• 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

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

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

Things that help me:

• Having a routine- every Sunday I walk into town and get a nice coffee/cake and read for a while and just be around people. If I stay inside for too long I will start to self isolate.

• Hobby- I go to a couple of choirs during the week. It helps me get out of the house and it’s an activity that stops me dwelling on things. You’re usually too busy focusing on the music to think of anything else. Singing also helps you regulate your breathing which is supposed to help with relaxation and sleeping.

• Spend time in or around nature, even if that’s a pet. Being around green space can help ground you. Being around animals can be a massive boost. Go to the park with a book and spot dogs.

• Medication - this has helped me more than anything but isn’t for everyone. I also had a few rounds of therapy but didn’t get loads out of it, but it may well work for you.

Might look into medication and therapy as well as the other options presented. It can be rough getting started, and finding the right fit, but for some people, it can be a life changer.

Consider depression as a broken-leg or any other medical depression, Talk to a doctor, rest, and get medication/therapy if the doctor deems it necessary.

To my understanding, for Burn-out-style depression, doctor tend to give you 2-3 weeks of sick-leave early so you don’t end-up spending 2 years in sick leave as it was the case a few years ago.

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.

Do tell us more about yourself and your depression?

That is a question, but also an advice. Talking can help.

Here is what most people can not accept (and I am talking from my own experience and experience of people around me): depression is repressed anger. Anxiety too. We are not “anxious” nor “nervous” we are angry.

Second step: anger does not equal aggression.

So you can try to acknowledge that you are angry and than to find out what are you angry about.

While this sounds easy, it is not, that’s why we go to therapy. But it does help.

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.

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.

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 know this sounds hard when you’re depressed but its important: pick a hobby you like and spend time doing it. What do you enjoy doing? What makes you feel like, well, you? Whatever it is, start small, just tell yourself to do it for 1 minute a day at first. It could be simply dribbling a basketball, or doodling a cartoon character. What you spend your time doing defines how you live your life; you deserve to enjoy it.

Everyone will recommend the same stuff to you over and over without asking if you’ve tried any of it before. The truth is, if you can get access to them, anti-depressants are pretty great. They aren’t a magic solution, but they do make it manageable. Coping strategies and excersise only work if you are in a place to even get up and try it.

Drugs

Keep busy. You can’t be depressed if you never stop moving.