I like to deal with mine by:

Work out almost daily, Be in nature often, Eat healthy, Get good sleep, Therapy, Socialize, Hobbies.

I know all that is easier said than done. Exercise really is my primary medication. If i take more than 2 days off, the dark cloud starts engulfing me.

Medication helped me out of my deepest pit, but i am off that now.

Walks, in nature if possible, always immediately improve my mental health.

Sorry you are going through this. In the UK, the NHS recommends exercise as an effective way of help mild to moderate depression. You may hate the idea, it’s worked for me in the past. That can be as simple as going out for a short, brisk walk. I hope you get some relief soon.

https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/clinical-depression/treatment/

Forgive me, but I’m going to give you a “non-answer”. The reason is that depression is very personal, and you should probably only get advice on your specific situation by a licensed therapist. Even a licensed therapist isn’t good enough for some people, and they’ll need to find the right therapist, and even then they may require medication.

With that out of the way, I’ll tell you that you probably need to forgive yourself a bit more than you currently do. If you’re high strung, rigid, and tend to be harsh with yourself for failure (which only makes depression worse, especially when you end up feeling down while beating yourself up over it), then the only way to break that cycle is to be genuinely forgiving with yourself. What some people have said is pretend it’s not you in the situation, but a friend. What advice would you give that person?

A very smart man I know once told me that we tend to judge others based on their actions and outcomes, and ourselves based on our intentions. That means that if we didn’t mean to hurt somebody then we can be a bit more dismissive than if somebody hurt us but didn’t mean it. That said, it can also cut the other way. If you intended to succeed at something but didn’t, you can beat yourself up over it. Nobody around you would be any the wiser about your shortcomings or failures, but you might be likely to draw attention to it and judge yourself harshly based on your (lack of) results.

I probably wrote this mostly for myself and my situation, but hopefully it helps you a bit. There’s no plan for life. We just all do the best we can with the hand we’re dealt in the situation we happen to be in at the time. Hell, most of people’s success comes down to luck, not hard work. To make things worse, neither success nor money will make you more happy with yourself. They may help, but they won’t do it on their own.

Go hiking regularly

daily exercise, clean eating, daily meditation, quality sleep.

Therapy and medication.

You can obviously do things that will make you feel better, like going to the gym or practicing sports, but ultimately it comes down to treating a medical illness.

No advice won’t help immediately, that’s a given. What helped me are a few things that compounded upon one another. The first thing is to be thankful for what does go right. You’d be surprised how well this works after awhile. Keep a journal, mark how you feel in the morning and at night, but always note something you appreciate.

Secondly, and I cannot stress this enough, read. It can be fantasy or anything, really. What’s important is that you walk in someone else’s shoes for a bit, this will help with perspective, and being seen. It might even help teach you something. It all depends.

Third, read some more. This time, don’t just read fantasy, read some selfhelp books with a psychology slant to them. Trust me. It’ll offer insight into how you think, and point out certain things you didn’t realize. I suggest “The Power of Habit” and “Smarter Faster Better” by Charles Duhigg - one of these comes first. I also suggest “The Power of Grit” by Angela Duckworth, and “Atomic Habits” by James Clear.

Knowing yourself gives you power over yourself. Goodluck.

be out in nature more, eat healthy (minimal highly processed food), exercise,

• Know that the answer might not be one thing, but a combination of things.

What works for you is going to be specific to you. That, and a few other points I’ll echo from other comments here:

• Some kind of regular exercise is frequently helpful

• Regular exposure to sunlight and fresh air is usually helpful.

Depending on your own form of neurodivergence, they may or may not act like they do for the general populace. They may have the opposite effect and make things worse, or they may work extra well. This brings me to my next important point:

• Pay attention to what works for you.

This is another way journaling can be helpful— it’s easy to miss the ways we are affected by different stimulus throughout the day, but by writing about it, you’re forced to pay attention to what alters your mood.

Some things that bring you down or entrench the depression might be unavoidable, and that’s okay. Not everything bad will be unavoidable, and there will be room to either increase the number of good things, or be better aware of them that they might better be savored.

• Choose the things you felt you had no choice in.

I remember being helped quite a bit by this. There was a time I felt rather trapped while helping a family member through their fight with cancer.(caretaking is hard, yo). I distinctly remember one night, reflecting on it, and explicitly choosing to be where I was, doing what I was doing, and how much that shifted my perspective.

Even if doing anything but what you are doing would be an anathema to you, you could still have chosen to do something else. At its core is the idea that there are many choices we make and ignore because none of the other options were remotely palatable.

• Zag on it.

The habitual paths of my brain will follow their familiar courses, and if I react in my usual, expected ways, I’ll see my usual, expected outcomes. But what if I did something silly instead?

If your brain is looking to take you for a ride, throw up your arms and go “whee!” Like you’re on a roller coaster.This, of course, works best if you’re by yourself, but you can get somewhat of the effect by doing it in your head.

Or do something else that’s a bit silly, and a non-sequitur to the pattern of worry, melancholy, or dread. The point is to break out of those familiar courses, so that you can form new ones.

The additional trick of this is learning to notice the arcs of your attitude. The earlier in the course of a downturn you can interrupt the pattern, the better chance you have of pulling out of it quickly.

• If you have trouble with intrusive thoughts, imagine a focus for them.

When the sorts of intrusive thoughts that might send me into an existential crisis creep about, I invent an imaginary source for them. I give that source a name, different every time, and I imagine they’re perched atop a large speaker that’s emitting the unwanted thought.

In my head, I address them, tell them I’m not interested right now, and imagine turning the volume down on the speaker.

It might be that this is more silliness, but it helps me to envision a source outside myself for these thoughts that are both mine and not.

• You’ll have some good days and you’ll have some bad days.

If anything in this long ramble helps, or if anything from anyone else is the secret sauce that gets you through, that’s awesome. I really hope you find some relief in this thread.

But I want you to remember that, just as one good day doesn’t mean you’re cured, one bad day doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Even a string of one or the other.

Each new day is a new opportunity to have a better day than yesterday.

• And if none of the above sounded good to you or was helpful, I’ll leave you with this: a stranger on the internet is rooting for you. <3

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I’ve struggled with depression for much of my life, and what’s helped me get moving out of the most recent hole I’ve been in is realizing I needed to make a number of large changes in my life. I took stock of many of the things in my life that stressed me out every day, and did my best to make progress towards changing my circumstances. Even small steps matter, they add up over time.

I started keeping my room clean, then the bathroom. I stopped drinking alcohol (this was a killer for me). It took over a year to go from five plus drinks a day to none, but I did it. Treat the small steps you take towards bettering yourself and your life as giant leaps, because they are. Don’t treat setbacks as giant mountains, they’re just molehills.

I find something to lose myself in. Some kind of project. Build something. Learn something. It’s good for your brain and it gives you some structure, some reward and confidence.

Quite a few good tips have been mentioned already:

• proper sleep schedule (sunlight early and during day, litlle light in evening / at night helps)
• regular movement / sports
• nutrition (less sugar)

The saying “a healthy mind resides in a healthy body” has some truth to it.

But one thing I wanna mention is journaling:

One of the benefits of psychotherapy is that you have to articulate your thoughts. Turns out articulation via writing gets you quite far and is already a lot better than spinning thoughts in your head only.

Literally just write what comes to mind. Or ask yourself what was good or bad about “yesterday”. Try writing on most days, but don’t force yourself to a specific amount. Try sticking it out for some weeks until it becomes normal to write. Over time you might see certain patterns, topics that come up again and again. This can also serve as a possible base for later talks with your therapist.

Nevertheless, I still wanna encourage you to try therapy, as having a therapist ask you questions can get you better out of your own thinking patterns (kinda hard if you try it with just your own, single mind).

Theraphy can also function as a catalyst, to get you over the worst part and give you a new perspective, which you then can follow more and more by yourself if so desired. But the answer to that will come to you when the time is right.

Take care, it will get better eventually! Just may take a while, some external help and some patience with yourself.

You can find helpful resources here:

https://www.therapistaid.com/tools/depression

Mental health professionals use many of them or variants thereof, and they can be beneficial as self-guided tools.

Best wishes on your journey.