[mindwok]

For me, it was a combination of two things.

First, I transitioned from an engineering role into sales engineering which meant I was meeting new people, running meetings, etc. every day. That exposure made me pretty comfortable with conversation and meeting new people.

Second, and I think more important, is to develop a much greater sense of self-acceptance and comfort. I think a lot of my anxiety was based having some implicit sense that social interaction were performative. I would often approach them with this feeling that I had to do the right thing, say the right thing, leave an impression on them that I designed in my head like being funny, likeable, or smart. Eventually I just learned to accept myself more, let myself say dumb things or make bad jokes. Ultimately you can't control what people think of you, so you may as well just do your thing, and if you aren't happy with your thing then you need to work on that first.

[MuffinFlavored]

this reads like “depressed people should just stop being depressed”

[mindwok]

Well that wasn’t my intention. I’m just saying for me, my anxiety was a function of self acceptance and how I approached conversations. If that doesn’t resonate with you then fair enough, everyone’s anxiety is going to be different.

[wruza]

Exposure is a known counter to anxiety though. The comment doesn’t say “just stop being anxious”, it says “just try and then reflect on how bad it actually was”. It will be bad, but not as bad as your anxiety screamed. The first question therapists ask is “what’s the worst that can happen, in your opinion?”. Even the hypothetical answer is usually much less catastrophic that the feeling itself.

But the wrong level of exposure may lead to an escape and reinforce the problem. So don’t start with e.g. going on stage like you don’t start lifting with 100kg.

Same for unattended anxiety, it reinforces automagically without proper reflection.

It should also be noted that anxiety as a set of sensations and mood isn’t equal to inaction. The mistake people often make is equating it. “I fear so I’m not going there”. Pushing through fear is a fundamental skill. I’d say that anxiety is when you avoid fears instead of avoiding bad situations — there it is born. Exposure is about being exposed.

I’m anxious af if that matters. Just woke up today with another flush. Although it isn’t anywhere near the seemingly unexplainable levels I had two years ago, before researching it.

[TomaszZielinski]

Just wanted to say I wish you all the best in your fight! I'm really happy that you found a way out, even if it's long and difficult. I know firsthand what "unexplainable levels" mean.. Good luck!

[solardev]

Not the OP, but I think it's a bit different? Self-acceptance isn't about just willing yourself out of depression, but accepting that it's a part of who you are, just not the sum of it. You can be "depressed and", but the "and" part is up to you to discover and cultivate. My partner is "depressed and X" (for her, X=[kind, loving, funny, understanding, compassionate, on medication, outdoorsy, fun, and my favorite person]). For me, who's been with diagnosed with depression as well, the X might be other things (goofy, prone to dad jokes, reckless, adventurous, smart, friendly, whatever).

I know a lot of people with mental illness. Probably more than without, actually. Some are on medication and/or therapy. But all the more functional ones accept it as a part of who they are, and still try to build a life and relationships on top of it. Mental health is just a part of your overall life, alongside physical health, relationships, work and personal goals, etc. Yes, depression can make all of that a lot harder, especially to start. But it can get better, and professionals can help, but sometimes it's also a bit of a chicken and egg situation too in that it can only improve if you force it to, but it's hard to force it to when you're depressed.

Depression sucks, but it doesn't have to define your life forever. Hang in there and keep trying :/

------

Edit: my partner had this to add about the social anxiety part: Will yourself to go to events and choose not to feel bad about them, no matter what happens there. Give yourself permission to fuck up and not be charming or funny or anything and just focus on enjoying the event for yourself without worrying about what others might think. Fuck 'em. You're there for you.

It's like the OP said, it's a lot easier when you don't worry about being liked.

[MuffinFlavored]

> You can be "depressed and", but the "and" part is up to you to discover and cultivate. My partner is "depressed and X" (for her, X=[kind, loving, funny, understanding, compassionate, on medication, outdoorsy, fun, and my favorite person]). For me, who's been with diagnosed with depression as well, the X might be other things (goofy, prone to dad jokes, reckless, adventurous, smart, friendly, whatever).

My first reaction (and I apologize since it's a bit rude) but

if you're depressed, how can you also be goofy + funny + making dad jokes? I thought depression is like "everything sucks, I'm in a bad mood I can't shake"

[TomaszZielinski]

Think of depression as of climate, whereas goofy + funny + jokes is like weather. Weather today can be good, even if global warming is beyond 2C.

I'm writing this as someone who was depressed but still tended to joke around people. No one could really tell from the outside.

[MuffinFlavored]

I feel like if you are depressed, any happiness you have is fleeting (like your point to the weather) / temporary / eventually overshadowed by the depression

How did you go from "is depressed" to "was depressed"?

[TomaszZielinski]

Yes, exactly, the jokes were in the moment, and an hour later it was all gloomy again.

The short story is that I basically filled in countless CBT sheets, spotting distortions and correcting my thoughts. And at some point it started to sink in.

As an example, one of the distortions I noticed in my thoughts was "should-ing" myself in the foot: "I should be X, they should be Y and world should be Z". And because I'm not X, they are not Y and world is not Z, it's all hopeless". A more realistic though would be something like: "It would be cool if I were X, they were Y and the world would be Z, but right now it's not like that and frankly, so what? The sun is still shining, birds are still flying, so it cannot be all bad, can it?". This might be a trivial example, but if you pile up dozen patterns like that then it starts to make a difference.

The long story is that I didn't know what to do, but I somehow managed to find the "Feeling good" podcast by a big CBT name dr David Burns, started to listen to it, then a friend bought me a book "Feeling great" by the same author (I literally couldn't force myself to buy it, I think because I was afraid that if it doesn't help me then it means I'm a hopeless case, or something like that...) and then I started filling in all those sheets. Sometime later (like a few weeks, maybe 2-3 months), I noticed I feel better, and it was an upwards trajectory since then. I guess at some point I "platoed", but I feel pretty good these days so I don't mind :)

At some point I was also taking pills, but I didn't feel any difference. Whereas filling in those sheets gradually made me feel better and better.

There was also a related anxiety, which I managed to greatly diminish through exposure (it's still there to some extent, but these day I can just acknowledge it and move on). I think the anxiety exposure also helped for depression, as when I learned that most people are really nice, I started to think that maybe things are not that bad and hopeless either?

(Sorry if the whole post is a bit chaotic, it's late here and I admit I didn't bother to edit it too much.. But I hope it's still at least somewhat useful.)

[solardev]

It's not rude, and I totally get where you're coming from. Been there, and that "bad mood I can't shake" lasted anywhere from a few weeks to several years at its worst! Two suicide attempts and decades later, life these days is much more bearable, even enjoyable much of the time, but there are still hard days!

Depression has many forms*, different durations, different treatments, etc. I am not a psychologist, but I've seen many, and have been through a variety of treatments from talk and CBT to meditation to different drugs, etc. Some days are better than others, some months/years are better than others, etc. Neurochemistry is complex and not just a binary "you are depressed, true/false" :) I think anxiety comes with a lot of nuances too.

You can probably plot these complex feelings by different axes of intensity and such, every few hours and come out with a pretty complex radar graph (random example just for illustration... don't read too much into it: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Radar-chart-pentagon-sha...). Like anything biological and human, it has a lot of variables.

My point is just that everyone experiences their life a bit differently, both from other people and sometimes from themselves moment-to-moment, day-to-day, etc. None of this advice is guaranteed to work for everyone, just like no medication or therapy works for everyone.

But a common thread you see in the comments here is repeated exposure. That works for many people, and is worth a shot if you haven't tried it yet (for anxiety).

For depression, other things like socializing, exercise, food, etc. can all affect it -- cyclically, sometimes the causes and effects flip, etc. Like depression can lead to bad food choices, which then cause further depression in a vicious cycle, etc., whereas exercise can temporarily alleviate depression in many people, which then gives them a bit more energy for more exercise, etc. in a virtuous cycle.

It's just nuanced all around! But again I'm not a psychologist, just a rando on the internet, and there are professionals who can hopefully help. We're just sharing personal anecdotes in the meantime.

-------

* Wikipedia has a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mood_disorder#Depressive_disor...

But note that different countries can use slightly different criteria for evaluation (like DSM-5 vs ICD-10), and often, self-reported questionnaires are a part of diagnostics and not necessarily totally objective. There's not like a simple blood test. A lot of is vague, subjective, and also depends on the mood of the practitioner themselves, who are also human, and sometimes themselves suffering from mental illness.

IMHO psychology is a pretty young art and we're only recently beginning to understand the brain, the gut, and how it all ties together into mood and affect and maybe personality. There's a long ways to go! Maybe kids a few generations from now will have much better mental health treatment, but for now, it's mostly a matter of statistical clumps of different symptoms and treatments that seem to improve those symptoms (at a POPULATION level, not individual, i.e. no one thing is guaranteed to work for everyone yet).

[3minus1]

I don't know why you read it that way. Talking to a therapist can help with depression, but so can introspecting privately and making similar realizations.