So i still have depression and im constantly bored, i feel like a loser who cant do anything right. I want to let my creativeness out, make something i can share with the world or family, but im probably dreaming too big. I cant stand being depressed and bored, it stinks, everyone tells me to work out but i lack the motivation to do so.
i usually just watch youtube all day while complaining to family members that have no idea what to do about me.
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To add to this, if you’re not too coordinated and are struggling with the smaller skateboard and doing tricks… try longboarding! It’s like skating, but without the stigma of being capable of doing tricks.
Plus they’re INFINITELY more comfortable to cruise around on. They even made drop through decks that are designed for long distance cruising
Bonus points for getting into downhill longboarding. Just make sure you’re ready for it/have the proper gear.
It’s like self harm but you look sick as hell doing it.
Above age 25 it’s more like assisted suicide rather than self harm lol.
Start playing a musical instrument. Works for me
i second this and recommend Piano/Keyboard.
A cheap Keyboard is probably found for 40-50 bucks online and it is a good starting point to also get into the music theory.
Still the skill ceiling is practically endless.
Keyboard is good. I personally would recommend bass guitar if you like rock music. If you can save up $200-300 and buy a used Squire Precision or Squire Jazz bass, it will literally last you years as long as you change the strings regularly and learn how to do an at-home setup.
You can pick up the basics and start jamming with people really fast, but the skill ceiling is deceptively high. Bassists are the hardest to find in any band.
The instrument is fun as hell too.
Ukulele is a fun starting instrument, and you can get a serviceable one for ~$50.
Tons of YouTube tutorials, too.
Ukulele is such an underrated instrument too! It gets ragged on for no reason at all. I’ve been playing guitar fairly seriously for over two decades and have great guitars, but 90% of the time I find myself with my shitty 10 dollar, plastic-looking (paint) ukulele that has a hole on the back because it was thrown at a wall and writing more songs and still finding new things for playing guitar, just because. My playing transformed once I bought that little thing. I’ve written my best songs on it.
Yeah I’d played steel strings for years, but picked up the uke my kid had (but never played) at the beginning of the pandemic. Played that thing nonstop and then got my own. Also got a nylon string guitar because I loved playing fingerstyle on uke so much. Like you said, it changed how I played guitar.
Plus it’s great to just dump your emotions into as well — especially if you try and learn how to improvise, which is easier than you’d think!
100%
You’ll feel great teaching yourself an instrument. Dive right into it. Look up simple things at first, and practice it. Then look up another thing that you don’t how to do and practice it. The time goes by fast and before you know it you realize you understand it.It’s an amazing feeling.
Exercise is the best cure for depression. Get a bicycle and start exploring new places around you. Endurance exercise is most useful for balancing metabolism and hormones. Do it every day, and only for your well being. You may find it is life altering. It only takes around 2 months of pushing yourself when the routine seems difficult. After the initial startup, it becomes harder and harder to stop the routine over time.
A lot of my advanced curiosities and interests all started from needing to fix stuff like my first car, or putting together junk PC parts to get something to play Doom back in the day when Doom was barely on the trailing edge of gaming. Learn to use FOSS tools on a computer. There is a free way to do everything. If you learn these tools well, it will pay off substantially in life. The entire digital underworld runs on open source software.
I’ve been severely depressed before. I’m not a physical activity person. I don’t like sports overall, and doing some sports makes me feel tired and shitty. I know the idea is to be tired, but that just makes me feel worse. My body hurts and I feel useless because it is so difficult for me to do basic shit. Basically makes depression worse for me.
I’m partially disabled. Like, I am in serious pain right now from spending an hour preparing to cook my one time a week when I make enough to eat all week. This is my whole day. Just cooking. It takes everything I can manage to make it work. I was disabled by a person driving that shouldn’t have even had a license because of cognitive limitations. I’ve been this way since 2014.
As soon as I got home from the ER I got a cheap laptop and started screwing around with Arduinos to give me something to do.
I was already a hardcore roadie when I got hit riding to work. In 2009 I was 350lbs. By 2013 I was 190lbs. I had the advantage of being in awesome shape when I got hit, and 2 months after, I was already back on the bike. I never lost my legs, but my thoracic back (between the shoulder blades) never recovered. The pain never stopped. I don’t care about the pain. I care about the way I deteriorate when I’m holding posture. If it was just pain, I would manage. But it is like muscles physically failing. If I push through it, I will physically give out and wind up laying on the ground. If I do that I will lose my ability to sleep for weeks. I spend 80% of every day laying in a bed.
Places like this are my entire social existence at this point. Still, most evenings, I drag myself out on the bike and ride a 25 mile loop. The part of my back that is messed up in neutral. After riding, I’m completely useless so I have to ride in the evening. It hurts like hell. I can’t go much farther or I have neck and back problems. I’m definitely not in race shape any more, but I don’t care. Riding keeps me balanced despite being in one of the most depressing possible situations. I get to watch life pass by from the sidelines.
Other people’s life challenges do not change your own. I used to be much less motivated. ADD meds changed that to a large extent. In fact, they are my real pain killers now. I’ll trade pain for overwhelming focus any day. I won’t claim it is easy to get past the start of a physical routine, but it really isn’t ad bad as it seems from the other side. There are very few people that lose over 100lbs and manage to keep it off for over a decade. This is how I did it. Everything seems harder for me than other people. It wasn’t natural or something I was born with. I can’t give you the motivation. If you lack motivation on a medically dehabilitating way, see a psychiatrist, tell them about it and suggest that you believe Vyvanse would help. The time release amphetamines are not easy to abuse and are much more likely to get prescribed.
I was seeing a psychologist and she recommended me to do sports to concentrate, have less anxiety and maybe relax. But my problem is what I explained above, I’m not physically disabled, but I suck so much and starting to so sports take a long time and so much pain and makes me feel like shit.
I was annoyed that she recommended sports so much instead of giving me actual solutions for what I was talking to her.
And also, it didn’t solve a problem that I have a severe tendency to abandon projects or tasks unless I have someone breathing on my neck, which just increases my anxiety by 1000%. Adding into my routine doing some sports in just another chore and is not exactly helping the problem in my opinion. I think I have ADHD on top of my autism but I don’t have a professional diagnostic on that.
“Do some exercise” is not an universal advice, and I feel like it makes it worse for me. Don’t think that someone can just run for one hour and suddenly feel better and incorporate it in their routine.
I may sound like complaining too much since you have an actual psychical disability and maybe I should be grateful that I can actually run, so I’m actually a piece of shit for complaining that I feel like shit after running when others have it worse, but again, every case is different.
Exercise definitely isn’t a fix all. It can help manage and improve anxiety and depression over time, but it isn’t going to accomplish that much the first time you start exercising.
I can definitely see that you have additional challenges as a neurodivergent person in navigating the physical discomfort of exercise as well as creating routines.
If you become open to trying again, I recommend starting a lot smaller so that you find a physical activity that is manageable and sustainable for your activity level. This can look like 10 minutes of extra walking a day. Or this can also look like body weight exercises (eg. 20 seconds of a plank, 5 curl ups, assisted push ups against a wall or table, etc). The best way of making exercise sustainable is to start small and slow. Minimize your physical discomfort (sweatiness and muscle pain). This is still more effective than doing nothing at all. You don’t want to push yourself so hard that you get completely turned off to the idea of exercising.
Thank you, also do you have any foss tool recommendations?
There’s are open source communities here! If you search for them, there’s several and they are all good. “Opensource” has a megathread somewhere that will give you an idea.
Get a bicycle and start exploring new places around you.
Especially during the sun rise. It totally starts your day bit fresh if that could help you a bit.
First and foremost I want to second anyone who brought up cooking. Learning to cook a meal perfectly to your tasted is both accomplishing and sharable.
For the geekier stuff, I have taken up Gundam model kits in the last year. You can start off with simply building them straight from the box. There are also a ton of ways to customize them such as repainting, adding decals, create “weathering” effects and “kit bashing” (mixing models together to make your own new model). It has been a very nice outlet whenever I want to be crafty.
I second Gunpla, it’s incredibly mindful to just crank some tunes and clip runners, sand nubs, and slowly watch something come together that seemed impossible from flat plastic. Then you see the articulation and and even more blown away by the engineering of it all.
I’m going to need you to elaborate on the Gundam model kits. Any good resources for getting started? Any recommended kits for beginners? Is it an expensive hobby?
There are lots of guides on YouTube but this should suffice.
Costs are sort of just down to how into it you want to get. Kits range from $10-$300. I usually build ones in the $30-$80 range. You can get lots of fancy tools but really, just get a decent pair of sidecutters and a hobby knife (exacto or other brand) and maybe a sanding stick. I actually started with a nail polishing block that you can get at any store that has nailpolish.
Kit wise, really just start with a HG (High Grade) or EG (Entry Grade) that looks cool to you. If you find you enjoy the process more than the end product you can get into RG (real grade) or MG (Master Grade). All but MG are a 1/144 scale while MG is 1/100 scale. MG and RG are much more intricate.
As a last word of caution, the earlier RGs were not designed very well, each kit has a number, currently their are ~40 of them with the last 10 or so just being tiny MGs. The earlier ones can be great but need a bit more love to get right.
My personal favorite kit I have built is the RG Hi-Nu Gundam
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/Idm7mt98enM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Running!
I was clinically depressed from 2002 to 2017. In 2017 I lost coverage and was forced to stop taking my medication.
The medication was wellbutrin. It really helped. I hated that I couldn’t get access to it, but I had to face life without it.
After having ramped down off the stuff, I was okay for a couple of weeks then the darkness started to come in.
In my research I found that exercise does the same thing as my medication (it increases hippocampal volume). So I switched from running about 1 mile per week to about 25 miles per week.
And my depression was gone. The medication managed it, allowed me to live my life. The running destroyed my depression.
IMO depression is caused by brain atrophy, which is caused by lack of moving one’s body. We evolved to be moving so much more, and just like your muscles will atrophy if you’re bedridden, your brain will atrophy if you don’t exert your body. Shrinking brain means life sucks hard.
I’m glad running has worked for you, but the perspective that depression is a caused by a lack of movement seems dangerous. It implies fit and active people can’t be depressed because they are active. That’s just not true.
Activity can help lift someone out of depression, but it’s not a cure all barrier between you and the world of mental health.
Okay, fair enough. That’s a good point to bring up. I think that’s one stable path to depression and I think that if a person has never been in good shape that should be their first thing to try after they’re stabilized from any acute danger. (Meaning if the shit’s bad enough just take meds to get out of the hole and be able to operate).
Maybe their brains are atrophied, maybe those regions are losing processing power, or for some other reason signaling freeze-inducing threat.
I think the most proximal cause of my depression, at least, is a feeling of overwhelm and hopelessness, that’s so chronic it just suppressed me across the board. And for me, that overwhelm came from normal life, being fed through a hippocampus without enough processing power to plot a path through it all. I couldn’t be sure, so I slowed down across the board, ie became avoidant and unmotivated.
So what I tell myself is that the growth of the hippocampus allowed me to just handle more complexity before it sent the overwhelm signal to the rest of my brain and caused a shutdown. Instead I got to operate more freely with more confidence that I was on solid ground, because I could see better.
But the prediction and seeing wasn’t the most proximal cause. Being able to see better made me more confident, lowered my stress response, lowered my physiological alert level.
But for someone else it could be their hippocampus shrank for some other reason. Or it’s inflammation cause by a food, and that cuts the processing power down. Or unconscious or conscious mental conflict, sapping processing power.
And it doesn’t even have to be the hippocampus. That’s just one input into the emotional system. Presence of abuse or enemies, presence of hopeless circumstances, straight up cell malfunction with neurotransmitters, all sorts of shit can go wrong.
I do think hippocampal atrophy is one of many possible paths to developing depression, and I don’t want to give the impression that what I said was a totally complete model.
It’s my model of how it happened to me, and I think it applies to a large fraction, possibly even half, of the root of people’s depression.
And I’m basing it on three things:
- How completely and utterly it worked. Better, more complete eradication than the meds had ever accomplished. (though I’m thankful for the years they helped me and the first moments they lifted me from the muck)
- How totally ignorant I, and apparently all my practitioners too, had been of that effect
- How drastically little activity I was doing, as a result of exerting myself in exercise maybe once every couple of weeks. I’d do it as a quick pick me up from time to time, not as an ongoing habit.
You have lots of good answers posted but here is the trick…You have to START.
You don’t need to sign up at the gym today and build a schedule to work out. That’s way too much commitment. Instead just go outside.
That’s it. Just put down the phone and go outside. Spend 5 or 10 mins out there. You didn’t run a marathon, but you’ve done something today. Maybe later today you can go outside again. Tomorrow so the same thing. Put the phone down and go outside for a short time.
You gotta start somewhere, so make it easy and start small. Eventually you’ll spend more time outside and less time doing nothing. Maybe you see cool plants and start getting into gardening. Maybe you find that walking isn’t so bad and you find a park with a nice trail and work into jogging? Maybe the kid down the street wrecks his minibike in front of your house while you’re outside and you stop to help and think the tiny motorcycle is cool and get inspired to start riding.
tldr- Don’t just pick someone else’s hobby. Put down the phone and go experience life outside your home. The hobby will likely find you when you start paying attention instead of distracting yourself.
When I felt severe depression, I struggled so much with feeling good about what I did. I thought it had to be significant to be worthy of enjoying.
It took me a very long time to start celebrating any tiny thing that I did. Sometimes it was doing something frivolous and feeling good about it for its own sake. Sometimes it was doing some productive and feeling good about achievement. They had one thing in common: I gave myself permission to feel satisfied with even tiny steps.
Knitting, crocheting, embroidery, cross stitch, etc. The work is meditative, and you get in a groove waiting to see what the next row or stitches will look like. Producing an object feels productive, and gives a feeling of accomplishment.
Choose bright colors and fun patterns, and it’s a lot of fun. There are patterns for all interests, so don’t think this is the realm of only little old ladies. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
There are also a lot of kits that include most of what you’ll need (especially for cross stitch). It can be a really convenient way to start and most kits come with really good instructions on how to cross stitch too.
Making food, either baking or cooking. They focus you on the here and now and you eat well to boot.
A hobby that has helped me a lot is knitting. It’s simple to learn and it’s another truly mindful thing to do for you.
Yes! I struggle to motivate myself to stick with hobbies. I love photography, making art, writing - but often the motivation is just lacking. But cooking? I’m biologically motivated to cook (most days) so it’s easy to keep up with. All I have to do is save recipes and plan ahead just a little
I had a conversation with a coworker recently and we got to the topic of working out, and he told he’s working out two times a day. He goes to the gym before and after work.
I asked him why the hell he would go twice, like that’s just ridiculous and he said well he was depressed, and started working out. Everyone said it’d help with the depression, but it helped only a bit. So he figured well maybe he has to go even more.
It’s absolutely ridiculous imo, but… whatever helps one I guess
The endorphins from working out do absolutely help a ton. Though 2x a day is certainly excessive lol.
If one of the two sessions is cardio, then it’s not too bad. But yeah, lifting weights twice a day would be extremely difficult to recover from.
Anything where you get to be physically active or mentally creative.
Passively consuming content is extremely unhealthy in large doses: TV, youtube, even reading is not healthy after a certain point. Humans were meant to be physically active creatures above all, not meant to stare at screens for long periods of time like many of us are doing now.
The best de-stressers are things like playing a musical instrument, painting, knitting / crocheting, hiking / going for walks / runs, exercising, meditating. I would go completely bonkers if I didn’t have piano and weight-lifting.
I used to have a watch with PAI built in and it was a great way to see how I’ve been doing over the last week. My current watch doesn’t support it and I almost didn’t get it because of that.
Photography.
You can set up a little studio area in your house and start with still life pictures. Search for Danish Still Life Paintings for some ideas - I’m sure there’s plenty of YouTube rabbit holes for more ideas. Or, just take up painting!
Photography is also a great excuse to get out of the house and walk around. Whether it’s street photography or landscape or close up nature photography, there’s always something to take pictures of. Give yourself little assignments - just circles today, just signs, just shadows, etc.
Either way, this is a creative outlet that you can share with others as you progress and get better. Who knows, you might start printing your images and have a gallery showing at a cafe!
Go exploring. On whatever mode of transportation you prefer, in whatever area you like. Set small goals for each trip (this is important to keep you from just wandering completely aimlessly). Maybe try to find a new restaurant of a cuisine you’ve never tried. Maybe find a street or alleyway you’ve never visited and see what’s there. Maybe go find the biggest tree in the park. Basically just go see what’s out there.
If you struggle coming up with your own fun goals, try geocaching instead.
I used to ride my bike a lot when I was young to the point where it became my automatic thing to do whenever I was feeling stressed/anxious/depressed. The adventures I went on, while also being outside in nature and in the sun (or moonlight) would always pick me right back up.
I only realized this recently as I’ve had a huge urge to buy a bike again but didn’t know exactly why.
Frisbee golf. It’s cheap, fun but challenging, and outdoors. Worst case scenario, you go on a long walk and bump into some interesting people. If you’re in a medium sized city or larger, there is probably a course and league near you.
The culture is generally very polite and fun to be around. Lots of harmless stoners and 30yo bearded people with beers in hand. In the south there is starting to be some influence from megachurches using it as an enticement, so I’m not sure if it’s “cleaned up” a little more down there.
Very solid answer. Just make sure to watch a couple YouTube videos tutorials on how to throw correctly so you can quickly make.progress toward being good enough such that you don’t just lose your discs every time you throw them. It’s a lot more fun when that annoyance is less frequent.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
I describe it as “playfighting for adults”. It’s a ground-based, grappling combat sport where your aim is to submit your opponent via joint locks and chokes.
It sounds simple enough, but there is a surprising amount of skill to it. A black belt takes roughly ten years to get, and unlike martial arts where you see 12 year old black belts, all black belts are adults, and you’ll almost never see a black belt that doesn’t have the skill to back it up.
A lot of people find that it really helps them with depression and socialising. While it’s absolutely NOT a replacement for therapy, you hear countless stories of people in a bad place mentally and physically, finding solace and meaning in BJJ.
I always described BJJ as chess with full contact. Lots of thinking and strategy.
Hiking. It costs nothing and you can create your own meaning from it. You can do the same trail over and over and know the place intimately, or you can make it a goal to do as many as possible and keep track of them all with souvenirs or art or whatever you want. The benchmark for success is what you define.
I’d also suggest traditional music, but maybe keep it simple and cheap… ukulele, didgeridoo, or tin whistle. It’s a low bar for entry and it’s inherently social, all about jamming and being inclusive. Didgeridoo is more solitary, if that’s what you prefer. These instruments have almost no ongoing costs and are great for learning the basics of music.
Instruments arr both humbling and also affirming. You can make noticeable progress and, again, define your own success. All my best friendships came through playing music. It’s an endless source of joy for me.
I’ve only known the hike “as many different trails as possible” method but am intrigued by the “make one trail your own” method.
I do both. I do lots normal public trails, but theres also a secret spot that I’ve found and been back like 40 times over 10 years. I feel like i know every tree, rock, and stump, but each time, I find something new and interesting. Its a 1sq km area of granite, forest, and stream. So peaceful. Its about 1km off an overgrown, uninteresting logging track, nobody ever goes there but me. In fact Im going back again on sunday, hoping to photograph some rock dragons.
