Working through Depression

[ClassicalBlueKitty]

Hello all, I've been going through a bit of a depressive spurt. I think I've started to see some improvement. I still feel really tired and more apathetic than I would like. I have regained some of my motivation/determination to do things again. I'm worried that I could end up slipping back some instead of building on this progress. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm normally mostly an anxiety sufferer and this depressive cycle without a lot of anxiety is new to me.

[Dolphin14]

ClassicalBlueKitty

I'm sorry you are struggling with depression. The good news is you are feeling better. What sort of things have you done to get yourself in a more motivated state?

I use exercise to keep my depression under control.

🐬

[ClassicalBlueKitty in reply to Dolphin14]

I've been trying to exercise more too. I've made the compromise that if I am exercising like on the elliptical I can watch a Hallmark Christmas Rom-Com. I don't always feel great but I hope that it helps trend my mood upward some.

[catsrock]

Like Dolphin14, exercise helps me. Also tapping meditations - I just do the free ones at this site and they also have an app: thetappingsolution.com/ I also worked with a great therapist who helped me by doing inner child work. Journaling helps me too. Don't know if any of those suggestions will work for you, but I hope you feel better soon.

[ClassicalBlueKitty in reply to catsrock]

I haven't thought about inner child work in a really long time. I'll have to ask my therapist if that would be appropriate right now or if it risks bringing up trauma I would struggle to process atm.

[Sunrisetabby]

Good morning, ClassicalBlueKitty.

Like many of the public intellectuals that I struggle to understand, I am not sure whether Nassim Taleb is only partially, or else completely full of bull crap.

But, and I say this as someone who has struggled, and is still struggling, I think the key to resilience and staying strong is to get more physically strong. For example, my mental health falls apart when I don't sleep well, and if I don't do physical excercise, I tend to eat worse and sleep worse.

I am scared to weights, but I am going to weight lift right now. I have never been able to meditate, but there is something about the complete focus and full body effort of trying to lift a heavy weight off the ground that can improve all facets of your life, including, absolutely, mental health.

Taleb was asked to write the foreward to one of the premier lifting guides, Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. These worse below are some of the best that I have found to prevent the slippage you are worried about.

"You will never get an idea of the strength of a bridge by driving several hundred cars on it, making sure they are all of different colors and makes, which would correspond to representative traffic. No, an engineer would subject it instead to a few multi-ton vehicles. You may not thus map all the risks, as heavy trucks will not show material fatigue, but you can get a solid picture of the overall safety.

Likewise, to train pilots, we do not make them spend time on the tarmac flirting with flight attendants, then switch the autopilot on and start daydreaming about vacations, thinking about mortgages or meditating about corporate airline intrigues — which represent about the bulk of the life of a pilot. We make pilots learn from storms, difficult landings, and intricate situations — again, from the tails.

So when it comes to physical training, there is no point engaging in the time-consuming repetitive replication of an active environment and its daily grind, unless you need to do so for realism, therapy, or pleasure. Just calibrate to the extreme and work your way down from there."

nntaleb.medium.com/strength...

[Sunrisetabby]

James Clear also provides good guidance in his book Atomic Habits: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there. This year, spend less time focusing on outcomes and more time focusing on the habits that precede the results.”