How I’m Handling My Depression Using an App

Natural processes are the best way to cure depression. I battled depression for years, and I am so grateful that I managed to fight that daemon off. For anyone suffering from depression, I recommend something that has helped me a lot. It is James Gordon’s system at http://lookingupstuff.com/mentalhealth/2015/02/06/how-to-des... He is a former depression sufferer, and teaches a totally natural 7 step process which relieves depression from your life.

I appreciate the link, but I don't understand why, in this day and age, we should pay for a self-help book (or "system") to cure a depression.

If depression can be cured with information alone, this information should be freely available on the internet!

I find this approach quite interesting, I'm not depressed myself (I have not been diagnosed with clinical depression, at least) but I am diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

At first glance this sort of approach seems also to be applicable to some anxiety disorders, but from how I understand cognitive behavioural therapy, applying such a method might be a bad thing to do...

Some anxiety disorders makes you, such as mentioned in the article, "[...] procrastinate over all kinds of jobs from the most basic domestic tasks to the really important stuff [...]". One consequence can be that you rely on others to make you do them. For example if you have an anxiety disorder and you get anxious over planning a trip, you might tell a friend to help you do it. Now the anxiety could take another form, which makes you get anxious if you have not had your plan, as in this example, reviewed by a friend.

This could make it worse; You have task X that makes you anxious (planning trips, in the example), you invent task Y (seeking help from a friend, in the example) to relieve your anxiety for that task, but now when you try to perform task X, you get anxious if you have not done Y. Meaning to solve the underlying problem of breaking your behavioural pattern, you have to not only solve the behavioural pattern that makes you anxious over X, but also stop using Y, which was not there from the beginning (or might have been enhanced from applying this new behavioural pattern).

This is how I have come to understand a part of cognitive behavioural therapy, and I could definitely see how, if I were to use an app like this, I would start using it to relieve my anxiety by inventing a new behavioural pattern (i.e. using the app) that does not solve the problem, but instead induces anxiety over not using the app.

This article makes me then wonder, could a similar thing happen to someone with depression? (EDIT: Perhaps like p4wnc6 mentions in a comment below.)

It was pointed out to me that there might be a form of an app however that might be good in the realm of cognitive behavioural therapy in application to anxiety. One method of facing your problem is to get a realistic view of your expectations and realise your behavioural patterns to be able to break them. For example, one method is to have a thought-diary, where you record your thoughts on a regular basis so that, even without reviewing past entries, you at least start consciously thinking about what thoughts are, for example, inducing anxiety. So perhaps a tool that would help you recognize thought/behavioural patterns would be more safe (in the sense of the philosophy of cognitive behavioural therapy) to use.

> Please do not start taking such pills.

[EDIT: of course, if you're able to undertake therapy without the help of medication, you should definitely do it! I'm talking about severe depression below.]

I really wish I could downvote you more than once, just because of this sentence. It's downright irresponsible to say such things.

While depression may be a psychological problem in most cases, it is not always so. There are genuine neurological reasons for depression, and trying to "heal" these without the help of medication won't work. Moreover, with strong depression, it's impossible to even start any kind of non-pharmaceutical treatment. Really, people who say "don't take pills, just meditate/sing psalms/exercise/or something" don't know what they're talking about. The whole point of depression is that the patient has no desire to get better, he just won't meditate, no matter what you say. Or he will try it once if you're lucky and then get back to doing whatever his depression makes him do (you're lucky if it's simply doing nothing instead of trying to commit suicide).

Medication - ideally - makes a depressed person able to start recovering. It makes depression symptoms lessen to some extent, hopefully enough for a patient to be able to work with a psychologist.

Depression is a very severe illness. It's not "feeling sad from time to time". It's an illness which leads to death in some cases! It's a very serious condition, and saying otherwise, saying it's easy to fight against it if you know some "techniques" or other is actively harming people with this condition. Please stop doing that.

Wow. Thank you all for your time and words. I've had a great amount of responses both here and on Medium and I've had a huge amount of people emailing me directly - presumably because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

For these reason, instead of replying to every comment right now I will write a follow up post which discussions much of the feedback, suggestions, alternatives and offers of help. I hope that you will read it.

I will however then come back and reply to specifics here and respond to every email.

Thanks a lot for your support and stay strong if you're in a low position. Try to find solace in the fact that you aren't alone.