I built an app to fix my depression

As for the present, I know when I'm doing poorly in either of those areas, but it's harder to dismiss them as normal when I see their abysmal scores.

You're not describing a concrete thing. Knowing if what you feel corresponds to what others feel when they use the same words runs straight into the heart of the "other minds problem." It's a philosophical pickle.

Meanwhile, on the academic, clinical or neurological side usage of terms changes over time. They also run into the same problem. There are broad ranges of symptoms to these things, whether they are physical-ish (like mild flue) or mental-ish (like apathy).

So, I suggest embracing ambiguity. You just can't one word that describes emotional states or conditions. This is true for a lot of things. Consider "anger." Seems relatively concrete. OTOH, we use it to describe a state of adrenaline fueled rage like you would feel in a fistfight. We use it to describe a long term attitude towards someone. My friend betrayed me 5 years ago. I'm still angry. You're not necessarily feeling the same thing.

Add an "-ish" to the end of these concepts. It takes a whole conversation to understand someone's depression (or other states) with any kind of precision. One word only gets you a part of the way.

Thank you so much! I have long felt outside help as lacking in understanding but this just flipped the switch in my brain. This opens many more opportunities to explore.

For those not in the know, this is based on what's sometimes called the Sedona Method. There's a popular book about it by Hale Dwoskin [0] and the questions (and phrasing) in this app are almost exactly the same (the self-questions are an important part of the technique).

I've been geeking out about psychological self-help for a long time and this is by far the simplest and most effective (especially in terms of the ratio between accessibility and effectiveness) method I've come around. The idea, to summarize it crudely, is that you can just let go of feelings. You're a layer cake of stuff and the more you take off the better things get. At first it sometimes feels like "ok, I've let go of this basic thing, but I'm no better off" (it's a bit like the situation you'd find yourself in if you started shoveling a landfill). The technique, apart from the basic insight that you can let go, provides troubleshooting and guidance that let's you get a lot of results from something that is so simple. One of the things that originally attracted me to it was the feeling I had that, whatever the mechanism behind my hangups is, it's simple, but with emergent behaviour, and this really satisfied that part of me, and has been otherwise very rewarding as well.

My favorite book on the topic is Letting Go by David R. Hawkins [1], which is also one of my favorite books of all time. I could sing praises for it for a long time; it's been a big deal for me. If I need a spiritual pick-me-up, that's the book. It's a really good instruction manual for your mind, feelings, emotions. If you think you might lack emotional intelligence, this book is a good place to start too.

If you feel like this method is working for you and you want to learn more, I recommend going back and forth between the two books. They have very different approaches on the same thing. I found that at different times I needed more of the one or the other.

In the app, I noticed that the voice-over "letting go might be new for you" kicks in every time you're going through a new emotion. Might be better if it was there only for the first time.

I think I'll be coming back to this app a lot. Thanks again! Are you considering open sourcing it?

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Sedona-Method-Happiness-Emotional-Wel... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Letting-Go-M-D-David-Hawkins/dp/14019...