That's one of the most insidious aspects of depression, really. It saps you of all energy to do anything joyful or to even just take care of yourself.
It seems backwards, but one of the only ways to really fight it is to force yourself into a "schedule" of things. Make sure you're cleaning up your surroundings and taking good care of your personal hygiene. Make sure you're eating at least relatively healthy meals. Make sure you're making yourself do things that you used to enjoy, even if they currently bore you. At first, it feels pointless, because it feels like you're just going through the motions, and in many ways, you are. But over time, just keeping yourself busy and making sure you have small, specific, easily achievable daily goals somehow ends up relieving the depression if only a little. So make sure you do some drawing every day. Make sure you do one crossword a day, even if you don't finish it, just have a prescribed time limit for doing it in and stick to that. Same with reading, force yourself to read for an hour a day, even if you find yourself tired of it. You have to have the minimal goal of "I did this for the amount of time I set for myself, bare minimum."
I know, it sounds stupid, I know it does. It feels stupid at first, too. I've had depression for decades, and it's the only thing that consistently works to at bare minimum make life feel bearable and still worth living. Small, easily achievable daily goals that you consistently follow through on. I am at my worst when I am not doing my daily goals. It's not always easy, either. Sometimes big draining, difficult events in life send me spinning and unable to achieve my daily goals, and that's okay, because having depression isn't easy. It can be so hard to start back up and pick up where you left off after life has kicked you while you're down, but in the end, it still works.
It won't make you happy, it won't make you jump for joy, it won't make your depression completely disappear, but it will make your day-to-day life something that you don't dread as much. I promise. Good luck.
all 7 comments