In regard to depression, another possible way to address it, is not to try to address it. At least, don't be primarily concerned about your own problems. The way to do this is to help others. Volunteer. Do something to, if you can't fix your own mental state, reduce the total suffering of the world, by helping somebody else.
Once again, this is, yes, easier said than done. You are depressed. You have low energy. You have low resources. Sometimes you feel that it's all that you can do just to keep going yourself. I get that, I've been there. It's hard.
But helping others is an effective way to help yourself.
And, even though it seems like you have barely enough energy to keep going and take care of your own needs, you will find that it's actually surprisingly easy to help other people. It's not that you don't have to think about what you're doing for other people: you do. It's just that, when you're doing it for somebody else, you can be more objective about it. You don't have to decide, when you're asking someone else to do something for you, whether you are worth their time and effort. You're doing this for someone else, so that aspect doesn't come into it.
During depression, your mind often goes into a loop, assessing, over and over, what you have energy for, what you should be doing, whether you have the energy to do it, and all kinds of other similar thoughts. When you are doing something for somebody else, that doesn't take place. You have a job to do, and you do it. And, since you're doing it for somebody else, obviously it's important. You tend to be able to have the energy to do that, particularly if it's a fairly simple task, and you will find that, quite often, doing a small and simple thing makes a surprising difference to someone else.
Doing something for somebody else also distract you. Therefore it breaks the cycle of going over the same thoughts over and over again. That gets your mind off yourself, and on to the task at hand. So the vicious cycle of pointless thoughts is broken, at least for a while.
There are generally plenty of opportunities for doing something for somebody else. There's formal volunteer work. All organizations that use volunteers can always use more. They've always got boring, relatively simple, repetitive tasks that need to be done. They can always use more help.
Of course, you don't need a formal organization. You can pick something yourself. This might be a bit harder. An organization has already decided on what jobs it needs to be doing, and usually parcels them into easily achievable tasks. If you are setting out to do something for somebody yourself, you have to figure out what you are going to do for them. But even that shouldn't be too hard. What is it that you wish somebody would do for you? Well, do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Do you wish somebody would take the task off your hands of deciding what to have for a meal? Okay, put together a meal and take it to somebody. Do you wish somebody would take a task off your hands? Okay, if it's a task that you can see needs to be done for somebody else, then go and do it.
Again, easier said than done if you haven't got much practice at it. But I recently joined a gardening crew on a volunteer basis. I have pretty much zero experience in gardening, and Mom made sure that all of us kids really hated the gardening that she forced us to do for her when we were kids. So this is not something that really grabs me, or that I desperately want to do. But, just looking around at what was going on, it was easy enough to see, at various points, that there was an area under some pine trees that regularly collected a whole bunch of pine cones, which people found it difficult to walk on or through. So, that was always something that I could do, anytime that I was there: just sweep up the pine cones and dump them in the organics bin. Everybody else knew more about gardening than I did, and pursued specific tasks in their specialized areas of interest. But all the plants needed to be watered. So, I learned all there was to know (not all that much, really), about the taps and hoses, and became Rob the watering guy. Everything needed to be watered, particularly this summer with the drought going on. Occasionally the others would teach me something new: like how to cover leek sprouts, or how to harvest and cure garlic, or how to pinch off tomato plants. So, when I wasn't being directed to a specific task I could look to those particular jobs and see if they needed to be done. There was pretty much always something that needed to be done.
So, just find it and do it. You'll feel better. Maybe not immediately, and maybe not every time, but eventually, and overall.
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