How to treat my depression?

Don’t let insomnia get the better of you. I have it too, and it kinda sucks. Prayer helps me when I’m wide awake at 3 am, but that’s because I’m a Christian. You might consider that, but I don’t necessarily expect you to do it. Just a suggestion.

Loneliness does suck, though. One way that I deal with that is to always have something to do that is in some way productive. Loneliness is only really painful when it’s all you have to focus on, so find a hobby that’s acceptable at 3 am (don’t play the tuba or do something that will harm yourself, and make sure it’s something relaxing rather than stimulating, as you may also help yourself sleep).

This works for me.

- Organize your time. Get busy! Do whatever, but fill your time, and have people around you.
– Recognize when your mind is going into a loop. Stay away from thoughts that amount to nothing. You are a great person, it’s all in there. Everything you need from yourself is in there.
– Walk everyday in a fast pace for an hour.
– Exhaust your body several times a week by training. Just do it.

Stay away from your own bullshit. You are the one that is making yourself feel bad. Stop it. You deserve better.

its really hard for me to find hobbies, growing up i never had any, and i get depressed easily. like my day can be perfectly fine until night comes, i start feeling lonely when i have no one to talk to. then my brain starts having depressing thoughts

Hm… that’s a problem. Like @oratio said, though, exercise does help (endorphins really do exist, and help). I was depressed all the time until I took up swimming. Also, if you have an addiction, DITCH IT. It doesn’t help. If you are able to lose it, you will actually find that the independence from it helps you lead a happier life, contrary to what you may have previously believed (I just recently ditched my video game addiction, and I find myself [gasp!] enjoying school!).

Don’t worry about finding something you’re necessarily good at. Try and find something you enjoy regardless of skill (the first step here is coming to the realization that you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it, a bit of a loop in that logic, bear with me).

If you form addictions too easily, make sure you find a hobby with constraints. For example, I love swimming, but there are obstacles to me swimming all day—spa hours, energy, the trouble of getting to and from the spa, etc. If it weren’t for these, I would probably be addicted to swimming right now, and constantly be at the spa.

Late at night when you are unable to sleep try doing random exercises (I did sit-ups, as they’re insanely easy for me, I weigh like 0 pounds) and breathing techniques (I’m not buddhist either, but these really help slow your heart rate).

I went to counseling to help me find out what was causing my problems. I was not necessarily depressed but had many issues.

There is almost always an underlying reason why we are not happy with who we are, and until you figure out the source of your feelings it is difficult to cope with them.

It is said too that depression is often repressed anger. I think that is an over simplification but has an element of truth.

So maybe you could get some counseling to help you find out the why and then figure out the how to deal with it.

@rooeytoo tbh i have tried counseling and to me it doesn’t help. i feel more like something is wrong with me and that everyone thinks im a freak when i did go. im not saying people that tried it are freaks, its just when you come from a family who is close minded, you grow up to be very paranoid of how people think of yourself

@omgwhat I’m fairly paranoid of what people think of me myself, and didn’t find much help in the counseling I did have (although that wasn’t so much for depression as for other things).

You don’t have to tell people, you know.

first of all, the concept of “my depression” sets you up so that you will fail. psychiatry (which hurts more people than ever helped) nominalizes* mental states, which implies you cannot do anything about them.

you have a habit. you feel bad and you act on that and it puts you into a downward spiral. arrest the spiral. you feel depressed. you do not “have depression”.

reading books with some decent poetry in them will help you, the older the better. make art. read some Transactional Analysis: I’m Okay You’re Okay, Scripts People Live and Games People Play. find beginner’s books on Neurolinguistic Programming (ask for help at the library). read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. though I shudder to suggest such a cheesy book, How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie can supposedly help. (I haven’t read it.) also read some Buddhists texts. Buddhism deals heavily with suffering, how it originates and what to do with it and about it.

you don’t “treat” thoughts. you learn to transcend them and think better, more productive and more self-loving thoughts. death to psychiatry!

ask yourself why you got to where you feared aloneness. ask yourself what to do

*—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-model_(NLP)#Nominalization

also, good suggestion about breathing techniques. calm down your body and your mind will follow (also vica versa). you can try putting a finger on one nostril and breathing with one nostril, then switch to the other nostrils. use an egg timer or stopwatch.

also try tensing and then de-tensing your muscles. a whacky cult leader guru named Osho had an exercise where you think bad thoughts as intensely as you can for fifteen minutes then good thoughts as intensely as you can for fifteen minutes. I tell you it frees the brain of habitual thought processes and emotions and allows you to master them. it will help you to realize that (to state the obvious which you “know” but often don’t really know) that it feels better to think good thoughts.

@Ria777 Yes, I wouldn’t recommend resorting to psychiatry either.
Meds creates a dependence, and can be devastating (I have a really close friend on depression meds who has come to the realization that he basically has a split personality and even goes by a different form of his name for the two of them: tony/antonio). The bottom line is that dependence on something that you don’t feel you should be dependent on (addictions, etc.) are a constant compromise of your values and is probably causing more anxiety than you know, which leads to the depression (I made several assumptions in there, but I’m pretty confident that’s what the problem was with me), so dependence on a medication will, in the end, only make things worse (they do tend to work, but what happens when they wear off?).

@Hobosnake: actually, as far as SSRI’s, someone did a metanalysis and determined that they did not work*. however, do apparently cause suicidal thoughts. thanks for backing me up.

*—http://www.metafilter.com/69373/Prozac-doesnt-work-better-than-placebo

It’s hard being a teenager. It was the worst time of my life! I was lonely as hell. I was a virgin, and had only kissed maybe one person, and that was pretty much of a disaster.

I used to read a lot. I hid in my room. I did have music, and that helped a little. But in the end, the loneliness was debilitating.

If you are depressed (have you been diagnosed?), then taking care of yourself is important. Staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning is a recipe for becoming more depressed. You’re a teenager, so your circadian rhythms make you naturally want to sleep late and stay up late, but staying up until 4 am is not good.

Do you watch a lot of TV? If you do, stop at 11 pm. Time shift your programs if you can’t get by without them. Get ready for bed—using the same ritual every night. Get into bed, and perhaps read a little bit, or listen to some music you like. Let your mind wander. It’s ok. You don’t have to try to get to sleep. Just let it come to you. But don’t get out of bed. Keep on doing the low key stuff.

If your mind is really anxious—and this is chronic, then you may have other mental disorders. If it is only situational anxiety, it’s not so much of a worry. In any case, if you exercise before sleeping, and really tire yourself out, that will help.

If you sleep, and exercise, and get on a regular schedule, it will help reduce your depression. Meds can help, also.

Then to deal with the loneliness is a whole ‘nother issue, and I can’t talk about that here. Perhaps you could ask another question. Or look at questions that have been asked about loneliness before. Just use fluther’s search function.

@Ria777 I don’t know what meds my friend is taking, but they do seem to work for him. The problem, as I said, was the dependence created and the tolerance built up, and the crash that happens after they inevitably wear off.

Side effects tend to suck, too.