[aristofun]

You are not depressed because you don’t care about your work.

You don’t care about your work because you’re depressed.

Same with everything else.

Your brain will show you opposite rationalizations if you’re really depressed.

This doesn’t mean you can’t influence it by changing external factors.

This means you need to take it seriously and find a good psychiatrist to help with it. Not random dudes on the internet who think their boredom is a depression and brag how they fight it with gym.

[milsebg]

> You don’t care about your work because you’re depressed. > Same with everything else. > take it seriously and find a good psychiatrist to help with it.

So, you're seeing a depression as an external "illness" that can only be cured by pharmeceutical compounds?

I can only speak for myself, but to me that was dangerous advice. it removed accountability for my actions. the only thing that helped was getting into new actions. actively changing small things.

i was diagnosed with severe depression more than once in my life. things started to change for me only when I stopped believing this narrative.

a psychiatrist will give you pills, a psychologist will talk to you with a "playbook", both will try do bring some predefined indexes of clinical depression down. nothing of this is tailored to your personality.

because you mentioned it: gym does not change everything miraculously (neither do pills), but it taught me that my actions have significant effect. going through a perceived hamster wheel all the time, that realization was a big step forward to me. i did things that i did not want (like meeting people, applying for jobs, etc.). that helped, and it gets easier with each step.

ymmv

[walpurginacht]

I think it's outright disrespectful to just assume people in such circumstances are just looking for external factors to step out of responsibility. Have you ever thought that they do want to make a move, but just cant because their minds are broken?

you cant apply the "you actually just have to step up and get out of your comfort zone" advice to people whose minds are severely altered by their condition. You fix the condition first, or give a remedy, then when they start to get a grip on things you move to making changes to get them out of the situation

thank god you only speak for yourself, please keep it that way

[aristofun]

Of course it’s not black and white. But the more concious control you have over some problem - the more it is your own laziness or stupidity rather than an illness that needs to be treated by professionals. Generally speaking.

[kbt22]

Everyone needs to find his way.

For me, talking about my childhood to someone that was non-judgemental helped me far more than lifting weight. But that was for me. I'm glad you found your way.

[milsebg]

Yes, sure, there is more than one way (maybe even as many ways as patients). My point was not about gym or not, it was about the idea that depression is something that is totally outside of one's own control.

Happy that you found your way, too.