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Ask HN: How do you deal with depression?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with depression?

#72

Post by tokstesla »

lxwyndxl wrote: post #46

Hey tokstesla, I've helped people overcome depression. It depends on how depressed you are and also evaluating whether it's clinical. A combination of medicine and extracurricular activities will get your life back on track! I know you mentioned that you were looking for non$$ solutions but hear me out: An overly simplified analogy to depression is like diabetes. Your body does not produce the right chemicals to proc…

Thanks for your concern. I think my cause of depression is just my inability to meet up with my financial responsibility. My Skype ID is okehdom

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with depression?

#73

Post by tokstesla »

xsmasher wrote: post #43

Sorted out my sleep first. I started putting on free audiobooks at bedtime to drown out "busy brain." Once I was getting enough sleep, I could sort out my eating/weight and had energy to exercise, which were big contributing factors. Then meditation, to learn "you are not the voices in your head" and a touch of stoicism to put your feelings in perspective.

Thanks

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with depression?

#74

Post by tokstesla »

nightchalk16 wrote: post #58

I used acetylcysteine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3044191/ This stuff helped very well. Depression is a biochemical problem in your brain. It needs a biochemical solution. It is impossible to rationalize your way out of a depression. You cannot cure a depression by choosing behaviour. Thinking about gyroscopes will not enable you to walk a straight line when drunk! Trying to cure a depression by cho…

Thanks

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with depression?

#76

Post by _8j50 »

Ok,so the answer is simple but difficult:hope.

I won't tell you what to hope in or how but hope cures depression. And by that I mean psychological depression,as I understand clinical depression has more to do with neurological and biochemical imbalance (for which you should seek out a legitimate psychiatrist).

I was actually thinking of submitting a similar question but about mental health in general(will do that another time).

But yeah,what I've learned is that hope is easy to come by but it carries with it risk where you hope but what you hoped for does not turn out well. If you can accept that risk,it will resolve what most people call depression at it's root where most other medication and therapy address symptoms first and maybe get to the root cause later.

I think educated and technical people are more susceptible to depression because they rationalize and analyze away hope much more readily than less educated people.

Other people mentioned getting enough sleep,excercise,hydration,good diet. And I'd also like to add on that a healthy relationship with your ownself and others. These all help but as someone who has struggled most of my adult life with depression and having desparately tried all these things my opinion is to prioritize hope.

A few years ago I had so much hope and as a result I lost a lot of weight,ate healthy all the time,slept better and relationships with people started to improve. I had a goal,something to look forward to,something I needed to get ready for and improve myself.

It was amazing,I may have had been sad once in a while but the horrible crippling depression went away.

I am not an expert,I just know I spent years isolated,not wanting to clean up after myself or even maintain basic hygeine at some point. It was unreal how this mental issue was causing physical pain and so many other side-effects. And I also saw what helped me,and it turns out actual psychologists also support my hope theory. Even if the hope is irrational ,is rational depression better? Of course everyone has a different story. I hope sharing my experience will help you and do let me know if you have any questions,this sickness stole most of my life,I hope you fight hard so you will never be in my shoes.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with depression?

#78

Post by brudgers »

anm89 wrote: post #63
ncmncm wrote: post #59

The most important thing to know about depression is that it is an illness. It has no moral dimension. Get treatment. People telling you to buck up and get hold of yourself are much, much worse than useless. The second most important thing to know is that "depression" is a label for at least a half-dozen, probably more, unrelated illnesses. What helps with one does nothing for another. The third is that no matter wha…

I hear the "depression is an illness" trope repeated over and over but I still fail to understand what it means. I'm sure for some definition of the word illness it's true. But it's certainly not an illness in the way a cold or malaria or shingles or cystic fibrosis are illnesses. Those things can be objectively diagnosed. They entail physical measurable changes to a person's body. Depression is a set of guidelines i…

Diagnosis of depression is clinical. Self reporting via standardized questions is an ordinary medical method. "Where does it hurt?" "When did it start?" "Is there a history of heart disease in your family?." "When did your baby start crying?"

'Illness' provides a framework for recognition and treatment. The book with the guidelines is medical not religious. The guidelines are guided by empiricism not revelation. Treatments are selected based on statistics rather than authority. There's general agreement that the book's content might be wrong. There's a process for changing it and the expectation that it will be rewritten.

Criteria for diagnosing depression in the DSM include behavioral "thinking of suicide," physically measurable "weight loss," and general well being "fatigue." The suicide criterion is more conducive to empirical confirmation than "headache" or "joint pain."

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with depression?

#79

Post by murm »

There are many ways to depression, and my depression seems to stem from my constant nagging feeling of existential meaninglessness. This has been going on for varying intensity for something like a decade now, but I feel like I'm finally coming to grips with it.

For all my adult life I feel like I haven't got a clue why I'm here on this planet, and as a result been just slowly drifting to places in life where I don't want to be. The resulting depressed mood certainly seems to make the world look a lot more bleak than it really is, and making changes to my life has felt like an impossible task. However, these past few years I feel like I've been getting some real progress. I've been trying to follow all the usual advice to a tee, and in my case they have helped:

  * precise sleep patterns, 8h of sleep same time every day
  * stretching, regular exercise (both cardio and lifting)
  * fixing diet: removing sugar, grains, excess carbs, all the common "bad" stuff. Basically something like a vegetarian-mediterranean diet.
  * daily 20 min meditation
  * daily journaling
  * very little alcohol, only couple of drinks now and then and preferably in a social setting
  * no smartphone
  * no social media
  * no porn
  * trying to avoid reading news
  * spending time in nature when possible
  * no cannabis (I tried to use this as a crutch but for me it didn't help, only makes things worse)
  * no other drugs[0]
I haven't sought professional help, but watching Jordan Petersons lectures have given me some ideas and tools what to try out (he is a clinical psychologist, after all?). Specifically, right now my goal is to figure out a clear plan for a life that I would like to live, which would hopefully end this existential dread and give my existence a clear sense of purpose.

[0] Only exception to drugs has been psilocybin mushrooms, which I microdose when I feel like I'm especially deep in the hole. This really helps for a little while, but I hold no delusions that I could just continue living my life like this and endure it with drugs.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with depression?

#80

Post by murm »

jammygit wrote: post #11
derrick_jensen wrote: post #2

Cardio helps a lot for me personally. I'm a firm believer that most people (myself included) don't get enough exercise when compared to hundreds of years ago. It gives me a dedicated hour or two block of time to listen to podcasts, and exercise in general is healthy anyways so its a win-win.

What style of cardio do people like? Some people have knee issues for example, or long winters. What do they do?

I skip rope. I like these muay thai-style jump ropes[0] with thick pvc-tube because I find it annoying when a slim rope gets tangled and I have to stop and start jumping again.

Maybe not the best style if you have knee issues though...

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Fairtex-Thai-Style-Jump-Rope/dp/B009Q...

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