I built an app to fix my depression
blog.elifiner.com
blog.elifiner.com
I get the feeling that the author is in a situation a lot of people in HN could relate to: A situation where Performance Anxiety, Fear of missing out (FOMO), Fear of being left behind, distraction and ADHD all gets entangled in ones work , personal life & choice of how to spend their time. It seems like if these things are left unchecked for a long time, the things can lead to depression, or other form of negative mental state.
My question is how do you solve/amend this? Reading comments from similar themed post on HN it seems like a lot of people are aware of themselves having one or more of the above. Some seems to have accepted it, others seek help from therapist. But a lot of people also seems to feel like they don't want to "lose" the feel of guilt, stress, bad self image that follow performance anxiety and fear of missing out because they take their negative emotional reaction as a virtue that pushes them to improvement in stressful times (myself being one of them).
It seems like vast majority defaults to "work harder, smarter" as a solution, and only later in life when "working harder" have a diminished (sense) of return, or when they hit a wall, change their course of action.
Now this "accepting" is not just something you (can) just do, it may be exactly what you need a therapist for. Because you may have to undo years of thinking and redefine your default thought patterns, this is very hard work.
For all the parents, I think this is a pretty important thing to teach your kids. Telling them: "If you work hard you can be whatever you want to be!" Is, imho, damaging, because it is not true, you are setting them up for disappointment in themselves.
In short: Happiness = Reality - Expectation
Don't burden yourself or your kids with unrealistically large expectations.
I second this. From my experience you have to START WITH ACCEPTING the status quo and honestly looking at it without judging or being ashamed. It helps me to tell myself: "This is not terrible. I am alive. I have a job. My body is still working OK."
From there FOCUS ON THE DELTA: What can I do today that will bring me into a slightly better position tomorrow.
Avoid thinking about the past ("I ate too much today.", "I did not exercise all week."). This is done. No way to change it.
Don't set high expectations. You only need to know where you want to be, and that you are going into the right direction. It does not matter much if you arrive there in one week or in five years.
- you set the delta of “what can I do today to achieve” to be low enough that it’s actually realistic and not what you wish it was (while still being high enough to actually mean something), and,
- if you still fall short, you don’t kill yourself with shame & guilt, recognising that you actually lose more time in that process.
Not easy to learn, and not easy to stay in that space. Meditation helps (after a long long time of doing it).
(Oh and if you have ADHD - undiagnosed or otherwise - please forgive yourself for it, and forgive yourself each time you get thrown off the rails because of it - yes, even if that is multiple times per hour. Everything else flows from that forgiveness and self acceptance.)
Nothing wrong with working hard of course, just make sure you like what you do and who you are while doing it.
So the real key to happiness is to set your expectations as low as possible!
This[1][2] is what he has to say about depression. It's largely about acceptance.
Mark Manson says The Uncomfortable Truth is that our lives are meaningless and when we die, nothing we did will have mattered. That the human condition requires hope so we invent narratives, as individuals and as society, to create a mental framework that makes life worth living.
That's all well and good, I was hoping to get some solution or suggestion but I got to the end of the essay and it was essentially "now buy my book to understand more".
I'm going to assume link [1] is of similar quality and conclusion.
Tell a college kid to lower his expectation and he will feel like a "unmotivated" person, tell a 30's/40's that and he will feel like a failure, all his struggle for nothing, and tell a late 20's to lower his expectation and that goes against every self-motivation influencer and (probably) what his surrounding successful peers suggest.
I think most people understand that the answer is acceptance, but how to reach that point, is so different for each person. Because some people overcome it by sheer grit, while some through therapists, it's hard for a person in the grind to realize what course of action is the best, and before it's too late.
That might sound obvious, but it's really easy to maintain a large set of relationships without ever talking about those things. Politics, science, arts, sports, etc. are so easy to fill a conversation with that it's a common pitfall to hardly ever broach the subject of who we are and what we're doing.
Many of the things that are bubbling up in society seem all too much the same. Whether it's school or employers or whatever, there's this kind of overvaluing phenomenon, where the rich and/or successful get more rich and/or successful and we attribute their [increasingly, given increasing inequities] freakish success to something about them, as opposed to being in the right fitting environment at the right point in their careers, or corruption, or something broken in the system, or what. If you're too old, too black, too caring, worked at the wrong place, the place changed, didn't go to a prestigious enough school, were too rebellious as a young adult, whatever, don't know the right people, you're screwed.
I'm not sure what my point is, except to say this acceptance-struggle tension you're referring to is even more complicated because it's not just about lowering or raising your own personal expectations or standards, it's about everything else as well, about accepting or struggling against what's broken in society (at the risk of sounding too idealistic or self-righteous).
What do you do when it's not self-hatred vs acceptance, but self-hatred vs societal anger vs acceptance?
Personally, the issue for the longest time was that I didn't understand my own issues. I went way too long without seeking a diagnosis, because I mistakenly believed that medical treatment wouldn't be helpful or attainable as an adult. Turns out medical treatment (psychiatrist - not a therapist) helped me a whole lot. So did doing detailed research on ADHD. The work of Dr. Russel Barkley on ADHD as an executive functioning disorder was particularly informative.
As for trying to reconcile my ADHD with a (healthy) sense of motivation - the best thing I found was actually from some random blog post that basically summarized the information in this article (https://www.additudemag.com/secrets-of-the-adhd-brain/ ). The brief summary: most people without ADHD have behaviors which are motivated by the concepts of Importance, Rewards, and Consequences. People with ADHD are aware of all of those things existing, and often do "care" about them - but if you look at the behavior of people with ADHD - those aren't the things which actually motivate us to action on a regular basis. Instead, we are motivated by Interest, Challenge, Novelty, and Urgency. It's not ideal, but even with medication, I've realized that is true for me - and I can't change it.
For some jobs, like my first post-college job working as a Support Engineer for Amazon AWS - those motivators were actually great. Tickets have really short-term SLAs and are often urgent, AWS was a challenging and interesting work environment, and for the the first year it everything was very novel. However, when I progressed in my in career towards more of a DevOps role, I started working somewhere which practiced two week sprints for everything - which was a total disaster. Kanban worked a good bit better, but no matter where I worked - the novelty, interest, and challenge of the work eventually wore off - and relying on crunch time to motivate myself was causing burnout.
I did think the consequence of guilt or shame from disappointing my teammates was a motivator and felt stress related to that. But in truth, that feeling was something that I mostly felt after I had forgot to do something or ran out of time - and not something that drove me to get work done.
So now I'm just leaning in to the whole thing, risks be damned. I left a pretty cushy remote-work salary job to build a startup, and I've started doing some freelance work on the side for extra income. I pick what I work on, so I'm super interested, I'm challenged frequently, it's novel (for now) and the freelance stuff is urgent because I don't get paid til I deliver. For stuff that is boring and executive functioning related (paying bills, scheduling meetings) - I try to automate as much as possible and be sure notifications for things go to both me and my non-ADHD co-founder who can nag me if I miss something. If I see a lot of success, I would like to pay a personal assistant or secretary to keep things organized / handle boring communications on my behalf. I spent a few years working for an executive who clearly had ADHD, and having an assistant was incredibly helpful to him.
I'm aware this could all crash and burn - but my daily needs are being met and I'm enjoying my life a lot more. It does feel like I'm working smarter. Though I am technically working harder too.
Holy cow. You've just described my whole life in a single phrase. I need to go away and ponder this. Thanks.
I had every problem you describe, and it leads to horrible procrastination. I don't think I would be employable at all without my anti-anxiety medication.
The second step was weekly self-assessments regarding how well my actions matched my values.
It didn't take long to meaningfully and permanently improve my unconscious behaviors.
Don't have just one most important/critical thing your life, like your professional life for example.
Very serious advice, go outside and exercise.
Find a friendly real life community to be part of. Fans of movies, fans of some sport, fans of science, anything, just any group of real people that you share sami-regular or regular friendly time with.
Human beings are not made to be alone, regardless of how introverted they are. They are not made to be isolated. They are not made to have little to no physical exercise. We are however made to become easly obsessed to get the job done, so make sure you have more than one fun challenge to become obsessed with.
Then there is motivation...
For me, the biggest improvement in motivation came from asking myself questions:
What do I really want to be working on and would enjoy working on?
Lucky for me, I already had experience when I was young writing software for myself and others which made it easier to do more things on the computer. I stayed up all day and all night, focused, motivated, and productive.
I was not motivated by money, deadlines, nor having to have a roof over my head and pay insurance, nor wanting to prove myself to anyone. I was just coding, and all I needed was some sweetened black tea in large quantities...
Another question I asked myself was, what does the world need right now, which would make it a better place, that no one else can provide except me?
This one is not as easy to answer, and the answer may not be the same today as it was yesterday. But if you keep asking yourself this question and pondering the answer, something will come of it.
Another question you may want to ask yourself and ponder on the answer:
What am I better at than anyone else in the world, and how can I help others using it?
I've built apps for similar(ish) reasons solely for myself in order to deal with whatever issue I had to deal with. A good example is using TiddlyWiki and simply making a journal with a few fixed questions that simply was asking how I was doing on a few psychological/physiological measures (i.e. exercise and so on).
I've been in the situation where people sought my advice to fix their issues, whatever they were, and applied my strategies. Sometimes they hit the nail and worked, other times they catastrophically failed because they worked against the nature of the person.
While one has to pick their battles, I'd advocate for people to consider making their own tools/techniques/strategies to deal with their issues. I know this isn't always possible or a smart move to do. But I've seen that it's more often the best move in the long-term than not. Oh, and of course that doesn't exclude recruiting help along the way :)
As for the present, I know when I'm doing poorly in either of those areas, but it's harder to dismiss them as normal when I see their abysmal scores.
Thank you so much! I have long felt outside help as lacking in understanding but this just flipped the switch in my brain. This opens many more opportunities to explore.
Thanks!
I got one question what other books did you read on Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)? And if you recommend any? I have been told that I am "Empath" and lately reading up on it (mostly online). Empaths and HSP seems related, based on quick research.
The Big Leap The Sedona Method The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership Hold Me Tight The Four Tendencies
It'd probably be wise to consult an expert on the psychological backgrounds.
As far as risk goes this seems low voltage enough to be at worst harmless.
Having a clear goal helps with depression, but leaving my job and trying to start a business around it makes it worse. I'm pretty sure using the app is what's keeping me sane these days, while building it is trying to bury me.
I think this in itself can be a dangerous thought. Agree that some people have dire need for help, an in particular some people might need medication for their condition to avoid getting into self harm behaviors. (Schizophrenia victims for instance.)
However, diving into emotions, trying meditation, and other things is not something to be considered dangerous and to be avoided without professional help. Being afraid of such subjects might in itself lead one to not be able to deal with them. Most people don't have a stand by therapist to consult every time they have some emotions bottled up.
Providing people with a structured approach to meditation/listening to emotions is not like suggesting to someone to do their own surgery. It's more like suggesting to treat a sore muscle with some tradition based massage.
Claiming that it mitigates the need for proper treatment for serious issues would be immoral, but proper treatment isn't always effective (most of the time it's not effective at all) and isn't always available.
And there are so many of these apps out there, why would someone build their own? Maybe OP is onto something though.
Could it be that the creative process and challenge of building an app to solve a personal problem is just as good a treatment for depression as the app itself?
Also, are you the right person to complain to about the quality of my depression? It is quite poor and I would like get a refund.
An example of a depression protocol is depression remission:
(1) Was an index test performed in prior year to identify depression (2) Was a followup performed this year (3) Does the followup test indicate depression has gone into remission.
There are various other measures for depression.
I really like the idea of incorporating a standard depression symptoms test into the app and then taking another test at a later stage to see the longer term change. It still won't be conclusive proof, but it would help.
The problem is those things are hard. And downloading an app on your phone is easy.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) it is still true that you reap what you sow. I'm afraid all this "innovation" around mental health is just sowing the seeds for more people spending more time sitting inside, alone, not moving, staring at screens, consuming.
Depression is a self sustaining problem. The depression prevents you from seeking social activities, taking care of your body and mind and being creative, This obviously makes the depression worse. Paradoxically, forcing yourself to do any of these activities makes the depression worse as well due to the internal resistance to get better.
We definitely do need innovation. We need something that works, is scalable, doesn't cost $1k per month in therapy fees and doesn't have any adverse side effects.
My current best guess about the future in this space is a combination of microdosing and supportive apps like mine.
Tangentially, I know that personally, something I struggle with, that has caused me frustration, is that I often feel like in my work life, I am forced to work on projects that I think are basically bullshit. I'm being asked to implement a feature that I believe is useless, or to work on a project that my intuition tells me will get axed later, have very little or no impact, or is based on terrible design decisions and just painful to work on. That leaves me feeling powerless and unmotivated, and has pushed me into a depression in the past.
As a programmer, having a side project can be a nice way to get what you can't always get at work, which is a sense of self-determination. A sense of working on something you actually believe in, something you can actually take the time to design cleanly and properly. Side projects can be a much better creative outlet than work. I hope that I can eventually find a job where I get to work on something I truly, really believe in. That's been very difficult to find so far though.
People deserve to be compensated for their work, obviously, but this is a space where people are looking to escape from being sold something or manipulated in some way.
If someone is building the app for themselves, it's based around actually helping and doesn't have some underlying agenda that it's trying to hide under the tablecloth.
Like a walk through the forest, the trees aren't reaching for your wallet when you turn around. The trees are just there to do some light photosynthesis before lunch, and then maybe make some pinecones that afternoon.
I'm not sure how to fix this and still make a living out of it yet, but I'm going to keep looking.
Thanks for your thoughts!
I'm now building a business around the app and that path has multiple emotional pitfalls per day. I tried to do this a few times before and always succumbed to my fear, guilt and worthlessnes.
This time, I'm using the app on a daily basis and snap out of my funk (usually) in a matter of minutes.
So I'd say the app is helping me feel better which is allowing me to keep building it - not the other way around.
Seriously, if you think you are not ready to introduce paid plans, start with donation link. Or kickstarter.
The challenging part with apps like these is that people expect quick fixes ("I will read that book, do that exercise and everything will fall in place"). No, it is a process, like coming to gym and lifting a dumbbell one time will not make you jacked. I think it is important to emphasize that.
Few items of feedback (1) Add email - not necessarily your personal email - but something like info@wuju.app, twitter is not everyone's cup of tea (2) I think you mispelled "tedious" as "tedius" in at least one place. (3) you narration is very authentic and I definitely connected to it, but most people tend to connect to the monologue with more expression and intonation in it. If you transition to a serious business with it - consider hiring a female sound actor - no sexism here - but research shows that people of both sexes have a stronger response to female voices, there is a reason that all voice assistants speak with female voice by default.
I definitely am planning to make a serious business out of it. I started out with a coaching + app mix when the app was a lot more bare and didn't really work without me walking people through it.
I'll get the email, marketing site and the rest of it in order, you're right, Twitter isn't everyone's cup of tea (although I am focused on buildign an audience there because my style of writing seems to work well in short bursts).
I'm not going to hire a female actress to do the narration because I want my soul to be in the app. I might hire a speach coach though to get this to a higher level, so thanks for for pointing it out. I've actually gotten way better feedback on the narration given that I'm not a native English speaker and this is my first time recording my voice for anything.
Again, thanks so much. I'm now going to use this motivation that you granted me to go get this thing in front of many more people!
My depression is not your depression, and your depression is not theirs. Please stop judging.
People die of depression, there's good reason there would be emotion going against its perceived over-usage.
(Your comment is arguably the third wave and mine the fourth...)
I feel depressed. Doctor - Take these pills.
I still feel sad. Doctor - Take more pills.
Medication cures symptoms of depression but cannot fix the underlying problems causing it.
Taking pill to feel happy again is a patchwork that will eventually burst catastrophically.
Rather then, pill are not going to solve the root cause.
If your apendix is infected taking painkillers will mask the fact its going to bust and probably kill you.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't take painkillers while waiting for a surgeon to operate on you.
Maybe I should have been more precise in my original post.
Now I've been working with a therapist since January alongside with some pills and I feel so much better. Not only the depression symptoms are mostly gone, but I feel I know so much more about myself and now I can understand what made me feel like I did before.
Anyway, if you, dear reader, are suffering from depression, I recommend you to visit a therapist with an open mind.
I would add on top of this, try out different therapists if current one is not working for you, rather than saying 'this is not working, i am done with therapy'.
This implies that there always is a root cause, which I don't think is the case. Very often there is, but sometimes there's just an imbalance.
What does that mean? As far as I know, there has never been medical science to support this statement.
I understand drugs 'work' in the sense people's experience and emotions are altered -- that's beyond debate. But we don't know what it means in terms of "depression" or "happiness" or other promises they make.
I'll feel great if I spend my day high on cocaine but I am not going to claim I cured my depression while under the influence.
The point being, it isn’t a cure, but it keeps you going until you can get therapy sessions or whatever else you need.
Sometimes those underlying conditions are brain chemistry though. The pills work for a lot of people. My Bi Polar depression doesn't seem to stem from any trauma or anything. I've done therapy and it did nothing. I've tried exercise, it helps for a short period. I tried diet, seems to help a little. If also tried about 15 different medications before a found a combination that keeps my mood fairly stable.
I almost killed myself before I found the right combination of meds. Meds work for some people we shouldn't be so quick to discourage it.
I'm really happy you found a combination of meds that work for you, sounds like it was a long and rough road to get there. There's still things you can do to improve your condition beyond what the meds can do. I have some anecdotal evidence that the app helps people taking meds, but nothing conclusive yet.
So at one level we could claim that indeed depression is caused by "too low" serotonin/dopamine levels, as temporarily increasing them will take away the depression, but on the other hand this insight in itself doesn't provide us with a clear path for diagnosis and treatment, and it doesn't preclude that there's other things that's a root cause, such as thought patterns, neurological setup, etc.
One thing that I am cautious about is the biological guarantee that you will develop tolerance to the drug and will need ever more powerful drugs throughout your life to maintain the baseline of "ok".
I'm glad the medication helps, but it seems like exercise and diet (and other activities) are more sustainable in the long run even if they are not as dramatically effective.
Maybe it makes more sense to take medication on a short term basis to deal with crisis and focus on lifestyle changes for long term success.
The problem seems to be that we don't really understand enough about how to brain works and how these medication work with the brain. So many psych meds are like "we don't really know how this works, but we think it might do this".
I think that's why there so much trial and error with psych meds. Plus don't get me wrong, the wrong med can be devastating to certain people. I ended up in the ER a during my trials due to bad reactions.
I still try to exercise and watch my diet. I don't have any studies or anything but low carb seems to keep me more mentally stable.
The other thing that helps me the most is running, but sometimes I just fall out of the routine.
I agree with everything you wrote, especially about the way medications are dispensed. I did try a medication once and had a bad reaction, have not tried since then but I think about it often.
20 years is a long time to suffer.
But the vast majority of people dealing with mental health issues are in the category of somewhat anxious or depressed with maybe a personality disorder thrown in. These are treatable with therapy, somewhat side effect free.
I'll share one reaction I had — these sorts of things are normally narrated in professional, glossy, somewhat saccharine voices, and it was a fun and surprising moment of human connection to realize, hey, this is just some dude talking into his laptop mic! While I imagine you might consider investing in professional VO at some point, there's something really nice about the way it is now.
I wonder what it's like for you to hear your own voice asking these questions of you — is there any value in that specifically?
It's interesting to hear that the lo-finess is actually helpful. Yes, I'm just a dude (with a bit of an accent to boot!) :)
I usually use the app without my narration - I find it distracting. Most people using the app over the long term tend to turn it off to, and listen deeper to their inner guidance (which is the whole point - the app is helping you to become your own therapist, not me being yours).
Hmmmm.....
Hope you feel better soon ;-)
What really helped me is to go out and exercise in the morning, rather than lounge inside until I start work. I have more clarity during the day, which means I feel less compelled to work late to make up for my self-perceived lack of focus during the work day. And less work in the evening also means I fall asleep more easily, which has really been an issue for me in the past few months.
YMMV, of course.
Also, ping me on Twitter @finereli. Let talk.
Wait, what?
The guy who wrote it is the real deal, not some random guru. The Surrender Experiment, his other book, is also good because it shows how he applied it all in his life to make him self a self-made tech multi-millionaire and to go through some pretty hard struggles and build a large spiritual community along the way.
Oh and I may be dumb but it took me I while before I realized I had to check all the boxes, because I though: Yeah I'm in a quiet space, so I don't need my headphones.
Other than that, very nice job, worked for me, impressive. Will bookmark.
It's great that more people are talking about their mental health, and that it's becoming more acceptable to seek help. But the word "depression" has become so murky to me, I rarely know what people mean when they use it.
Maybe I just don't understand the word...
I'm not sure where I heard this, but likely it's one of the following podcasts, which are worthwhile.
Sam Harris #91 - The Biology of Good and Evil https://samharris.org/podcasts/91-biology-good-evil/ YT version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLWzMH8psFU
Peter Attia #51 – Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.: The pervasive effect of stress – is it killing you? https://peterattiamd.com/robertsapolsky/
Except now, I think what is most likely the case is that we use/learned to use words like depression in a context based fashion, like mapping a set of contextual behaviors to a word. The actual experience of depression is sort of non-existent. The usage of the word and the contexts in which it is applicable changes as society changes its interpretation of emotional health and the behaviors or mannerisms that go with it. I think how we use depression in popular culture isn't indicative of anything fixed, it depends on the zeitgeist in a way. I'm sure this is different from a clinical standpoint, I'm not at all qualified to comment on that. But then again, most people don't use it in clinical terms anyway. Still, I think this is distinctly different from 'sad', as in, the context is different for the two states.
The book 'How emotions are made' by Lisa Feldman Barrett might be interesting to you, it goes exactly into this sort of phenomenon.
You're not describing a concrete thing. Knowing if what you feel corresponds to what others feel when they use the same words runs straight into the heart of the "other minds problem." It's a philosophical pickle.
Meanwhile, on the academic, clinical or neurological side usage of terms changes over time. They also run into the same problem. There are broad ranges of symptoms to these things, whether they are physical-ish (like mild flue) or mental-ish (like apathy).
So, I suggest embracing ambiguity. You just can't one word that describes emotional states or conditions. This is true for a lot of things. Consider "anger." Seems relatively concrete. OTOH, we use it to describe a state of adrenaline fueled rage like you would feel in a fistfight. We use it to describe a long term attitude towards someone. My friend betrayed me 5 years ago. I'm still angry. You're not necessarily feeling the same thing.
Add an "-ish" to the end of these concepts. It takes a whole conversation to understand someone's depression (or other states) with any kind of precision. One word only gets you a part of the way.
I'm sure it varies a lot from person-to-person, but for me, I have a constant and profound feeling of sadness and futility, I often feel like crying, and occasionally consider ending my life (I almost fantacise about it, because I wouldn't have to feel this way any more).
One of my parents has manic depression, and a sibling also has clinical depression - I presume there is a genetic factor at play; I was brought up in a middle-class household with parents that loved me, and I seldom wanted for anything. Now, I'm a successful software architect with a wife, kids and side-business. I own my own home, I have 2 nice cars, and I have a high income. Yet I still feel that sadness, and often just don't see the point of living, or life at all, really.
Except for randoms on the internet, I've never told anyone about this. I've come close many times, but I guess the longer you keep a secret, the harder it is to let it out.
If anyone else is reading this, I'd enourage them not to be me, and to seek medical help. If you don't think you can speak to a doctor, I'd also recommend trying 5-HTP - I started 200mg 2x a day a few years back, and the change was incredible. It may have saved my life.
How would you actually do that? Is there some kind of home test available?
Even considering just that axis, I'm not sure how one would define a spectrum that has low-grade symptoms on one end and manic episodes on the other. If anything there is a spectrum of affective states ranging from severe depression to severe mania, with most people at most times clustered around the origin point - and even at that, you can't map it to a line with two ends because mixed states exist.
Speaking to your specific case, and also for anyone who might be in the same shoes: suicidal ideation isn't the sole purview of depression or even of mood disorders as a whole, and I really wish the conversation around mental health would expand enough for more people (both patients and healthcare providers) to actually tackle it properly. Besides that I don't think you need to encourage anyone "not to be [you]"; you've found something that works for you, which is more than can be said of the healthcare system sometimes.
This sound like good advice, but I've kept it hidden so long I'm genuinely afraid that I'll have some kind of breakdown if I let it out.
Well, physically expressed it can be just like a mild flu...
Apathy, in my case, felt like the flu. I didn't have energy, didn't want to do anything, felt weak and soulless.
This is not the official definition, but it's a workable description that also points to a solution - process the apathy and then the underlying emotions and the depression should lift. That's what the app I built helps with. But as usual, YMMV.
Poor spelling makes things look less credible ("tedius", etc.)
For those not in the know, this is based on what's sometimes called the Sedona Method. There's a popular book about it by Hale Dwoskin [0] and the questions (and phrasing) in this app are almost exactly the same (the self-questions are an important part of the technique).
I've been geeking out about psychological self-help for a long time and this is by far the simplest and most effective (especially in terms of the ratio between accessibility and effectiveness) method I've come around. The idea, to summarize it crudely, is that you can just let go of feelings. You're a layer cake of stuff and the more you take off the better things get. At first it sometimes feels like "ok, I've let go of this basic thing, but I'm no better off" (it's a bit like the situation you'd find yourself in if you started shoveling a landfill). The technique, apart from the basic insight that you can let go, provides troubleshooting and guidance that let's you get a lot of results from something that is so simple. One of the things that originally attracted me to it was the feeling I had that, whatever the mechanism behind my hangups is, it's simple, but with emergent behaviour, and this really satisfied that part of me, and has been otherwise very rewarding as well.
My favorite book on the topic is Letting Go by David R. Hawkins [1], which is also one of my favorite books of all time. I could sing praises for it for a long time; it's been a big deal for me. If I need a spiritual pick-me-up, that's the book. It's a really good instruction manual for your mind, feelings, emotions. If you think you might lack emotional intelligence, this book is a good place to start too.
If you feel like this method is working for you and you want to learn more, I recommend going back and forth between the two books. They have very different approaches on the same thing. I found that at different times I needed more of the one or the other.
In the app, I noticed that the voice-over "letting go might be new for you" kicks in every time you're going through a new emotion. Might be better if it was there only for the first time.
I think I'll be coming back to this app a lot. Thanks again! Are you considering open sourcing it?
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Sedona-Method-Happiness-Emotional-Wel... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Letting-Go-M-D-David-Hawkins/dp/14019...
However, the app works for people who don't know the method, haven't read the book, didn't watch the full DVD from 1992 and didn't attend the weeklong seminar. I think it could bring this to a much wider audience.
Thanks for the bug report, yes, there's a lot more I need to fix in it before hitting the big leagues.
I haven't considered open sourcing it because I want to make a living off it. But I will think about it. There's a more limited version, without narration or the deeper content, that I use for myself and I think I might open source that.
I apologize if I'm not getting this.
seems like it's a gathering scheme...
This comment comes off as belittling someone else's depression, and I'm afraid it might be very hurtful to the author.
I've just got over a couple weeks of a viral infection (not Covid19 according to tests) and just felt yesterday -- oh wow, I actually feel happy. I've been intellectually 'happy' (by which I mean that on analysis there's nothing for me to be especially down about; at least something to take joy in) many times in the last few years (my depressive period) but very rarely have I felt physically in that state.
It's one thing to be alive, another to feel alive.
This implies to be depressed you MUST be the worst form of depressed, or nearly suicidal to be deserving of help.
The first version of the app took a couple of weeks to build and I was flying on a good streak at that point, but it's prevented me from spiraling down ever since.
I don't know if the app could have helped me in my deepest depressive state. I don't know if it can help other people in even deeper states. I think it might.
Depression acts primarily on willpower. The bad feelings come as a consequence of not being able to get anything done.
I disagree, as someone with experience in the matter. I think is fine to question whether OP's depression was a real major depressive episode or to what extent they were really depressed. However, the succinctness of your comment leads me to believe that it's more simplistic than anything and thus counterproductive while discussing depression. It's not always a matter of "but was it real depression, though?"
> Depression acts primarily on willpower.
Depression acts on everything and shouldn't be characterized so easily. That's exactly what happens in real life, where a statement like yours can instantly nullify the efforts of someone trying to tell you that, yes, they look normal, but something is wrong. To that, you'd likely reply, "but Jane, you don't look that depressed!"
Some people are able to keep operating on certain realms, which IMHO is the key to getting out of the rut; grasping whatever still motivates you, even if just a bit, to operate at 1% of your normal capacity and "power" on.
> The bad feelings come as a consequence of not being able to get anything done.
I repeat, not always and not for everyone as the causes for circumstantial and clinical depression are too many to count and so are the symptoms and the way they are externalized.
^^ This. I've battled with depression since I was something like 7-10 years old, and it's just not as simple as the GP implies.
Depression affects different people to different degrees, and has different impacts - human beings are afterall very complex beasts.
Being depressed also doesn't necessarily mean that you feel that low all the time - or at least that those feelings aren't in the foreground. Some days, weeks or months are worse that others. It's absolutely always there, but sometimes I can have a streak of weeks where I feel like I'm winning, and it's only in the background.
I'd also add that people with depression cn be very good at hiding it, to the point where they can even be hiding it from themselves. Barring occasional random on the internet, like now, I haven't told a single real person about it for the 30-year (and counting term) of my depression. Despite growing up with a parent with manic depression, somehow I didn't even recognise the way I felt as depression until I was in my 20's.
Nobody has ever told me they think I have depression - I'm very good at hiding it. My main coping mechanism, if you can call it that, was to bury my head in the sand and pretend everything was fine.
As for how I found out, it was very slowly, over a period of a few years, as I matured into an adult. Looking back I can see that my mental state deteriorated, likely due to stress caused by various life events and (physical) health issues, and everything kind of came to a head. At some point I couldn't bury my head in the sand and ignore it anymore and think "it's just me, I'm weird".
But even once deep down I recognised it as "depression", it was a long time before I'd even say in my head "I have depression". This was 15-20 years ago, and there was even more stigma around mental health then than there is now, and my shame was probably tempered by how one of my parents (with manic depression) had been viewed while I grew up. I also felt guilty - I had a wife, house, job, plenty of disposable income etc; how could I still feel like this when my life seemed so superficially perfect?
Even though I admit it to myself now, I doubt I'll ever tell anyone else, even my wife. Would anyone even believe me, believe that it was possible to hide such a thing my entire life? But now I'm rambling, I'll end it there :)
I asked because I don't consider myself remotely close to it, having good job (well until today my last day) and a good safety net. But in the past few days, my SO & a friend have told me that I should maybe seek therapy. My first instinct is to dismiss is and focus my time on betterment of myself through other means, but your anecdote made me think of the possibility that I might just be oblivious about it.
Unfortunately I live in a country where mental health is still a stigma and my insurance is gone with the work, but your experience at least nudge me towards trying to seek out professionals for it. (when I one day return to my homecountry where it isn't a stigma)
Well it sounds like the app fixed their depression then!
I was summarising my own experience (20 years and counting), that of people I have observed with diagnoses of depression, and my reading in the subject.
Viewing all of your relationships as investments is selfish, hurtful, and will very likely result in a very lonely life for you
* major depressions with a single episode (F32 - this is probably what you had in mind)
* recurrent episodes of various degrees (F33 - this includes seasonal affective disorders, i.e. recurring winter blues)
* Persistant mood disorders like dysthymia, where your baseline mood is dysphoric (F34.1)