I'm quite tired, so this will be poorly organized and I won't go into as much detail as I could. Please PM me if you have any questions.
I had anxiety (plus OCD, which is driven by anxiety) and depression starting in my teens. I was borderline suicidal for years. Now I'm happy most of the time, the OCD is a non-issue, and the anxiety is manageable. I'll tell you what worked for me.
The OCD was the easiest thing to treat, actually. Most of my issue was obsessions, more than compulsions. But the same technique helps for both. It's a thought-stopping technique a therapist taught me. I am still eternally grateful that she taught me this. Here are the steps:
- Learn to identify your triggers. Things you commonly obsess about, ie.
- Pick a pleasant thought. It could be an affirmation, like “I'm a wonderful person to be around,” it could be an image of a beach somewhere, it could be a feeling of intense joy or serenity. It needs to be something strong.
- When you find yourself starting to fixate on one of your triggers, say “STOP!” to yourself, and jump to the pleasant thought instead.
At first, you are almost certainly going to fail at this. I found that my triggers were like black holes. The first few times, I didn't even remember to do the exercise until I was mired in my obsession again. But even that was helpful: I made a note about the thing I was obsessed about. After a few times, I started to see it coming. I tried to make the jump, but still got sucked into the black hole. But then, one day, after a few weeks, I was able to jump to the image and redirect my thoughts! I still remember where I was the first time it happened.
Eventually it got really easy to redirect my thoughts. After a while I stopped having obsessions altogether.
My OCD did flare up a bit when I got CFS/ME. Nothing like it used to be, but sometimes I start arranging the tiles on the bathroom floor into patterns or making anagrams out of words that happen to be nearby. It mostly happens when I'm bored, and I think it's related to the brain fog. I'm still able to redirect my thoughts though, it's just a bit harder than it used to be.
I've been on just about every anti-depressant you can name. I got off those altogether about 12 years ago and never looked back.
Dr. Ilardi gave a great Ted talk in which he shares his method for healing depression. It's basically the same program promoted by Dr. Andrew Weil in his book “spontaneous happiness.” Here's the talk:
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The gist is that there's a bad fit between the environment humans are evolutionarily adapted to and the one we find ourselves in now. The solution is to try to get back, as much as possible, to a hunter-gatherer mode of existence. That means getting into nature more, seeking out more connections, spending less time online, avoiding electric lights as much as possible, reducing modern stressors, getting lots of natural exercise, etc.
How is your sleep? I'm guessing poor.
Depression and anxiety can both be caused (or at least exacerbated) by low serotonin, and 90% of your serotonin is produced in your guts while you are sleeping – IF you are asleep between the hours of 11pm and 3am. If you are awake at that time, you will be serotonin deficient the next day. Human beings are diurnal. We need to be asleep at night, or our bio-rhythms get messed up, which can affect our hormone production and every other aspect of our being. If you're a chronic night-owl, as I was, that's definitely going to be a significant contributing factor to your poor mental well-being.
Things that have helped me alter my sleep cycle:
- Waking up at a good time (7 or 8 am latest) every day. Same time, every day. No matter what time I went to bed the night before.
- Keeping my room cool and dark at night.
- No naps after 5pm if you can avoid it.
- No bright screens after 9:30pm. This one is HUGE. The lights from monitors and phones will trick your brain into thinking you are more awake than you really are, and you'll enter sort of a beta-wave trance where you're not REALLY awake or asleep.
- Going to bed at 10:30 to 11:00pm every night.
- Buying a memory foam pillow that supports my neck.
Other things. I forget. Dr. Bergman has a pretty good program towards the end of this video:
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What's driving the depression? Odds are there are some negative thought processes going on. Gratitude journalling has vastly improved my outlook on life in general. I just pick 3 things every day that I'm grateful for. It's that simple. And it dramatically changed my life for the better, more than anything else I've done.
Humans have basic needs beyond food, water, and shelter that must be met if we are to be happy and thriving. What needs of yours are not being met? Is it self-esteem? Meaning / purpose? Adventure/novelty/fun? Connection?
I have advice for all of these things and more. Message me if you want to dialogue about it.
What's your diet like? As Ilardi mentions in the Ted Talk above, western diets are WAY too high in Omega 6s. The Standard American Diet (SAD) causes brain inflammation which causes depression. Again, eating more like our hunter-gatherer forebears is incredibly helpful. My diet consists almost entirely of meats, eggs, and organic plant food now.
I take two supplements that make a huge difference in my mood: Omega 3s, and Vitamin D. We are all vitamin D deficient. I also highly recommend supplementing with Omega 3s. There's a new form of algae on the market that you can try if fish oil isn't your thing. Some people get fish burps for the first little while (I did at first, but that went away after a few weeks), but you can apparently cure that by freezing the pills and swallowing them frozen.
Regarding food: thanks to decades of chemical assault, the soil our food is grown in is now thoroughly depleted of nutrients. Everyone who eats grocery-store / traditionally farmed food is getting nutrient and micro-nutrient deficiencies. Without proper nutrition, sickness is inevitable. Grow your own food or buy organic local produce as much as you can. I know it's not an option for everyone (especially me), but eating grocery-store “food” will kill you in the long run. It's important to be aware of that and choose accordingly. You're much better off eating half as much as you used to if you're eating food that has 10 times the nutritional value.
Anxiety is a tricky beast to tame. I recommend reading up on fear hierarchies. Fears that aren't confronted will grow and can become crippling. Trust me, I know. It's important to challenge ourselves, to push ourselves a LITTLE outside of our comfort zones every day. (Not too much! Just a little!) Only you know when you need to push yourself and when you need to take it easy.
Learning to focus more on the present has helped me a lot. Even just grounding myself. I often have anxiety about the future or sad thoughts about the past, but then I remind myself: I'm in a room with a roof and a bed. I have food in my fridge. I am okay, right now.
Nothing else exists. The present is all there is.
The smell of lavendar really helps calm me. Lavendar and valerian root in teas or baths or just to smell are generally recommended for anxiety. Valerian is the active ingredient in Valium.
EXERCISE is a miracle drug for anxiety and depression. Get your heart pumping. Most of the people on this forum would kill to be able to exercise. If you can, do it.
I recommend you do all of the things I've suggested: proper sleep, proper diet, exercise, mindfulness, etc. But if you only do one, do exercise.
Speaking of drugs, there's been some interesting new research into therapeutic use of ketamine. I generally don't endorse the use of anything produced in a lab, but if nothing else is working, it might be worth looking into. Apparently it reorganizes your brain pathways in positive ways. Might be particularly beneficial if you actually did mess yourself up by doing too much pot, etc., too young.
I'm all out of spoons. I hope this was helpful.
