Ask HN: Are you depressed? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you depressed?

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408 pointspcbro141489 comments

Nowhere else to post this so here it goes.

I lost my job in January. From January - March I started looking for a job and then COVID hits at the height of my search, now suddenly no one is hiring and all the businesses are slowing down.

My girlfriend of 13 years left me the day after my birthday in June before I had a chance to propose to her, I had to return the ring, she had no idea and I never told her about it.

I have been hardly able to keep it together from the summer until now. I have no one to rely on for support.

Meanwhile all the politics and election stress has had an impact on everyone including me.

I managed to find a job but I'm pretty sure I'm suffering from depression. I spend most of my time mindlessly browsing HN or Reddit, eating whatever I find and sleeping late.

It has been an extremely stressful and emotionally exhausting time.

Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing this.

To be blunt, it sounds like you’ve been tossed into a blender, and I can’t think of anyone in my life who could have gone through all of what you just described and not feel exhausted so please keep that in mind. It sounds like a lot.

I don’t have any advice to give except, if you are able, find and speak to a professional therapist. I thought I was above that sort of thing until my own mental health got so bad it was basically one of my only options.

One thing I wish someone had told me in my mental health journey - If you don’t connect with the first (or second, or third) therapist you meet with, fire them and look for a new one. You won’t offend the first (or second, or third) therapist because they have the same goal you do, which is to get you into a better place. It took me three tries to make the right connection with someone I spent about six months working with and it has made a big improvement in my well being.

Sending positive vibes!

"My girlfriend of 13 years left me the day after my birthday in June before I had a chance to propose to her"

Well, there is a bright side to it. If you would have married and it was about to break soon after, you would have the joy of a legal divorce now on top of it.

Instead you are free to find someone new. Possibly better fitting. The world is full of women and other awesome people, you can still connect with. A bit harder now, true, but nevertheless possible, once you manage to get out of that hole. So if you don't manage on your own, maybe stop wasting your time mindless browsing and seek professional help or find people, online or offline, to help you throuhg.

Nobody knows me on here, so I'll have to keep it that way after I post this. Get professional help. A combination of COVID-19, a high paying/high stress consulting job, and a history OCD related stress & paranoia pushed me into a VERY bad place. I was considering suicide. I didn't go outside for weeks if I could avoid it. I'd go 3-4 days w/o a shower (out of character for me). I started subconsciously punishing myself via starvation (Shitty Life Pro-Tip - drink a lot of water & you won't feel hungry! Eating disorders FTW!) because I wasn't hungry & didn't need to eat because I wasn't really doing anything all day. I cut off from people who reached out to me.

I was fortunate to be well off financially after 5 months to walk away from the consulting job. My wife didn't see it because I hid it from her. I reached a braking point when I walked way from the consulting & was well supported by the engagement manager. I took two months off, I started seeing a counselor (virtually, thanks COVID-19), and I started on Prozac. I'm not "done" yet, but I'm an order of magnitude closer to who I was before all this happened. I've started to gain weight back. Suicide no longer holds its appeal. I can consider the idea that there might be a world after the year 2020, and that I should be a part of it.

Sorry - I know this is rambling. Let me pull back to my point: getting help is the only thing that would help. If you could change yourself, by yourself, you would have by now. It takes the push of someone else's perspective to move you, because you simply can't move yourself. Your best bet is a professional - you have your own bias and trust issues with friends & family, no matter how much they mean to you. Hang in there. No matter how bad life gets, don't let anyone, let alone you, tell you that you don't deserve to be a part of it.

I find that Reddit sucks the joy out of my day. There's just something about that site.

Ouch. I feel you.

My girlfriend of 5 years broke up with me when I was considering proposing. It totally knocked me off the rails for some time. Suddenly all my ideas for what the future held turned to dust. I can't imagine how much more of a gut punch it must be after 13 years, especially in our current world.

It's hard to suddenly have to try and define yourself, your life and your future without including that other person. It takes time, and effort, and a certain amount of deliberate action. Be kind to yourself, and take your time.

Covid makes all this so much harder. One of the things that helped me was getting involved with a local theatre company (doing the tech side of things). Just being with other people really helped, and doing something new was invigorating. I'm guessing that sort of thing isn't an option right now, but perhaps consider something like that next year. In the meantime, anything you can do, join or take part in that can give you a bit of purpose and structure to life outside of work will help. But I know all that is easier said than done right now.

If you need someone to unload on let me know. I didn't always have that and it sucked.

The only other thing I'll say is watch out for the booze and food. I feel lucky to have not fallen into alcoholism, but looking back I was closer than I realised at the time. It always gives me the chills thinking about how things nights have turned out.

Just some experiences of mine, I had been really stressful when trying to get a job, long time ago. And eventually I started the jogging at the time. To me, it's like sort of hedge, if I got my job later, I got a heathier body due to more work out. In other words, the destiny is not going to screw me up on both sides :)

Actually, I kept on jogging even after I got the job later, I don't know why but that does make you feel a bit better about life.

Thats tough. My usual strategy to cope with situations like this is to sign up as a part-time waiter. Its quite physical job, which is good, cause physical work is satisfying in itself, and you have a lot of positive social interactions. This usually distracts me enough and offers enough socialization to be emotionally stable. Maybe this helps. Good luck!

Hey,thanks for sharing, and I'm really so sorry you've had to experience this. I can only imagine how stressful this must be for you.

It must have taken quite some courage to speak up, but that's a very good, positive step. It sounds like you may want to seek help, as you've identified you may be depressed.

I really encourage you to take that step to speak to someone, and seek some assistance.

I know you said you have no one to rely on support, depression can make you feel very alone and isolated. Try to speak to friends or family. I know it can be hard. Give it a try, you may be surprised.

Also remember, there are organisations out there that can help. I don't know where you are geographically, but I strongly suggest, if you are able to, to go to your local GP if you have one, and tell them how you are feeling. Explore your options for what works best for you.

If you don't have a GP, see if your workplace has an EAP program that you can call anonymously.

If they don't, do some research locally and have a look at support groups dealing with depression. (I'm based in the UK and can recommend some organisations, and if you need some assistance, I'm happy to explore some options for where you are; I'm sure lots of people on here could help, too.)

You are not alone, and people will be happy to help, and listen. Take that step.

You mentioned politics and election stress. Have you considered turning off the news, and disconnecting from Reddit etc.?

I'd also ask, do you do any exercise? Perhaps try going for a walk in a local park regularly, try doing jogging if possible? Try find an activity that suits you, physical exercise is a very good way of alleviating stress and depression. I know it's hard and daunting, just try some small steps at first.

You've taken a good step sharing. Take another, and another. Good luck. If I can help at all, let me know.

If I may suggest something...

Everybody hurts from time to time, hardships are part of life.

In situations like this it's important to focus on things you can control instead of being sad about things you can't control.

You might consider that now you life is again a blank canvas, and you can rebuild it. Everything's in discussion again, you're not encumbered by a relationship, the possibilities are endless!

Your destiny looked like set in stone, and now it's yours again for designing and implementing :)

Good luck!

Hey brother, I'm sorry to hear you're going through all of this at once. I've been through the grinder a few times - still am - but not like this, so I can imagine it must be tough.

When you're with somebody, especially for so long and on the road to marriage, they almost become your purpose in life. Losing someone like that means you also lose your sense of purpose, so everything else feels like you're just aimlessly passing time as you described.

The important thing is to not let it continue to spiral down. Force yourself to stay away from the mindless browsing. Start doing things to stimulate yourself more and work towards something. For me, it was running. I hated running. I still hate running. But it gives you something to work towards, and you'll begin looking for other things to work on too. It's difficult at first, and it will initially seem like just a distraction, but if you stick to it you'll realise you still have a journey to go on. It doesn't just stop here, so don't let it. It's hard to believe it now, but it will get better.

I know I'm just some random bloke on the internet, but if you do want someone to talk to, shoot me an email. I'm not a professional, but realise that you're not alone, and if it helps you reconnect to the world in some way then I'm happy to chat. And that goes for anyone. We'll all make it out stronger on the other side.

> My girlfriend of 13 years left me the day after my birthday

This is something I'll never understand. How can someone be with another person for so long and be able to end up things in such drastic manner (assuming there wasn't any toxicity in the relationship)? I mean, if you hadn't any idea that this could happen then did your partner never try to fix whatever problem you had before taking that decision?

Sorry to hear it. One technique that might be helpful is to imagine a point in the future where things will in fact be better and how you will look back on this as just a period that really sucked. It also helps to think of another difficult period in your life and how that one was also followed by a much better period.

Also try to remember that the pandemic and the political rollercoaster are a shared burden. You are not alone in those.

It's easy to get into a cycle where negative habits perpetuate themselves. Try to reorient your daily habits by setting one small goal a day and achieving it. This creates a positive feedback loop and reinforces the idea that you are in control and that you have agency and can effect change.

Lastly I would recommend daily exercise of some sort if you are not doing so already. Anything that provides a bit of an endorphin blast can help break a negative thought cycle. Even if just for a few minutes to start.

Small building blocks like these will reintroduce positive and optimistic thoughts back into your mind.

Hi swat535. I'm sorry that all happened to you this year. :( I really hope things take a turn for the better soon.

Sorry buddy, throw the politics out, the reality is it's not worth investing your emotions in. Especially if you are in this state. On your girl sorry man pretty shitty to do it the day after your birthday. But the reality is she is gone, women rarely come back get it in your mind that she is gone and free yourself from it. I know that is easier said than done, but the point is to get back to happy and hanging onto that is not going to get you there. Shit if you have to hire escorts every damn day until it makes the though of her fade. Seriously you need to do something to make that fade, do not hold onto hope there. Focus on your job, make it the #1 priority, ensure that you have done a good job there before you move on to other things such as browsing the web. Finally find an interest, get involved in it, and meet people with similar interests, try to avoid sitting in the house alone until you feel like you have found balance and are comfortable in your own skin sitting alone at home. As I tell everyone in this situation, my contact info is in my HN profile, you can ping me if you just need someone to talk to, sometimes strangers are the best people to talk to.

> I spend most of my time mindlessly browsing HN or Reddit, eating whatever I find and sleeping late.

This sounds like my routine...

What you’ve described is indeed extremely stressful and emotionally exhausting. It sounds like an expected response! You could consider this the valley before climbing back up to not feeling this way.

Time helps - but it may take more than that. I would confide in friends if you have them, and consider talking with a professional...

Sorry to hear that. Two things that I've seen help, I mean actually help, are Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and for me reading great Stoic philosophers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. You have to learn to be comfortable in your own skin and love yourself or you will always feel bad. You are as valuable, indeed more valuable to yourself, as anyone on this planet from your perspective. Learn to love what you have -now-. If you live in the past and the future all the time you will always be miserable in the now. It may be trite, but it's as true now as it was 2000 years ago. I had almost this same converation with a friend last night who is tearing himself apart trying to keep his relationship together along with a crazy work schedule. Walk it all back, shut it down, and take care of yourself and your means of supporting yourself during a recovery. Volunteering to help the homeless on the weekends, helping someone else with projects, anything to get yourself out of the rut. If I can do it anyone can.

Hey man, look the bright side... imagined if you had proposed before she left, and keped the ring? Yolu would be without a girl and the money of the ring.

That said,the good thing of hitting rock botton is that theres no way, but up. 3 Years ago I was being underpaid, divorced a 6 years marriege, and was sunk in debit.

I was really depresed,for the first time of my life I cried waching a movie, and was pretty sure I was in funcional side of alcholism.

That said, I keepd it going by solving one problem at time. First, I organized all debites of my company, and made a rigid paying plan.

Then I made a deal with my dad, that I would stay at his home for 1 year, while I paid some of the debt my ex wife left me.

After that I put my company on hold for 1 and a half year, so I would not generate new taxes while paying the old ones.

I found a shit soul sucking job, but with good payment, in the capital. For almost 2 years I would spend 4 to 5 hours in traffic, just to get to this job. But small things helped me going foward.

I got close to my friends (before the pandemic). I checked out lots of books from my reading list, while I was in the bus, or train, going and back to work.

I basically sold or donated most of my possessions, basically reduced my life to small things that really mattered.

The thing is, don't try to fix everything wrong at the same time. Focus on small problems that you can solve, and after a while, even the big problems will appear to be less intimidating.

Now, finally after 3 sucking years, I reoppened my company, I paid all my debts. I still got to deal with shit from my ex from time to time, but goddamm I love being free now.

Well at least for a while. Now my ex appeared telling me shes pregnant, but shes pretty sure I'm not the father, but she's not 100% sure... well I will deal with that when the time came.

My condolences on a truly rough year, I hope things start to look up for you.

I had a similar cataclysm in 2007, let me share one sliver of advice: what you're experiencing is grief, rather than depression.

They feel similar but they come from different places.

That's it; any attempt to try and tell you how to feel about it or what to do would be out of place. Good luck.

Hey! Its me, minus the girlfriend, job, and career history :(.

Sorry to hear about your gf tho

Congrats on the job! Hope things work out for you on the personal front too. Tip: I finally managed to overcome my multi year Reddit addiction using Cold Turkey on my PC and Adguard + Applock on my phone. Adguard blocks the URL and Applock restricts access to Adguard itself.

Do you think your gf leaving you was bcoz u lost your job and could contribute anymore...sorry for asking this...but I see this happen a few times these past years...friend loses job...months later gf leaves...I am beginning to think those incels are on to something..

Hey man.. hope you feel better soon. I usually learn new stuff to get out of such phases. Learning gives me excitement and offers mis direction for busy mind, which other wise loops through stuff

Try therapy and, if necessary, medication. Both of those have completely turned my life around. Things are still shitty sometimes (esp. during Covid), but way better than a few years ago.

That’s rough, sorry to hear that. You’ve been hanging in there, despite these very trying times, and managed to get a job. Keep it up. Keep hanging in there, things will get better.

I'm really sorry for your situation, this year's been truly awful for me as well. Take solace on the fact that you're not the only one hurting.

This reminds me of that Wait but Why post [0] about picking your life partner. TL;DR: it is better to have no one than to be around people that you're not happy with. I know this sounds like a cliche but it is true. You're not at the bottom of the scale right now, but in the middle. The upside is that now you have the chance to pick whatever floats your boat without carrying the baggage around.

[0]:https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html

Holy shit. Couldn’t she wait like a week or so? We’re things that bad?

No disrespect, but good thing you’re not marrying her.

I'm living in Iran. Here the situation is disaster. it gets worth when you grow up in religious family. I can not listen to any music, watching any movie or even worth I can not play any video games easily.. Economical situation here is disaster so I can not rent a new apartment and move in.. I forced to go to male-only school, male-only high-school and even now I study computer science at a male-only university. And I can not have any girlfriend. Even I can not get near to girls.!! At my work all the people are male! all this situation get worth when you have to live in a country with a broken economy. My salary is 100 US$ per month. and lots of other harsh situation which I can not write here.

MY LIFE IS SO F.CKED UP. I have no idea what is life? what is future? my life is just like a robot who forced to do repetitive stuffs over and over again.. (I'm so sorry because of my awful English!!! :) )

No worries about your english. It seems like you are in a very tough position. I cannot really connect with it because it is very different from where I grew up. But if you are studying computer science, you are ona good track. That will open lots of different doors, and will most likely give you an ability to move out, or even to other country. Stay strong and persist!

worth > worse !!! (worth even kind of means the opposite)

Regarding all you critique: That is just how your culture is setup. Mostly males live a lonely live with each other, cf. the animal kingdom, where "young males gather in groups until they get older, if surviving and might find (younger) females, then". If you go to mixed classes, like me, then there are a lot of girls, which have zero interest in you (but have some "older" boyfriend) and constantly are turned off by you and look down on you. Later you study computer science and 'again' there are no girls. The situation improves, when you get older, though still you have to put in all the efforts (eg. have a nice hobby, that girls also share) to get a girlfriend eventually.

Sounds awful. I'm Israeli btw, but live in the Netherlands. I heard there are quite a few Iranians who moved to the Europe, in Netherlands also. Wish you all the best. Things can change for the better!

Wish you luck in getting over this period.

Just keep in mind that your advantage is Computer Science and speaking English, use that to get yourself to a better place.

I know it is hard with Mandatory military draft, blocked banking system, covid lockdowns and many other issues, but it is doable.

https://clutch.co/ir/developers

I am curious, if you look at outsourcing to Iran, it seems that they charge 100$ per hour on average.

Are you a developer? At 100 per month, I can hire you for double that :D

Well, let's see.

My wife left me shortly before the pandemic started. I tried leaning on alleged friends for emotional support and they bailed on me. I don't have any family here in the US.

The pandemic hit and I had to stop practicing my sport.

My work output has been 10-20% of what it used to be even though I don't have kids to deal with, or any of the things that are driving folks crazy. It takes me around 2h to make myself get out of bed every day.

Fortunately, therapy has been helping little by little.

Damn, that's a shitty hand you've been dealt. I hope you find your luck turning around, and I hope you can allow yourself to operate at 10-20% without too much judgement; an individual can only accommodate so much at once.

Thank you for sharing this on HN. It's always good for us, as a community, to acknowledge the less ebullient, bullish sides of our lives.

You’re welcome to email me if you want or need someone to talk to (in profile).

Do you have some savings? You should do a vacation in the south. Get some sunlight in a southern state (Cali, Texas, Florida). With proper planning your interactions with other people can be as minimal as your average gas station run-in.

Good luck and feel free to reach out for an impromptu chat

You are not alone.

Get a dog or three.

I lost my father recently and this has been the toughest period in my life. I grew up in India in a middle-class family and my father always went through unimaginable hardships just so that he can buy us chocolates and pay our tuition.

He was still young at 65 and there was so much that I wanted to see and share with him. Realizing that this is not ever going to happen itself kills me from the inside.

I'm doing okay now compared to a few weeks ago but I keep having breakdowns and depressing episodes every now and then.

I now know that I need to continue to live and be strong and do things for him and raise a family and spread love just like he did. I don't think I'll ever go back to living like before but I feel happy with the idea that I'll be taking it from here, keeping him in my thoughts every day, doing things he would do, talking and acting like he would, pass on his genes and finally go away like he did one day.

I am sorry for your loss. I lost my father and my mother few years back. My mother’s passing away hit me very hard. My mother’s passing away meant I could no longer share my deepest feelings, fears and failings to someone who actually hears and understands. I still miss her. I now have kids and wish i had 1 percent the strength she had. I hope you find peace and are able to find strength from how your dad was a pillar in your family.

I'm really sorry to hear about your father.

My mom passed away in this pandemic too, and I don't know how the death of a parent is supposed to work, but it feels like it's impossible to offer them as much as they deserve. It's an odd sort of robbery of possibility :(

I'm sorry for your loss.

I lost my father some back too, though he lived longer, I can relate. Hit me up, my email is in my profile, would love to connect

That was beautiful.

Remote work is not for me. I'm struggling pretty hard. I miss people. I miss my sense of being good at the parts of work that involved people. I'm shit at working alone. I'm not productive like some are, and all my best assets were how I could support people around me and help them love what they were doing. All I have left of work are the parts that make me feel badly every day.

Fuck this pandemic.

Network effects, mate. I'm in the same boat. Zoom/hangout meetings just aren't the same magic as walking down the hallway and knocking on a door/cube.

There's still nothing widely used that compares to a whiteboard, either. Drawing tablets haven't caught on yet.

It's not for me either. I feel as though there's a lot of peer pressure to say I love working from home, and I'm so much more productive!

I hate it, it makes me miserable and I'm much less productive.

I'm back in the office 5 days per week again, through choice. Most of the time, I'm there on my own, but get to see others when they show up, and also get to leave work at the office, come home and relax.

Same here. I am extroverted (for a SWE) and bad at staying focused when nobody is around to peek at my screen. Work at a company where everything needs to be signed off, things need to always be clearly communicated, etc. so constantly having to context switch projects while I’m blocked on waiting for someone else to stop ignoring me.

The one thing that makes me happy about my current job is fixing support tickets. But nobody in my management chain really cares about it so it’s pretty much just a work-hobby. Ironically that makes it much more enjoyable because nobody else (managers, tls, product managers, etc.) will take credit for my work and I don't have to get signoff on every little thing.

It is not the pandemic, it is the lockdowns.

I am not trying to be dismissive, I understand missing people, but why can't you support people around you in a remote environment?

You can pair with someone, or have informal chats, or plan some online game with your colleagues, have presentations in your team around work or non-work related things, setup a book club.

It is harder and not as good as in-person interaction, but maybe you can get some good out of it.

EDIT: sorry, I am re-reading this and please be assured my intent is not to say you're "wrong", but just to offer some minor remediation ideas that might be helpful.

I was miserable before it was cool. Before the pandemic, I had a development job in the neighboring city.

I'd take a 2 hour commute each way, and when I got home, I'd immediately collapse, sleep, wake up, and head right back to work. I didn't check my phone, my voicemail, my email, or call anyone. Just sleep. I rarely ate.

I listened to a lot of death metal during that time. The pandemic hit, and I lost my job, then my apartment. I moved into an apartment with my elderly mother with dementia.

I still do some contract work for the old company, but I struggle with the bare minimum required to keep my old boss happy. Working at home is a fucking nightmare.

The loss of my decent paying job hosed my bankruptcy eligibility, so now I get to keep drowning in debt I have no means to pay off, while I try to find a way to get things back to normal.

Yeah, like many others here, I usually wish I could just die already. Sadly there are people who would be devastated if I departed. So, here I sit.

> I'd take a 2 hour commute each way

I used to have a job like this. I dreaded waking up each day.

I would consider losing this job a blessing in disguise. I know that doesn't help right now but remember that things can always get better.

Some things that would make an immediate impact:

- spend more time outside (go for walks)

- exercise

- socialise (it's hard right now, but speaking to a person IRL is a vital part to what makes us human)

- write things down

- tidy up your room/house

- get into a routine incorporating all of the above

If you need to chat, you can email me.

I couldn't imagine living your life man. You must be a really strong person. I hope you turn it around.

Favorite death metal bands?

I don't mean to attack you, but why wouldn't you just move closer? Your weekly commute time multiplied by your hourly salary is likely significantly more than the increased rent, no matter where you lived.

I've never understood why people make those choices.

Sorry to hear this. I've heard that one of the small numbers of things that causes chronic unhappiness is long commute according to research

Here‘s an account of someone who answered no, I‘m not depressed. Hoping this offers some light to those who couldn’t answer the same way this time.

Like I said, I’m not depressed today but have definitely suffered my share of emotional pain following the loss of my mother and the loneliness that comes with moving to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language.

Here are two frameworks I came up with during those dark years, which still help me today. Not claiming this will help you too, though I hope it does, but perhaps you can find some use in it... even if only as inspiration to find your own frameworks.

Framework 1: Myself > the ones I love > the things I do.

I found these are the building blocks of a happy life, in this order. First I need to be content with myself and to know I‘m worth of respect and love, and no one can help me with this. Then I need to actively seek and nurture the love of others (family, friends, spouse). Only then should I focus on what I‘m doing with the rest of my time (my job, my hobbies).

Framework 2: „The Mix“

This is something that rather helps me keep a happy state of mind. Every week, I try to make sure I fill it with a good „mix” of the following “ingredients”:

- Socializing: of the “deep” kind. Meaning I want to talk to people I love and make an effort to really listen to what they are saying/feeling. To empathize. I’m more interested in a few (maybe starting with one) deep relationships.

- Movement: move my body somehow, preferably outside. I try to do this 4-5x a week. Sometimes it’s just a long walk, sometimes a run, sometimes a workout. Anything counts.

- Inspiration: watch, read, listen to anything or anyone that makes you dream of what life could be.

- Appreciation: make an active effort to objectively realize that some things in your life, even if sometimes only a small few, are positive. I usually do this at night, in bed, before falling asleep.

Hope this is useful in some way. Feel free to email if you need to talk (email in profile)

I could not find your email in your profile. Perhaps you could add it.

Not depressed myself but like 90% of the people I know is depressed, and it has been a rollercoaster of emotions for me, I live in a country with a huge economic crisis that have led people to the most horrible suffering you can imagine without being in a war state. Most of the causes for the depression are systematically caused by the government, people even ignore their mental health and are just struggling to survive.

What makes the whole thing worse is that there isn’t much help available, really few people can afford to really get professional help and there is no public help, some NGOs are doing the best they can but it’s impossible to help a society where mostly everyone has depression.

I am not familiar at all with any psychological studies being done in my country, but I believe that a lot of people in the field would like to work in here, there is so many things to study and observe.

For those wondering, my country is Venezuela

If you’d had said, “my country is Lebanon”, and all the same would apply. Government is absent, currency lost 80% value, banks blocked people’s savings. 90% of the people around me are depressed.

Anyway we can chat? I'm interested in getting more perspective on the Venezuela situation presently.

I had severe depression for a few years that became debilitating at the start of 2020 causing me to be unable to socialize or work or do anything but sleep. I was a terrible friend, parent, spouse, and employee. I tried multiple anti-depressants and therapists, but nothing helped. This august I found a psychiatrist that also did ketamine treatment and it was a miracle. Literally the day after my first treatment I wasn’t depressed and have had zero depressed feelings since. It was surreal. Depression had define my life for so long. I wish the treatment was more accessible, but unfortunately it is very expensive and not covered by insurance. If anyone is struggling and would like to learn more, please reach out.

My doctor prescribes ketamine lozenges for depression. I fly in every six months for appointments. It's much cheaper than infusions and more convenient to take it at home. I can refer two doctors. Send me a message.

Unless you add an offsite point of contact to your HN profile, the only way for anyone to reach out is to reply here.

I'm fighting every day to keep the depression at bay. I've been through the same thing as every one else this year, plus my sister took her on life in March and my startup that was flying in February, has been hammered by the pandemic.

I felt like I was about to slide back into depression in May. I needed something that I could accomplish that was completely within my control. I decided to start lifting weights. It has changed my life. I lift for one hour, four days a week. I thought it would be good for my mental health, but I didn't realize how quickly my muscles would grow.

I've never been muscular - I sit at a desk all day and code. In just a few weeks I could see significant changes in my body. Six months in and I look and feel like a completely different person. I love looking at myself in the mirror. (Sorry for oversharing a bit.)

Lifting is much easier than intense cardio for me, and it is helping me keep my head above water. I highly recommend it for anyone that might be having a hard time.

+1 to compound weightlifting (Barbell squats, deadlifts, bench press, military press) have done more to help me manage my mental health than any other avenue. 45 mins per day, 3-4 days a week and life just feels brighter. Keep it simple, https://stronglifts.com/5x5/

How can you start a gym hobby during quarantine? Haven't been to a gym in 8 months even though I still pay my pricy membership just to support them.

Reminder: winter is coming[0] & days are shorter so take care of yourselves pls

---

I believe depression is a spectrum so although I'm not depressed, I'm also not not depressed.

Right now I'm in a good place and I accredit this to a few things I did this past week:

- attended multiple virtual events (2 chat-based, 1 video)

- caught up with 2 friends via phone/video call

- went apartment hunting yesterday. Going outside for first time in a week + general excitement of moving out & exploring a new frontier is motivating

I'm 23 and I know life is a struggle. If you're reading this and are around that age + care about exploring personal development and mental health + want to connect, hit me up! Twitter - @radiunhuq

Thanks for asking :)

EDIT:

[0] In case you haven't heard of SAD (seasonal affective disorder), check it out: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seasonal-affe...

Anyone who thinks they even might have SAD should get a daylight lamp. LEDs are so cheap. You want at least 100W of real power draw, 5000-6500K color temp.

You want em about 2-3 feet away, about 45° off-axis to minimize glare and maximize activation of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs). I keep mine on a cheap tripod behind my desk.

I have some LED floodlights, flat panels with a mounting bracket. ~$60 for 200W. Just as an example:

https://www.amazon.com/Onforu-Waterproof-Floodlight-Playgrou...

> winter is coming

I was going to say "not everyone lives in the northern hemisphere, you know", but to be fair I suppose 99% of HN lives there and the rest of us are already used to this.

Btw, HN can do polls too. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

In all my years reading HN, I've never seen a native HN poll trending to the front page. And I consider myself obsessed with it. It's my primary website to visit on the internet.

I'm not saying that they may not have made the front page, just that I haven't seen one.

Fuck yes. I left a stable job because I have a plethora of health issues and wanted to put the little energy and productivity I have into studying, so I went to Uni. I've burned through my savings (6k or so) in 11 months now and I'm almost going broke as my sick leave wasn't approved any longer.

My body literally don't cope with stress as my pituitary doesn't produce enough cortisol, testosterone or thyroxine. Now that I got the reject letter from our government, I've been panicking and feeling borderline suicidal because everything seems so hard and I feel like I can't do it. Fuck being sick.

This may sound stupid, but you can try looking up the stories of people who had really hard luck and struggled, and finally were able to make a life for themselves. Their stories can remind you that even after enduring incredible hardships, you can overcome them, even if you don't know how yet.

I also suggest meditating on death and life. Ask yourself what's the worst thing that could happen. Usually it's not death, which means you can survive whatever the worst thing is. Then you can ask yourself what good things do you have right now. If you're warm, safe, and have food, you've covered all the base requirements! Can you hear, see? Then you can also listen to music and look at nature/art. Even when things are falling apart, we usually still have pretty amazing lives.

I badly need my three year old to be in kindergarten so my wife can have six hours a day of just one child and possibly claim back part of our house and energy levels from the abyss.

I'm counting the days to next September.

I feel you, myself I have two toddlers (2, 4) that was a life change for me. Responsibility, scream, lack of sleep, inability to what I used to do to get some energy boost. Which escalated during working from home.

No advice from my side, as I haven't found any good way. Take care,

God - we are all in the same boat. I have a 4.5 and a 1.5 year old. I can work 2-3 hours in the morning and then I have to push all my work to late evening and I stay up till 1 am completing before waking up early to help with cleaning, cooking, and then caring for the kids.

Can't wait for daycare and montessori to re-open :(

Hang in there. Might be another year like this, as you correctly point out...

I am not depressed now but I am doing the same things I do when I am depressed. I think the difference is compassion.

- it takes me hours to get out of bed but that's ok, I have loads of time during lockdown.

- I spend hours daily scrolling through HN and reddit but that's ok, it's good to switch off for a bit.

- I can only productively work 1-2 hours per day but that's ok, most people I ask is doing the same and that's probably all I ever achieved with the distractions of the office.

I hope this can help reframe things for others.

i think i’m in a very similar situation, thanks for putting it into words. i’m not doing great but it’s ok. it doesn’t feel good, but it doesn’t feel bad either

I recall a comment from Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist, saying to "aim low" when starting from a difficult perspective, and slowly increasing from there.

Extremely. Mostly can't focus, can barely get out of bed at all some days. Some people are trying to help with various aspects of this, and they're doing some good, but they're poorly coordinated and there's secondary damage when they get things wrong.

Out of money. I was trying to get my career back into play via Triplebyte + one or two contacts around the beginning of the year; I had some minor success, but my interviews promptly got cancelled as the pandemic ramped up. And I think my Résumé of Nothing is now even more of an infinite liability than it's been in any recent years. (I took enough of a hit at the end of 2018 to pretty much lose my ability to work, after some years of on-and-off self-underemployment, and spent 2019 trying to recover; what I managed to regain has mostly been undone again in 2020.) Oh, and video calls and screen sharing (things people want a lot of nowadays) are both tricky due to secondary effects.

I finally have a source of medication that requires less effort to keep going, and that might help stabilize. Wish me luck?

Speaking of which:

I don't normally post things like this out of the blue, but if anyone has small software things they might be willing to commission me for within the next few-to-several months where turnaround time isn't “right now”, that could help a lot, so don't hesitate to poke me at my profile email address, low-effort one-liners accepted. (I have a partial source of work lined up for once I can focus again, but it's fraught in its own ways.)

My most native domain is oldish/systemsish/Unixish (Go, C, shell scripting, Perl…) but I can be fairly polyvalent in environments overall. Have done some previous work on things like Tor and OpenVPN. Ideal is something like “this bug/feature-request has been nagging at us and could use a fresh set of eyes”. Specific strengths historically include informal-methods precision of modeling and ability to haul The Good Stuff out of semantic mud. Specific weak areas include PHP being too psychologically taxing, Node.js likely being the same (which, ah, er, ouch given current SV culture), and flakiness from the depression itself (expected to improve with medication, but not 100% and exact curve unknown).

Posting this as a separate comment so it's easier to delete on its own if it turns out to be inappropriate. Also, to avoid surprise: I don't make my legal name too immediately visible from profiles etc. presently, but anyone who's transacting with me will get a confirmation of it privately.

Good luck! Glad you found a more stable source of meds, that's clutch.

Try to find ways to talk up that resume. I was under-employed for a long time but I was also working out of the hackerspace every day. I milked eeeeeevery project I even tangentally got involved in. Helped some kid flash an arduino? "Tutored microcontroller development". Have 2-3 projects you can really talk in detail on, and the rest is just fluff.

I'm not a doctor, of course, but for those who are depressed, but where it's not debilitating, or where you are not suffering from some kind of clinical depression where you need medical attention, I highly recommend that you immediately purchase the book "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life" by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, and put that information into practice as soon as you can.

I would recommend a motorcycle instead

I'll also add a suggestion for Martin Seligman's "Learned Optimism" [0]. A mindfulness practice on self-talk (along with giving up sugar and reducing carbs) has made a huge difference on managing my mental health.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_optimism#Seligman's_me...

Thanks for the recommendation. Do you have personal experience with this book? Do you mind sharing your thoughts on the book as well as the practice of mindfulness meditation?

What's the point of this? Yes, I am severely depressed among other issues I am facing. I haven't had a job in 3 years, after burning out and started having panic attacks. The finances are so stressful that are making me just numb. I can't make any decision, the executive part of my brain appears to have shut off.

Also, depression is not an illness. It's a defensive mechanism, just a symptom of a certain body state. It's a completely natural response.

Depression is an illness (well technically I think it’s called a disorder).

Oh hey, are you me? Do you have any underlying physical health issues?

Probably around a decade ago I was diagnosed with a slew of things and put on, among other drugs, SSRI's. I never felt depressed at time. Interestingly, I felt angry, powerless, etc. but not depressed. The drugs really didn't feel like they had any effect on my mental state or behavior.

Then maybe around 2017-2018, after living mostly in isolation (outside routine requirements like work, etc.), things started to go downhill. I spiraled into a period of what I'm sure is depression. Since, then? I might be able to crawl out of it every now and then (around mid-late 2019-2020 I had some sort of strong resolve come over me that lasted a few months) but ultimately just return a depressed, monotonous and sedentary state. I'm generally good enough and keeping together in public, but in my private life it's on full display display. The pandemic did good work to undo everything I had tried to fight it, but the isolation isn't anything new and I'd likely have returned to it in my own eventually.

Yes. I started a new job (software engineering again) at the start of the pandemic. I feel like I burned a bridge with my manager prior to leaving so ... I won't be able to return to that company in the future.

Haven't really spoken to anyone outside of work (tiny company, too) since March. Left to my own devices at work. Haven't seen anyone in person since April.

Spend most of my days online and alone. Attempted suicide over the summer. Not eating much, rapidly losing weight.

It's my birthday in a few weeks and most days, I don't want to live to see it.

Hi! I'm happy to chat if you like! I agree that meeting people is hard, it felt easier when then internet was younger. I'm jackbravo on twitter or linkedin.

Also, you won't know if the bridge is really burned until you try to use it.

I'm sorry, man. I know what that's like. I've been down the whole rapid weight loss suicidal thing before myself. I used to wake up and cry, because I had to live for the rest of the day.

What kind of programming do you do?

Hey Bro, If you want someone to talk/help, please let me know.

If you want someone to talk to I would be happy to chat. Contact info is in profile.

Holy crap, that's a way higher percentage than I was expecting.

What are some of the reasons you all have for being depressed?

Also, is this possibly a self selective poll? Are non depressed people not bothering to answer?

As someone who has suffered from depression in the past, I'd like to borrow Steven Fry's words on depression:

“You don’t get depressed because bad things happen to you. . .depression is something that happens like weather to you, it’s inside you. . .it’s not enough to talk yourself out of it by saying, ‘but I shouldn’t be depressed because I’ve got people who are nice to me’. . .It’s very important, at least to get that stage of it out of the way, to recognise it as a mood disorder, as something that is akin to weather.”

I feel like there is a lot of confusion between "Shit Life Syndrome" and depression, and to the people suffering from either I'm not sure the difference is much of a consolation.

I had to put down my childhood dog down today. He was with me every day throughout my depression. It's awful, it hurts and I'll never be able to replace the role that dog played in my life. I don't feel depressed though, I feel distraught.

I'm lucky enough to have lived an incredibly privileged life, with a stable family, excellent education and opportunities etc. so today is the worst I've felt in ages. With that in mind, I don't feel like I can lay claim to even "Shit Life Syndrome", I live in a country that has nearly eradicated COVID, I have a strong support base among family friends and coworkers.

With all that in mind, all I want to drive home is that if you're depressed, you don't need a reason. Though if you do have reasons you could have depression or you could not (I'm never going to tell someone the way they feel is invalid), either way I hope everyone out there is looking after themselves as best they can.

No social contacts with friends or strangers who could become friends (or even a partner). So loneliness and lack of intimacy. The latter is a killer.

Personally it's the pandemic and the ensuing financial stress and isolation that came from it. I haven't hung out with any of my friends in eight months due to a combination of those factors.

It’s very much a self selecting poll.

I answered yes, even though I suspect I am not clinically depressed and nowhere near the levels of some posters on here.

But compared to the average person, I definitely appear depressed/emo/sad/tired.

And if you were to talk to me in a conversation, I would inevitably drag the conversation (like I am doing now) to be all about my woes, regrets, and how I find living in one of the best first-world cities to be "sad" and lacking of purpose. I will also cynically suggest that everyone else seems so happy and normal, that no one else really has problems. Then you might start to find me off-putting, impolite, condescending, all of which are actually just unwanted side-effects of my symptoms manifesting in social situations; after the conversation ends, I will surely start to ruminate and regret what I said, realizing that I am a PoS for having left a piece of negative energy in the world, and that the world would be better without my negativity. But since everyone in this thread is chiming in about their situation, I feel perfectly at home, because now I don't feel like the odd one out.

> Holy crap, that's a way higher percentage than I was expecting.

Software

Funny enough, I used to be depressed for almost my whole life and now I'm not. Two and a half years ago, I dropped out from an average university to be admitted in Harvard within one year. At that time I also had poor English, struggling to differentiate present and past simple tenses.

In just two years, I ruined relationships with my relatives, lost all friends, don't talk to anyone, got a horribly loose skin, had a mini-stroke and got tinnitus. Also, I became fluent in written English, lost more than 50 kilograms, and right now 70% done preparing for applying for SWE positions. It's tough, but I've never been happier. Never had so much progress before.

Man that is a crazy story. Congratulations on the English, wouldn't second-guess your fluency one bit. But I don't understand how you went through some social catastrophes and still manage to level-up in the rest of your life so well? Please allow me more vague details or in private for such an amazing turnaround.

The reason I ask is because I have been struggling with socializing my whole life. While not autistic, I have lots of shyness and anxiety ever since I was a kid, got a bit bullied in high school, cared too much about what other people thought. Even in my early 30s now this is still a huge problem, because I have become a pretty avoidant person and other people perceive this as lack of initiative, bad work ethic, etc. I also wake up every day replaying any 1 of 100s of bad social experiences in the past, where I said something I shouldn't have impulsively and made things embarassing or awkward, or how I mishandled some friendship.

So its as if I base my whole identity off how well I'm maintaining my personal relationships, literally rewrite Whatsapp messages the more I am not close with someone (should I end the sentence with a period or 'lol'? Is the frequency of these emojis too much? Yeah its that extreme).

When I read your comment, I just get the impression that though you lost all of it, you were able to somehow transform yourself after. How?! If I were in your shoes, I would literally be watching YouTube videos about social skills, and think that "if I can't get this social thing down, I'll never be able to survive at a job". Please break my brain.

If you don't mind me asking, the loose skin is from the weight loss or did you get hit by an illness on top of the tinnitus/mini-stroke?

No, but taking 300mg of Effexor (venlafaxine) every single day (for reference, the maximum allowed dose is 375mg).

Venlafaxine is known for being one of the hardest antidepressants to stop taking once you start. It's like being physically addicted to it, if I skip it for just one single day, I start having seizures, dizziness and feeling like a zombie. People can take years to stop taking it by gradually decreasing the intake dosage very slowly to prevent the discontinuation effects or getting depressed again (been there three times already).

That said, I feel great right now. Not that I don't have some days that I'm mildly depressed (meds aren't a panacea), but I've been able to get to work in another city and get out of my parent's house for 2 years in a row since I've started psychotherapy. I'm now working on a great startup, earning enough to save every month, have a stable relationship and plans for the future.

If you're depressed, don't dismiss psychotherapy. It may take time to find the right professionals and the right meds - I needed some years, but lots of friends got it right on the first try. There are some DNA tests available to speed this up (they match drugs that are more prone to work with your genetics). I recommend everyone trying it. All the cons and side effects of venlafaxine definitely worth it for me - and you may not even need to take it to get as better, as there are antidepressants with "lighter" side-effects known to be very effective.

Take care of your mental health, HNers.

I’m a former user of venlafaxine. The highest dose I was on was 150 mg. It really helped me out. I used it mainly to combat my anxiety but it helped with depression as well. The side effects were not great which is why I stopped. Tapering off was terrible — flu-like symptoms, mind racing at night, couldn’t sleep, sweats, etc. Would not recommend. The one thing I can say is that I do not feel like the same person having been off these meds for a long time.

Never been better, personally.

I'm used to travelling a lot, I've been doing it since I was a wee baby thanks to my very international family, so it's been a very strange thing to be constrained to a single country for so long. Ignoring that though, I've been doing quite well. I was always a freelancer, so my job didn't really suffer much, I'm pretty much working exactly as much as I used to. My friend circle is all similarly international people, and we've grown accustomed to not seeing each other for months, sometimes years at a time so this is just another one of those periods for most of us. Since getting out of the house is a bit of a hassle, I mostly just do yard work now, it's very calming. Not much has changed, other than the inability of flying whenever I pleased like before, but I'm hopeful that those travel restrictions will loosen relatively soon, and once that happens I'm pretty much back where I started, which is a good place.

I'm not. I think I was mildly depressed up until the start of this fall (I'm a college student). I go to U of I and we've got a pretty good covid testing setup which basically means we can hang out with small groups of friends like pre-covid times. I think the catalyst for coming out of depression might have been acid, but most likely it was being able to meet with friends again. I saw this effect in my friends too, and they noticed it as well. I'm not saying acid is some miracle cure or something but I have a strong suspicion that it contributed in some small way.

Well yeah. At the start of covid, I was dealing with ptsd from a difficult childhood.. and after some time with a good therapist (for once) I've managed to work past a lot of issues, and finally built up the courage to come out as transgender.

Now I'm working with an endocrinologist on transitioning to female with hormone replacement therapy. Now I've been queer in intolerant environments before, but I have been pretty shocked with the way people have been treating me in the conservative area where I live. Basically I'm afraid of my own neighbours and have to drive an hour round trip into the city just to get groceries without being called a fag..

So, life is rough.. but getting a lot better. Thankfully my employer is being super supportive, as are all of my co-workers. Not speaking with my family though, I would have done this 10 years ago if it weren't for them actually :/

I implore you to reconsider.

I was "supportive" of my friend who came out as trans. I regret this. Like the vast majority of men, he never had a realistic chance of passing, especially since he did not start taking hormones until his mid-twenties. It was a sad delusion, and I was one of many who enabled it. For me, it was the path of least resistance: I didn't want to lose my friend. I wish I had just told him my true feelings, because now he's gone anyway.

My friend followed the classic progression. He had childhood trauma and was never successful with girls. He was depressed and anxious and bitter. Slowly, strangers on the internet with anime avatars sold him on the fantasy that transitioning could solve his problems. He fell for the meme. And I have no doubt that it did help, for a while. It gave him a community that constantly reassured him that he was doing the right thing. Coming out as trans was scary, but it made him feel brave and unique. It made him feel like he was finally reasserting some control over his life.

He had a decent shot at a normal life. Over time, his dating prospects would have improved. He might have had a family. I know that he would have made a good father. Now that future is gone forever. Because after the initial euphoria fades, grim reality sets in. No one showers you with praise anymore. The honeymoon is over, and the depression and anxiety are still there. There is nothing left to do but chase the dragon: FFS, VFS, SRS...each surgery gets you some attention and support again, but eventually there are no surgeries left to perform, and you have to face the prospect of living in this body for the rest of your life.

I'm sorry to be harsh. But I swore that I would never be complicit in this process again. It is a mark of a truly sick society, and our descendants will look upon it with a mixture of disgust and disbelief. I pray that you come to see your situation clearly before it is too late.

I don't understand what compels people to go out of their way to hurt others that just want to live their life as anyone would. That said, if you really think your neighbors are a threat to your well being, you might want to setup some cameras to record any altercations or harassments.

Hang in there, and be true to yourself.

A yes/no questionnaire is the worst possible way to poll this issue.

It's a complex issue and reducing it to a "yes/no" questions doesn't live up to it, is what you mean.

Having said that, just taking a simple poll like this is a great starter, I think. Simplified, but very clear and understandable result and also: Easy to conduct.

Indeed. I wish there was more nuance here. This has been the second worst year of my 39 years on this planet... but, with that said, I'm not depressed, just kind of shitty.

This post looks like a promo for that site, and likely they're setting a ton of tracking cookies and sell our data to a ton of advertisers

I'm not depressed. Shit happens sometimes, but overall, it beats a lot of things that people have gone through in History.

Anytime I start feeding bad, I either go for a walk to get the blood flowing, or I realized that in 1914, teenagers were drafted and thrown into a trench to fight and die for 4 years. After that was said and done, the survivors got to experience the Spanish Flu, which killed more people than they meat grinder war they just survived. After a nice 12 year break (0 years if they were a farmer), they got to experience the Great Depression for 12 or so years, followed by WWII, which managed to be even more horrific than the first one.

This is true but it also doesn't invalidate the struggles of anyone who's experiencing depression in modern times. Not saying you were trying to do that but I just want to say that for anyone who reads this and feels like their own struggle isn't valid.

I feel this way as well. I have moments of being stuck in my house with my great family and say “man I’m tired of the pandemic” or “my kids are acting crazy”. Then I remember the lives of others, not just men who were drafted in the wars but their wives who had to make a living and raise their children in a time that it wasn’t so easy for them. I also think of other countries where people aren’t stuck in a house but a shack with 5 others and have to go out and do dangerous work. Not invalidating that there are people with depression that I could never understand. I also realize some people are very alone and don’t understand why. BUT if your biggest problem is that you are stuck in your house or apartment over in Silicon Valley or NYC playing video games or reading books, I have a hard time being sympathetic. Things could be much much worse.

When my wife uses this line of reasoning I point out that she's taking solace in other people's pain. It's kind of a joke, but it's also kind of true. Don't need to minimize your own suffering just because someone else suffered more.

I had an inability to focus and paralyzing procrastination until the election was decided. And then, like a miracle, it went away. :)

Not making a political statement with that, but we have a ton of stuff weighing over all of us right now, so be easy on yourself if you feel a bit down or unable to do anything like normal productivity - you are definitely not alone.

> "Not making a political statement with that"

Negating something also 'somewhat' implies the opposite (the not negated version). Also you add a smiley ":)" in the paragraph before, which drops a very clear hint.

I can say with certainty close to 100% that you are a strong Biden supporter and fan.

I am happy for you that politics fixed your depression.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: (800) 273-8255

There are a number of specialized lines too depending on what an individual identified most with in their circumstance.

+1 (800) 273-8255 or text HELLO to 741741 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

+1 (800) 799-7233 National Domestic Violence Hotline

+1 (888) 373-7888 National Human Trafficking Hotline

+1 (800)-422-4453 National Child Abuse Hotline

+1 (800)-656-4673 Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN)

+1 (800)-985-5990 Disaster Distress Hotline

+1 (866) 488-7386 TREVOR Crisis Hotline

+1 (800) 996-6228 Family Violence Helpline

+1 (800) 784-2433 National Hopeline Network

+1 (800) 366-8288 Self-Harm Hotline

+1 (800) 222-1222 American Association of Poison Control Centers

+1 (800) 622-2255 Alcoholism & Drug Dependency Hope Line

+1 (800) 233-4357 National Crisis Line, Anorexia, and Bulimia

+1 (888) 843-4564 LGBT Hotline

+1 (800) 221-7044 AIDS Crisis Line

+1 (877) 565-8860 The Trans Lifeline

+1 (800) 273-8255 Veterans Crisis Line

These phone numbers were pulled from the following resource which is US-centric but you can call from anywhere if you need the help: https://www.caredash.com/articles/which-online-therapy-servi...

Keep in mind that calling this phone number literally just has police/ambulance sent to your location to 5150 you and put you in an involuntary 3 day psych hold.

You're just better off just voluntarily commiting yourself to a psych center than calling this number. Unfortunately reality, honestly.

I don't know if it's still the case or if it was a fluke experience, but they left me on hold for 30 minutes when I called in 2015.

UK (and EU, I believe) 116123

Which nation?

I was just talking to a friend about how deep my depression has gotten. It's at the point now where I'm too scared to go to sleep at night because I know it means I have to wake up and do another day.

Congratulations on talking to a friend about it. That's a huge step and an uncomfortable one. Have you managed to speak to a medical professional? With depression that deep, it's definitely worth a try - there are things that can give you respite.

The best of luck, really and look after yourself.

I was suicidally depressed in 2017. A combination of medication, CBT, talk therapy and the love and care of other helping professionals got me better. I've never felt better. It gets better. My email is in my user info.

Tomorrow's another day of trying to get better. It's not who you are, it's an illness that can perpetuate and dissipate. Every day is a project to get closer to the latter. Talking helps a shit load, but friends and family can't help you as much as you can, and the talking is you helping yourself.

I want a "I don't know" tick.

I periodically suffer from what assume are symptoms of depression, but I can usually pinpoint the triggers that caused them (a lengthy social media session filled with large amounts of scrolling reviewing dozens of happy families hugging and kissing each other, a missed deadline that I'm emotionally connected to, a hangover, rainy weather, etc.)

Although I don't do this every time I suffer from the symptoms, usually a high intensity workout of some sort (a relatively fast 2 to 3 mile (or further) run, 45-60 min lifting session of fast paced lifts with super sets, etc.) will almost instantly "cure" my symptoms.

I can probably do some research or go see a doctor to confirm whether what I experience is anything potentially connected to depression, but I just haven't been motivated to and again, can usually fix what I'm feeling with a workout. Not really sure how to proceed, if at all...

One of my friends went to a psychiatrist for ADHD symptoms and he got diagnosed with depression. He was like, “I didn’t know I was depressed!”

That's usually a yes, or at least "keep watch". There's grades of it, things like cyclothymia and disthymia, too.

I'm depressed, anxious, and lost.

I'm 38, married, and I have two daughters.

My career seems to be stuck. I work in IT, but I don't think I'm actually very good in any specific aspect of it. I suck at debugging. I write Python but I never learned how to use the Python debugger. I'm no good at project management either. Every time I'm asked to give an estimate for something I feel like I'm pulling a random number out of my ass. It's even worse when I'm asked to make long term planning with a Gantt chart. I don't know how to advance my career. I don't know whether I want to pursue a technical path or a (project) management path. Just in terms of programming languages, there are so many out there that I don't know, but that I think I should know - e.g. rust, haskell, elixir, clojure, kotlin - and I'm anxious of missing out. Or shall I forge ahead and try to become a Master of Python? I tried to learn TypeScript and React and I just can't get it. Out of necessity, I do code review for a project written with TypeScript, React, and Next.js at work, and I just can't help falling asleep because everything seems incomprehensible. I don't really know how to get better at any of this.

I have no idea how to spend my free time. I have over 1000 games on Steam, GOG, Epic Store, EA Origin combined, but I open my game library and don't even know what I want to play. I bought most of these games from Humble Bundle, mostly when the bundles come with soundtracks because I just know I won't really play the games. I just listen to the soundtracks while I work. My wife isn't a gamer and there's nobody to play with me. I also have hundreds of ebooks bought from Humble Bundle and Story Bundle, and again, I have no idea what do read.

Since even before the COVID-19 pandemic, I have deleted all my classmates and ex-coworkers from Facebook, except one friend and his wife because he's more like a big brother to me than just a friend. Nobody tried to reconnect with me, neither via Facebook, nor by e-mail, nor by giving me a call. I have no friend to talk to. I eat the cheapest fast food lunch alone during work days and I just spend time mindlessly wandering the streets and the malls until lunch time is up.

When I'm off work and get home, I take care of watching over the little one do her homework, I have supper and I do the dishes, and then it gets late and I have no more energy to do anything useful.

For reasons that I would rather not say, I can't talk to my wife about my depression.

Thanks for sharing... Plenty of devs don't like using debuggers. It's just a style thing. We use print instead. (The only time i really need a debugger is when my c code segfaults.) Are you sure you suck at debugging? It is the hardest part of the job. Good devs always write down (to keep the bugs at bay).

Don't worry about learning other languages, much better to be interested in something. Try to find something that interests you.

Common dude, eat better food [1]! Try to get more raw food. I gotta do this too.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9__23-zjhM

Also 38, also married, also two daughters, also have depression.

I can't tell you what works or not for you but I can say what helped me go from suicidal over a failing business to functional enough to interview at 20+ tech companies and land a job I like.

I firstly spoke with someone. Dealing with depression totally alone is not easy. I don't know your wife (ofc) but if someone married you they (probably?) care enough to hear more than just good news from you. If you really can't afford to share with your wife then damn, that's rough, but do share with someone who knows your situation and can advise your doctor, a therapist, a parent, someone.

Deleting contacts on social is a symptom of depression. I did it and my counsellor raised it. Ask yourself if you'd notice if someone unfriended you first? It's not like FB notifies you. Your friends and family care, they do, but they also have their own lives and also let's be honest, a lot of people hardly check FB in depth these days anyways. No one is going to notice their friend list drop down by 1.

> I eat the cheapest fast food lunch alone

I'm gonna be dictatorial on this one and just say 'stop'. Don't do it. Junk food is a treat, like ice cream. You wouldn't incorporate ice cream as a regular part of your nutrition.

> then it gets late and I have no more energy to do anything useful

That's true for any parent, especially those dealing with stress and depression. You're not alone on this one. I get done with the day after tucking my kids in and I literally have like 1-2 hours to maybe learn something tech related to advance my career or veg out with my wife and enjoy a TV show. It sucks, but that's life, no parent I've spoken with differs in this regard.

> I have no idea how to spend my free time.

Another symptom of depression. Loss of interest in things we used to enjoy doing or withdrawing from hobbies. So what if you have 1000 games, they're there to give you joy not anxiety. You might have 9000 grains of rice in a 1lb bag in your cupboard but you don't worry about when you'll eat each individual one. Let them be, not playing them is as valid an option as playing them. Probably more so if you're time poor.

> Every time I'm asked to give an estimate for something I feel like I'm pulling a random number out of my ass.

I think software has this problem regardless, some of us are better at estimating some less so. I wouldn't worry about that. Unless you're repeating a development task you've done before many times (write a new rest controller, develop a CRUD web app) it's heard to give an estimate on something you haven't done before.

Pick a language you like and which advances the career you want and just start reading, hacking, messing around with it. Python's a great one for work and play tbh, but the important thing is to start. Most of the great coders I've worked with just get stuck into something new, they don't seem to care too much whether what they're learning will be obsolete or is non-optimal. I myself struggle with this one which is probably why I only know Java :)

Disclaimer: I'm just a random person on the internet, but a lot of issues you wrote about ringed home to me. So below here is how I dealt with all of them. And in some cases, I'm simply offering a thing or two here, because I feel like you need some companionship (and since I have no clue on how to meet people during this pandemic, I'm doing it this way).

> I write Python but I never learned how to use the Python debugger.

I can show you my workflow. Feel free to email me.

I love debuggers.

> Every time I'm asked to give an estimate for something I feel like I'm pulling a random number out of my ass.

I think a lot of us do. I came to accept that this is the way it is.

> I tried to learn TypeScript and React and I just can't get it.

I've learned enough React and TypeScript to have some insights into this. Self-learning this takes around 100 hours. This is how I did it:

- Read a book (e.g. Road to React) and code whatever the book says

- Then make a project on your own that is like the project of the book but not completely

- Now make a project (small) that is something different

You're now ready to code in actual React.

My route for this was:

1. Code whatever Road to React says

2. Make a favorites app. List your favorite websites and give it 1 to 5 stars.

3. My thesis (tbh convincing the academic board that a React project was scientific was as hard as the project itself :P). My thesis was an XML parser that feed to output to React components which would be rendered. Note: the XML language was academic and my claim was that there would be a 30% code reduction by using React, which was true as no parsing was needed anymore, you could use a webpack plugin.

> My wife isn't a gamer and there's nobody to play with me.

I've noticed that I only like and play games because my friends play them. And I then become quite competitive and practice that game over and over and over again. I always wondered why I was addicted to games, it was just a distorted way for my need for human contact.

With that said, feel free to email me to play Among Us. It's one of the few games that I allow myself to play (as long as I know someone who wants to play as well).

> eat the cheapest fast food lunch alone during work days

In my country it's quite easy to circumvent this as we have good bread, butter and peanutbutter (so I simply make that as a sandwich, super quick), throw in some tangerines and that's my "fastfood". Do you have similar ways of doing that?

> When I'm off work and get home, I take care of watching over the little one do her homework, I have supper and I do the dishes, and then it gets late and I have no more energy to do anything useful.

For the past 6 months, I mostly worked 4 days per week instead of 5. The difference is massive. It sounds like your energy is being depleted too much for what you can handle right now.

Yep. But surprisingly not as bad as I expected, given COVID, and ADHD+bipolar going into this mess. I've been reeeally depressed in the past, this isn't that. But feeling very burned out. Focus and working memory is really suffering. I'm too busy/tired to be bored but I feel novelty-deprived. I'm barely exercising and I know that's contributing but forming exercise habits is hard for me.

Would be great actually if anyone had tips on how to get exercise habits to stick. I've literally tried to addict myself to working out using nicotine gum, nope, nothing.

Check out pre-workout with Beta Alanine. When I've taken it I can "feel" my muscles more while lifting, it's fantastic. Really helps you get more out of your workout and get into your rhythm in the gym.

I used this one. It tastes kinda bad but whatever: https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Pre-Workout-Powder-Preworkout/...

For basic-level exercise in the form of “walking around outside a lot”, I've been playing Happy Surveillance Pets aka Pokémon GO—as hypocritical as it sort of is with my software philosophy leanings. May not work if your version of “outside” is either too far away from civilization for the shared AR part to work or too high-risk to be going out in a lot (I live in a medium-density area of city, which seems roughly ideal).

I was able to keep up some ad-hoc home bodyweight exercises with Habitica (gamified habits) + Forest (pomodoro-ish app) earlier in the year, but that fell apart a few months later when the depression got worse, and I haven't managed to pick it up again yet.

Make your workout sessions a commitment with someone else. If you know someone else who also wishes they were exercising, contact them to arrange a time once a week, or more, to work out 'together'. Even now, you can do socially distanced outside in the same place, or video calling from your house to chat/ check form/be present, or do either at a gym if they are open.

If you don't know/don't want to involve anyone else, you can also pay a personal trainer to do this.

Starting with just 5 minutes run, or maybe 1 minute push up per-day.

Start small, then you will feel not enough and then you make a big leap.

I also getting started to loose weight. just lost 5kg, still 20 to go.

> Would be great actually if anyone had tips on how to get exercise habits to stick.

Try picking up martial arts or dance. Learning a skill while exercising may help with both the being novelty-deprived and the exercise habits. That being said, both of those are hard to pick up alone, and COVID is still here. You may be able to find live-streams or something to help with that.

Last year: moved to PNW for a high paying job after participating in a mass exodus from a failed startup. Commuted 2hrs a day, crashed at home completely exhausted and got eaten alive by the seasonal depression. Cried on the drive home about twice a week because I was miserable. This year: covid hits, I go wfh full time. Decide to move to a new team. They're really great to work with and work is fun again. I have hours back in my day for all kinds of fun activities. Lockdowns were actually a blessing in disguise.

I'm reminded I'm depressed every time I take my anti-depressants. I know that I can't survive without them, having tried to come off them a few times, and going to a very dark place each time.

The hardest step when living with depression is doing something about it.

I wasted a decade of my life ignoring the signs. Don't be like me. If you think you are depressed, or even if you feel the world is just too hard to live in, go seek help. Your friends and family will thank you.

What made you finally start doing something? What was the most obvious (in hindsight) sign you ignored?

The second hardest thing about depression is often continuing to live with it after attempt after attempt to do something about it hasn't helped.

I'm depressed and I really can't do much about it.

I need to find a job to work part-time during my studies so I can afford rent, I need to do my degree so I can stay legal in this country and not have to go back to where it would be unsafe for me, I need to find a full-time job with visa sponsorship so I can stay after my degree is done to be able to stay.

I need to contribute at least a day or two worth of time every few weeks to my hobby to keep it alive and me - sane.

I need to cook for myself to save money.

I've no luck finding any jobs one way or another despite applying for loads I don't know if it's just me being a graduate with little work experience or the economy, probably a bit of both.

It's hard to do my hobby good when I feel like there are more pressing important responsibilities around. It's hard to give a heck about university when it's all online-only because of COVID.

Cooking for myself requires going outside to buy groceries. Anxiety intensified by the other things makes that difficult.

Things were looking up for me in September, graduating, being accepted to a new degree but now it's all just like an illusion fading away. Every time I wake up, I'm crushed by the pressure of all those things and just choose to scroll the internet for 12 hours a day and go to bed as soon as possible.

Am I depressed? No. Was I depressed? Maybe. I don't know if I've ever been depressed. But, there was definitely periods in my life where I felt miserable for a long time (6 months to years). During these times-- I was listless, lack motivation, and had typical symptoms for depression. However, it never crossed a threshold where I would call it depression. Mostly because I still felt like I was in control. When I didn't get out of bed for the day, it wasn't because I literally can't. I was just being lazy as shit. Of course, that fueled my sadness for a while because I would think I can fix this, but I'm not. Thus, spirally deeper.

Eventually, I had enough. I decided not be sad anymore. I'll never be Bill Gates, Bruce Lee, or any of my heroes. And, people in the third world can never all the opportunities I have. So, I decided it doesn't matter my situation. There is always some miniscule, tiny thing I can do to improve my situation. I started waking up earlier, journaling more, and stuck to these habits religiously. They became my anchor. Now I'm in a much better place. To everyone who is struggling. I hope you find your better place too.

> When I didn't get out of bed for the day, it wasn't because I literally can't.

If that was what depression looked like, it wouldn't be called "depression". It would be called "disability".

So for years I was diagnosed as depressed, but I never really felt depressed just tired, really, really tired. After a suicide attempt I decided to just let go and find a therapist who I could really really relate with and let it all hang out. Low and behold this gentleman figured out what I had a feeling about all along but could not put a finger on it. What he figured out was that I had PTSD comorbid with ADHD, when I would get down in a hole via the PTSD the ADHD would leave me in a pattern in which I could not figure out how to put one foot in front of the other, which would leave me in the hole watching the world stack on top of me.

He said he had seen this a lot with "resistant" depression because it is not depression at all, it is PTSD coupled with ADHD/ADD which is a really bad and many times fatal combo. ADD makes you feel just as worthless as depression, and PTSD is a match in a dynamite factory coupled they can look a lot like resistant depression. I user anyone who suffers from resistant depression to at least have the checks for comorbid PTSD and ADD.

I feel like I am one of the few who is actually loving the WFH, and am feeling better than ever. Most of my coworkers complain about feeling isolated and looking forward to returning to the office, and I don't feel like I can tell them that I much prefer the current situation.

With WFH, I now have enough flexibility to work whenever I want to, which allows me to indulge my night owl instincts without it affecting my work, and also allows me to nap whenever I need during the day.

I am already a major homebody, so staying home almost every day fits me very well. I don't have a great need to meet people face-to-face, so the fact that most meetings are voice only works very well for me as well. Social interactions at work always stresses me out a bit, as I feel like I have to put on a performance whenever it happens.

I am not looking forward to when COVID-19 is under control and the office opens, as my employer has made it clear that we are all expected to return to the office once it is safe. Not only do I have to put on a performance all day long, I lose the commute time and flexibility of work hours.

Nope... I am the opposite. Kinda calm, and enjoying NYC/Manhattan being a quitter place.

I am mostly an introvert though, but had some major FOMO before covid.

I attribute this sense of tranquility/calmness as all that FOMO is gone, since pretty much everyone is in the same boat.

I also have created a routine and I go out every day, and work outside for at least one hour. Before it was in the parks, but now that is a bit chillier at outdoors at coffee places. Many coffee places have outdoor seating, so I use that as much as I can, before it gets too cold. I bundle up, and have noticed that I can work outside up to 42-44F so far. Not sure how will it be one it gets colder. Weather in NYC has been lovely so far though.

I miss playing sports though (soccer and volleyball), and the occasional dating, but I don't feel bad at all since everyone is in the same boat.

For the winter, I highly suggest to get some good yellow spectrum lighting in your apt. and also buy a powerful projector, and project movies/games in a whole wall. I have noticed that using a 2000lumens projector daily, instead a normal TV has made a huge improvement in my mood, and almost eliminated that SAD feeling you get in November.

TLDR: 1. Develop a routine where you go outside, to work/read, for at least one hour a day. Be friendly with the local baristas. Just somme chatting and in-person interaction every day, makes a huge difference.

2. Visit/explore different parts of the city, every week. Use a bike, so you don't have to use public transportation.

3. Buy a powerful projector, and watch TV/youtube, play games on it, for those days that the weather is not good.

4. Make your apt, room ambient look and feel nice, get some good lighting.

5. Get a regular cleaner. (I usually leave the apt. for most of the day when a cleaner comes). A clean/neat apt improves your mood a lot.

6. Start new things (either projects, books, games, whatever), so you don't feel stale, and experience new things.

So, to precede your good intentions:

Step 0: Be in a good place in life and have money.

If only things could be so simple...

> I have noticed that using a 2000lumens projector daily, instead a normal TV has made a huge improvement in my mood, and almost eliminated that SAD feeling you get in November.

This is brilliant (pun intended!) Also a good way to mess with circadian rhythms if used after 6pm-ish (unless you use f.lux)

I knew I loved my projector, but I didn't realize it was also making me feel better until you said it. Very thankful for it.

Posting on a throwaway for reasons.

I take anti-depressants so yes, however, recently I'm not sure how effective they have been, or even if what I am feeling constitutes being depressed.

I find myself constantly oscilating between apathy, loneliness and irrational anger. I've never been a person who really has "friends" so to speak, I have acquaintances and family, I'm close with family but beyond that I don't have anyone I talk to outside of performing my job. It's not like I don't want people to talk to, but I find myself unsure of whether I can't or won't try to connect with others.

More often than not nowadays, I'll get the idea to watch a movie or read a book or just do something, and the idea excites me a little bit, right up until I get to the point where I need to actually do it, and then I just have this crushing moment where I cannot move passed the thoughts "I can't be bothered" or "what's the point?" To the point where I'll just scroll through youtube, looking at everything and have no motivation to watch anything.

Anger is the one that most confuses me, because I am fully conscious of the fact that it is completely irrational, but its still there. It's always things like people driving too slowly or inadvertently getting in my way at the supermarket, or things like a news article. The big one I've found is social media, I look on social media and see everyone looking happy and successful or even just saying something that I disagree with. But, whatever it is, it just makes me so mad.

I’m not really sure what to do, I know I should probably get help, but every time I think about that I keep thinking about how I’ve tried getting help before and here I am, still unhappy, and to top it off, getting worse.

What you said resonates with me a lot, you’re not alone in how you feel. I find myself losing my temper irregularly over things that wouldn’t normally irritate me. I normally chalk it up to some secondary affect of other stressors or whatever (which helps to bring me back to earth when I recognise I’m being irrational), but I also have the same driven/apathetic thing where I’m really exciting to do something, but when it comes to it I either procrastinate the task enough to become a stressor or convince myself I don’t want to do it and move on. I never framed it in the context of a depression or depressive episode, choosing rather to believe I’m just lazy, so there’s definitely something to think about for me here.

I’ve been feeling the physical symptoms I associate with depression, but not the changes to cognition. I feel like I’m wearing an iron mask, if that makes any sense. Really heavy head with what feels like a layer of numbness between me and my surroundings. I have an appointment to talk about it with a doctor next week since I don’t want to spiral into something worse.

It’s odd to me that I’m not having the cognitive changes I associate with depression, like inability to focus or an overwhelming sense of dread. I’m surprised that things haven’t spiraled cognitively after 7 months of WFH and social distancing. I’m grateful to have a super energetic dog that needs walking twice a day, at least.

I usually use throw aways when talking about this kind of thing, but am trying to get better at doing my part to raise awareness of mental health issues in this field.

What have people found are the best ways to help normalize dealing with mental health issues in our industry?

Until recently, I was.

Every day before going to work I had anxiety. My workplace was extremly toxic, people talking behind each others back etc.

I got home and instead of hanging out with my gf and 6 months baby I escaped into video games, or news. For some reason, I blamed my family for my shitty life, and where mean to my gf.

I used to read a lot of books and be interested in a lot of stuff before, but the recent years all I have had energy for has been to browse my normal time killing websites. In my mind, the reason for this was that I was getting older (just turned 35).

Anyway, a while ago I got a "moment of clarity" that I just had to change my current path or give up completely and start drinking or something. I quit my job without having a new job. The first week after quitting nothing changed really, but week 2 then things really started to happen. The heavy anxiety in my stomach dissapeared. This in turn enabled me to do more stuff.

Another thing I did was deleting my Facebook account. I have been wanting to do that for years, but I have always resisted since I would then lose my way of communicating with a lot of "friends". Anyway, after a few days of that, I somehow felt that my head felt clearer. I was no longer filled with other peoples bullshit thoughts.

Inspired by this, I stopped reading newspapers online and started buying paper versions instead. That also had a positive impact on me.

My relationship with my family got sooooo much better. I started to having long conversation with my gf, something I realized I had barely had for a lot of time. Also, I started to feel all these feelings when being with my kid, and I am so happy that I now can be in the moment with her.

In two weeks I will start my new job. I don't know how it will be, but I know that if it sucks, I will talk about it with my gf instead of escaping into the internet.

I’ve been depressed for years. After years of short term gigs and constant moving I decided to give up that lifestyle. In late 2019 I moved to a place with family, got a corporate job, and attempted to develop a feeling of community. I was well on my way of forming new friendships and strengthening family ties when covid hit. Now, making friends is much harder and less satisfying. It’s harder to cultivate a feeling of community. My family is, in my opinion, reckless when it comes to covid so I don’t see them. All of my attempts to mitigate my depression came from improving social ties, and now it feels like that’s an impossible thing to do. On the other side, I’m use to isolation and loads of digital-only social contact, so 2020 doesn’t feel much different than 2018.

I suffer from borderline personality disorder and it's rough but usually treatable with lots of therapy and learning of "skills."

The covid crisis made my issues boil over to the point of losing relationships, friendships and attempting to take my own life twice (before I found the therapist).

Yes and no.

Getting laid off a couple weeks ago from my frontend/ux job of 6 years, and the job hunt since has been a bummer. But the positive is, I no longer have to work for a boss who underpaid, overworked, and did their best to make me feel worthless nearly every day these last 6 years :)

Have bipolar disorder and struggled with depression from 13 to 20ish. The right medication, and constant work on reframing your thinking makes a huge difference. I still struggle with mania and occasional bouts of depression, but it's no longer debilitating.

For me work has been very stressful, though I'm better off than most people, the pandemic did not affect me very much but I find work very toxic. I'm a very young software engineer at 23 in a country where most engineers you will find are 26 and above I got my first full time developer job when I was 19 fresh out of high school.

Most people consider me as smart but I'm not given the opportunity to use my skills. In late 2019 I had decided to resign my current job because I found it too toxic, I had been diagnosed with bipolar and things had been very hard before I had decided to go and see a therapist who when immediately saw me referred me to a psychiatrist and I've been on medication since then.

My manager convinced me to stay and offered me a small increase in salary and promised me that my voice will be heard. He also convinced me to take a contract that involved completing an app that I had been working on. he made a lot of promises to me. As soon as I accepted his new offer and rejoined the company, he changed again, I'm still faced with the issues I used face previously and as someone with bipolar, I get stressed easily and the company does not make it any easy for me. Last week I just decided to send my manager a notification about my planned exit next year. He's trying to convince me to continue staying... So I'm just wondering why s would someone want you to stay in a company without giving you the opportunity for growth? For me it feels like they just want to use me to do the hard work and then "The right people will take the credit", considering I don't have a university degree.

Are other young engineers who are talented face similar issues in other companies? Despite my age, I've been working with computers longer than most people around me. So I do know a lot and can easily do any task. A lot of people are just usually concerned with how do I know what I know? Most of the time people don't listen to me and when things go wrong or something is very technical they always want me to be the one to do that but I get no credit. Maybe I'm the problem. Is there something about me that makes it hard to be acceptable to these people?

Consider making it your philosophy to do without any & all credit and doing "the good deeds in stealth". The win-win is that probably credit will easily flow towards over time in surprising ways you when the need is gone, and even if it doesn't, the need was overcome.

Consider the way your manager tried to keep you "at all costs" (salary & even promising much more than he could really deliver!) a huge credit in disguise.

"The superior leader [...] is a catalyst, and though things would not get done well if he weren't there, when they succeed he takes no credit. And because he takes no credit, credit never leaves him."

Presently no, but I faced depression for almost six years.

I faced continuous failures in college between 2010 -2013. Dropped from one degree, tried another but didn't go well either.

Then with broken skills in coding, set out to build a startup with strangers (now close friends).

That was for three years and didn't work out either. There were times I didn't have money for food.

Couldn't go back home, as an introvert didn't feel like sharing even to people I was close to.

Situations changed in 2018, articles sharing my learnings hit an audience of 50-100K.

Got contract for a book, Linked-In was filled with job offers. Later, I got into a great startup.

Befriend uncertainty, I survived six years of depression, you can make through one. Stay Hopeful!

I've definitely had a few rough points since I started my current job early last year. I think I focused too much on my career that it left me with little energy for anything else.

I was finally starting to figure things out and get where I wanted to be in life at the beginning of the year but then the world got flipped upside down and it's been a rollercoaster since.

I almost want to say I was happy working from home, having more time for myself and my hobbies, but I was still looking forward to going back to the office because it brought back a (small) sense of normalcy and it definitely did.

Problem now is that I'm possibly days away from putting in my 2 weeks for a new SWE job in a sector that I'm super interested in and working with much cooler tech, but I'm scared. I'm extremely comfortable in my current role and it's very stable for the time being. I have no idea what the new role will be like - stress, long hours, etc. I know it'll be WFH for at least a few months to start, which I'm not looking forward to. I'm scared to leave my comfort zone in the middle of all this, and I'm worried it'll be terrible for my mental health going into the winter.

I know this isn't exactly the thread for this.. but I don't know where else to talk about it.

Yes. It’s hard to have empathy and not be.

As we grow up and become aware of our world, there’s too much shit going on everywhere to truly be happy anymore even if my own life was perfect, and there’s little good to look forward to.

At best we can hope for everything to keep shambling on and not collapse catastrophically. And the worst part? Even if everything did collapse it would be hard to feel sorry for us..

I daresay that never being depressed would be the odd behavior for a sane individual.

I used to be bothered by all that's wrong in this world, but as I've gotten older I've slowly learned to accept that which I cannot change, because otherwise I'd just be perpetually pissed off and it's impossible to be happy.

Yeah, this is honestly the most logical and rational conclusion I've come to myself.

Once you're fully aware of the state of things... shit's hard. I'm almost envious of clinical psychopaths in this age.

Important to note that "feeling depressed" and "having depression" are two different things.

Everyone feels depressed sometimes. Maybe your mom died, maybe you're getting divorced, maybe you lost your job. Feeling depressed is normal, but it doesn't mean you have clinical depression.

Clinical depression, or Major Depressive Disorder, is a specific condition and people often don't know all the symptoms.

If you experience the following, you may have clinical depression.

  - you experience a change in your previous functioning
  - symptoms occur for a period of 2 or more weeks
  - at least one symptom is either depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure
  
  - plus 5 of the following, experienced in the 2-week period:
    You feel sad or irritable most of the day, nearly every day.
    You’re less interested in most activities you once enjoyed.
    You suddenly lose or gain weight or have a change in appetite.
    You have trouble falling asleep or want to sleep more than usual.
    You experience feelings of restlessness.
    You feel unusually tired and have a lack of energy.
    You feel worthless or guilty, often about things that wouldn’t normally make you feel that way.
    You have difficulty concentrating, thinking, or making decisions.
    You think about harming yourself or suicide.

If you think you have depression, contact your doctor and/or a psychotherapist, or review resources here: https://www.healthline.com/health/depression/help-for-depres...

(i am not a doctor)

One thing that has helped me is becoming involved with a men's group. It might not work for you but I see benefits in being able to discuss aspects of life with other men. This particular group has a training regimen to learn to open up and communicate. It starts slowly and then it ramps up. There are a ton out there but the one I'm part of is K4 Nation. They are currently taking enrollment for the January cohort of men.

What I would suggest is reading a book that have helped me a lot and may help you as well. "Man's Search For Meaning" from Viktor Frankl.

The author is an austrian therapist that founded the "logotherapy" (healing through meaning) after surviving WW2 concentration camps.

Is a very small book, and very easy reading, and at the time that I've read it, it helped me find the inner tools within myself to go on and achieve happiness.

The best thing about being at the very end of a big, long, dark whole in the ground, is that you can only go up.

I know that it's not easy to be you right now. But sometimes the worst things that happens to us, turn out to be blessings in disguise.

The bad news is that the healing needs to come from within you, nobody can help you from outside. Not therapists, not family or friends. They can only support you and help you reach your inner voice again to move forward.

Reading a book in itself is not going to help you either, but the thought process that come from it may help you start a different, happier path.

Think of this time as a turning point: There's the old you, and the new one, that needs to start over and reboot himself into something different and better.

I wonder..

The relationship fell apart, the startup is struggling

I am now playing videogames for 8hours on Friday and Saturday. And this week I am back to browsing cybersex type chats which were out of the picture for 5 years and I thought I kicked the habit. I am not even stimulated by them.

I hope I will deeply understand how useless all this hiding is and get back to social life.

But with ADHD meds you get into this loop.

Also covid messed up the sport my Vilks score dropped from 1370 to maybe 1200 and it’s just soul crushing

I am 37 and no kids, no girlfriend just a semi-failing startup. If not for the parents I think I’d be seriously considering the S-word, but I just can’t to this to them.

I think the problem is that I just don’t really care about myself - I eat only because I am clinging on to gym performance and knowing something is doing damage to my body or my personality doesn’t really matter. We are all just dust. I sometimes envy people who actually put their ego first and care about themselves so much.

Hell I quit smoking only because I wanted to win this girl, the most beautiful one, the queen. And it was a cool challenge to stop smoking so she never knows I did. And now she’s gone and it was a doomed relationship anyways

I've been off anti-depressants for a few months, having been on SSRIs for about a year.

I mostly feel fine off my meds, though lately I am finding it harder to stay positive. Random negative thoughts surface more often, and it's difficult at times to deal with them. I think the current situation with lockdown and covid is having a toll on my mental health.

I'm not depressed, but I'm scared I may end up depressed again...

We're not in the best decade either. Surely it makes things harder when very often you consider climate catastrophe, collapse, post pandemic economics. Your mental strength is seriously challenged.

Someone told me about talklife app. Never tried it but for english speakers it might be of use.

Also more and more I think it's good to cut off if possible, time off in the green is surprisingly "replenishing".

g'luck

I'm curious how everyone here is doing mentally. Do you consider yourself depressed, whether or not you've been clinically diagnosed?

I'm not depressed, the weird effect the pandemic has had on me is that not much really changed for me. I do high power rocketry for a hobby so i haven't been able to attend launches but that's about it. I don't get to eat out but my wife and I both have been wanting to stop eating out for a while. I've always been wfh so no change there either. Kids are home more doing school through zoom but that's not a big deal either. :shrug:

I dealt with depression when I was younger, and being completely isolated due to the current world situation has brought it back. I am situationally depressed from a lack of human contact. I feel awful on a regular basis, and I wish more people would come out and just say it now. It's not rare or precious or embarrassing, it's just being human.

I think you should take this as "how are you feeling?" rather than "have you been diagnosed with depression?".

I'm not depressed but I feel like every year has been getting progressively worse over the past decade. I'm working hard and taking significant risks. I achieved all my technical goals this year; some which seemed almost impossible, but financially-speaking, I keep getting poorer. The smarter I get, the harder I work, the poorer I get.

I'm at a point where I've identified all the things that are holding me back. I know exactly what's going on in the economy and society and so I can make sense of my own situation - But I can't think of a way to pull myself out of it without engaging in behavior that I consider unethical.

I feel like everyone in society is becoming progressively more selfish over time. It's become impossible to make new friends because relationships have become incredibly shallow, financialized and transactional. I don't even see the point of making friends anymore because it just feels like everyone is acting. People just don't meet my minimum standards to qualify for friendship these days.

I feel extremely lucky to not be experiencing depression right now. I for some reason seem to thrive with this stay at home stuff, maybe being a gamer as a kid and having my primary social outlet be friends online has helped. I tune into twitch streams and becoming a regular in certain channels feels like hanging out with a group of friends.

Please don't race who is more depressed here.

Also don't undervalue simple symptoms, as those can develop over time into clinical depression.

Take care,

I hesitate to write that I am depressed after reading so many tragic and heartbreaking comments... My everyday life just seems so good in comparison.

I've recently graduated from a university and I have my first full-time SWE job as a backend developer. Although I really like my job and I can barely imagine a better workplace, I really dread my everyday life.

Working 8+ hours every day is soul-crushing to me, and with all other errands and a good sleeping schedule, I barely have time and energy for the other things in life that I enjoy. Dating, working out, being social, finding a place to live, as well as being quarantined is just overwhelming with a full-time job, I feel.

Since I've been getting negative work reviews, I called a career counselor. When he said that "I got to man up and prioritize my work above everything else", I was severely depressed and suicidal.

Dude your career counselor is a fool. Awful advice.

Fire him and get yourself to a doctor and proper therapist pronto. You are worthwhile and your brain is telling you lies, like any proper health condition you need to get some medical help with it, nothing to be ashamed of.

You are worthwhile don't forget it. You can and will get better, go sort out some help and everything in your life will improve.

Well, I don't know if I'm depressed but let's say that despite having a stable life; a loving wife that cares about me, a loving family and a stable job, I feel deeply unsatisfied and unhappy.

I hate my job because I feel unproductive, incompetent and frustrated all the time, despite having a good relationship with my wife our sex life has going to hell and I feel it's my fault because I don't feel sexually attracted to her like before. I can't connect with other people because I feel awkward and out place and feel like I don't have anything relevant to say so I always avoid conversations. For this reason I have lost many friends and I haven't made a new friend in 10 years.

I spent a lot of the time daydreaming, thinking of "what could've been" as if my life was done, but it isn't because I'm 35.

no, but optimism is dwindling by the day.

quit my job in 2018 as I was totally burnt out. figured id take a couple months off and get back to it. spent all of 2019 job hunting with no success. took my last interview in January 2020 which was also a dead end. beaten up and making zero money for all that time takes quite a toll. wife and i had our first child in march. have been a babysitter since then more or less. happy to have our child but feel totally worthless; zero income, zero prospects, tons of student debt, nothing to my name. have attempted freelance work but finding more than 15 minutes where I can sit down and do something is impossible. keep failing to start or finish things, missing deadlines. feel totally burnt out again. probably even more unlikely I can find a job at this point, no money to do anything. just completely stuck.

taking care of a small child is exhausting. the way our culture says a person can do that full time and also work full time is completely unrealistic. But the shape of it changes over time - you’re what, nine months in? that’s still the hard time. Over the next few months, it will get easier, little by little. The kind of attention that a child needs changes, and while it continues to be intense, I find having a 2-year-old so much less mentally draining than having a small baby was.

If you can, just try to be present in the moment. Maybe you can’t work right now, but what you’re doing is important. Being a good parent will do more good for the world than almost anything you will ever do for money

No. I normally wouldn't post since it probably comes off as insensitive, but since every comment seems to be talking about how depressed people are, I will give a counterpoint.

I've been pretty blessed. I was working remotely before COVID so it didn't really affect my life much other than being way more restricted in where I can travel. I've been nomadic the last couple years so the travel restrictions were an adjustment, but there are still places one can travel to. I'm currently in one of those countries that had no restrictions. Unfortunately it's looking like they're going to start making businesses close at 9pm, which sucks but isn't a huge deal since I can still work out of my favorite coffee shop during the day.

I find that my happiest times seem to be correlated with:

1. Having goals, and subsequently purpose and meaning. Doesn't have to be career-related by the way, can be a hobby or caring for a loved one

2. Having a sense of community with real in-person human contact. Intimacy is good to have too, or at least avoiding a complete lack thereof.

3. Accepting that which one cannot change

I get that the pandemic has made things more difficult, but we can still control our destiny to an extent and make the most of the cards we've been dealt. I had spent 3 months in the U.S. at my parents' house bored out of my mind before deciding to fly out to a random foreign country, and have had a blast here. I could've just stayed put at my parents' house and said "but I shouldn't do anything because the pandemic", but thankfully I didn't.

My sympathies to anyone who is out of work or depressed. But I do think it's healthier to look at our mental health as something that we can influence and control through our own life decisions and mindset, as opposed to just looking at it as a disease where cure = therapy / pills (not that there's anything wrong with therapy + appropriate medication).

Good on you for posting here and please follow all the advice about seeking professional help. It may take time but it will help. You will get through to the other side.

In my case, due to a buyout, I lost me job over two years ago and felt myself in a similar place as you.

What made it hard for me is I was 63(!) years old at the time . (I know what it is like to feel "over the hill" in technology employment.

After picking up my pieces, I started freelancing and haven't looked back. I've had more fun, on my terms, than my previous three decades in stressful tech jobs. That's the easy part.

The hard part was accepting my humanity and asking for help. Ask everybody and don't be ashamed to do it. You'll find out who your friends really are and you'll get the support you need.

Good luck. You'll make it.

I am so sorry to hear what you are going through. I suffer from clinical depression and did for years before I got help. I wish I had done it sooner.

Please get help. If you are in the US and feel like you are in a crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Trained crisis workers are available to talk 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your confidential and toll-free call goes to the nearest crisis center in the Lifeline national network. These centers provide crisis counseling and mental health referrals.

If you are not in a crisis, try calling 211. This number should direct you to your state's information and referral system. You can get referrals that way. Calls are anonymous.

Like others, sending good vibes your way.

I’m in a great situation. Good job, great family, enough money to not worry.

But I still answered yes. I was always prone to anxiety and depression, but Corona is fucking me up.

I’m trying to resume my normal life because getting sick is frankly a much better alternative than whatever this is.

After the second world view I constructed collapsed (after having gone through the same thing with my parents' world view a few years earlier), I was done. I was less than twenty years old.

Since then, I have built & collapsed yet another life philosophy, and am now mostly just trying to keep floating on the raft I've built from whatever I figured out works. It takes a lot of different tools to do this. I've allowed myself to be an addict by many definitions, because it works. All I can do is keep trying to hew toward preserving my health as much as I can stand. It's better to be able to be here than not, that's the best I've got.

I was horribly depressed in 2017. I am not today.

I have a toddler and started a new job which makes me work crazy hours as I'm competing for a manager role with a bunch of asian kids which not only are very smart but can work 12-14 hours a day including weekends. I used to work for a very simple role which was a very stable product just pure maintenance and FR nothing crazy. Fight after fight with wife, it makes you wonder many things in life. But I try to continue and think that after the pandemic, daycare, personal life will be better. Good luck to everyone and let's cheer up. We are alive that's the greatest gift

That sounds.. bad. Do you see your hours going down if you ever hit the manager tier there? Or up?

Yes. I don’t take care of myself the way that I should, and if I let that continue on for more than a week or two I get depressed.

I moved to an area with some pretty foul weather (month-long stretches of rain or snow every day are not uncommon), and that has made things worse since my primary source of exercise and probably my greatest joy in life is the outdoors.

But even when I was living in a sunnier climate I would frequently drift in and out of bouts of depression.

I am lucky to have a wonderful family who put up with me in the good times and the bad. I just wish I could be a better person for them.

If anybody wants to talk about their problems, feel free to send me a message. I've been through years of depression and anxiety, and I'm looking to help people in the same boat.

Can we have a similar poll for anxiety?

Whew. As someone that struggled with depression for nearly 15 years, as someone involved in the radical mental health movement for a long time, as a social scientist, as a Buddhist, as an activist...pulled so many different directions by seeing these numbers.

I guess all I have to say, with an immense amount of compassion, some frustration, and all the honesty in my heart is that "It doesn't have to be this way." And "It's not your fault, but it's still your one life."

What’s the radical mental health movement?

I have a job and my parents try their best to support me, but since last year (before the covid) something broke in me and i can't enjoy anything.

Waking up is so hard, i started going to work late every day (flexible hour) and i can't sleep, i'm always anxyous and the medicine prescribed to me aren't helping. I'm tired all the time and i don't know what to do.

I constantly think about suicide but apparently is a sideeffect of what i'm taking so i'm not too worried about it.

I empathize with the isolated rats in the university of Texas study on isolation and addiction https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130123165040.h.... I’m not abusing substances, but I can tell that my isolated brain is acting differently than it does when I had daily social interactions in person.

Not at the moment, but I have seasonal mood swings that I usually control with the gym and taking a holiday to the northern hemisphere when the worst of it hits in winter.

This year was really rough on me mentally, being away from people and couped up in the house took its toll on me and I had no real way to fix it. It's crazy how everything can be objectively ok in your life, but something like this comes along and just completely messes you up emotionally.

Ok, here goes:

I think I might have depression. But my life is by all accounts pretty damn good. I don’t have any health issues, actually I’m fitter than most people. I make a great salary, have good relationships. I show up to work and do a good job.

However I’ve been managing this shitty feeling that I just can’t seem to shake. It’s been so long it’s my new normal. I get fatigued and agitated easily. I feel alone - even when I know I’ve got good people in my life. I’ve tried combatting this by reducing complications in my life. Limited possessions, no pets or anything to take care of, no subscriptions or services, just keep it simple. I’ve been trying to date, but oh man dating apps suck balls...

I severely limit alcohol consumption, and do self care things like get myself massages, take time out etc.

I’m the guy everyone looks up to, but the truth is most days once all the distractions are gone I feel pretty “meh” and just tired. I don’t talk to anyone apart from my friend / ex gf about this stuff.

Maybe it’s a distorted lense but I feel like the “help” out there is just like a bandaid to the problem. Like is there really no better solution other than stuffing yourself full of drugs and people telling you to go exercise (is 4 gym classes a week not enough?)?

People will say stuff like “it’s ok to ask for help”, but honestly I feel like there are real disadvantages to being labeled as “depressed”. Donating sperm, applying to become police officer, insurance are some examples.

A while back I tried Better Help, and maybe it wasn’t a good match, but it just left me feeling disillusioned with psychologists. Honestly I felt like the woman I was matched with didn’t care and was a bit dumb. Perhaps part of the problem is I’ve learnt to mask my feelings - it’s bloody hard to admit this stuff, yes I’m your typical male that doesn’t want to talk about his feelings...

Anyway, to summarise, I just feel a bit shit most days. I don’t hate myself, and I feel like life is absolutely worth living. I do have hope that there’s something I can do to improve my situation.

I suspect it might be “talk to a doctor” and / or “find a shrink that works for me”... although I have a level of skepticism about the whole thing.

Any anecdotes or recommendations would be helpful! I know the only way out is through taking action.

I think you're already in a pretty good place - the fact you have healthy relationships, a good job and you regularly exercise is very very important. And yet, something is still off by your account. Fatigue, agitation, loneliness. It's not entirely clear to me why you get these fits of agitation, loneliness etc. A lot of depressed people feel down about themselves - they feel like they're worthless, no good, a failure etc. You don't see yourself that way - which is good, but it also calls for more exploration into your predicament. The fact you're kinda already doing everything right (sports, relationships etc) is a sign you may do need external help as you yourself said. An obvious thing that may be lacking by your account is a signifcant other, but in itself is not gonna be a cure for depression.

Good idea to post an anonymous poll.

Ever since I experienced ego death in the wake of a mental breakdown, around five years ago, my mental health has improved a lot :).

Can you explain more about this?

The prognosis for depression is excellent when the right help is given.

It's a shame on humanity that the prognosis is poor.

I was, what I thought, a special case of depressed. No hope of recovery. Hell, I didn't even have depression, it was just who I was inside! Constant terrible thoughts about myself and every day a torture. But it got better. It got sooo much better. Life is beautiful and I'm excited to live it.

I am really happy that constant medication can help you. Are you on the same dosis or did you have to decrease/increase it over time?

My mother passed away two years ago, while I was an expat far away from home. a day later was her funeral, which I couldn't attend. She was a true friend to me. She hasn't lived for herself even for a moment. Losing her was the the most painful event for me so far. I can't even describe how painful is this. I can say yes I am depressed since then and maybe forever.

It seems surprising that a lot of people from the developed world have so much to complain, not that I am insinuating their complains but I am looking at just how hard it is to live in a country like mine (Nigeria), despite the horrendous living conditions we are very much resilient in facing day to day life challenges and depression is uncommon among us especially the youths.

There's been a lot of layoffs in tech and elsewhere recently, so that could be skewing the responses in here. I know nothing about your daily life, but as a curiosity--could it be that you face less (perceived) uncertainty on a day-to-day basis?

I would _love_ to read more research about this, if anyone is aware of any. This aligns with my (unsubstantiated) intuition as well.

Yes. But I have been for years. COVID has actually been somewhat good for me overall as it forced me to figure out for to be happier without external stimuli. I'm over 100 days sober now which has helped my overall mood dramatically.

Still depressed. Just my lows are not quite as low. Most days I can at least get something done. On good days I can even forget I'm depressed.

The pandemic doesn't really affect me. I social distance my whole life so this is a pretty natural time for me. I'm happier in the sense that I can work remote now and live in an area I like more. I get to do activities I always dreamed about every day now.

However, when things are generally going pretty well, it highlights how mundane life and especially work can be.

My depression started in the summer of last year because of health problems. My leg hurt from the knee up and I could not move properly. I did not leave the apartment for 2 weeks when it started. Not being able to move properly was a really bad experience for me, especially psychologically. I got sent from doctor to doctor, nobody knowing who to do with me. Later I started physical therapy, I do not think it helped, just the problem was slowly going away. It came back around Christmas making it the worse Christmas of my life. At least I was able to travel to my home country to visit my parents and the family. I started going to doctors again but the covid-19 hit and they all stopped seeing non critical patients. I basically turned to my own research about the problem, reading articles, watching videos about specific exercises, etc.

The travel restrictions because of covid-19 also meant I could not travel home, even if it is a neighboring country. I usually got every 2-3 months, it took 7 months to get there. I was planning a wedding with my girlfriend, in my home country, but all the plans got busted with the restrictions, but we were able to get a September slot for a small wedding. 2 weeks before the wedding my grandma died. My grandpa did not take it well, still is not taking it well, i am a bit afraid of him, that he is loosing the will to live. We buried my grandma a day before the wedding.

The back from my home country just missing another travel restrictions and back to dealing with the health issues. At the same time I decided to quite my job. I have been hating it for a while, because of a borderline abusive boss. He made a few good people leave the company and here was no way to replace him as he was also the owner. Fed up with everything, but I guess mostly my health issues affecting me daily I decided to quit. I found a company that looked cool, went to 5 rounds of interviews. At the end I had some doubts about the job, but I guess I just really wanted to leave the current job so I accepted.

I started the new job now in November and it sucks. It is an environment that makes me depressed, seeing all the broken stuff and chaos, unable to make a difference. I want to quite again, but I do not know where to go. I guess I have just too specific recommendations that are not easily fulfilled by not wanting to be some small cog in a corporate machine.

And I will not be able to travel home for Christmas because of the current covid-19 situation, will be first Christmas away from the family. But with a new family I guess.

Reading through here I see a lot of people who are just as depressed as me, anyone wanna have a be less alone video chat?

A be less alone chat sounds like an awesome idea! I want to not participate but doing this is probably one of those things that's better in hindsight (like getting out for a walk or cooking something fancy for yourself). Count me in if this ends up happening. My email is in my profile.

Yes, and I have been since I was a kid. There have been several periods when my personal and professional life have taken huge hits and I felt like I was set back several years on a number of occasions. It feels like it takes a lot of work just to have a relatively normal life. Still, I'm mostly doing fine.

Yes, and I have the nitrogen exit bag ready to go once the credit cards and cash run out. Thankfully, I have no family or friends or coworkers, so no one will be adversely impacted. https://youtu.be/aNCQuCKQxSo?t=53

I am also surprised by the numbers. At first I thought numbers would be lower.

I wonder if an equally useful question is “were you ever depressed?”

Im interested in seeing if there is an overlap of those that answered no. If they’ve overcome their depression and more importantly recognize what real depression feels like for them.

Depression is unfortunately a part of modern society now, and I think a growing reliance on technology is one of the main factors.

Technology seeks to make individuals happy, but in doing so they're consumed by screens and feeds and become physically isolated from other people...

I think globalization is the cause for depression and anxiety, because we are now competing with 8 billion people and not just "in our local circle". Technology is just an enabler, a window into this global world. If you drop that, I won't doubt that you immediately feel better, but I also think, that you just diminished your chances on the global rat race for the top (eg. FAANGM) jobs. Also: It's a "winner takes it all" (global) world and the world is full of (super positive) surviver ship biased stories, which do not match the reality of most people.

I have existential depression. Or at least that's what Google tells me. Pretty close to nihilism. I don't believe life has any meaning. Hence I don't find anything worth doing. Yet I still do stuff. But life is depressingly hopelessly empty.

I try to pull what little joy out of life that I can. I think the only things that matter are what matters to us living things.

The best way to live your life is a type of compassionate hedonism I'd think.

Some things with too high a cost/reward ratio, like 10 more years of a college or something, I just won't do. I'm going to be dead in 50 years anyways, so what's the point?

Learning a new programming language? Maybe, but only if I like the language. Luckily I often enjoy learning.

For everyone interested in mental health topics, follow kati Morton on Youtube. Thank me later.

Just watched one, which spot on my case. Thank you.

Was already running on empty since a long time, then got hacked and lost a friend to covid, didn’t see anybody for 8 months, suffering from chronic and acute health conditions and hate where I live. It will get better but for now it sucks.

In a scale from 0 to 10, let's just say I hope nobody saw me while doing the dishes a while ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H5I6y1Qvz0

I am not depressed, but I think this talk is worth sharing: Devs and Depression by Greg Baugues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

No, I'm very good thank you. I eat delicious meals almost every day, I have installed lights that imitate the sun, I exercice every day and I'm working on something that people want. Everything is just fine.

This is a frightening result. Please vote if you aren't depressed!

Try Becks Depression Inventar for better assesment https://deprese.euzona.cz/en-index.php

Yeah, I'm depressed on multiple levels.

[ I wrote a long text here about what is wrong/feels wrong, but I don't think I should share those thoughts. Only hurts more writing them down. :-( ]

I think I get pretty bummed out at times, but I don't think I'm depressed. Just stressed out, low self esteem, imposter syndrome, and I'm sure plenty of other problems.

I want to kill myself so I'm gonna go with "yes"

You can reach out to a suicide prevention hotline at (800) 273-8255. I've called multiple times before and they have gotten me through rough patches.

Please don’t. You are underestimating the likelihood that things can and will turnaround for the better.

I don’t know your situation and I certainly don’t think your situation is the same as mine, but I had suicidal thoughts until this past January. I didn’t have hope. I thought the way I was was the way I would always be. I thought most of the people in my life would better off freed from the burden of me. But I found relief that I thought I’d never feel. I don’t know if you will find relief, but I have hope for you. I didn’t have anyone to talk to and that was the hardest part; feeling alone, so I want you to know I’d love to talk. Please reach out. We can text, email, phone, zoom–if there is anything you are comfortable with know that I am here and I WANT to talk with you. You don’t have to, but you can.

I get that, feel free to e-mail me @ jonathanlouiswerber@gmail.com if you need someone to talk to

I came close in 2017 but didn't. I checked myself into a behavioral unit instead. Now my life is 10,000 times better.

Hope that is a joke, we all have down times, remember the people you love and those love you. Hang in there, things will be better.

It’s ok to have those feelings, I think many do but they will not last forever friend. Peace and love is all around you <3

Welcome to the club buddy

Home Office can seem like Groundhog Day. At least to me.

I went to the office for an entire week and feel really refreshed. After 8 month of Home Office, this is like vacation.

1 IP == 1 Vote

There's gotta be a better way to identify uniqueness.

Meta note: 4819 votes on the poll and 152 points on HN. I'm surprised that only 3% of people that vote on the poll are upvoting the story.

I initially thought this was about the site strawpoll.me. On a side note why does the caption above the chart says 'Advertisement' ?

Depression comes from sadness about events occurring in your life that you can not control or from when you got what you thought you always wanted and it turned out to not make you happy.

While it is possible to numb the pain with mindful thoughts or even medicine. And these have their place to lead us to an even better solution. The underlying issue will remain. But there is a master, someone in control. If you can, relinquish your life to the unseen hand. Look humbly to Jesus, who is Lord, and he won't turn you away.

Has there ever been another one of these on HN? I can't tell if HN is just abnormally depressed or it became more so in time.

I'm ready to say good riddance to 2020.

Consider non-institutionalized ideas:

- music (including live music (streaming is fine))

- dance

- talking with random people about mostly anything (dialup smartphone app)

- rest

- something else

My wife and I need ivf / icsi to get kids. We are now on fifth try.

It gets harder and harder to pull it together...

Yes. I'm about 35 and I've been depressed for the past 20 years. I now have a relatively high paying job in a startup working remotely from a house I own in a forest. That was my dream, and it's great when I think about it.

But I live alone and I have no friends IRL. I've been practicing social distancing way before it was cool, and like most people it's affecting me. I've been alone without friends or lovers in major cities for most of my life before so the isolation with or without people around is not new.

Before covid I used to go to a few festivals or camps every year and do environmental activism regularly, and that'd keep the loneliness at bay, although the connections with the people I'd meet were superficial and short lived.

Being into environmental activism means that I don't see the current world situation in a very positive way to say the least. And my job, while high paying, offer no meaning at all to my life. But it pays for everything else and that's great. I've traveled without money for a couple of years before and it was great, but I prefer the security money give me in the capitalist society I'm trapped in.

I think about suicide a lot, but I'd never do it because of how it'd affect my parents and sibling, they are great and don't deserve that. I also like to live a life of contemplation in the forest and hacking stuff and following new scientific discoveries, it's just the craving for intimacy and companionship that ruins everything. Maybe when I get older I'll learn to fully let got of it, it's already a bit easier that a decade ago.

I guess the answer is probably to talk about all of that to a therapist, but I've been trying for years to make myself see one without success for now.

Yes. It seems I lack the ability to be deeply happy even when everything is great

Nope. Somehow I got all the mania and none of the depression. Lucky draw.

How do you know if you are? I was hoping this would be a diagnostic test.

My observation is that most smart people are very prone to depression if they stop and think about stuff. And yeah, the ongoing global pandemic, social isolation and economical crisis isn’t making that any better.

I was close to burnout early this year when I decided to quit the job market altogether (I was a programmer). I decided to start doing something else instead (teaching people how to program). I'm still doing programming, but only as a hobby, or on projects I pick. My stress levels dropped significantly, and I work much less for only a 20% decrease in pay.

That being said this COVID situation is starting to take a toll. I'm only meeting with friends in open spaces and with 1.5 meters between us. No lan parties, and stuff like that. I really hope that next year we'll get a vaccine and we can return to a more normal lifestyle because I'm starting to feel like a pit bull with half of its mouth sewn shut.

More good person you are, more depressed you will be.

I was mildly depressed for about 8 months, I self-diagnosed. I think I'm actually out of it. I once read a HN comment that depression is that your mental model of how you think the world works is severly different to how it actually works. For me, that description was a lot better than anything I've heard in my psychology classes [1].

That's why I got a mild depression, my view of the world was not suited for the switch from fresh EU grad to working person (long story short: no FAANG interviews, and the one that I did clear at an SF startup later said "not enough experience, good problem solving skills though").

So I got a lot of jealousy/envy to my American counter parts when looking for a job. Combine that with not finding a job for 12 months, because of FAANG expectations (I just wanted a shot, never got one at FAANG, it used to feel really painful as I worked 8 years to get all qualifications -- CS bachelor/master, TA stuff, professional software dev stuff -- but now I'm fine with it). It weighed me down. Some people on HN offered referrals, but I always doubted on cashing them in, because I want to feel super certain, which I never do.

Ironically, I got a job during COVID (May 2020). The job offer was a mediocre one, but a job is a job, especially after a 12 month search. My contract didn't get extended though (I was offered a demotion to a junior role, I didn't take it, IMO I'm not a culture fit), but it doesn't matter. The job gave me perspective, it pulled me out of my mild depression (along with some self-applied CBT, meditation, identifying my cognitive distortions, etc.).

I have an amazing runway, so I'm probably going to do a lot of side projects. I've always wanted to do it and it's hard to give yourself permission for it, because the risk is insane. Or at least, that's how it feels now. Survivorship bias, or lack of it, will tell whether it was insane ;-)

I'm not cut out to be an employee. I'm too interdisciplinary and want to stay that way (otherwise I'm going to have some psychological/emotional issues). I might be an amazing early employee fit for certain companies, but Dutch startups aren't really that entrepreneurial. Which is another part how my mental model doesn't fit the real world. As a Dutchie, I'm too Americanized while not being an American citizen. And I'm noticing some strong psychological issues (and benefits) with that.

So yea, this story goes to show that in my case it was a mix of having a wrong view of the world, checking expectations and learning to not compare myself to others as that gave me chronic stress.

I hope it helps someone. If you identify with it and want to talk about your situation, feel free to email me.

I need an "I don't know" option too.

I am, and I feel I have nobody to talk to

Probably. Doing mushrooms has helped loads - granted aside from slacking off at my job there isn't really much else to do during quarantine ;)

I don't know... I think I am

I don't know how anyone navigates 2020 without a substantial spiritual relief valve.

I have had severe depression for over a decade now, I am in my mid-twenties so since a bit before adolescence, roughly. Majority of my life. Been taking various medications for a decade. Nothing works. I don't really remember what it's like to not be depressed.

For those who do not have a point of reference for this disease, here's a semi-accurate description, or as short as I can fit in a few sentences: imagine telling yourself that you're an empty husk of a human being, or that you'll never be happy - et cetera, it's different for everyone - and imagine doing that every day or almost every day for a decade. It wears on you. Eventually you believe it.

There are a number of factors which make it hell and there are few options.

Everyone says they're willing to talk; I'm sure some or most of my friends/family are truthful, but a. it's impossible to know whether they're genuine about that beforehand, since it's a rather heavy discussion, and b. even if they're truthful and willing, I am scared more than anything of pushing friends away - having them consciously or subconsciously avoid me, even somewhat. I realized that being with my friends is the only thing which brings me joy in life, and probably ever has for the most part. I'm probably anhedonic. I've brushed with suicide but never attempted, but if I pushed my friends away I would probably do so.

Psychiatry exists and it is a good option. Unfortunately, unlike other disciplines in medicine where a course can be charted given enough information, there is practically never enough information to figure out the best course of treatment. The way we figure out which medication(s) work is by trial and error. I have a decade-long spreadsheet and nothing has worked, except for a mood stabilizer that does not actually help the depression, just prevents minute-to-minute swings. Most psychiatrists, or at least the ones I've tried except one, are not willing to be aggressive with drugs and dosages since that isn't necessary in most patients. It takes several weeks or even a couple of months to titrate a drug to a dosage high enough to prove it doesn't work. More aggressive drugs and dosages tend to have worse side effects and withdrawals, to make things even worse, but if you've tried all the first-line drugs then the available options become less mainstream and fewer psychiatrists will have the experience to deal with them.

Therapy works for some people, cognitive behavioral therapy works for some people. It doesn't work for me because I don't have the strength to put enough effort into it. It's heavily dependent on the therapist.

Finding psychiatrists and therapists is a crapshoot. The state of reviews and patient feedback is pitiful. Legitimately good professionals have a months-long waitlist and may be too expensive anyway. Who insurance covers is also a crapshoot.

If I'm in a particularly bad state, I can't tell anyone, not friends, family, doctors (especially internists and other non-subject matter experts), therapists, and so on because I don't want to be hospitalized. Involuntary hospitalization does the opposite of helping: best case I leave in a worse state than when I went in. Worst case I would leave actively suicidal since it disrupts your life heavily. I was hospitalized once because my family and I didn't know that it wouldn't help. It absolutely drove me insane, almost literally. Many physicians won't hesitate to pull that trigger for liability reasons (emphasis required for how fucked our system is) and its impossible to know who's trigger-happy. Friends and family don't know that it's hell. The suicide hotline is exists only to funnel suicidal people to involuntary hospitalization. That may be useful in many cases but it teaches you after one instance to never express these emotions, to lie to psychiatrists/therapists, to never call a helpline.

I'm stuck in this body, unable to express what I want or need, except perhaps on here, where there is even a slight change intelligent discussion may occur, and from where I cannot be traced (or at least it's sufficiently unlikely). But I won't get any emotional relief from it, either.

I had a friend who died by suicide a few years ago. The scary part is that I am certain he came to that conclusion and course of action logically, for reasons I certainly will not list here. And I have come to those same conclusions, except I do not have the cajones to actually go through with it, and I am scared of death. But it will come for me in the blink of an eye anyway, no matter what I do.

Yes

if this is about covid19, the asia pacific is curious why.

Yeah, I just got done coming to terms with the fact that women hate me because I'm ugly and weird and unhealthy and that's also why my family didn't like me growing up, and the second I start making progress fixing it this shit happens. I'm 28 now. I have to go from totally weird and ugly as shit (might need surgery) to having an enjoyable career, a wife who's not repulsed or settling during temporary depression, and a normal social life before 30 or else I'm really a loser. I will probably be a loser.

Are you married , live with a SO or have another person or relative in your life?

Have you perceived any income in the last 12 months?

Are you able to legally work in the country you live in?

Do you own a house or rent a place?

Do you have any friends?

If you answered yes to any of these questions you are already doing way better than me. I am not depressed. I know it does not work like that, but sometimes a little bit of appreciation for the things we already have helps.

I feel like I should leave these here:

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association: 1-800-662-HELP

National Suicide Prevention Helpline: 1-800-273-TALK

Free Crisis Text Helpline: 741-741

Trevor project Helpline (crisis intervention specialized in LGBT issues) : 1-866-488-7386

No.

never mind

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