For me, it’s pure laziness and probably also my depression taking control. I did feel better in that I had more energy, and it was easier to do other things like walk long distances or up flights of stairs, but it didn’t really do much for my mental health and was too hard to maintain. I never got the purported endorphins.
Clearly, its a matter of YMMV. I don’t exercise much these days, but when I do, I actually do feel a shit ton better. It helps if it’s something you like doing – in my case, ice skating. Before that, it was running, not something that cost a lot of money at all. Just zoning out and listening to my headphones while running along the lakefront worked to keep me in the best of spirits.
Now, older and lazier, I don’t get out much in terms of dedicated exercise time, and my mood (and energy levels) does suffer for it.
The people seem to have been well-meaning in their case – it just doesn’t seem to work for you, for whatever reason. For me, sleep and exercise are probably the two biggest contributors to my mood. It’s just trial and error. What works for me may not work for others and vice versa.
I was a “poor sleeper” as a child, and beginning with what was more or less the end of physical puberty for me, around age 16, I developed intractable insomnia.
After 10 years of it, I was having trouble at work, and sought out health care besides Benadryl and shots of scotch. I learned early, BTW, that alcohol worked wonders for about 3 days in a row, and then gave me “restless” sleep for a couple more, and then just kinda stopped working, so I reserved it for nights when I absolutely had to sleep, or when I had to reset my schedule for some early morning something, or a time zone change. Otherwise, I didn’t drink at all, except for holidays, when I stopped at one, or weddings, when I’d sip champagne for the toast, and that was it. I was kind of cranky about it-- anyone trying to push a second drink on me on Purim got some words that shouldn’t be said on a holiday. Had to preserve that ability to react to alcohol.
The doctor I sought wanted to diagnose me as depressed, and after 10 years of lousy sleep, not to mention the week of 3-hours-a-night I had before I saw him, I was at the end of my rope. I took anything he’d give me, especially the Valium he gave me for anxiety, that I took right before bedtime.
Cut to the chase, I finally had a sleep study several years into being “depressed,” and started taking, instead of a series of unhelpful antidepressants, a medicine that was aimed at fixing what was disrupting my sleep (an anti-seizure medication, but a new, non-sedating one). I stayed on a reduced dose of one of my antidepressants, bupropion (Wellbutrin) to make me alert in the morning, and unable to nap during the day, so that I would sleep at night.
OMG, did that work. I also took 10mg of melatonin, after a blood test confirmed low levels of it-- I had to go in for a special blood-draw at night.
About 10 years after that (and decent sleep for a diagnosed insomniac), another doctor told me that a lot of psychiatrists were revising their thinking on the insomnia/depression link. Instead of the idea that depression caused insomnia, many doctors were beginning to think it was the other way around.
I’m not going to bore you with descriptions of how genuinely painful inveterate insomnia can be-- and I mean literally painful, or how it can affect your self-esteem when you can’t achieve the work production of your colleagues because you are exhausted.
People who have insomnia know what I’m talking about, and kind people will take my word for it, instead of suggesting that I meditate.
My point, and I do have one, is that telling an insomniac to get more sleep, is like telling a fish to ride his bicycle faster.
Or to get my hands really dirty, it’s like telling black people just to call the cop “sir,” and everything will be fine.
Anyone who says that just doesn’t get it.
And don’t discount stuff like sleep apnea, as well. I would absolutely encourage medication, if that’s what’s needed (I was put on Seroquel, off-label, during the worst of my moments, but I didn’t need to take that long term as a confluence of other factors helped me with my sleep issues.) I am not at all surprised that insomnia → depression is the stronger causal relationship than vice versa, and am a little surprised that the inverse was the conventional wisdom.
My poor daughter has done all of this, for years. She is miserable. She sees a therapist and is considering medication. Everything she does, it doesn’t help.
Eating well, drinking water, blah blah blah…it’s like tiptoeing around an elephant in the room. ‘oh, lookit me, just living my life, doing all the right things, there can’t be anything wrong with somebody keeping fit and eating healthy and doing deep breathing and socializing. Can there? I’ll just do all that stuff - ignoring the big f’ing elephant in the room. Maybe it’ll just go away.’
With regards to exercise, many of the activities that people do to exercise are objectively boring. If you don’t get some enjoyment from the act of exercise, then things like running on a treadmill or lifting weights will be an “exercise” in futility. Instead, do an activity which has a fun aspect to it. This could be things like walking, hiking, dancing, playing a sport like basketball, and so on. Do something which you get some inherent enjoyment from and don’t worry about things like calories, heart rate, or minutes of activity. Sure, it may not melt off the fat and you might not get abs of steel. Oh well. You’ll still get your body moving and get many health benefits from being active. And since you’re (hopefully) doing an activity you enjoy, you’ll get a nice mood lift from doing something you find fun.
The thing with medication for me is that it does take out the horrible lows. I don’t have crying fits or suicide wishes anymore, and I haven’t for years. But that’s as far as medication takes me. I’m not sad exactly, but I’m not happy either. And everything, including supposedly fun stuff, Is just a chore to get through.
Yeah, when I was a teenager, going out and meeting new people was just going to increase the number of people who didn’t like me, so what was the point?
It took becoming an adult to change that.
Re Get Enough Sleep
I generally require more sleep than the average person. When my depression is really acting up, I get hypersomnia. I’ve been known to sleep up to 20 hours a day.OTTOMH My record for longest sleep without waking up is about 72 hours. As you might guess, I eventually woke up because a bladder can hold only so much. Telling me to ‘get more sleep’ is counter productive. It also makes me feel freakish and ignored.
Re Excercise
Add me to the list of ‘It feels like a chore the whole time and I never get an endorphin rush’ I bought one of those ‘just pedals and a resistance screw’ exercise bikes that fit under a desk and you use in a regular seat, at Goodwill. I almost never use it. Also, for reasons that escape me, doing any kind of exercise in public triggers my social anxiety and I feel profoundly embarassed. In actual practice, I can busk as a clown in a park full of people. I can dress as a Cultist Of Cthulhu and do street preaching. I can do these things without being self conscious in the slightest. But trying one jumping jack or push up is deeply shameful.
I’ve battled with depression (and anxiety) my whole life. Heavy exercise does give me Very Good Feeling for hours after the fact, which is the main reason for me to lift weights.
Starting out, I was self-conscious as hell, as a sports-hating bookworm weakling. I solved that problem by buying some free weights to use at home, and educating myself on how to use them. After gaining all-round strength I no longer had qualms about going to a gym or make pullups in a public park, as I knew I objectively had nothing to be ashamed about. (I still prefer to work out at home, for time / cost / efficiency reasons).
I truly know how that feels, having been there. But I have to take issue with the “objectively boring” characterization. Mindlessly lifting some weights can be that, but not a well-designed and implemented personal regime.
Picking up a weight that is at the edge of your capability has a very real excitement attached to the act. And the reward, of being able to do something you never could before, something many people want to but simply can’t do, is not exactly a boring feeling. YMMV.
I try to describe it to people like a reverse addiction. I know exercise is good for me, when I manage to regularly exercise I feel noticeably better, but I still don’t want to exercise and will find the thinnest excuse to quit.
I know for me, when I’m sleep deprived it puts me in a depressive mood. I’ll remind myself I just feel that way because I need a good night’s sleep, but that doesn’t do anything to change how shitty I feel in the moment. This is a very different feeling than just being tired.
The trouble is, when depressed, people don’t get enjoyment from anything. Getting somebody prone to depression to go back to playing tennis a few times a week, might help prevent future depressive episodes. In the midst of a depressive episode, it’s unlikely to do much, because even if they used to love playing tennis, it’s not going to beat the anhedonia.
Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with you that the best way to exercise is to find some physical activity that is fun.
My wife is the same way. She too could sleep 20 hours a day. Depression can really mess with sleep, and eating, pushing them to either extreme.
I wish I got the same delight from exercise achievements. I really do mean this in earnest envy, not as a snap back. The problem is instead of feeling rewarded for breaking some personal record, I just want to know if I can go home yet.
I forgot to add that it took a good while for heavy exercise to start feeling good, especially in the afterglow. I reckon for a good two or three months into it (actually working progressively and hard, not just going through the motions), I just felt like crap for working out. My body (and mind) were just not used to it, having been a non-exerciser (outside walking a lot) for my entire life.
But as things progressed beyond the newbie stage, post-workout I consistently experienced a deep, satisfied, accomplished sense of mental balance and calmness that I could not get any other way. Highly therapeutic, and a boon to self esteem and fitness in general (the working out part).
I also know there are people for who none of this will work.
I see the “five simple tricks” more as good mental health hygiene habits rather than ways to snap out of a depressive episode. It’s like doing fire mitigation around your house if you live in a forested area. You have to do it on a regular basis for it to be effective. If you wait until there’s an actual fire, it’s too late. The mitigation doesn’t mean your home won’t get burned, but it will make it more likely that your house will survive and any damage will be minimized. Certainly depression can make it difficult to do all these tricks, but the more someone can do, the more they will help.
Regarding doing exercise you enjoy: sometimes you can kill two birds with one stone by finding exercise with a social aspect. I have played on softball teams, and I really do enjoy softball, but I ended up socializing with people on the team, and not just right after games.
Right now, I am in good shape for my age, because I have an active job (teaching preschool). I easily get 10,000 steps a day just at work, even on the days my dog goes to daycare, and I don’t walk her. The days I walk her, I get around 17,000 (unless it’s a weekend, but I still average well over 10,000/day). I also enjoy the times with the kids as well as the social aspect of being with the other teachers.
I also discovered that yoga helps with sleep. Don’t laugh at me. I thought it was as stupid as anyone before I tried it. I sleep better when I’m doing it about 5 hours a week. Worlds better. I can’t explain it either. In any event, it’s also exercise with a social aspect.
As a teenager and young adult I think my extreme social anxiety led to severe depression. When it came to trying to date, I couldn’t get myself to experience the number of rejections necessary to get one date. When I managed to ask someone out and got rejected (sometimes no doubt because I looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights), that worsened the depression. Since I’ve been married the source of anxiety has been work (specifically dealing with student behavior and filling in for people who don’t make it to work), but meds have helped tremendously. I’ve always exercised a lot, and it’s made me feel and look good physically but has had its limits helping me feel better mentally.
This year, for the first time ever, I experienced depression - albeit situational depression - which is to say, depression with all its myriad of horrific symptoms, but with a specific cause (marital breakdown). Holy fucking shit-balls, it hit like a freight-train and was waaay more intense than I had imagined depression was or could be.
I suppose the biggest surprise for me was the physicality of it. Sure, you feel it in your head, but you feel it in your bones. The feeling of being weighed down by a lead blanket, of having a black ghost of pure evil negativity living in your chest and pulsing out vibes of paranoia and despair, the headaches, tiredness (etc. ad infinitum…) - it was/is like a real physical illness, linked to yet separate from all the horrendous shit going on in your head as well. While I never reached the point of actually being suicidal, I certainly entertained the fantasy every now and then of thinking ‘How much longer can I withstand this?’ (the answer would have been counted in months). With that in mind…
Get enough sleep.
With insomnia? Fuck off.
Eat a healthy diet.
With no appetite and no desire to cook? Nope.
Get regular exercise.
With barely enough energy to get out of bed?
Try mindfulness techniques like meditation.
I did - not enough on its own
Don’t isolate socially.
Socialising while depressed is one of the most difficult and painful things you can do, this is far easier said than done.
I realise, BTW, that I am speaking from a position of relative privilege - in that I only had depression once for a little while - a far cry from those who have lived with clinical depression for years. To those in the latter category, I offer my sincerest empathy and sympathy…
I had assumed from casual references in 20th century histories, that Winston Churchill suffered from depression, what he called “the black dog”. It turns out that this is highly debatable. Some think, based in part on an evaluation by Churchill’s one-time physician, that he suffered from bipolar disorder, alternating periods of depression with high-energy/near-manic functioning. Others think Churchill’s black moods were brief and situational, and that his mental swings never approached the level of clinical illness.
*my own (literal) black dogs have had periods of manic behavior, especially in puppyhood and early adult life, but largely settled down without the need for medication or analysis. They have somewhat benefited from mindfulness training (“You mind, or else!”).
Yeah, severe depression (which I experienced as a young adult, up to a solid suicide decision and plan) is a mass of black tar in which no simple trick has any possibility of doing anything good, or mostly even happening.
There are levels in this shit.
Same. When I was in Jr. High school, there was a dance in the gym on a Friday night, and I got dressed up and walked up to the school, alone. I FORCED myself to go. I didn’t want to but I didn’t want to sit in my mother’s house one more Friday night. I can’t say I actually had fun, but I loved the music and the disco ball, and I hung out on the girl’s side with some school friends. It was a start, I did power through. Story of my life forever more.
You know what you need to do? You need to stop being depressed! When I get depressed, I stop being depressed and be awesome instead. True story.
I’m sure if “exercise” was the simple solution to depression, Michael Phelps wouldn’t be talking about therapy all the time.
IANA mental health expert, but from some people’s posts it seems like people who suffer from chronic long-term depression sort of identify with it as an integral part of who they are. Many of the events in their life experienced through the lens of depression. i.e. feeling like you have to “force” yourself to do what is traditionally an enjoyable activity (beyond the normal nervousness and trepidation once might experience). So in a way, not being depressed requires essentially become a completely different person.