How to fight depression: Tools and frameworks to help beat depression without medication
Disclaimer
I have to start this post with a disclaimer: This is not medical advice, if you are worried you might hurt yourself or others it’s important that you do so. This is the single best piece of advice on here.
Now let’s get to what you can do to help yourself.
The suffering of the mind
“We suffer more in our imagination than in reality.”
- Seneca
Depression is insidious. There is no blood test for it or scan, that’s why oftentimes we don’t even recognise the signs until we are already deep into it. And it can affect us all differently. A lot of times it’s triggered by difficult, even traumatic events that have changed our lives forever, like a stressful job that we hate, illness, the loss of a loved one, being a victim of abuse, or occasionally we don’t even know why yet. These events somehow change the way we think, giving us a sense of helplessness, the world turns grey, and we don’t seem to enjoy life as much as we used to.
Life as such is full of these negative events that happen in everyone’s life (otherwise how would we truly appreciate the positive ones?), and we have little to no control over those experiences. How do we regain control over our thoughts? How do we get out of this negative cycle?
“Doctors won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists won’t make you slim. Teachers won’t make you smart. Gurus won’t make you calm. Mentors won’t make you rich. Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself.”
- Naval Ravikant
This is the start of the process. You have to acknowledge that you are the only one who can help yourself in this situation and you can! Multiple people have done it before, and you are no different! It does not mean you have to do it alone, but it has to start with you. So here’s a few tools and frameworks that can help you with depression.
The blaming game
Stop blaming others. Bad things happen to everyone, and I can almost guarantee you that whatever misfortune happened to you, somebody else had it worse. Maybe it is a bit harsh to say, but this is not to belittle something bad that has happened to you. Instead, it’s to express that feeling sorry for yourself and being depressed about it, is not going to change the situation or help you in any way.
This anecdote about Charlie Munger stuck with me since I read it a few years ago and I still think about it when I find myself feeling ‘down’ about my life.
One of Charlie Munger’s friends, when he was in college, had a stack of index cards, of which one that read ‘Your story has touched my heart, never have I heard of anyone with as many misfortunes as you’. He would hand it over sarcastically whenever he heard someone feel sorry for themselves. And Charlie Munger made it his own after that, suggesting giving yourself one whenever you find yourself in self-pity, even if your child were to die of cancer. I have this quote in my room to remind myself that self-pity is not going to improve whatever bad situation I find myself in.
You might be thinking something like ‘This is such a horrible thing to say! He’s the classic billionaire that had it easy all his life!’. When he was 30, Charlie Munger wasn’t the billlionaire people knew him for before he passed away, he was divorced, broke, and had to watch his 9 years-old son die of leukaemia.
Advice 1: Stop complaining and stop blaming others at all costs. Even if it’s just with yourself. In fact, especially when you are by yourself because whilst you think no one else is listening, you are.
The pleasure list
Reality is only a reflection of what you are feeling. Reality does not feel anything over what happens to you. This means that by having a more positive outlook on reality you can have a more positive reflection from reality. Tony Robbins talked about this on Lewis Howes’ podcast reminding us how much your surroundings influence your thoughts.
In one study he mentioned before, there was a number of subjects, which were divided into 2 groups. One group was handed a hot cup of coffee before listening to a story, the other an iced one, before listening to the same story. They then asked participants to describe how they perceived the characters in the story. The group who had a hot cup of coffee described them as warm and empathetic, whilst the iced coffee group said they perceived the same characters as cold. This does not mean that you should drink only hot drinks for the rest of your life but is to show that your mind is easily influenced by your surrounding and the things you get exposed to.
Use this to change you in a positive way and your outlook. For example, I enjoy watching comedy, it makes me laugh and I feel good after having watched some stand-up. So, I made sure to have at least one or two that I would consume every week. Yours might be dancing, or watching a movie or listening to music, whatever it is! The only condition is that it would have to be an empowering behaviour, not destructive habits such as smoking, eating an absurd amount of junk food, etc. (you get the gist). If you are depressed this might only work a little at first, but gradually you will condition your brain to shift focus from the negative aspects of life to the more pleasurable ones, as Tony Robbins explains in ‘Awaken the Giant Within’.
Hopefully at some point, you will start seeing the characters in your life in a more positive way, and that will make in turn act them in a more positive way towards you, starting a cycle of positivity.
Advice 2: As Tony Robbins suggests in his book, make a list of things you like to do that are positive. A pleasure list. The more items on the list the better. Make sure you allocate time to do them or do them more often, especially when you feel low. I know it sounds simple, but this exercise can have profound effects on your outlook on life in the long run.
Remember: you are not your depression
Depression is a thought disease, you are not your depression – do not identify with the depression, detach yourself. The main reason why meditation has proven to be effective in treating depression is because it helps you disassociate yourself from your thoughts, in this case depressive ones. It teaches you to be observant of your thoughts rather than identify with them. You might say ‘If I am not my thoughts then who am I?
The best answer given is by Michael Singer, the author of New York Times Best Seller ‘The Untethered Soul’.
“I am the one who sees. From back in here somewhere, I look out, and I am aware of the events, thoughts, and emotions that pass before me.”
- Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul
We have a monkey mind always running without any control, and when we get caught in depressive thoughts then the monkey mind takes over and runs with it. Instead of identifying with your thoughts, you should observe and really ask yourself ‘what part of me is this bothering me?’, as Michael Singer suggests.
Either yoga or meditation will help in doing that. MIchael Singer seems to differentiate between yoga and meditation as yoga trains you to focus your awareness, whilst meditation is just being aware of being aware. Either one will help with the process of this, both would be best. Maybe try one and see which best suits you or which one fits best into your schedule.
Again, results won’t be instant. Remember, see this as training for your true self to detach from your thoughts.
Also, people that start meditating regularly, often mention benefits like improved cognitive function and memory, which are often negatively affected by depression.
Advice 3: There are lots of meditation apps and YouTube videos with guided meditations. Pick one that you like and dedicate at least 15 min a day to meditation. If you are not sure yet whether you want to commit long-term, a good option is Sam Harris’ Waking Up. For those that either can’t afford membership or would like to try it he offers a one-year free full subscription to the app if you email support (no strings attached!).
Similarly, with Yoga there are plenty of channels that offer yoga teaching. One simple zero-cost way to start, which I found useful for a newbie like me during lockdown was Yoga with Adriene. She has a ton of videos for all different experience levels.
Get rid of the clutter
Start journaling – writing forces you to structure your thoughts more thoroughly and putting them on paper will also give you that detachment from them. It will help you observe them better and understand them, because understanding is key for change to happen.
As Tim Ferriss said in one of his videos on journaling and taking notes, releasing your thoughts on paper will declutter your mind of all the anxieties and distractions, it will be like you are almost physically getting rid of your depressive thoughts.
Journaling can also help in processing past traumas that have built up over the years. Writing them out will force you to look at them with different eyes. Re-read what you wrote a couple of weeks ago and you will almost definitely acquire a new perspective on how you view those events.
There are also professional programs that you can pay for, such as the Self Authoring Program, created by psychologists Jordan B. Peterson and Robert O. Pihl. This program is split into 3 parts: The Past Authoring, looking at significant past events of your life and analyzing them. The Present Authoring helps you look at your personality. And the Future Authoring helps you design a plan for your future.
If you don’t have enough money to buy it, there is one single writing exercise that I found has given me the most significant results and that Jordan Peterson has shared before in one of his lectures online.
This exercise was in the ‘Future Authoring Program’ section of the ‘Self Authoring Program’. Think about the most ideal you, what do you look like? what is your ideal job? etc. Write down what your life would look like then. Now think about the worst-case scenario. What would your life look like if you were to carry on with your destructive patterns? Describe both scenarios in as much detail as possible. This exercise shows you your two available extreme worlds. One heaven to strive for and one hell to run away from. This will generate the two forces for change: The ‘push’ away from the suffering, and the ‘pull’ towards the better you.
Advice 4: Start a journaling practice to declutter your mind. It can be a good way to start your day with ‘The Morning Pages’ as suggested in the Tim Ferriss’ video, or it can be in the evening before bed. Write whatever comes to mind. It’s up to you whether you want to revisit your journal entries or not, but either way it should help clear your thinking. You can also pay for access to services like the Self-Authoring Program, which offers tested templates and guidance on how to use reflective writing to improve your life.
Do not compare with anybody but yourself
This is a simple one. Stop comparing yourself with other people, everyone is different, if you want to be like somebody else then you have to trade everything else with them (their friends, family, upbringing, insecurities, etc.) – there is no point. Comparing with other people is a sure way to develop envy, and that will turn you into a bitter person, making it harder to fight depression when you also made yourself resentful.
“The more you define yourself compared to the people around you, the more you are lost.”
- Jay Shetty, Think Like a Monk
The only person you should be comparing yourself to is your older self. At the end of the day, this is your life and solely you should get to decide how you want to play the game. Life is the only game where you get to decide what the endgame is. Track your progress and look back on how you have changed.
Whilst envy is the mother of unhappiness, gratefulness is the mother of happiness. Make sure to count your blessings, and I mean it in the most literal sense. A lot of happy and most successful people on Earth have a gratitude practice. Tony Robbins shared his multiple times for example. Part of his morning routine consists of picking 3 moments he is grateful for and maximising his sense of gratitude, feeling as if he is there in that moment again.
They don’t necessarily have to be all profound reasons to be grateful, they can even be about something mundane like the weather or a stranger that smiled at you the day before. It can be something that happened recently, or your childhood and everything in between.
Advice 5: Do not compare yourself to others, instead track your progress towards achieving goals you set yourself and have a daily gratitude practice. Every day be grateful for three things in your life.
Replace bad questions with 'Lofty' ones
Change the questions you ask yourself. Jim Kwik talks about it in his book ‘Limitless’ where he describes how most people ask the wrong questions to their brains – why am I not good enough? Why can’t I find my partner? Why is my life so crap? In our brain there is this thing called reticular activating system (RAS), the coordinator that processes which stimuli are important and which can be ignored. These are all disempowering questions that instruct your RAS to filter through the information coming through your brain daily to answer those questions.
The problem is that those are leading questions, which assume something negative about yourself. The answers your RAS finds will then just reinforce the negative feelings about yourself. You are what you pay attention to, change your questions and you will be able to change your perspective.
Changing questions will also shift your focus from a helpless external locus of control to a strong internal locus of control.
What are external and internal locus of control? Jim Kwik explains it with this brilliant analogy when talking about limiting beliefs:
“There’s a metaphor I’ve always found useful when helping people to move away from limiting beliefs…the difference between limiting beliefs and a limitless mindset is like the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat. A thermometer has only one function: to react to the environment. It reads the temperature and nothing more. This is similar to how people commonly react to limiting beliefs. They read their sense of restriction, react in a constrained way to that, and conduct their lives in a limited way. On the other hand, a thermostat gauges the environment and makes the the environment react to it. If a thermostat notices that a room is too cold or too hot, it changes the enviornment to fit the ideal for which it is set. Similarly, if you encounter external or internal attempts to put constraints on you, you can act like a thermostat to reject those limiting beliefs and create an environment that aligns with your most ambitious goals.” – Jim Kwik, Limitless.
The thermometer is your external locus of control, and the thermostat is your internal one.
This is also talked about by Vishen Lakhiani, entrepreneur and founder of MindValley, in his talk ‘Techniques to Hit your Top 3 Goals Faster’, where he explores the concept of ‘Lofty Questions’.
Lofty questions are identity shift statements, asked in the form of a question. In the talk one of the example he uses is ‘Why am I surrounded by bliss and happiness no matter what?’. You can create your own question, and I recommend watching the video to see some of the other examples from the crowd.
Advice 6: Be creative and ask your lofty question to yourself once a day, at the end of your meditation. They tend to work better than daily affirmations as they ‘trick’ your brain to look for answers to answer the question as Vishen Lakhiani explains.
Take care of the basics
Eat, sleep and exercise right – these are part of the organic component to depression. Even though I put them last, they should be the number one thing you should focus on first. I know it’s not news, but there is a reason why they all go off the rails during depression.
When we have depression, these three are all dysregulated: our eating habits are all over the place (with more junk food usually), exercise goes out of the window, and sleep is either too little or too much.
So, what if we reverse engineer it? Would the opposite be true? Just like motion is emotion, by making sure we stay on top of these things, they might help us get out of the vicious cycle that the depression got us into in the first place.
‘Spark’ is one of those books that emphasise the importance of exercise and its benefits, amongst which depression and anxiety. You don’t have to become an Olympic athlete; all you need is 30 minutes of zone 2 cardio 5-6 times a week. There is plenty of choice on how to do this: do home workouts, sign-up to a gym, sign-up to a sport group, or even go on runs in nature.
Advice 7: Pick something that you like, not what is most convenient or ‘cool’ to do at the time; this will ensure you stick with it in the long run. And if you don’t like it, change it until you find something you like! Because you want this to become a part of your day that you ‘get to do’ not ‘have to do’. With the exercise advice I’d like to add that if you do it in nature it works even better. Nature has proven to be very beneficial for mental health.
There is growing evidence of an enteric nervous system that communicates directly with your brain, having profound effects on your mind. Most of your serotonin (your ‘feel good’ neurotransmitter) is produced in your gut by certain types of bacteria that are cultured when you eat whole, nutritious food, not junk fast food. Those bacteria can then have effects on your mental health more than you think. You are what you eat.
Advice 8: Get you diet right, eliminate the junk food and the sugar. Eating more fruits and vegetables is a good start.
Matthew Walker is the expert when it comes to sleep. He studied it for over 25 years and has summarised his work in the book ‘Why We Sleep’.
One of the most incredible facts that you should know about sleep is this: in the spring, when we change the clock losing one hour of sleep due to daylight savings, there is a 24% reported increase in heart attacks worldwide.
Sleep is a serious matter and it’s implicated in most of diseases, including major psychiatric ones such as depression. Therefore, taking care of your sleep will most definitely help in the fight against depression.
Advice 9: Be conscious of your sleep, make sure you get at around 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. If you struggle falling asleep, do not use any sleeping pills, alcohol, or drugs. They cause more harm than apparent good, as Matthew Walker explains.
Final thoughts
I did not mention asking for help or opening up to friends and family; if you are lucky enough to have someone to help you get through this, do reach out! That’s what friends and family are for!
These are some of the most impactful advice I found on dealing with depression.
I hope that using some (if not all) of these, will give you some relief in the fight against depression. Like I said at the beginning, many people got out of the vicious cycle of depression before, and I believe you can too.
Honorable mention: Feeling Good – The New Mood Therapy by David B. Burns. This is also another book that is highly recommended. It is more detailed look on the cognitive distortions we make when we have depression, which I might cover someday but did not feel to include in this post as it would have made too long otherwise. If you do have the time and are interested, this is the one.
I.A.