Walks, in nature if possible, always immediately improve my mental health.

Forgive me, but I’m going to give you a “non-answer”. The reason is that depression is very personal, and you should probably only get advice on your specific situation by a licensed therapist. Even a licensed therapist isn’t good enough for some people, and they’ll need to find the right therapist, and even then they may require medication.

With that out of the way, I’ll tell you that you probably need to forgive yourself a bit more than you currently do. If you’re high strung, rigid, and tend to be harsh with yourself for failure (which only makes depression worse, especially when you end up feeling down while beating yourself up over it), then the only way to break that cycle is to be genuinely forgiving with yourself. What some people have said is pretend it’s not you in the situation, but a friend. What advice would you give that person?

A very smart man I know once told me that we tend to judge others based on their actions and outcomes, and ourselves based on our intentions. That means that if we didn’t mean to hurt somebody then we can be a bit more dismissive than if somebody hurt us but didn’t mean it. That said, it can also cut the other way. If you intended to succeed at something but didn’t, you can beat yourself up over it. Nobody around you would be any the wiser about your shortcomings or failures, but you might be likely to draw attention to it and judge yourself harshly based on your (lack of) results.

I probably wrote this mostly for myself and my situation, but hopefully it helps you a bit. There’s no plan for life. We just all do the best we can with the hand we’re dealt in the situation we happen to be in at the time. Hell, most of people’s success comes down to luck, not hard work. To make things worse, neither success nor money will make you more happy with yourself. They may help, but they won’t do it on their own.

daily exercise, clean eating, daily meditation, quality sleep.

Things that help me:

• Having a routine- every Sunday I walk into town and get a nice coffee/cake and read for a while and just be around people. If I stay inside for too long I will start to self isolate.

• Hobby- I go to a couple of choirs during the week. It helps me get out of the house and it’s an activity that stops me dwelling on things. You’re usually too busy focusing on the music to think of anything else. Singing also helps you regulate your breathing which is supposed to help with relaxation and sleeping.

• Spend time in or around nature, even if that’s a pet. Being around green space can help ground you. Being around animals can be a massive boost. Go to the park with a book and spot dogs.

• Medication - this has helped me more than anything but isn’t for everyone. I also had a few rounds of therapy but didn’t get loads out of it, but it may well work for you.

Sorry you are going through this. In the UK, the NHS recommends exercise as an effective way of help mild to moderate depression. You may hate the idea, it’s worked for me in the past. That can be as simple as going out for a short, brisk walk. I hope you get some relief soon.

https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/clinical-depression/treatment/

Go for a walk in a local park if you have one, maybe during the early morning or close to sunset (assuming you’re in a city). Maybe also see about getting a bicycle.

Eat as well as you can (nutrient and protein wise) and drink water when you’re thirsty. Forgo the soda pops and other things with too much sugar.

Focus on your breathing, and don’t think. It’s a little respite.

Go hiking regularly

Get outside and into nature as often as you can. Even if you don’t feel like it, go for a walk, look at some birds, find some nice trees to surround yourself with. You’d be amazed at how much being in a forest can improve your mood (there’s been some studies on the effects of nature on mood).

Start exercising, lifting weights, walking, jogging, cycling, doesn’t matter start doing something. Not only will it give you something to occupy your mind with, but exercise causes your body to release endorphins that seriously increase your mood quickly and can last a large chunk of the day.

Just do something every day. Your brain is going to talk you out of doing it, but tell it to piss off and do it anyway, you’ll feel better that you did.

Exercise sounds like it won’t work, but it sometimes does

Try putting on music and moving around to it. Walking, dancing, since you have autism stimming. Works best with faster beats.

Go sit somewhere noisy and colorful like a busy mall or grocery store. It distracts you from the depression for a bit, and helps if understimulation is contributing to the depression.

Find something cool to look really closely at, think about how it works. Being deeply interested in something (irl, not online) can help for a little bit

• Know that the answer might not be one thing, but a combination of things.

What works for you is going to be specific to you. That, and a few other points I’ll echo from other comments here:

• Some kind of regular exercise is frequently helpful

• Regular exposure to sunlight and fresh air is usually helpful.

Depending on your own form of neurodivergence, they may or may not act like they do for the general populace. They may have the opposite effect and make things worse, or they may work extra well. This brings me to my next important point:

• Pay attention to what works for you.

This is another way journaling can be helpful— it’s easy to miss the ways we are affected by different stimulus throughout the day, but by writing about it, you’re forced to pay attention to what alters your mood.

Some things that bring you down or entrench the depression might be unavoidable, and that’s okay. Not everything bad will be unavoidable, and there will be room to either increase the number of good things, or be better aware of them that they might better be savored.

• Choose the things you felt you had no choice in.

I remember being helped quite a bit by this. There was a time I felt rather trapped while helping a family member through their fight with cancer.(caretaking is hard, yo). I distinctly remember one night, reflecting on it, and explicitly choosing to be where I was, doing what I was doing, and how much that shifted my perspective.

Even if doing anything but what you are doing would be an anathema to you, you could still have chosen to do something else. At its core is the idea that there are many choices we make and ignore because none of the other options were remotely palatable.

• Zag on it.

The habitual paths of my brain will follow their familiar courses, and if I react in my usual, expected ways, I’ll see my usual, expected outcomes. But what if I did something silly instead?

If your brain is looking to take you for a ride, throw up your arms and go “whee!” Like you’re on a roller coaster.This, of course, works best if you’re by yourself, but you can get somewhat of the effect by doing it in your head.

Or do something else that’s a bit silly, and a non-sequitur to the pattern of worry, melancholy, or dread. The point is to break out of those familiar courses, so that you can form new ones.

The additional trick of this is learning to notice the arcs of your attitude. The earlier in the course of a downturn you can interrupt the pattern, the better chance you have of pulling out of it quickly.

• If you have trouble with intrusive thoughts, imagine a focus for them.

When the sorts of intrusive thoughts that might send me into an existential crisis creep about, I invent an imaginary source for them. I give that source a name, different every time, and I imagine they’re perched atop a large speaker that’s emitting the unwanted thought.

In my head, I address them, tell them I’m not interested right now, and imagine turning the volume down on the speaker.

It might be that this is more silliness, but it helps me to envision a source outside myself for these thoughts that are both mine and not.

• You’ll have some good days and you’ll have some bad days.

If anything in this long ramble helps, or if anything from anyone else is the secret sauce that gets you through, that’s awesome. I really hope you find some relief in this thread.

But I want you to remember that, just as one good day doesn’t mean you’re cured, one bad day doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Even a string of one or the other.

Each new day is a new opportunity to have a better day than yesterday.

• And if none of the above sounded good to you or was helpful, I’ll leave you with this: a stranger on the internet is rooting for you. <3

I know this sounds hard when you’re depressed but its important: pick a hobby you like and spend time doing it. What do you enjoy doing? What makes you feel like, well, you? Whatever it is, start small, just tell yourself to do it for 1 minute a day at first. It could be simply dribbling a basketball, or doodling a cartoon character. What you spend your time doing defines how you live your life; you deserve to enjoy it.

Drugs