Hi there,
Thank you for sharing your experience with depression and reaching out, I hope you find the answers you are after.
I think one of the most powerful things that helps me is setting lifestyle goals and figuring out the daily habits that incrementally get me there. Habits start small and can snowball as you stick to them. Sticking with them is the hardest part during depression, I strongly recommend reading atomic habits, or watch the podcast recently on DOAC with the author, or use ChatGPT to summarise it haha…it gives you very practical ways to cultivate habits. Such as, sandwich habits together. For example, if you have a habit of watching short form content, maybe watch 5 minutes of it, then you do a task, then do 5 more minutes of watching content.
just to add onto the above, cultivation of your well being is a good analogy, like a garden you have weeds (bad habits), they will always seek to grow and take over the garden, you just have to spend time pruning them every now and then, and you do that by giving your attention to the good habits. Strictly avoiding the bad habits, going cold turkey, may work for some people but it doesn’t stick for others, and that’s where those strategies can really come in handy. And When you have depression, you start small, really small and you slowly build.
when things get too much, I know this happens when I’m disregulated, my nervous system is having a hard time dealing with the stress of things. I need strategies to help me regulate, reduce that stress. This can be context dependent so the strategy changes. First, deep breath work, try to sooth my body’s physical stress. Secondly, I need to offload the mental load, I write down what’s on my mind, and initially I don’t write down my plan to address it. That comes later when I regulate. I remind myself that I am identifying the causes now and I will revisit the thing later. Later me will have a better idea on how to deal with the issue as I will be more regulated and more time to think about it. Just tell yourself, I know that I am overwhelmed, this thing does need my attention but I will come back to it with a better mindset. (Refer to habits above, this could be that task).
Low pressure support, I would consider joining a discord group that is mental health focused or perhaps religious gaming. Then, when you’re ready, jump into a voice chat by yourself, and message a channel you have been active in “hey, I’m just hopping into this channel if someone would like to chat about mental health, life etc” it puts a no pressure invite out there for people to talk to around the same purpose. Great way to make friends!
Hope this helps. Have a great Christmas and happy new year.
