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Comment by durpleDrank | Hacker News Reader

Drink more water. Sleep more. Exercise. Stop listening to depressing music. Listen to happy music. Focus on the good things in your life. Force yourself to think about them at least daily. Stop comparing yourself to others. Stop feeling envy. Be creative and do something that's fun. Buy a note book, write all your problems down and work them out that way. In fact, write everything in your notebook. Journal. Plan. Draw. Write. Stop worrying so much. Stop working so hard. Eat Healthy. Cut out stuff that will give you heartburn (oil,fried,chocolate,etc) Find people or something or someone to love. Do an audit on who you can trusts with your life.

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I don't know if it's me but having dealt with depression most of my life, I find "happy" music irritating and grating. Pharrell's "Happy" has to be one of the worst songs I've ever heard in my life.

Sad music tends to be more beautiful to me but I don't know that it necessarily affects my mood. But I could be wrong.

Either way though happy music is not happening.

There is happy music that isn't pop. I agree that "sad" music sounds more beautiful, at least to me, but I also see it as affecting my mood if I listen to it constantly.

So I often choose either to not listen to music at all or to listen to "happy" music that doesn't suck, even if it's not so easy to find something I like.

"Just do all the things that you would do if you weren't depressed".

Thanks mate.

>... do something that's fun.

There is NO fun in depression.

I found that doing things I normally would've thought was fun worked well, even if I didn't think so at when I was depressed. This was the starting step for me to get better.

I concur. My experience is similar. Definitely needed to will myself to continue them, but they kept me sane.

I know what you mean. I've been there.

And yet, from my own experience and the little I have read, the bigger problem is that there is no anticipation of fun. Thinking of fun activities does not bring me joy when depressed. Doing them brings lesser joy, but there is still joy, however little.

No joy either.

Thanks I'm cured.

Yeah, it's poop. None of that works when you're depressed/prone to depression. Add in anxiety and maybe ADHD and you're completely fck'd, it's a neverending feedback loop that only gets worse. Drugs are the only thing that can lift you up, then you can try to make new habits and not fall back. But you'll still likely always need to medicate.

I hope you will never give that list to somebody who has depression.

To a chronically obese person: Just stop eating.

To a person in poverty: Just save up money and find a job.

It seems to me that the real problem is that these issues have root causes which really need to be addressed, and that's why telling the chronically obese people "just stop eating" doesn't work, because it isn't addressing the root cause.

The problem, however, is that addressing the root cause is extremely difficult, or even impossible (for those trying to give advice), so people don't know what else to say. For the person in poverty, for instance, the root causes are numerous and systemic in that society, and pretty much impossible for anyone to fix anytime soon. So what else do you do or say?

> So what else do you do or say?

I don't know, but if one can't think of anything better, then I think it's better to shut up, or just acknowledge the problem and be supportive but refrain from offering unwanted non-solutions that implicitly blame the victim and trivialize their problem (you aren't "just doing X" therefore it's on you) and simultaneously frustrate/anger/depress them because "just do X" is impossible (or not a solution to their problem).

PLEASE STOP

"Sleep more. Exercise. ... Stop worrying so much."

Most of of this "advice" is profoundly insulting to depressed people.

It not different than recommending a paraplegic person to learn to run... just do it one step at the time.

I understand that you are writing this advice in good faith, but it is not how depression works.

There's even a whole subreddit dedicated to such bad advice https://www.reddit.com/r/wowthanksimcured/

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