> As s as formerly depressed person I can attest that this is the only thing that worked. DO stuff. Even if you feel you can’t, even if it feels hopeless. Do it anyway.

> Somehow through the act of forcing yourself you find you’re actually enjoying yourself, are making progress and feeling better.

I tried this approach. The "you find you're actually enjoying yourself" part never came. It left me profoundly exhausted, disappointed, and hopeless to the point of being suicidal.

I'm glad that you found an approach that worked for you, but depressive disorders are highly complex and poorly understood phenomena that aren't suited to neat little explanations of "the actual" solution.

I had a similar experience to yours. Divorce. Heartache. Depression amplified by..a lot. Tried to get out. Joined a couple of groups on Meetup.

Didn't work. Moderately enjoyed it. Would get home, then... crash. Back into the spiral.

Fast forward a couple of years. In a better place, somewhat. Try again, what the hell I'm bored and can only play so much HZD and BotW. It was surprisingly better this time. Started making friends. Texting.

Feels good. Better, at least.

So maybe you aren't in a place where that works for you right now. Maybe it will one day. Don't close yourself off to it completely, though. It's helped others, so who knows.

Well if it's any help, here's my two cents: to rewire your gratification circuits you need a lot of time and effort to alter your brains to accept some new ideas or behaviors. Took me a long time to get used to going to gym. Now it's like second nature. I know if you are really depressed it might be impossible to do it and other means, eg psychologist and medication, might be more helpful.

But the rewiring of your brain is the most important thing I feel in combating depression and getting somehow your lizard brain engaged in the "normal" things. For some reason I have felt that losing the connection to your primal desires (or the real you) is often the trigger, that will cause your body to tell you "hey, you are doing something wrong - please fix it". I know self-blame is the last thing any depressed person needs, but I think positive action and experiences are definitely key-part in overriding the negative thinking patterns. Things such as social connections, the feeling of belonging to a group and physical exercise.

Yet for certain, if you feel you are pushing yourself too much to me it says that there are deeper problems unsolved under the surface, that should be reworked with maybe a psychotherapist before going on a trip around the world. Or maybe it's a chronic chemical imbalance that just can't be fixed (eg Abraham Lincoln). Who knows.

To me physical exercise was like a magic cure that did feel like a natural depression medicine when you get the feeling of progress. Then other positive things started to build on top of it.

In the abstract, it's entirely plausible to me that I somehow need to work to "rewire my gratification circuits". However, nothing has demonstrated even a hint of actually doing that. I've tried multiple approaches to talk therapy, medication, diet/exercise, and self-directed behavioral activation (aka "do stuff"). None of them have noticeably helped; a few have backfired badly.

> I think positive action and experiences are definitely key-part in overriding the negative thinking patterns. Things such as social connections, the feeling of belonging to a group and physical exercise.

Here's the thing: I'm not sure I've genuinely had a positive experience in a long time (maybe decades). I'm not sure I've ever experienced "the feeling of belonging to a group" in an emotional sense. I routinely do things and have interactions that I can intellectually analyze as having been positive accomplishments, but for me there's a disconnect such that this simply fails to add up to a positive experience. As far as I can tell, most approaches to therapy don't even acknowledge this as a possibility, let alone have a method to address it. Those that do acknowledge it tend to have a questionable-to-nonexistent body of scientific evidence and are often phrased with a weird mythical/quasi-religious/metaphorical quality such that I'm often confused as to what advocates or practitioners are even trying to say once they move on from discussion of symptoms.

I was just describing this to my therapist the other day. There are things that you recognize at the intellectual level that never make it down to the "lower levels", which ironically are the ones that matter.

She's an anxiety therapist, so I tell her my anxiety is holding me back from connecting with others, but part of me suspects that my inability to "feel" the connections is the real problem.

Depends. In the short term (12 months) CBT has been shown to be very effective. However, over two years it has been shown to be just as effective as doing nothing.

The problem of time turns up in multiple kinds of treatments, and I believe it has simply to do with how long the depressive episodes last. Usually by the time people seek treatment that will be at the peak of the episode. Regardless of the treatment, a couple bunch of month will pass and people find themselves getting better. I suspect most depression studies a deeply flawed because of this effect. At some point the treatment will stop working. But it's not that the treatment stopped working, it's that a new depressive episode has begun and the treatment never really did all that much in the first place.

I’ve found it effective to develop circuit breaker mechanisms. It took a while and it seems to help long term.

When I see myself slipping into a depressive episode, I circuit break it before it gets bad. Remind myself that overall life is pretty good, distract myself with work, take a break, or whatever else seems like it might help.

And most of all: dont follow the spiral. Jump out while I still can.