So you know how you’re a disgusting waste of space? And you always fuck everything up no matter what it is or how simple? Then you sit there and wait for your punishment, but sometimes it fails to show up in the way that you’d hoped, so you take it upon yourself to find one that’s more fitting?

Good job. Go ahead and do that. Be the go-getter you were always meant to be.

It’s frustrating how people don’t get punished for the mistakes they make. Without punishment, how would we learn to avoid making similar mistakes in the future? If you touch a flame, you get burned, and then you don’t go around touching fire. Well, there are exceptions to every rule. Then again, if you find that you punish yourself and yet still end up making the same mistakes, then maybe you’re not doing it right?

The thing about determining an appropriate punishment is that every incident is truly different both in the reasons that led to it, and the impact that results from it. If you accidentally step on one person’s toe, he or she may simply laugh it off, while another may get their grump on. If you intentionally stomp on one person’s foot, he or she may try to get away before you hurt them further, while another may launch a vicious retaliation. There are natural reactions that occur as a result of your actions. And natural punishments too. So really, you don’t need to punish yourself at all. Still, there are times when you might think that life hasn’t doled out the right punishment. That it is too strong, or even too weak, and you need to take action to fix that.

If the punishment is too strong, you can end up taking the balance out on others. That’s why hurt happens. Because the overflow of pain needs to go somewhere and so it ends up splashing all over everything. Again, then you’ll want to recognize that while it may not have been your fault that you were punished too strongly, it is your responsibility to make amends for passing on the pain. Instead of being victimized, and then going on to victimize others, it’s worth turning the tables on whatever force punished you too strongly. Not by striking back, since that will just start more misery waves. Instead, by understanding why you were punished so strongly, and whether the pain inflicted was intentional or accidental or a force of nature.

Now, if the punishment is too weak, then maybe you’ll want to hurt yourself. You’ll physically or emotionally attack yourself to make up for the difference between how the world responded to your action, and how you think the world should have responded. Sometimes you’ll act in ways that jeopardize your well being, or cause other people to not get along with you. You may seek out people who will punish you, and even provoke them into doing so. Sometimes these people won’t want to hurt you, and as you transform them into monsters capable of causing pain, you’ll feel your punishment even more. Because you know that you have hurt another person by turning them into your personal torturer.

So if you want to punish yourself, go ahead and do it on your own. When you create monsters for the sake of hurting yourself, you fuck everyone else over too. Because that darkness that you helped to create in other people doesn’t go away, and it leads to the development of those cycles of hurt. It would be for the best if you search for a way to forgive yourself. Still, until the time comes that you’re ready to do so, avoid using other people as a tool for your self-flagellation.

So you know how sometimes you fuck up big time and hurt other people? Maybe because you were flailing around in your misery puddle and accidentally splashed someone. Maybe because you were bored or lonely in your misery pit so you tried to pull someone down. Or maybe just because you were being an asshole. Then after you realize that you’ve hurt someone, your self-loathing cycle starts and it’s all wash, rinse, repeat.

Yeah, sometimes whether we mean to or not, we hurt other people. And it’s important to remember that is okay. Well, maybe not okay so much as it is inevitable. Ideally, we would never lose control and hurt other people, but unfortunately it does happen. And when it happens we can’t take it back, or pretend that it didn’t happen. Well, we can pretend, it’s just that does not change reality.

While it is tempting to try and brush over our actions. Or to try to explain them away. Or to even apologize and then beat ourselves up a disproportionate amount. These solutions don’t tend to make other people feel better, and even when they are enough to get everyone off our case, they don’t make us feel better either. Because none of these responses are enough to satisfy our internal self-critic. Our depression knows when we’re minimizing, or explaining, or self-flagellating, and it just attacks us for doing those things.

And worst of all is when we know that we hurt someone, can’t accept that it was our fault, and feel the need to lay the blame on others or even the person we hurt. When we are so disgusted with ourselves, and our actions, that we can’t handle it and need to share the guilt. Of course, this just makes the guilt worse, and our inability to manage it leads to more hurt. Then the cycle continues…These cycles are the most frightening and damaging aspect of depression. Because they perpetuate again and again, until we have lost all sense of self-control and autonomy. We even lose site of the way out. Not sure how we’ve become the agressors when we were originally the victims.

There is a way to break the chain. To prevent us from becoming agressors again, and again, and again. That is, we need to recognize that what we did was wrong, and then we need to accept that it is also okay that we did it. When we blame and attack ourselves for hurting others, we are unable to truly take responsibility for it. Punishing ourselves does not help the people we’ve hurt, and when taken to an extreme, it causes us to break, and take our punishment out on others. The only way to stop the cycle is to truly look at the hurt we have caused, and accept that it was our responsibility. That we have caused pain, and that through our will, we can stop causing pain. Most importantly, we can redeem ourselves for the pain that we have caused.

So hurt happens. It would happen even if we weren’t depressed. There would still be times when we are agressors, and still be times when we are victims. The depression just intensifies our self-blame, self-loathing, and self-punishment. It brings us past the brink of despair, and leads us into cycles of negative behavior. In order to break free of our depression, we must break free of these cycles by recognizing our responsibilities without punishing ourselves when we fail to live up to them.

So you know how depression is just sooo unoriginal? Like, because like, everyone has it these days so who even cares? And everything you think and feel has already been discussed in some book or pamphlet or incredibly insightful help-self blog?

Yeah, you’re not the first person to experience depression. And you’re not the last either. Then again, that’s not really the point. Because whether 5 billion people have had depression or just 5, that doesn’t change the fact that you have it, and you need to find a way of managing your version of it.

Because it is your depression and no one else’s. Everyone has unique past experiences and unique ways of experiencing things in general. Consequently, everyone is affected by depression in a different way, and everyone finds a different combination of coping or healing techniques. While you might be struck by the unoriginality of having depression, watch out! If you don’t take full account of your depression’s little eccentricities, it will be hard to clear it out of all the corners and crevices of your mind. Stock solutions and generic by-the-book cures generally need to be adapted to your own special brand of crazy.

For some reason people think that if a condition is common, it isn’t as serious as if it’s a rare one. There’s probably a fancy name for this phenomenon, but the Internet is big so out of pure laziness let’s just call this the “Dangerous Zebra, Safe Horse Phenomenon.” Because people make a big deal about zebras, but they’re really just the same as horses in that you’re pretty fucked if you get kicked in the face by either one.

The household flu is pretty common, but people still get fucked up by that shit. And depression is in some ways common, and similarly, people still get fucked up by it. If you sit in your misery pit and think to yourself “Ah. Really, this is just so trite.” You are totally right! And it will remain trite, especially if you sit like that for hours, or days, or weeks, or years.

So yeah depression is pretty unoriginal and that sucks. Lots of people deal with similar issues, and so your misery is not as special as you would like. However, your experience of your depression, and your ways of managing it are unique to you. And ultimately, It’s the climb out of the pit, the whole personal redemption narrative, that is truly distinct, and absolutely all you.

So you know how you’ve tried everything to “cure” your depression? Yet all of the Mongolian throat singing, Alpaca farming, and math puzzles just haven’t seemed to work? And you’re getting more stressed and depressed in your hectic search for the perfect solution?

Feel free to quit looking for a bit. Remember that “taking a break” thing can be pretty important when you’re getting to that point where you want to give up all hope of ever figuring your depression out. If trying out everything in the world hasn’t helped, how about trying some tactical not trying?

Now, tactical not trying is not the same thing as regular not trying where you let the depression run amok and get its misery blah all over everything. The “tactical” part means that you intentionally take some time off to examine your depression, not that you give up entirely. It’s the difference between sitting on your couch because you couldn’t get yourself to do anything else, and sitting on your couch because you just really feel like sitting on the couch.

Sometimes the process of trying to deal with your depression can be so frenetic and intense that you kick up a storm of emotional tumult which obscures your progress. It’s good to take active steps to work on your depression, and it’s also good to give yourself some time to assess the results of your efforts. That way you can determine what’s been successful, what’s been less successul, and what you want to try next.

And it may be the case that you don’t really notice much change. Or that things have actually gotten worse. That’s okay. In fact, that’s really valuable to know. Getting a self-status update is worthwhile even if the results are negative, because it’s still information about your depression.

So take some time to sit back and get some perspective in between your cure searching efforts. It takes time and energy to determine the best ways to manage your depression, so give yourself time to rest as well.

So you know how the future is really fucking terrifying? And lots of bad stuff could be waiting around the corner? And you need to do a hundred billion things to prepare for it, but even then everything awful will happen?

The future doesn’t exist. When you prepare for it, you’re not doing it for the future, you’re doing it to make your present self feel better. Which, is absolutely fine, and in fact, often a smart idea.

It’s good to do your best to prepare for negative things. For one, you get to feel like you have complete control over your life, and that’s a nice feeling. The thing is: you don’t. All your best made plans to build castle moats could go to waste if a massive comet strikes the earth. Or the flood insurance you bought could be made useless if your house is taken down by a giant lava monster.

Still, it’s good to prepare anyway. Because that way you never have to feel like you should have done something, or that you were dumb for not preparing. No need for regrets. And after all, there are always things that you can prepare for in some capacity. If you’re afraid of earthquakes, come up with an evacuation plan. If you’re afraid of spiders, learn about their likes and dislikes in order to repel them. While you cannot have complete control over everything in your life, you can choose to take actions that allow you to be well-prepared regardless. And you can feel somewhat more assured in knowing that you’ve got a plan.

You can’t fix the future. You can’t do anything to it, because it doesn’t exist. But you can prepare your present self for anything that you fear you might face. If you’re worried about diabetes, you can change your diet. If you’re worried about being self-sufficient in your old age, you can save money or invest in other people. Just because you can’t control everything, or prepare for every future situation, that doesn’t mean that you can’t do your best to control what you can, and prepare for what you can.

So that imagined future is never going to happen. Still, as the present continues to flow onward, you can do your best to steer your life boat, and prepare it for any storms that you see approaching on the horizon.

So you know how it’s really cool when people are decisive? Like, when they make up their mind, do something, and then never look back? Meanwhile, you find that the choice between whole grain or white bread is overwhelming?

Decision making is hard when you’re trying to make thirty of them at once, as quickly as possible, and hating on yourself all the while. When you’re depressed, prioritizing becomes incredibly challenging because everything is weighing on you at the same time.

With decisions the goal is: take them one at a time, and take your time with each one. Yes, if it’s a matter of immediate survival, like escaping a burning building, take that one first, and take about 5 seconds. However, if you’ve got a bit more time on your hands, then think through the matter at hand, debate the pros and cons, and come to a reasoned conclusion. Then write it fucking down so you don’t forget that reasoning.

Because coming to the conclusion is only half the battle. The real fight starts right after the decision is made, when the self-doubt and what-ifs take hold. “What if that was the wrong choice? Why did I even do that in the first place? This other choice is a million times better, I should go do that. Man, I chose the wrong thing again, maybe I can still change it…” And so on and so forth.

The only thing different between a person who constantly changes their mind, and one who sticks with their original conviction, is whether a person does what they decided on. If you want to be decisive, then follow up on your decisions. Now, that requires dealing with the self-doubt, which can easily undermine all of your certainty. And then there’s that fear of regret, that you’ll make the wrong choice and never be able to fix it. If you want to avoid regret, you need to know why you’re making a decision, that way even if you doubt yourself in the future, you can trace back the logic.

So you can take your time coming up with that decision. And you can pay attention to the process of how you came to it. That way you can spend less time wondering why you made it later on. Have conviction before and you’ll have it after. Writing shit down doesn’t hurt either.

So you know how sometimes you are feeling better? And then you celebrate and have all the fun because you’re cured of your depression? But then some time later you feel your depression coming back and it’s even worse because you thought you were finally better?

Yeah. Bad news is you weren’t cured. Sorry. Good news is that what you felt when you were feeling better is a pretty good reminder that life can not suck. Actually, truly, really not suck. And that’s really important to know when the depression is back and trying to convince you that the world is an endless, eternal dark abyss.

The trick is: you really do need to remember those better moments in order to make long-term progress. You need to know what makes it worth resisting your depression. You need to make it clear to yourself that your depression is lying when it tells you that bad things weigh more than good things. You need to never forget that you have had times in your life when you felt that you were truly better.

Now, when you’ve had a good spell and then things take a turn for the worse, you might start to think “Well if everything goes to shit just when I think things are finally going well, then what’s the point?” The point is that just because sometimes your life is shit, that doesn’t mean that the good parts did not exist. Those memories and moments remain positive even if things get worse again later. It’s the depression that tells you that the good stuff is invalid. And it’s the depression that convinces you that you never really felt good, when in fact, you really fucking did. And the good stuff is worth the fight.

If you believe that you are cured, then you’ll probably feel bad if you start having trouble again. Rather than it being black or white, “cured” or “permanently fucked,” it’s useful to think of it as “healing” or “coping.” Healing from depression takes time and energy. Sometimes it’s all you can do just to cope. At times you will be doing better and at other times you will be doing worse. Sucks. Although, even when your ultimate goal is a nice stable grey, at least the blacks and whites can be interesting.

So you don’t need to worry if it turns out you’re not cured. The part of you that healed is still there. You just need to make more steps, keep track of each one, and don’t forget the ones you’ve taken. It’s not about being cured. It’s about remembering that you have healed in the past, can heal in the present, and will heal many more times in the future.

So you know how sometimes life is finally going your way? And all of a sudden everything has fallen into place and feels right? So of course this means that you feel incredibly guilty about your new found perfect life?

Hm. Well, if your guilt is still there then your life is definitely not perfect. Because guilt is a big blob consuming everything and then leaving a slimy trail of self-loathing in its wake. And beyond the guilt, there’s probably still plenty of things going wrong in your life. Even in your bliss, don’t forget about them!

Now why when you are at your best would you want to think about the negative things in your life? Isn’t the goal to heal your depression, and to not think about those things? Absolutely. Still, even when you’re not depressed, negative things do happen. And when these things happen, you need to think about them in order to deal with them. And when you think about them, you may feel upset about them. And when you feel upset about them, you may feel guilty because you have such a perfect life and yet here you are getting all upset about shit. So the point is: you get to think about negative things as much as you do or do not want to, even when things are going well.

You deserve to feel happy without any guilt. That gnawing guilt of yours is unfair. It is a holdover from your depression, and it should be put in its place. Meaning, recognized and then invalidated. And it is invalid. Because as was just mentioned, there are still things going wrong in your life. Maybe they are small things, like getting a paper cut. Maybe they are larger things, like getting a big paper cut. Maybe they are huge things, like getting a big paper cut and being stabbed at the same time. The thing is that no matter what’s going wrong, or how big or small it is, you do not have to feel guilty about being frustrated when it mars up your life. If you want to, okay then. It’s your decision.

Those imperfections are unfortunate side-effects of being alive. And responding to them with anger, or hurt, or sadness, or amusement, or however else you respond, is just how it goes.  No one has a perfect life, and there is nothing wrong with recognizing the flaws in your life, and wishing they weren’t there. Just because you don’t like certain things about your life, that doesn’t mean that you are not grateful for the good things that you have. It does not mean that you are taking it for granted.

So your life isn’t perfect. And it’s not likely to become perfect. There will be plenty of things that are wrong even when you are not depressed. That’s totally okay. And if you get angry or sad or whatever because of those things, then that’s totally okay as well.

So you know how you have dreams of being a  fire-baller-ani-sci-presi-bus-amagician-avior? But it’s so hard and you just don’t want to put that kind of effort in? And so therefore you are a lazy McLazerson who can never do anything?

Yeah… No… It’s not lazy to not try to do something ridiculously hard, it’s just normal.   People avoid doing ridiculously hard things all time time because they have other things they’d rather be doing. Why shoot for the stars when you could watch TV? And why go climb every mountain and ford every stream when you could sit on the couch and eat ice cream sundaes?

If you don’t want to do something because it takes a ton of work, then that’s fine. Since you’re depressed, you probably have a decent amount on your plate to start with, so even taking care of the day-to-day is pretty fucking great. And you should get to feel productive from checking anything off the list. Anything at all.

Chasing after the hard stuff or being all special is impressive and shit. It means you’re taking extra effort to get what you want out of life. Keyword: extra. Plenty of people take the easy way and live perfectly contented lives. The road that is more travelled by is better worn, and you can follow in the footsteps of those that preceded you.

Now, if you want to do better than just taking care of things, then that’s great. Go for it. The point is that you’re not lazy if you choose to just live your life and take care of your primary responsibilities. It’s okay to meet baseline expectations, and avoid holding yourself to ones that are unfairly high. By giving yourself credit for fulfilling your day-to-day responsibilities you can avoid that whole rationalization thing. There’s no need to explain or excuse your being content with putting in an average amount of work.

So go ahead and be a lazy McLazerson. If it means that you get to take care of your life and get through the survival stuff, then there’s nothing wrong with that. And if you want more after you’ve gotten the basic shit down, then that’s a bonus. You can grow your passion, energy, and drive to experiment and explore life as you get better at keeping your depression in check. Then you can unleash it on the world and go beyond the basic to achieve your larger goals.

So you know how the future is a bleak landscape of despair? And no matter what you do, nothing will change the fact that the world is an awful place? And how there’s no hope of anything ever improving, especially your depression?

Well it’s hopeless then. There’s nothing you can do to change anything.  So why not try changing everything?

If there’s nothing that can be done to improve your depression, what’s there to lose by trying every single method? Change your eating habits. Change your sleep schedule. Change your social tendencies. Change how you interact with people. Change your manner of speaking. Change your appearance. Change your life in whatever way you see fit, provided that it doesn’t result in harm to you or those around you.

See the thing is, depression makes you avoid change even as it takes away your hope of change. You don’t want to try to change because why make the effort if there’s no hope of success? But if there’s no hope of success, there is absolutely no reason not to try whatever you want. Why fear or avoid something that’s not going to happen?

Oh sure, it takes effort to change, and why put in that much effort? Well really, why not put in that much effort? There’s really nothing better to do with your energy than spend it on finding new ways to manage your depression. There’s really not much worth more than your mental health. And in terms of some sort of fear of failure, why have that at all? The worst you could do is confirm that it’s hopeless, which is where you’re starting from in the first place. If you stay at base zero, that’s fine too.

So if it’s always hopeless, and there’s no possibility of change, then there’s also need to have any fear of it. If there’s no way to improve, then what’s the harm in experimenting? It can’t be any more of a waste of time than sitting on the couch. And maybe just one of the things you try, or some arbitrary combination of several of them, will cause a slight change in the big blah of your depression. And even a slight change, is proof that change is possible, and that it is not quite as intimidating as your depression would have you believe.