will naturally float by like leaves on a river, and your brain will instinctively start to think about them, but as soon as you realize you have drifted away from focusing on your breath, let the thought go and return to your breath. It's sort of an exercise on controlling your thoughts

desu it has worked well for me and anxiety. It's made me more aware of anxious thoughts and how to throw them away before my body turns them into a physical reaction (an anxiety or panic attack)

That's the simplified version. You can read guides and watch videos online. I feel weird shilling for it, but there is an app I use called Headspace where you get guided meditation and it's pretty good. There is a subscription and shit but I just keep repeating the free 10 days. If nothing else it gets you into a rhythm, teaches you how to do it by yourself and gives you advice on goals and your mental being

>there is an app I use called Headspace where you get guided meditation and it's pretty good. There is a subscription and shit but I just keep repeating the free 10 days
I'd also recommend this.

Sink deep into the pit and become friends with your sadness, use it against itself, conquer it and mock it, and when you are finally able to laugh at your own perceived sadness, then viola: you have defeated your depression, and you may realize that it was all in your mind.

i have a head cold, can i still meditate you think or should I keep putting it off forever

Listen to any guided meditation from Theravadin or Zen traditions.

Like those two user's posted, breath meditation is the way. The Buddha (Gotama) said all you need is the breath and you're in the right path. But of course, as you go along with meditation you realize that youre life and your everday actions affect your inner climate, and I think that's the key here. The choices you act upon can either lead to good and beneficial results, and you should strive to do them, or it can mess you up spiritually, physically.

I'm not depressed but I think I have ennui, any books to help with this?

nicomah's ethics

Ham on rye by Bukowski

This book will teach you to embrace the sordid aspects of life.

Thus Spake Zarathustra is weird, but it is extremely life-affirming and can help you find something to keep you going.

I tried peyote a few days ago. Shit did nothing. Was it supposed to be dried? Because the one given to me by my friends friend was ripe

I'm depressed and I liked The Bell Jar, although it's not recommended for depressed people.

This, actually

I also read the Bell Jar when I was in a depressed episode and it weirdly made me feel better. It seemed to confirm to me that my depression was temporary and not an actual illness like Plath's

I don't know for sure, but in hindsight it seems like things have been better for me since then, although that's not necessarily from reading it

Regardless, I think it's a pretty good depiction of melancholy, especially for people who don't understand it

please respond

The Moral Discourses of Epictetus

I was going through a bleak period, (maybe depressed, not sure). Stoic texts helped me.

How old are you? I had that for a while after I graduated college but I think I eventually outgrew it

21

It's pretty bad for me, I think it's something I'll have to overcome before I can do anything. Being NEET for 5 years (I left school at 16) will have a pretty big impact on anyone.

I chuckled.

But I do want to read this.

It didn't make me feel better. For me it just confirmed that mental illnesses are real, and that someone else besides me feels like this. I've been depressed for 10 years, and I'm about the same age she was when she attempted suicide. I'd probably attempt already, but unlike her, I know that pills don't work.

probably wasn't peyote or you are such a stoner that drugs dont affect you anymore.

Chronic depression, anxiety disorder, PTSD and OCD here.

The Art of Happiness helped me.
Meditation really helps alot. Caffeine makes my anxiety 10x worse so I switched to decaf. Any physical activity helps raise serotonin but aerobics like running, walking, swimming or bike riding seem to be the best. And try to stay positive. Write down positive affirmations in a journal everyday. Like "I can do anything, I am strong, I am intelligent" and so on. When you realize you have a negative thought, balance it with a positive one.

whats your address

Sylvia Plath

The Magic Mountain

If he's diagnosed with depression like he says, those really won't do it user...

>viola

Bell Jar just made me realize what I'd forgotten, that depression is universal (up to a point) and that misery, too, is the same, barring extreme poverty.

Random leap here: Letters to Lucilius is great. Helps put things into perspective. I just happened to read these two in succession.

Hate to turn this into a tumblr focus group but depressed people won't have the motivation or focus to commit to all that user.

>viola

You have to make your brain think depression is just a meme, seriously.

Motivation means nothing. It comes down to discipline, and depressed or not, if you have no discipline, you have nobody else to blame but yourself.

>Motivation means nothing. It comes down to discipline
This is the shittiest "self-help" advice one can ever give, because you need motivation to be disciplined, unless you're a prole who always does things the way he was told to. For a man who questions his actions it won't do.

you don't suppress it, you simply do other things

>If you aren't memeing, it's probably hard to focus on reading, so you should pick up a book of aphorisms

one of the realest lines itt. the will to read is almost totally gone when you're in the shit bad. also try pic related. short poems are good too.

Bearenstien bears, the giving tree, where the sidewalk ends, good night moon,the secret garden, the velveteen rabbit, the indian in the cupboard, the witch of blackbird pond, alexander and the terrible,horrible,no good, very bad day, the tale of peter rabbit, the stinky cheese man, cloudy with a chance of meatballs,

The complete works of
Dr. Suess
Grimm
Aesop
Hans Christian Anderson
Mark Twain

The true story of the three little pigs
Bread and jam for francis
In the night kitchen
Chicken soup with rice:book of months
The rainbabies

Well you get the picture.
Depression is a wall
You cannot go through it
You must go back and regress.
Build up your rocketship of wonder and blast through that wall of depression

i got the diagnosis, became a neet for a year. Then i started slowly doing this, it didnt do miracles, but over the course of 2 more years i became "normal" again.

...

>ctrl + f
>the bible
>0 results
what are you even doing, Veeky Forums

DESU this seems kinda advanced and for a beginner I would just recommend focusing on your breathing.

Can you explain this further? I started recently and I find it depressing.

All is good except most people advocate keeping the eyes open. Closing them makes it easier for the mind to drift or people get sleepy.

100% this

David Benatar - Better Never to Have Been
" - The Human Predicament
Thomas Ligotti - The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
Ernest Becker - The Denial of Death

kill yourself

pastebin.com/BiFE2fUX
write it yourself

seconded. unless you're severe meditation and vegetables will work fucking WONDERS.

most of you dumb fuckers won't even try meditation or cry after 2 weeks why its not working. its a damn shame.

How about not fapping 3 times a day and fucking up your brain? How about getting fitter? How about watching comedy instead of depressing shit. learning to talk to girls?

tfw can't do other things because too depressed to leave the bed

That user is right, ennui you grow out of eventually.

Read this. Please, try it.

The author is very smart, with top academic chops, and has used the latest research to devise a therapy for depression that he has tested many times in his own practice.

The key is that he has developed a fast therapeutic approach, that one can do on one's own.

Try it. You have nothing to lose but your crippling depression.

>not TM
Stay pleb

Clinical depression and manic depression here
Books aren't the best for what you are looking for
First step is to take your meds
Then do whatever really, lol. I would suggest learning how to play a musical instrument, every morning I play guitar and sing for like 10 minutes and I find it extreamly energizing
Meditation is also good, but you have to be constant with it, I have not been able to do that
And if you really want a book, as another user said, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is one of the most life afirming books I've read. Personally, it seems like I'm the kind of person that Nietzsche was raging agaisnt. Everytime I read it I get BTFO, and the guy has some pretty good arguments. But he was clearly a little insane, I don't agree on everything with him.

This is still objectively the best answer in this thread

Best advice op is, imagine you are sick and your goal is to look after yourself, put every superfluous worry on hold.

Also read Hermann Hesse, helped me a lot.

This is one of those comments that you see being made by people trying to cover up for their profound lack of insights on something.

Is the most reddit answer, clinical depression doesn't work like that

Primo Levi's "If this is a man" took me out of a depression. Hopefully it will help you, OP.

>Viola
>Literally "Rape" in Spanish as an imperative
You sick fuck.

You don't "have depression" you're just lazy and pathetic. Man up and live your life.

Oh fuck off. It's pronounced "wa-lah". I don't condone rape.

I can second this. Very informative and helpful book.

If you like animals and you're not a complete piece of shit I recommend adopting a puppy.Man the little bastard really cheer me up.Also you will be forced to take responsability for a living thing and change your habits which probably are one of the reasons you're depressed.(Don't do it if aren't 100% sure you can handle it and end up abandoning it,I will come and eat your liver nigga)

this is the main topic about self healing in any kind of terms.
The main problem is how does a person become disciplinated. You can discipline yourself only if you are the opposite of a depressed man. The main way to give the value of discipline to somebody is by education. But not any kind of education.
A good example is when you do martial artsÑ if you do not obey what the instructors tolds you, and if you do not train hard, if you cannot gain control on yourself, you will be beaten up sooner or later.
Discipline is an essential value in any correct kind of education.

Go do boxing and search for a good coachmay be of help at this point, the couch will focus on injecting you the discipline, then with time and hard work you will for sure be able to train and discipline by yourself

To OP & others with depression: I know the cover art makes it look like a mediocre, meme-tier book, but the author is a serious academic who thinks outside the box and has devised a therapeutic approach that has been proven effective, can be self-administered (via reading the book, and doing the exercises in the book), and works *very* fast.

Go read Psalms. If Psalms cannot help you feel better and get through the day, you are truly hopeless.

>He thinks people on Veeky Forums have actually read the bible
People meme about it being important all the time here, but I'd guess that very few of them have actually read it. Reading the bible takes a lot of time and dedication.

in these contexts, the word discipline should be divorced from its tough-minded connotations. motivation is also more than that poultry rush you get when you look at inspirational pics on reddit, it also means the life-drive, a man's raison detre. you cant blame someone who can't conceive of anything to build discipline for, for not having discipline.

>try to meditate
>get uncomfortable
>restless and bored already
>check stopwatch
>its been 2 minutes at best

im not gonna make it

As someone also diagnosed with clinical depression I really enjoyed John Dies at the End and the sequel.

If you give yourself like an hour to meditate eventually the squirming does stop and you don't even notice it. Just count your breaths and let yourself squirm and at some point the bell goes off and it has been an hour and you feel refreshed and like super.

Kill yourself or stop being a bitch

underrated

Paul Nielan Apathy and other small victories

You are going to have to train your brain to get into stay in loops of good emotions. Which is somewhat gradual. On the way there there will be some swings, but stick with it.

Basically, you've established bad connections reinforcing negative emotions due to attitudes you took that became habit. Think of your brain as an ecosystem of feelings. You will have to work at it like a garden until it is built more in positive emotions.

You absolutely can. I used to get morbidly depressed. Now nothing can depress me. I had just had a bad attitude and it became severe habit. Worked/willed my way out of it over the course of a few years.

>Not recommending The Very Hungry Caterpillar or Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale

This shit was legitimately life changing. Probably the only self-help book that fundamentally helped me.