Tips for the depressed
I largely agree with all the advice here. I dropped out of college due to depression, then I torched my tech career with a manic episode that led me straight from a FAANG SWE job to an involuntary psych ward patient for a month, which was followed by a half year brutal depression.I’ve done a lot of research and I think psychiatry is pseudoscience and antidepressants are largely placebo.I’m really on the mindfulness bandwagon but don’t believe it’s “positive thinking.” The opposite, it’s less thinking, more acknowledgment of how you feel. If you feel depressed, maybe that’s ok, maybe that’s part of the human experience. If it endangers your life that’s perhaps not ideal, but if it endangers your goals, perhaps that is ok. I think modern society pathologizes feelings and acts like anything that detracts from your ability to be “successful “ must be cured. It’s ok to feel bad feelings it’s how we react to them that’s more often a source of frustration. Meditation gets mislabeled as some way to reduce stress and clear your mind when I believe it’s training for how to learn to react to difficult thoughts and feelings.I have many more thoughts on this topic for when the time is right but as much as self-care advice gets responded with “thanks I’m cured” self-care is the foundation to recovery. I have many more strategies to do this even when thoughts/feelings are giving resistance.