Hmmm. This has never ever worked for me. My mind will tell me “So you were once happy… so what?”. I can imagine myself happy, in the past or in the future, and still be sad right now. Even a air tight argument for why the depression surely will disappear soon, will not help.
I’ve not been able to find any mental tricks that help with depression. For me at least. The closest thing is doing many hours of meditation. But that is not sustainable, and also ridiculously difficult to do when you’re the most depressed.
The only thing that has had some small positive effect, ironically enough, is writing down a detailed argument for why being depressed doesn’t change what I should do, and that I need to follow through with whatever I was planning to do anyways. Then include details of plans, immediate plans, how those are parts of bigger plans. And then write in the margins rebuttals to all the thoughts that predictably will appear when reading such an argument when you are depressed.
But it doesn’t really work that well. You can always just rationalise it away. But it works more than zero.
It doesn’t work by alleviating depression in the moment. But sometimes it would cause me to actually go do something, and then I’d be a fair bit less depressed while I was doing that thing, or at least be distracted enough that I was feeling it less.
Yeah… Depression cannot be defeated with logic. It’s inherently illogical and no matter what you do, like you say, it can be rationalized away.
I think the point I was trying to make isn’t “here is a logical tool to help you”, instead it’s “here is evidence of the lies. Remember, it lies”. Because of those lies, it cannot be trusted. That’s what helped me, not the evidence itself.
Hmmm. This has never ever worked for me. My mind will tell me “So you were once happy… so what?”. I can imagine myself happy, in the past or in the future, and still be sad right now. Even a air tight argument for why the depression surely will disappear soon, will not help.
I’ve not been able to find any mental tricks that help with depression. For me at least. The closest thing is doing many hours of meditation. But that is not sustainable, and also ridiculously difficult to do when you’re the most depressed.
The only thing that has had some small positive effect, ironically enough, is writing down a detailed argument for why being depressed doesn’t change what I should do, and that I need to follow through with whatever I was planning to do anyways. Then include details of plans, immediate plans, how those are parts of bigger plans. And then write in the margins rebuttals to all the thoughts that predictably will appear when reading such an argument when you are depressed.
But it doesn’t really work that well. You can always just rationalise it away. But it works more than zero.
It doesn’t work by alleviating depression in the moment. But sometimes it would cause me to actually go do something, and then I’d be a fair bit less depressed while I was doing that thing, or at least be distracted enough that I was feeling it less.
Yeah… Depression cannot be defeated with logic. It’s inherently illogical and no matter what you do, like you say, it can be rationalized away.
I think the point I was trying to make isn’t “here is a logical tool to help you”, instead it’s “here is evidence of the lies. Remember, it lies”. Because of those lies, it cannot be trusted. That’s what helped me, not the evidence itself.