The only thing I'd add to this (as someone with stupidly depressive and negative thought patterns), is that there are techniques that can help.

The parent comment comes off as flippant, but I am going to assume it's not intended that way.

Learning to think more positively takes an incredible amount of effort. An effort which seemingly never goes away. It just never gets easier. It's like my brain is simply wired to assume the worst, worry and of course just constantly make suicide seem like some kind of great way out. So much so, that when I was younger, I had assumed everyone just walked around constantly wondering whether it'd be easier to just die.

To this day, that's where my brain goes first. Decades of nearly daily thoughts of ending it. BUT and this is the crucial part, to me that was just always part of the noise. It's there, but it's not forcing my hand. I can both live and also constantly think that I don't particularly enjoy just existing for existence's sake and therefore death sort of seems like a viable alternative. I don't act upon it, because I'm too curious to see what's next, for the time being.

Anyway, the techniques that people are often taught in therapy sound simple and obvious, but they are harder to do than one might assume. Especially for people deep in depression.

Gratitude journaling is one of those things. It is quite boring and tedious to write down what one is grateful for in life. To write down every single good thing that happened in a day, no matter how small.

BUT, it sort of forces you onto a track of positive thought. It literally blocks / occupies thought, because it takes effort to do and focuses the mind on the positive, even if for a short period of time.

Similarly, as stupid as it sounds, sometimes it can help to simply sit up straight and smile. There is some feedback loop between pretending to be happy and then sort of feeling a bit happier all of a sudden. Doesn't always work, won't work for everyone and deep clinical depressions are a whole different ballgame.

Exercise is a pretty big one for me as well. As much as I hate it, I always feel better afterwards.

Again, the sum of various small techniques can eventually make a bit of a difference.

I've come to terms with the fact that depression is hard-wired into my brain structure and it's not going anywhere. But, I have also made a ton of new pathways that allow me to more quickly switch into more positive and grateful modes of thinking. And this, in some ways, is like a list of positive things to think, like the parent comment alluded to.

Though without all of the above, I'd also take offense at the implication that depressed people can somehow choose to be depressed and need to just stop being depressed. That notion is ridiculous and has prevailed for (what feels like) centuries of ignorance of mental conditions.

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jfengel 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I have a really hard time doing gratitude. Most days are pretty much like any other day, especially with work. If I journal the same thing over and over ("lunch was fine" "the podcast I listened to was slightly interesting") it feels grim.

I feel like I'm already aware of the good things in my life. I'm actually quite fortunate. But even that forms a baseline: "I was healthy today in a world where not everyone is" grows repetitive. Saying it every day means little even if I write it down, and the writing itself feels more like a burden than a help.

Do you have any thoughts on how I might reframe that more beneficially?

	▲	throwaway77385 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'll try to offer my perspective, but there is no guarantee it'll be of any use to you. You are touching on a few things that sound familiar. I _struggle_ with repetition. Tasks like emptying a dishwasher or taking out the trash, to me, are like pure torture. No idea why. Now you can probably imagine what gratitude journaling feels like for me as well ;) Another commenter mentioned the mantra as a technique (even espoused by various religions, though I'm not religious at all). The mantra is a way to simply take up space / time / focus. As I also mentioned, gratitude journaling simply doesn't allow you to think anything else for a moment and that, in and of itself, can be a relief. I tend to play around with how I write these things down. Prose takes more effort. Changing the wording, and writing it from different perspectives can be a way to dedicate more mind-resources to it and also make it less boring. Crucially, however, my ability to do this is supported by the other things I do. I have found that another concept comes in handy here, something I've come to call "avoiding zero-days". A zero-day is a day where I have not done a single thing that contributes to my health. E.g. I have not eaten healthy, I have not learned anything, I have done no exercise, I have done no work and I have ALSO not relaxed (see, the thing with my depression is that I won't really do anything. The tell-tale sign for me is when I stop enjoying video games. That's when I know I'm in deep. So literally getting myself to even play a video game is a win which contributes to a non-zero-day). The reason I try to avoid zero-days is because ANY of the aforementioned things can give me that tiny positive push to accomplish another thing. Eventually, that can lead to a cascade of me achieving 2-3 positive things I'd like to achieve. And that can be the beginning of crawling out of depression for a while. Another tendency of mine is to retreat into repetition (ironically, despite hating it) for comfort / safety / convenience / efficiency. So my mind kind of goes "I can score non-zero days by just doing one thing over and over". Take gratitude journaling. I'll be really tempted to not put effort in. To the point where I'll just write single words "exercise, training, sunshine" and be done with it. I start to try to cheat my own system. So, I then have to remind myself to mix up the activities and see if I can pivot away from the obsessive component locking me in. It's a never-ending cat and mouse game. That's all I can add from my perspective, not sure if that's of any use to you.
	▲	avtar 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'm not the person you replied to but their list of strategies (gratitude practice, evoking joy, exercise) pretty much mirrors what I've been trying to employ. > Saying it every day means little even if I write it down, and the writing itself feels more like a burden than a help. Perhaps an obvious statement but our experience with any type of practice varies in infinite ways from moment to moment. At times things just click or maybe we've built up enough momentum that it could feel effortless, but on just as many occasions it can feel like wading through sludge. When it's the latter I have to ask myself just how am I showing up for the activity. How mindful am I? What's my intention? Perhaps most importantly, is the sense of gratitude actually being felt in my body? If you don't mind self-help type books, 'Hardwiring Happiness' by Rick Hanson is a fairly accessible resource that stresses the importance of the somatic side of this type of work. The tl;dr is that if more parts of the mind pay _sustained_ attention to the embodied experience of gratitude, compassion, joy etc. then we're increasing the chances of training our minds. So if I find myself enumerating things in a journal that I believe I'm grateful for but the exercise feels contrived or flat then that's a sign I should either tune even more into large parts of the body (can be anywhere but for me it's usually my face, chest, and arms) or just attempt to evoke warm feelings in those areas. That last part can feel fake at times but there's probably value in learning how to encourage more mind processes to sign up for the practice. The OP alluded to this bit with "sometimes it can help to simply sit up straight and smile". If the body remembers what gratitude feels like then chances are that's going to influence the mind for the next few moments. 'Awakening Joy' by James Baraz is another book in this vein. In it the author makes the case that learning how to shift our baseline towards one coloured with joy and gratitude usually requires someone repeatedly and genuinely appreciating seemingly trivial things over the course of each day (food, shelter, mobility, pet, access to nature, etc.). Whereas shifts occurring solely due to significant positive life events are potentially less common.

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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