This has been a really important and central aspect to my life for an increasingly long amount of time. This video/blogpost was initially conceptualized as about 2 or 3 separate ones, alongside a plethora of partially disparate ideas that couldn't really tie in anywhere. They're now all joined into one written-form piece split into chapters focusing on different aspects of my self-improvement as of recent.
Since, I'd say late November, I've been in a much more positive mental state. It's crazy to say, but, after years of depression and some really dumb behaviour over those years, I can actually say for certain that is has gotten better. When you're at your lowest, it really feels like BS when someone says that it's going to get better. How could you possibly believe that when all the evidence--Your whole lived experience--points elsewhere? I certainly didn't.
As per usual with people tackling their mental illness, routine is to blame. Or I guess, uh, "credit". We don't really use the word 'blame' with good things, do we? I consider myself to have an attention deficit. It's immediately apparent that we all do. Whether it's due to certain food additives, the constant overstimulation our digital devices deliver us, second-hand smoke, a mix of all of these, it's impossible to deny that Gen Z is absolutely doomed in terms of attention span. Everyone's said this before, I won't dwell on it. But I bring that up to say that I very much fall into this camp.
This aforementioned deficit of attention has been the biggest obstacle to me grasping onto the one thing that can dig you out of depression--Routine. Brushing your teeth or showering every day simply doesn't have the same instant dopamine reward that intermittently scrolling on 5 different social medias does. For this reason, I use a pretty common coping strategy in the form of Obsidian's daily notes feature, a checklist of basic personal upkeep tasks, the Obsidian calendar plugin, and a plugin for making a nice completion sound effect whenever I check off a task.
This daily checklist initially was comprised of the following tasks, but has since grown as I've become capable of more:
These are all incredibly simple tasks. Those of you who haven't had depression probably can't imagine ever struggling with completing them. But it's a real struggle, and it's crushing. Being in a terrible physical state as a result of your mental weakness only makes you feel worse--It's for this reason that people go into a loop of worsening condition. It's really sad to see. The most realistic way of getting out of this is to have some sort of spark of inspiration and capitalize on it to do as much as you can for yourself physically. If you have something good happen to you, it makes you happy, then you manage to brush your teeth once every day for a week, a moment like that can be snowballed into locking in in a much larger way too, eventually getting better (Because taking care of yourself physically directly results in a happier mental state). But it takes lots of attempts. Whether the successful self-betterment attempt or the successful suicide attempt comes first is a matter of chance. I got lucky.
The process of getting better has been more complicated than I make it out to be. It's multi-faceted as everything is and unrelated habitual changes eventually coalesce over the course of weeks or months into what actually resembles a healthy lifestyle. I'll talk about all the different ways this happened in different chapters. The first half will be about specific actionable advice, then I'll spend some time reflecting on this whole experience.
A while ago, my smartphone broke after I climbed a mountain with some friends. It just stopped booting, probably water damage. This was probably the biggest blessing in disguise I've ever received.
Since then, I've shifted into only owning dumbphones. This is really logical and explaining it feels dumb, but a lot of you are conditioned into thinking there's actually justification for owning a smartphone in day-to-day life. The reality is, having a dopamine device IN YOUR POCKET available even when you leave the home, is retarded. It's impossible to learn to be bored and appreciate mundane life if instant stimulation is one unlock of your phone away. To paraphrase Luke Smith, hanging out with your friends will become unentertaining enough that you're instead just going to scroll on your phones in proximity of eachother and call it hanging out. That is pathetic.
The social media I used to switch between all day on my smartphone added no value to my life. It was ALL wasted time--How can it not be when you're just looking at memes you'll forget about in five minutes, porn, and youtube videos about topics unimportant to you?
I'd like to say that messenger apps (which is a distinction I make from social media) are less evil than the straight-up social medias of Instagram and shit. But in some ways, they're really not. Especially Snapchat, and Discord to an extent. But mainly really Snapchat.
Using Snapchat makes you an inherently less interesting person. Not being able to see past the horrible and limiting design of that app and remain willing to use it on a regular basis is the epitome of being a normie, or frankly, an NPC. Snapchat is something I couldn't even allow myself to use at my lowest. All apps nowadays want you to spend as much time as possible on them, but designing a messenger as to manipulate your own friends into socially penalizing you for choosing to use it a healthy amount is objectively disgusting.
I haven't looked back on my switch to a dumbphone, and this will likely be a lifelong change.
Looking at a screen first thing in the morning is terrible for you. I hate that I have to say this, but some of you need to hear it. I certainly did. All you're doing is immediately giving yourself the heightened stimulation of a digital device as soon as you wake up. If you start your day by watching a youtube video or scrolling on a social media website, you're setting a ridiculously high standard of dopamine intake for yourself for the rest of the day. So of course you're not gonna get up and fucking do anything. When you think about it logically, it's obvious that this will lead to you not doing anything but scroll all day.
I started not turning on my laptop (my main dopamine deliverer, as I can use it from my bed) at all in the morning, until I'm well into my obsidian checklist, or ideally finished with it. I allow myself use of my desktop PC in the morning, but that's just to use Obsidian, obviously. I close my web browser and messengers and don't let myself open them until I've finished the checklist.
You can still be listening to music and talking to your friends. And even jerking off or scrolling, to an extent. But you really have to be doing mundane shit aswell. Zoomers don't realize that doing mundane shit is so essential for your wellbeing. While writing this, I literally just went out and juiced some overripe lemons and froze them for preservation. It was boring as shit but I enjoyed it. It will deliver me a reward in future, and now I'm enjoying being back on my computer being creative.
As I said on my blogpost about going outside, "The power button is named appropriately. It IS very powerful. It can take you from feeling agitated and apathetic all day and achieving nothing to feeling an active sense of growth and achievement. Press the power button sometimes. Look out a window even, maybe."
I've engaged in a lot of self-destructive behaviour throughout my life. Literal drugs as in nicotine, diazepam, and caffeine mainly, alongside the less-literal drugs of cutting or other self harm, masturbation, and social media addiction.
I went through a phase of habitually using nicotine/caffeine and the benzodiazepine known as diazepam to regulate my mood. This was stupid and as one would expect, led to a greatly destabilized mood whenever not on one or the other, or especially when coming down from them. My mood swings were strengthened so much by these drugs.
Quitting nicotine was an accident for me. I'm really fortunate for this. After too many nauseating experiences with large nic doses, I eventually found myself finding the menthol flavour inherently sickening permanently, and vaping in general sickening for a few weeks. This resulted in me just giving up vaping entirely, and eventually as my mood stabilized the diazepam too. I'm really lucky to have relied on drugs for as short a period as I did--I could've faced a lot more damage in a slightly different timeline. I'm really really lucky I stopped when I did.
I've talked more about my thoughts on society's drug use at large in one of my blog posts, so I won't dwell on actual drugs much longer. But this is a good opportunity to touch on cutting.
I've cut myself on and off for three or so years. Because of this, I have a lot more nuanced of a perspective on the matter than most people do. Most people are pretty ignorant: "Why would you cause harm to your body? There's no reason other than attention-seeking, these people are cringe.", the average normie tends to think. This is ignoring the chemical release in the brain that cutting causes which makes it addictive in the first place. At face value, cutting is actually really easy to defend and even romanticize--It feels good, causes pretty-looking scars and "isn't as bad as doing drugs."
Yeah, cutting feels really good. Obviously it hurts, but the feeling it gives you in your brain is amazing and really soothing. It's just a hit of a vape but you have to do it with a razor blade. It's for this reason I believe it to be just as bad as any of the other drugs I did, and I find it unhealthy. How can cutting not be unhealthy if it is literally the same experience as smoking a cigarette?
To conclude, quitting nicotine, cutting, diazepam, and lowering my caffeine intake has given me back the stable mood I used to have. It's really easy to be in denial and think your mood swings are just from your mental illness or hormones or something. I was. But I feel a lot more stable now that I'm off the drugs.
A lot of you need to get your ass off of Uber Eats. One of the best changes I've made to my life is no longer eating out and cooking myself nutritious meals every day. Going to a restaurant (including fast food or buying some shit from a dairy/convenience store) and paying for food just because you're hungry is the equivalent of paying for porn. You're just gonna jack off (consume nutrients) and then be done, but the option of cooking at home will leave you much less worse off financially. Also especially for you Americans, you'll have a much smaller sugar intake if you start cooking for yourself.
The restaurant pricing situation is terrible in New Zealand. I'm sure it is in America too. Me and Garret probably saved upwards of fifty dollars just by cooking two meals when spending time together instead of wasting our money buying food. Sure, restaurants are fine for occasional social events, but most of you are probably overusing them. Cooking alongside someone else is probably going to be better for one-on-one socialization anyway. But the benefits of home cooking don't stop at savings.
Home cooking ties in really well to this video's theme of routine. It's important to put thought into what I call routine starting points. These are lower barrier of entry tasks that give you an immediate reward (and thus are easy to want to do) and will contribute to your ability to stay in routine as you continue to do them. Cooking is one of these. You immediately get the benefit of saving 20 dollars for every meal, and eating a healthy and delicious dish. It's really easy to get started, and it will lead to you hopefully understanding the value of this type of routine and finding it easier to apply in other areas of your life.
Also, you shouldn't be buying energy drinks. They have double the reasonable amount of caffeine for waking up and are insanely overpriced compared to making coffee at home. Coffee doesn't have to taste bad. Nobody will judge you for shoveling sugar and cocoa powder into it if you're still saving money compared to buying sugary kidney killers.
I try to give advice for wellbeing, whether that be physical or mental, through the lens of entirely self-centered improvement. Although a lot of the improvements you should be making to your lifestyle are directly a positive thing too for those around you, I wouldn't try to convince somebody to change their habits because "Your family will be so happy for it!!" or some bs like that--I shouldn't say BS, because it's true, but, it's much easier to convince somebody to pick up a behaviour by explaining to them them the direct benefit it's gonna have to THEM. And then maybe their loved ones.
This is to say, for an extended example, if I was convincing some dopamine-fried zoomer who doesn't cook or clean for himself at all to try and get in the kitchen instead of making his mom do everything for him, I wouldn't flip out and go on some rant about how he's inconveniencing his middle aged mother and making her life worse and being a selfless POS or something like that. The truth is, anybody in that situation has already mentally justified their behaviour within their own moral compass. He is acting in accordance with his own moral standing--no abuse or genuine criticism you launch at him will lead him to betterment. Instead, it is helpful to indulge in one's own selfishness in order to make the decision to become more independent. This isn't to say his (or anybody suffering with any kind of mental block forcing them into bad behaviour's) moral beliefs won't shift in light of seeing the benefits of their improved habits--We're always loyal to our moral agenda, but that doesn't mean it itself cannot shift. The lazy hikki will feel bad for his mother and help her out. The unwilling-to-quit smoker will stop rationalizing their spending habits. The gooner will realize it's a bit silly to be exchanging porn in Discord DMs everyday. But only after seeing the positive effects to THEM.
It's true that my change was the result of increased happiness after feeling a novel type of true affection nobody has given me before. Meeting a new bestie that I really connect with, along with the positive mental state I have from being off drugs, along with starting HRT, really gave me the boost of happiness I needed to get my shit together. As I said earlier, if you recognize one of these happy periods in your life, even if it is just a week or so where the depression happens to not hit as strongly as it usually does, capitalize on it. But even if that doesn't come, I encourage you to atleast try to do one of these things everyday. If you make a checklist that tells you to shower and brush your teeth, and you manage to start doing that everyday, that is a HUGE achievement. The idea is to plant seeds of routine. Even if it's literally just one thing that takes one minute, like cleaning your glasses everyday, you're training your brain to appreciate routine. And that's the only way to stop being depressed. I really hope the shit I've been yapping about is helpful to even one person struggling like I was. Also, don't quit if you fuck up, even for weeks at a time. Just imagine that as a break from routine, don't beat yourself up over falling out of it.
This year, my social interactions have taught me the importance of being outwardly positive and supportive to those you care for.
I find that every single relationship in past where I've changed parts of myself to fit in better socially has resulted in me not enjoying those relationships at all. Socializing was never meant to be a game of putting on different masks that you think will appease whatever conversation partner you find yourself with.
If you were raised in male social circles, you've probably been conditioned into not understanding the value of actual direct compliments. I don't mean politeness or friendliness. I'm actually saying you should be in people's DMs saying nice things to them on a regular basis. The more malebrained among you will find this weird, unnatural, and just *off* at first. But it isn't. Why should affection be stigmatized and socially penalized? That's retarded.
You should be complimenting people and expressing exactly what tendencies or attributes about them make you enjoy spending time with them. Even simple acts of compassion and tenderness are enough to taper down the intensity of one's self image issues. Someone who is more confident in who they actually are is less likely to obfuscate aspects of themselves to try and appear as someone they are not.
This is to say, boosting the confidence and happiness of those around you through simple acts is a catalyst to your loved ones being more happy to portray themselves to you how they actually are--And enjoy talking to you more. Which means they'll talk to you more, because they enjoy it.
Isolated symptoms of mental illness are often potent enough to ruin a relationship. It's good to do what you can to diminish the self-loathing of those you know. But, you shouldn't force yourself to stay in a relationship where the toxicity of the other person is an active toll on your own mental health. That would ruin the whole point of this--We are meant to bring eachother up.
tl;dr BEING NICE GETS YOU BITCHES (and makes those bitches happy)
A lot of really unhealthy behaviours are normalized in our society. For someone with a mental illness, these seemingly normal behaviours are enough to really ruin your life and chances of feeling happiness. Most important is that we learn to have a relationship with technology that is healthy and limited, not one that is expected of us by society. The social norms of owning a smartphone and checking every notification you get weren't agreed on logically by the masses. They're solely a result of the psy-opping of the people by large corporations wishing to prey on you. Your phone is making you depressed. And so is going on Pornhub everyday. This is how I dealt with it, and I hope my experience proves valuable in demonstrating not only how you can get better, but also exactly why doing so is so difficult. Thank you for reading.
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