have you tried just not being depressed?
spoiler
/s just in case
But to be fair. Regular exercise and hydration can help with mild symptoms of depression. Clinical depression makes it difficult to even attempt these things, which is why we all should have access to effective mental healthcare
As a person who finally managed their anxiety after years of therapy and like 10 medications the best thing for me has been yoga and Mary Jane. I hate that my therapist was right about the yoga.
Yoga legit really great a managing stress and getting your mind off tense subjects.
Dehydration genuinely fucks over your ability to regulate your mood and concentrate on tasks at hand.
Like, I know you want to be mad at the “Easy Answers” crowd. But also, sometimes there are things that consistently improve your life. And people know it. And you can just do them and feel better.
A bit like asking someone who is in pain “Have you tried ibuprofen?” And then they’re angry at you until they take it. Then the pain subsides. And sometimes they even say “Thank you”.
Except yoga is aimed at something way beyond the scope of tense subjects. If I ever encounter anyone advising me yoga like this I will punch them in the face
Yeah this is a “I hate to tell you this, but it does in fact work” situation.
Doing those things won’t fix everything, of course, but they do help. Like, OP should be lucky they have someone to talk to, who’s taking an active interest in their wellbeing
as someone who has been on that particular moon i have to agree. i need to add sleep hygiene, healthy and enough food and excercise. It might not get you out of a crisis but things like low blood sugar and vitamin d do affect a persons mood significantly. so it might not be enough to cure depression but it very much helps with stabilization
My buddy’s got a “mildish” bipolar disorder. For years they ate like shit, drank hella soda (why is it always dr pepper) and never exercised. I’m sure as shit not gonna say stopping all that fixed the disorder, but they’re so much less volatile now that they do Hot Yoga and quit the soda… Their diet’s still trash tho…
100% agree. The “easy answers” are pre-requisites. You don’t get to bitch about them not helping until you’ve actually done them and still feel bad. See also:
- When was the last time you ate?
- What did you eat, and why didn’t it include a green vegetable?
- Are you getting enough sleep?
- Are you getting enough good sleep? (Sleep apnea is extremely common and also quicker and more convenient than you think to diagnose and treat.)
- Are you taking a daily multivitamin?
People dismiss these out of hand without actually trying them. Your body affects your mood a lot. I’ve had to deal with so many people both at work and in my personal life who were perpetually crabby because they never learned how to properly take care of themselves.
Yoga legit really great a managing stress and getting your mind off tense subjects
unless one of those tense subjects is a pinched nerve in your spinal column.
Yoga is a general stand-in for light isometric exercise. If you have a pinched nerve, adapted exercises including specific yoga poses and low-impact exercise are still recommended to help recover. For moderate exercise to get the endorphin-powered stress relief, swimming and upright/recumbent stationary cycle with good posture can be appropriate for someone with a pinched nerve.
I hate it too, but tailored exercise is kind of a magic bullet.
In that case, you might need actual physician’s care and not just friendly advice.
Unfortunately, finding a physician willing to read medical records these days is impossible
Let me tell you how depressed I am instead, and how much more justified my depression is, and how your situation is bullshit by comparison.
That’ll cheer you up. Probably.
at least op has
- someone to talk to
- someone that probably actually listened
- and that someone at least tried to help
when i try to reach out, if i even find someone that listens…well. it doen’t end well or they just stay silent and leave basically, like never to contact me again unless they need something (which i don’t indulge anymore, thus i realized i was alone for a long time before i realized)
Have you tried heavy drinking?
On it thank you. But can’t due to working too much
Yes, it just gave me indigestion
If you just want someone to listen to you and be supportive you should say so. A lot of people, especially autistic people, jump to trying to find a solution to fix it. Communicate better, say you just need a compassionate listener and both parties will be better off.
Not sure why this was downvoted. I mean if this was Lemmy shitpost, I get it.
Yeah. Lot of people on the spectrum see everything as problem/solution. Like if you’re venting, say so.
“Have you tried not being depressed?”
“Thanks, I’m cured.”
Have you tried 10g of powerful psychedelics?
Or my parents’ go to, “You gotta stop thinking about those kinds of things, try being more positive”. What the actual fuck?
I get the same shit. Like look around the fucking world has gone insane.
If you’re struggling with depression, you need to see a doctor. To go with the metaphor in the meme, the average person isn’t trained to save a drowning person, who can also end up drowning anyone who tries to save them. Lifeguards are trained to save drowning people.
If only I could afford the $200 co-pay per visit. Some of us are too poor to afford mental health.
Just stop being poor and get better insurance. See? So easy. /s
Talk to the providers, some may be willing to waive that depending on need. Also, that seems expensive; I’m on shitty healthcard.gov insurance and my co-pay per session was only 40 USD. I know when you are struggling, 40 can feel just as unreachable as 200, but getting that price down can be the difference between spiraling down or climbing up and out.
Talk to the people that are offering even shitty help – see if they have ideas for getting you professional help, maybe they could even pay the provider for you, or know about lower-cost services in your area.
yep. i had a girlfriend with depression.
she refused to do anything about it. other than weaponize it against me. and blame me for it. it was horrible.
many folks just refuse treatment and act like the world is the problem, or their friends/family are the problem.
“I’m sad”
“Here, let me try and cheer you up”
“IT DIDN’T WORK! NOW YOU’RE THE PROBLEM!”
“Okay, I’ll give you some space.”
“Oh, so you’re just going to ABANDON ME?!”
“Nevermind, I’ll shut up now.”
“Aha! The SILENT TREATMENT!”
:-/
There’s also the “Oh yeah, same situation” crowd. People who feel the same way, who agree about the state of the world, and also struggle to get by.
Which in itself, isn’t a bad way to respond - it’s honest, after all. However, it makes the idea of “reaching out for help” worse than pointless - not only won’t I get any help, but I’ll get more validation that I was right to feel hopeless in the first place.
What do you expect others to help you with in this situation?
they don’t even know.
i had girlfriends with these issues… they just often lack the emotional maturity/forethought to realize that there isnt’ anything other folks can do, and they vaguely expect like other people to just magically make their problems go away, and they resent you for not being the ‘cure’ to their problem.
it doesn’t necessarily have to do with mental health, it could be physical, or just a job they don’t like, or a ton of other things.
the issue is the person suffering, is looking for a solution outside of themselves and their own actions, and refuses to acknowledge the solution requires them to change themselves or their circumstances, and often like change habits or lifestyle or etc.
i remember being a suicidal teenager and I just wanted it to stop, i wanted the bad feelings to stop. i had no clue how to get them to stop because they just kept coming at me. some people just… are like this their entire lives and they often self-medicate because that is a way to get them to stop temporarily. but getting them to stop systematically… is a much larger challenge, and there is no guarantee the problem won’t come back.
and yeah one option is to join a community or have friends who just validate the shit out of your bad choices or share your frustrations and complaints with. because those folks won’t ask you to change or try something new, they will just agree with you that you’re fucked and there is nothing you can do.
Some people like to vent though too. I’ve been told, hey, I’m not looking for answers, just an ear. I always try to offer some help or advice, but I realized that isn’t necessarily what the other person wants, it’s what I want. So I try to listen, try to say more than just “That sucks,” and if I get asked for help, I’ll see what I can do.
But sometimes, it’s just “That sucks,” and that’s usually because you made your bed and now you need to lay in it, but that’s kinda mean to say to someone who’s already not feeling so great.
there is nothing wrong with venting.
however for too many people venting is all it ever becomes. and those people are always the same folks who won’t let anyone vent to them. because everything becomes about what hapless victims they are and nothing can ever change their life.
way too many folks just want to vent vent vent vent vent and never ever address the problems. they refuse to change their job, refuse to try new things, refuse to meet new people, etc etc. and their entire identity becomes their misery. so yeah, they end up only being able to socialize with folks who endlessly validate their toxic attitudes and just get stuck like that for years or their entire life.
or they get stuck in a cycle of exploiting kind people who just eventually get sick of their shit and their poor miserable lifestyle. can’t tell you how many of my exes, and how many people i date before i even get into a relationship, theri entire life is this cycle of misery and refusal to change and self-medication.
like you know how many first dates i go on where the person just vents at me for 45m about how they hate their life? like 2/3 of them. And yeah, as total stranger it’s not my job to help you, it’s to get the fuck away from you because you clearly lack the maturity and self-control to not dump your problems on a stranger. not to mention, most of the ‘venting’ done at me by these people are ‘problems’ like they can’t afford first class plane tickets, or they can’t afford a Porsche and it’s not fair.
anyway, these are the same folks who demand others be ‘emotionally mature’ as in, validate them and never challenge them. because you know, it’s everyone else’s fault that you don’t like your job, your ex was mean to you, your parents suck, etc etc. and they are supposed to fix it for you, otherwise they are worthless assholes. it can’t be that maybe you’re the worthless asshole who needs to fix your shit and make changes if things in your life are pathologically making you unhappy.
and as for you, sounds like you just are getting off on yourself by being a ‘helper’. the truth is, you aren’t really helping, you are more than likely enabling and validating shittiness. would you ‘help’ an alcoholic by buying them alcohol? plenty of victims of alcoholics fall into this trap of enabling and being abused by the person, that’s the reason things like Al-anon exist, because folks who refuse to help themselves almost always end up dragging everyone else down with them.
I don’t expect anything anymore, that’s why I stopped speaking out. People ask how I’m doing and I just keep it light, because there is nothing that can be done on an individual level when the issues that drag down life are systemic (unless everyone bands together to revolt, but I’m not holding my breath on that.)
I work with people experiencing homelessness, and I’ve worked inpatient psych where I saw the full gamut of socioeconomic statuses, and can confidently tell you people who attribute their depression to external factors that are out of their control universally fail in treatment. There are a ton of people on the street who aren’t depressed, and a bunch of rich people who want for nothing who are depressed. Sometimes, depression is caused by a neurotransmitter issue and meds work, but more often the issue is a pattern of thinking and perception, and the only treatment is learning new ways to think.
Or the ones who play Misery Olympics and try to 1-up (1-down?) you.
i love people who think everything is a competition. it results in those of us who lead extraordinary lives clamming up and kicking out those of you who think that by us sharing one of our smaller events, we’re trying to one-up you.
I have been getting this argument the past few years, in person, that growing up in a poor family with uneducated parents makes me more privileged than people who grew up with doctors for parents in elite/rich places, and that means I had it better than they did and my life is better than theirs and I should have empathy for them and their lower privilege and more difficult lot in life.
and who do you think makes that argument? yeah…
The problem doesn’t need to be solved in order to help others. There are plenty of unsolvable problems that people need help with. That response is a direct way to show empathy and let’s the other person know that you can share things you’ve done to mitigate the problem that did or didnt work. Even if it’s not a solution, it can help skip steps where one might fumble.
As someone with a recurring severe depressive mood disorder diagnosis, I always found the validation helpful. I could complain without pushback to them. And, it help dissuade me that I was actually the source of everything bad. But, ultimately, I needed to get pharmacological help AND focus the core health items: sleep, food/water/diet, exercise/activity.
That actually sounds kinda decent response. The person giving advice is just trying their best, we aren’t all therapist
