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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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.
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.
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.
Oh also, maintaining a regular cardio / activity regimen with something like PAI, will also help you live a lot longer too. With a cheap smartwatch that supports it, you can kind of game-ify your cardio health.
I’d recommend an in-person game of Pathfinder or DnD. The great thing about the game for me is getting rid of the electronics for a while and trying to be as creative as possible. If you can think it up, and convince the DM, you can do it be anything you want. Be as creative as you want. Come up with a character and their backstory and have fun.
Once you’ve played for a bit and have a good handle on things trying DMing. I was more afraid than I should have been and found that it is a ton of fun. Between getting to come up with and run the games I like to add my own twists and turns, bring things from previous sessions in as a surprise and most of all I love to see the creativity from the players and seeing how they
fuck up all my carefully laid planscome up with amazing ideas and surprise me.It can be an amazing outlet and a place to make some new friends. If you find a group that doesn’t work with you don’t be afraid to find a different one though, and remember that it’s meant to be fun.
Full honesty though as someone who was going through something/depression/purposelessness back in 2012 and found the world of DnD, Magic the Gathering and Tabletop games it can be dangerous to get into a hobby like DnD because you may end up liking that life over your actual one. Took me 4 years to get out and do something because everyone within that community also had lives they didn’t want to get back to and kept enabling each other.
i love dnd and such games but i find it hard to find a group, any advice for finding a group by chance?
do i need to make flyers? is there a good place to post online or said flyers at?
@QuietStorm Facebook is your best friend (only in this situation). Just search for Dungeons and Dragons/RPG + the area or city you live in. You could also search for Local Game Stores or Magic the Gathering stores near you as both MTG and DnD are owned by the same company and usually supported together.
@QuietStorm I find gardening a great help. Watching something grow, taking care of flowers and veggies is rewarding.
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.
Exercise is a definite one. This is actually coming from a medical side, not just a personal one. There’s a lot of data there.
However I think hobbies that are ‘measurable’ are also really good. Ones where you can feel like you accomplished something. So things like painting, drawing, learning something, reading, where you can feel like youve finished something I feel really helps.
So a good idea might be combining the two. Maybe an exercise with a goal in mind. Or maybe take a few karate classes, with the goal of working towards your first belt. Or biking a certain distance every day to reach a total amount for a month. I personally find when i can see that my hobby has some measurable accomplishment, I personally feel more satisfied with that
Also for me social things help a lot. Im a very social person, but can get such in a rut. Finding more ways to be social can help expand and open you up to other things
I got a cheap smartwatch recently, and it uses this metric called PAI, which kind of game-ifies your cardio health. The interesting thing about it, is that its backed by several large-scale scientific studies, where people with above this amount of cardio activity, end up living on average 8 years longer.
For me getting back into LEGO really helped, it’s a nice and relaxing activity. Also depending on your interests a hobby like flying FPV quadcopters can be a lot of fun. Forces you to go outside too which is always good :-)
Therapy is the best hobby.
What kinds of stuff are you interested in?
What do you like?Music, art, working out, programming, biking, gardening, modding cars, woodworking, cooking… Any hobby can be a great thing for knocking out depression. You just have to be honest with yourself about things that you like, your current level of skills, what kinds of projects it makes sense to tackle on your own, and so on.
As Heliumfart said, music works well. Even if you’re not musically inclined you can get a small midi keyboard and bash at it using some free software, is very accessible nowadays! (Plenty of YouTube tutorials, I use reaper but plenty of other free tools to try). As far as working out goes, I lacked the motivation too, but then got a couple of dumbbells and would do some small movements while watching movies or shows at home. It’s slow progress but eventually gets to the point that you enjoy it. You’re already sat there watching TV, so this is just adding one small thing into that. I do feel more motivated after moving a little, so maybe that would work for you.
Many people have suggested walking and creative outlets. I think painting rocks is a good way to merge the two together. Go on a walk with the intention of finding a rock you like. It can be big, small, smooth, rough, maybe the shape of the rock reminds you of something or maybe it’s just a rock. Then at home just paint it however. It’s low stakes cause it’s just a rock, it has a clear finish point, it can be as high or low effort as you want. Big, small, plain, intricate, concrete, abstract. Just get a rock and put some paint on it and then you can feel accomplished cause you did something good for yourself.
I really have the urge to paint a rock now.
A really simple creative hobby could be drawing mandalas.
You can completely freehand it, or use a circle tool like a compass to make guides to make it more symmetrical. Search for “mandala shapes” if you want some ideas for basic shapes to use.For times when you want to do nothing but watch youtube, learn to knit or crochet so you can feel a little better about doing something.
Plus when you have a particularly bad day, you can say, this shows I did something today worthwhile. Even if it’s a small thing, sometimes you just need that little thing.
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