<story><title>Tips for the depressed</title><url>https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/tips-for-the-depressed/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>One of the biggest force multipliers in overcoming depression is accepting that you &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; modulate your condition by taking small, deliberate actions.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also one of the most difficult and delicate ideas to communicate to a depressed person. Depression notoriously clouds peoples&amp;#x27; judgment and makes simple tasks seem impossible. Depression also encourages a lot of binary thinking, where people tend to give up because they can&amp;#x27;t achieve the optimal solution and can&amp;#x27;t imagine anything in between optimal and complete failure. And most importantly, depressed people almost never want to hear someone else telling them that they should &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; something to change their own condition. If you&amp;#x27;ve ever been through a depressive episode, you&amp;#x27;ll understand how unpalatable this idea is if it&amp;#x27;s not delivered carefully. Be careful to not make depressed people feel even worse about their condition.&lt;p&gt;For example, I&amp;#x27;ve known several depressed people who spiraled deeper into depression when they could no longer perform their regular 60 minute gym sessions multiple times per week. It took a while for them to accept that a 5-minute walk around the block is better than no exercise at all. From there, they could push to 10 minute walks on good days, then 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, and eventually work their way back up to gym visits. Taking those tiny steps is a great way to re-learn that you can accomplish things, and it&amp;#x27;s a great to way to see gradual progress in yourself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>frausto</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve struggled with this quite a bit in my own life. I find the &amp;quot;No Zero&amp;quot; mentality to work well for me. Treat every weekday as a &amp;quot;No Zero&amp;quot; day. What does that mean? It means if my goal is to go to the gym, even if I literally walk into the gym, do a pushup, and leave, that counts. It&amp;#x27;s more than Zero. Consistent non-zero days eventually help break me out of my depression. And when I miss a day... well forgive myself and keep going.&lt;p&gt;All easier said than done of course, and sometimes a no-zero goal is just to get out of bed... but it has helped me.&lt;p&gt;For anyone interested I got the idea from here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;getdisciplined&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;1q96b5&amp;#x2F;i_just_dont_care_about_myself&amp;#x2F;cdah4af&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;getdisciplined&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;1q96b5&amp;#x2F;i_ju...&lt;/a&gt;
The style and language of the post are not really my cup of tea, but the ideas behind it have really helped me.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tips for the depressed</title><url>https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/tips-for-the-depressed/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>One of the biggest force multipliers in overcoming depression is accepting that you &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; modulate your condition by taking small, deliberate actions.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also one of the most difficult and delicate ideas to communicate to a depressed person. Depression notoriously clouds peoples&amp;#x27; judgment and makes simple tasks seem impossible. Depression also encourages a lot of binary thinking, where people tend to give up because they can&amp;#x27;t achieve the optimal solution and can&amp;#x27;t imagine anything in between optimal and complete failure. And most importantly, depressed people almost never want to hear someone else telling them that they should &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; something to change their own condition. If you&amp;#x27;ve ever been through a depressive episode, you&amp;#x27;ll understand how unpalatable this idea is if it&amp;#x27;s not delivered carefully. Be careful to not make depressed people feel even worse about their condition.&lt;p&gt;For example, I&amp;#x27;ve known several depressed people who spiraled deeper into depression when they could no longer perform their regular 60 minute gym sessions multiple times per week. It took a while for them to accept that a 5-minute walk around the block is better than no exercise at all. From there, they could push to 10 minute walks on good days, then 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, and eventually work their way back up to gym visits. Taking those tiny steps is a great way to re-learn that you can accomplish things, and it&amp;#x27;s a great to way to see gradual progress in yourself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cgriswald</author><text>For me, doing those small things did seem impossible and even when I managed to achieve it, I didn&amp;#x27;t feel the reward. There didn&amp;#x27;t seem any point in making the bed if I felt the same whether the bed was made or not. Eventually I reached a mental place where I could turn that around: If it doesn&amp;#x27;t make a difference in how I feel, why &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; make the bed? I had to more or less take it on faith that eventually the rewards would come, and they did. Anyone out there dealing with this: Keep fighting, but don&amp;#x27;t kick yourself if you have a set back. You wouldn&amp;#x27;t kick someone else when they&amp;#x27;re down, so don&amp;#x27;t do that to yourself.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Just want to plug Allie Brosh here. This comic is maybe the best description I&amp;#x27;ve ever read on how depression is experienced: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;depression-part-two.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;depression-par...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>