[burkean]

In the first few weeks of working from home, my depression definitely got significantly worse. I'm pretty sure that, perversely, I enjoy my job because of the high levels of stress and anxiety (teaching) that normally distract from deeper-seated unhappiness. By removing all the distracting stimulus from my day-to-day, my mental health fell off a cliff fast.

In recent weeks I've mellowed out into a new normal. Have you heard about the idea of the hedonic treadmill? It's the idea that being happy is a temporary response to a positive change in your life and eventually your emotional state returns to normal, even if your life continues being great. I'm beginning to think it works the other way too: I've returned to my not-so-great emotional baseline, even though my quality of life is objectively worse.

I'm sure others will chime in here with what strategies have worked well for them but I thought I would add this observation because it surprised me and is perhaps counter intuitive. All the best getting through this.

[throwaway888abc]

Default is happy. The rest we learned on the way.

https://samharris.org/podcast/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTrrRoBZSpg

P.S. Obviously get out and travel doesn't work well those days... There must be better days soon!