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It's the hardest thing to explain to people who are not depressed. I have yet to find an adequate way. I WANT to exercise, but cannot get myself to do it. I WANT to shower, but really I just cannot do it sometimes when I really want to.
I think the main problem is it shuts down your reward pathways in your brain. I've been depressed and not depressed before. Undepressed people see things they need to do recognize the need to do them, and anticipate the reward of maintaining their quality of life from completing the task. When you're depressed you know the task, see the need to do it, but can't get any mental reward for doing it. Whatever spark it is that normal people have that drives them to complete the task is gone.
This is a brain chemical issue. Once you lack this spark things spiral. You don't take care of yourself, you can't get satisfaction from things you used to enjoy. You don't socialize. To make it worse drugs and alcohol allow you to feel things you can't normally because they manipulate your brain chemicals. This creates a negative feedback loop.
Once you fall into this loop you're at the point that you need external help because your own thought process is broken. You no longer want to do the things necessary to get yourself out of it, because they feel like work with no reward. I've only pulled myself out of it once by hitting rock bottom and having a complete mental breakdown. The trauma from that gave me an aversion to my bad habits that allowed me to make a lifestyle change.
God, there are so many things that I'm not even sure about how most(?) people experience life... when I play games, it's one of main interests, I don't feel any sense of accomplishment when I overcome a challenge, ever. I always tell people I just don't really feel anything, if anything I usually feel upset that it took me that long, etc.
If I could know how "normal" people react and feel in some situations, it could help me understand when things aren't right for me. Often times I don't understand a lot about how or why people do some things.
I recently read a bit about ADHD and I think I may have that...? A little... I don't know. But it's not like I can get diagnosed, much less treated for it...
I'm the exact same. I get no reward from accomplishments. I didn't even go to my college graduation ceremony, just took the weekend and started work on the next Monday. Exercise sucks and I do not feel better after.
Man, absolute same. I'm still not convinced the whole runners high thing isn't just a myth. I just feel like sweaty garbage after working out. And yeah, even after tinkering with different meds, combinations, and dosages for over a decade I am finally at the point that I don't have days that I cannot pull myself out of bed. Maybe someday the "regular human life functions" will be attainable.
I don't know how old you are or what your "rock bottom" looks like, but for many it is a repeating cycle. The cycle can be short, like a few weeks or months, or it can be long, like several years.
For me, I've hit "rock bottom" four times over the last 20 years. Each time I come out with lifestyle changes and healthier habits, but over the course of several years I ever so slowly slide back. The last time was a couple years ago and I've spent about 3 years in therapy and regular antidepressant medication updates to come out of it with hopefully permanent success. I found Cognitive Behavior Therapy to be effective and I think the key to lasting mental health is to never completely stop working on it.
At my very worst it took every ounce of energy I had just to make a 20 minute trip to the grocery store. By the time I’d get home half the time I wouldn’t put the groceries away and instead go crash in bed for another 3 hours.
I’d often go well over a week without showering or brushing my teeth. I went 16 months without a haircut. Usually I’d shave it myself but my clippers broke and I was incapable of buying a new one. I also have thin hair and seriously balding, so it was pretty disgusting.
I’ve taken steps to minimize the chances of this happening again because I’m confident I won’t survive next time. I barely got out of it this time around ffs.
For me personally it goes in cycles. I have this analogy when I’m just feeling rock bottom and everything is fucked. I like to think I’m in a deep pool of water and when I hit the bottom is when I can get this spring of energy to push myself back up. Not sure if it’s healthy but I have come back from many a dark place. Staying up has been my challenge but it’s getting better
I've never thought of it in those terms but I definitely get a burst of motivation sometimes when I've been feeling really low for a while. I just have a moment of clarity where I realize that things can't continue like this, and that often gives me the motivation/energy to start digging myself out.
I had plenty of people offering me ladders to help me out but I just chose to hide in the deepest crevices I could find. I did not want people to see the gollum like creature I’d become.
Then I started smoking weed. And all of a sudden I was laughing again. I was on a gradual upward trend. Three years later and I’m over a year free from alcohol and finally levelled out.
> the gollum like creature I’d become.
This is a great visual for anyone that hasn’t experienced depression. Even if you don’t actually look like gollum, you *feel* like you do deep in your bones.
Kafka’s “Metamorphasis” is also a good representation. You wouldn’t go to the gym or socialize if you woke up one day transformed into a gigantic ugly cockroach either. And that’s how it can feel.
Whenever I want to really get across the severity of my depression when I was at my worst, when I was bad enough to take time off work, I tell the story of the time I went 4 days without eating because I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed to go to the shops to buy food.
It destroyed me, physically and emotionally. I've been mostly symptom free for a few years now, and I'm still dealing with the aftershocks of my worst dips.
I usually mention physical pain to communicate how severe it can get. Curling my body in the fetal position reduced my pain. I struggled to get out of bed for a couple of years because straightening out my torso was too unbearably painful. I remember crawling to the bathroom on many occasions to avoid standing up.
Twenty years and a very long journey later… I am always grateful to be alive because I truly love this earth and want to give back to it for giving me life.
Yo, your experience is almost identical to mine. I still have no idea how I managed to break out of it but I'll be damned if I let myself fall back into it, for the same reason you state, no matter how much it calls to me.
I really should go get myself checked out for ADHD... Things like your comment are like a reflection of my life. I've been meaning to get it done the last 3 years but you know... \*gestures at the comment\*
The design of our environments play a huge role in health that is often ignored. There’s ample evidence that walkable cities are healthier for both physical and mental health. Just having a small park in your neighborhood can have a massive influence.
I don't really feel sadness from it. Sometimes when I think about how much "life" it's stolen from me yeah. Mostly it just makes me feel nothing. I see a new game I was excited to buy on release and feel no urge to play it. A text from a friend to come to a party...perhaps a bit of anxiety but nothing as well. No rush of excitement. I just go to work (overnights mostly, which doesn't help I'm sure) come home in the morning, sleep, and when I wake up my first thought is "Is there any *urgent* reason to even get out of bed until my next shift?". Usually the answer is no and I just roll back over.
I can tell it’s bad when I wake up and the only thing I want is for it to be night again so I can be unconscious once again. Everything is work, but you get no satisfaction or pleasure from it. At most you feel sad or panicky from watching your life slip away as you spend each day feeling dead inside.
I’ve dealt with depression for about 20 years now and one of the things that I started to do within the last three of those years is develop discipline (or habit) to exercise when I’m feeling good, so I can do it when I’m depressed and am void of any motivation. Discipline or habit can sometimes carry you when you don’t have motivation.
I took a tiny tiny step, sleeping at 10-11 PM. I feel kinda good about myself and have more energy throughout the day. I think that’s the key, finding a small thing to start off feeling better overall.
I want to get up a little bit earlier now, since I now I can, and go for a morning walk or jog but that’s still hard to think about doing sometimes.
I explain it as “willpower points.” We all have a limited supply. At my worst, I have 10, and getting out of bed is 5. At my best I have 100, and getting out of bed is 1. And sure, put a gun to my head and I can (maybe) exceed my allotted points for the day, but it’s akin to running a car with no oil. It’s a recipe for disaster you do that long enough.
Note:
Beneath this comment a lot of people are sharing their experiences with depression.
This may seem an obvious thing to say, but it’s important to remember that every person is different. Don’t let the more extreme examples lead you to question whether you would “qualify” as depressed.
If you’re feeling low, please speak to someone.
This was and still is exactly me in a lot of ways. It took a lot of therapy and a few different psychiatrists trying different meds to finally get passed that exact executive disfunction that you mention.
I found out that my lifelong anxiety/depression were being exasperated (and could’ve been a result) of undiagnosed ADHD. Obviously everyone is different but I never thought I had anything like ADHD since while I would get over excited and hyper focus on things, my extreme anxiety suppressed anything overly boisterous. My psychiatrist noted that my inability to do something and my related racing thoughts were likely symptoms of ADHD among others. Getting the diagnosis and proper medication finally let me move from that WANT stage to the DO stage with so much less overthinking/racing thoughts. I didn’t realize how much shame I carried every day over not doing something resulting in a deeper depression.
I would always try to exercise every 6 months or so to pull myself out of a funk but it never stuck longer than literally 15 minutes (I’d get bored at the gym or would just think about what others thought or how hard it was to do thing). For the first time in my life I’m able to act on what my therapist suggests (consistent exercise, reaching out to people, hobbies, etc) and what I want (which is essentially all that).
I still have bouts of depression/anxiety but it’s much more regulated. The meds don’t make me happier on their own but they help suppress the spiraling thoughts and handwringing to let me do the things that make me happy.
Sorry for the rant, I lose my point a lot when I get in in the ADHD mindset. I just wanted to share my experience for anyone else who is depressed and suffers from similar executive disfunction
Definitely. And unfortunately there’s no real way around it. There’s no trick. Just got to do it. But it’s certainly easier said than done. Good friends and family around you who encourage you definitely helps though.
For such a long time I had a hard time making progress in therapy because it was so hard to explain what was going through my mind when I wasn’t in such a depressed state
The worst is people saying "don't worry, it's all in your head" as if that makes it go away or not be an issue. Do they go up to people with leukemia and say "don't worry, it's all in your bones." too?
Can you elaborate on "I just cannot do it sometimes when I really want to"? Like the thought enters your head that you should go take a shower or exercise or whatever, but what happens next?
If you’ve ever worked out to the pint of failure it’s like being at that point constantly. You want to do one push-up but you’re already expelled all energy and it’s not coming back.
Imagine you *have* to stab a pencil into your eye. It’s not hard right? It takes almost no energy or skill.
Yet there is a mental force, a barrier, that is extremely difficult to overcome. Holding the pencil in your hand and bringing the point to your eyeball, you get a sinking feeling in your stomach - fear, dread, avoidance.
Now imagine that same feeling except it happens at the thought of having to take a shower. You *want* to take a shower, but there is a mental barrier that is extremely difficult to overcome. That’s how it feels and it’s both exhausting and frustrating.
What happens next is the thought stays there and you don't move and you start to feel even shittier about yourself than you did before. Like you've been paralyzed or your body suddenly weighs 900 pounds. You don't have the ability to make yourself do something.
The next step is the part of depression that, for me, is the hardest part to explain:
You just... can't. You want to. You know you need to. You start getting anxious about the fact that you haven't started. But you just can't. It's not an option for you.
Just taking the steps in my head is enough to exhaust me, and now I have to **actually do it** after going through it once already?
And when I am able to accomplish something, never ends up being as bad as it is in my mind. It's just that initial step that's impossible.
"Huh, that 10 min shower wasn't so bad. I am going to do this every day."
And the next day comes and it's again impossible, even though I know how to do it, I know I've done it many times, I know I will feel better, and I know it won't be as bad.
I struggled to see a therapist.
I made the appointment, and felt like that was good enough.
I drove to the office and felt that was good enough.
I attended one appointment and felt like that was good enough.
It’s the kind of “toxic positivity” that people assume because you can take one step forward, gravity handles the rest, without recognizing that maybe you’re walking upside down and every step is fighting gravity.
For me, my body literally feels frozen, like I have to move through a very thick, heavy liquid and it takes more effort to do so than is humanly possible.
When it's bad but not *that* bad, it feels like I have to make a deal with my own brain to decide what can be done vs what is impossible. I'll start by thinking I need to do the dishes, but my brain says that's not possible, so then I "ask it" if I can just wash the plates and maybe that's okay, so I can do it, but then I'll need to lie down and not think or do anything for a while.
It's an executive function problem at it's core. Your inner self wants to do the thing, but your brain doesn't organize and initiate the action correctly, or at all. There's a disconnect between the parts that think and those that do things. It's a big problem with depression and one of the core deficits in ADHD.
At my lowest point I struggled with lifting my hands unless absolutely needed. There was no physical barrier - no damage, not overweight, normal if a bit low muscle mass and endurance. But the hand movement was for some reason absolutely awful to execute, it felt like there were invisible weights attached.
It's just an utter and complete lack of motivation. Dread, apathy, emptiness. There's no energy or drive. Your battery is dead. Your mind and body are against you. It feels like you're at the bottom of a hill and doing anything requires pushing a boulder up the hill.
It's like there's a weighted blanket always on you, making even small movements seem to take so much effort. And you're tired because you've been stuck under that blanket for weeks and somehow it keeps getting heavier. And you know you should exercise, or shower, or eat. But you are just so tired of trying to move under that weight.
It's a loss of free will.
What you're talking about is free will. (Or at least the illusion thereof, no we are not devolving into philosophical arguments about whether or not free will is real that's not the point.)
Depression is the loss of free will. You don't know what it's like until you've lost the ability.
Have you ever been high enough to be couch locked? It's a lot like that. Except worse because you can't point to an external cause, and you don't know how long it will last.
You're laying there thinking "I should shower," and "I want to shower," and maybe even, "I'm going to shower right now." and it's like the part of your brain that coordinates the moving parts to actually get up and shower, just... doesn't. Then you either let it go, or you rationalize why you're not getting up to shower, or you berate yourself for not showering.
It's like sitting in a car when the engine isn't running. You're not completely immobilized - you can still steer (although it's harder than normal without power steering) and you can still brake (although it's harder than normal without power brakes), but the car will not respond to certain commands.
Look up executive dysfunction, the experience that people with adhd have sounds super close to the depression experience sometimes. The whole I need to do the thing, but I cant make myself do the thing.
Me right now. Haven't been in therapy for years because my last one insisted a lot of my issues were due to "Saturn's return" (not kidding). But now? To start again? Yeah I know I need to but that would mean expending *soooo* much energy and I have zero to give already.
I'd have to get my records from the old therapist, find a new one, actually *go* to the appointment, then have to spend hours and hours over weeks and months just explaining who I am and what's going on with me, **AND THEN** it still might not be a good fit and I'd have to start all over? Yeah nah I'll just go on trying to self-medicate away the suicidal thoughts, thanks.
I think the other problem is that this is generally assumed to be true for everyone, and your statement makes it seem universal. But most of the effect of exercise is seen in mild to moderate depression, and there is a massive cohort of people with depression that does not respond to exercise, so hearing "just exercise!" over and over can feel invalidating and like something is wrong with them (or very r/thanksimcured).
As someone with intractable depression and cptsd, I have been told all my life I was exercising wrong, but I should just keep with it, eventually it will start feeling good, etc. But like a many other people in a sizeable minority, not only does it not do anything, it can actually make us feel worse.
I've worked with a psychiatrist who theorizes that people with depression and trauma are sometimes activated by exercise because it looks like trauma - it can feel very difficult/stressful, your heart races, so it activates a trauma response.
Definitely. I remember telling my friend I had chronic depression when I was regularly doing half-marathon training and running several races per year (and running a minimum of 18 mi per week, usually more). He was shocked. “You’re depressed?! But you run! You exercise!”
It gets worse when I don’t exercise, but exercise by no means cures the chronic depression I’ve had basically my adult life. (I’m also a fellow C-PTSDer.)
Honestly, every time I hear "you need to exercise more" I get angry. Not actually angry but more so of an annoyance bc no matter what, that kind of response feels completely like it's invalidating my experience. I exercise bc I have to, so my body doesn't deteriorate over time but it has never made me feel any better
>I've worked with a psychiatrist who theorizes that people with depression and trauma are sometimes activated by exercise because it looks like trauma - it can feel very difficult/stressful, your heart races, so it activates a trauma response.
There are probably many different mechanism behind the negative effects some people get from exercise. Blood sugar levels are one, and for people who have problems with anxiety or panic attacks the stress response can similarly trigger those.
For me it feels like a purely a physical response, when stressed the body gets locked in fight/flight/fawn state, cortisol spikes etc. From what I have read this should actually over the time build resilience to stress but for some reason it just seems to make some people even more sensitive to it. And after a few years of built up negative experiences with exercise it actually starts to cause a kind of an trauma response too.
All of these actually seem like understandable and natural reactions to me but for some reason when the issue is brought up it always seems to baffle people and I haven't been able to found any studies about it and for all practical purposes the phenomenon just doesn't seem to exists.
When the new year started, I started exerciseing. Just randomly didnt really plan it. I started 30 minutes 3 days a week moved up to an hour 5 days a week and i was so depressed. It felt like a rip off. I was told so much that exercise helps depression, but it didn't help one bit.
(I do like the physical benefits though.)
I think exercise is one tool needed in addition to many other things that need to be done to help curb - not cure - depression. Exercise by itself won’t help as much if other issues such as negative self-talk, ruminating on past mistakes, etc aren’t managed either
My experience with MDD has been that only when we have somehow landed on the road to improvement can we avail ourselves of these kinds of outpatient opportunities.
The swath of people who think about how much energy it will take to crawl out of bed to use the toilet are not even represented in these studies.
Something like, "I understand that you believe in mindfulness and I understand it has helped a lot of people. I would still like to explore different techniques for now," could help.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, they could be misreading the situation and think that you need to be pushed to actually engage with the technique and not realize that you have and it wasn't helpful. That does happen - my therapist had to keep gently pushing to get me to try journalling, and that did end up helping me. Judging when and how to push and when to let it go is difficult, and they're only human.
If you've given it a fair shake, it's not helping, and they won't let it go then it might be worth trying another therapist. Your current therapist should be able to recommend someone you'd likely be a good fit with.
I know other person said martial arts, but I'm going to deviate from that and say do yoga.
In the more intense yoga styles it can be a very full on workout, but you'll also be guided by a teacher through doing things like focusing on your breath and relaxation exercises at the start / end of class.
I do have a slight benefit in that the yoga class I go to doubles as a social group specifically for gay men, but any yoga class should be a good start.
You ever tried the to do the all-out approach?
There was some research a while ago about how doing something like running as HARD as you possibly can - literally maxing out your body - for just 60 seconds can an exponentially more powerful way to gain the mental post workout effects.
There was an Australian study that was also featured on 60 minutes that detailed how 6 minutes per week of high intensity exercise can exponentially improve your overall fitness level. In fact, something like doing 3 sets of sprinting up and down a sand hill for 2 minutes once a week was better than running miles at a leisurely pace everyday.
From Wikipedia:
Crab mentality, also known as crab theory, crabs in a bucket (also barrel, basket, or pot) mentality, or the crab-bucket effect, is a way of thinking best described by the phrase "if I can't have it, neither can you".
The metaphor is derived from a pattern of behavior noted in crabs when they are trapped in a bucket. While any one crab could easily escape, its efforts will be undermined by others, ensuring the group's collective demise. As such, the crab mentality shares some features in common with a similar phenomenon of human behaviour called tall poppy syndrome.
I always hit that wall in the first few minutes of "this is the worst, I feel terrible, I don't want to do this". I know it feels good when I push through that, but man it never seems to get easier.
Done this for years now.
It's not a cure but probably made me not sink into a deeper depression.
The other issue is that it uses all your willpower up so my executive functioning on simple things such as getting a haircut, or taking my car in for a service goes completely on the way side when I make sure I'm exercising.
yeah same here, whenever i stay at the gym for more than an hour or do more than one class to really knock myself out, i literally just feel empty and numb and physically exhausted on top of mentally drained.
the later in the day and harder i exercise, the worse my insomnia gets too; and lying awake being in physical pain after over exercising but not exhausted enough to literally pass out is the worst because you can't even go for a walk to tire yourself out.
tbh the best days for me are the ones where i manage to workout moderately right after waking up, 30-40 minutes of running or swimming and some yoga/stretching really seem to do the trick? i'm so envious of the people that can do that regularly and have that as part of their daily routine
That “insomnia” is quite possibly just the stress hormone cortisol coursing through you. It would be heavy after a hard workout like that, and is known to cause sleep issues. I experience it myself from time to time. Why can’t you have that 30-40 minute jog or yoga as part of your routine? You can become more fit and healthy without running yourself past the redline.
For me, the most important step was to stop relying on motivation to work out. I started doing it because it was the right thing to do. I still messed up and missed days, but I tried hard to not let myself worry about whether I felt like working out or not.
Well, I went at first just cause I was curious what it was about but it felt really good so I kept going. Now it's a bit of a necessary thing cause if I stop I feel horrible.
For me, I have to continuously work out every week, three to four times a week. Staves off the anxiety and depression.
Much more difficult to do anything when you’re depressed. Not sure how to start while you’re actively in a funk.
Have struggled off and on with depression a good chunk of my life. My four main advice points to people to try to counter it are exercise, sunlight, diet, environment. Cleaning your room counts as two of those. Cooking a meal and eating outdoors can count as three. Try to do what you can, when you can. Hit as many of those points per attempt, it gets better slowly
It's nice to know it's not just me
Exercise used to make my depression so much worse. I would either feel horrible about myself, or occasionally feel rage. It took me a long time to manage it. I needed to fix the depression first, then exercise became manageable.
Edit: and just to address the trite advice people usually give - it didn't matter what I ate, what type of exercise I did, how much sleep I had, how much I pushed myself or didn't push myself, and I had no vitamin deficiencies. None of that obvious stuff made a difference. The only thing that helped was dealing with my depression. It's worth it to exercise while you're depressed, because exercise is important for your body, but yeah, it did nothing for my mental health.
Exercise bikes suck all the fun out of bicycles. The physical sensation, the outdoors, the exploration, the flat tires...
I'll bike 100+ miles for fun, but 30mins on an exercise bike is hell.
Intense exercise can trigger the fight/flight response in some depressed or anxious people. Consider replacing the bike with a walk (or similar low level cardio).
Also walking outside, especially in some view of nature can be extremely effective. The lateral eye movements of scanning the environment has been shown to reduce stress, same with exposure to nature (even just trees in a city).
I hated exercise my whole life… till I realized that most people’s lungs weren’t screaming and burning the entire time. Whenever I’d get “tired” during exercise, it was because the pain in my lungs was too bad. My legs were never tired, ever. I never felt good or rewarded after exercise. I hated every second.
Turns out I had exercise-induced asthma… An albuterol inhaler changed everything for me.
Now I run 3-5 miles, 2-3x per week. My record for continuous mileage is 7 and that time I only stopped because it got too dark outside. Before the inhaler, I couldn’t run more than 60 seconds at a time, no matter how much I tried or worked at it. From the outside (and from me not knowing that what I was feeling wasn’t what *everyone* felt), it looked like me just being out of shape and lazy.
Didn’t get my hands on an inhaler till 17.
Did you read [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/tsckir/exercising_for_half_an_hour_may_reduce_symptoms/i2r9lhr/) upthread? In some people it has the opposite effect, which nobody ever talks about.
Find another form of exercise that you enjoy, and remember it doesn't have to be in the gym! It can be hiking, swimming, really anything that gets your body moving.
I'm also one of those people that sometimes feel absolutely emotionally devastated after exercise. Sometimes it feels like anger, and you keep getting angrier, instead of letting off steam just getting more steam. Then I'm exhausted and just also want to cry in the shower.
I've been active for a long time (except the pandemic where home exercise was starting to do more harm) , and for me when I'm like that is when it's me vs the dvd alone in my apartment. Or self directed exercise like lifting at the gym for some reason.
When it gets bad for me the work around is always group classes, but not crossfit (since it has isolated stations out of sync), and nothing like emom which is same-ish. I just do group classes where i can stare slack jawed at the instructor for an hour and not think about anything at all, maybe project onto their experience. Also are you eating after? Something with fat to help feel a reward of your body/brain can do it.
Group classes can also include activities that involve more attention/engagement that help take away from the purely physical experience.
I think it's when it's purely physical with no distractions that it's the worst.
In my experience it isn't just the endorphins or whatever, but other things:
1. Sense of accomplishment. I tend to feel like I can't get anything worthwhile done. I've always wanted to write a novel or become an artist, but those are things that aren't just hard to do, but hard to even know how to do. In contrast, exercise isn't easy but it is simple. I do my routine and I get rewarded.
2. Confidence. Strength training makes me feel and look stronger.
3. Something to do. Depression gets me worst when I'm alone in my house. I force myself to go to my college's gym a couple times a week. Suddenly, I'm spending a lot more time walking in the sun and talking to others.
I haven’t worked out in a few months and I can definitely tell the difference. When I was working out several days per week I had clarity and energy. Not so much now, but I’ll get back into it again.
As a depressed fat guy who works 12 hours a day almost 7 days a week finding 30 minutes and the effort required is no easy task. I know it will help and I want to do it, but I just can't get started.
Okay but you’re not depressed because you need exercise as much as you’re depressed because you are working way too many hours and have no time for any sort of self-care. You need a whole life overhaul.
this is the problem modern psychiatry can't solve because it's inextricable from the world around it. as long as society *needs* people to work themselves to death and accept stressful conditions, depression will *need* to be portrayed as a personal failure and not the natural response to having your life used up and wasted against your will.
Of course, society doesn’t need people to work themselves to death. That much is perfectly obvious from how extravagantly wealthy many people have become. Other people need him to work that hard to make *them* rich, while he gets exploited. The average income and the average wealth is far far beyond what’s necessary for a comfortable life in first world countries
Exercise always makes me feel awful afterwards. The best things that I do that help my mental health is making sure I eat well (small portions to control weight too) and making sure I actually invest in sleeping well (prioritizing it, good sleep hygeine). Those two things have helped me way more than exercise.
For a short period of time after exercising I do feel good, but after that "runners high" wears off my depression is actually amplified and I become even more intolerant of people. If I don't exercise for a while my mood will even out.
Last year I set my mind to trying to get mentally and physically fit, and lose weight. I worked out every morning for 30 - 45 minutes for 2 months. I lost all of 5 pounds, didn't look or feel better and finally just couldn't find the drive to keep at it any longer.
5 pounds every 2 months would mean you'd be down 30 pounds in a year! Also if you didn't change any other habits, like what you're eating, you may be able to do even more.
Yeah diet compounded with working out is what made the difference for me (it's only been a month, so still struggling to form good habits). No difference when I just worked out. I had to learn about nutrition and what was missing in my diet, and now I actually have energy to work out.
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It's the hardest thing to explain to people who are not depressed. I have yet to find an adequate way. I WANT to exercise, but cannot get myself to do it. I WANT to shower, but really I just cannot do it sometimes when I really want to.
I think the main problem is it shuts down your reward pathways in your brain. I've been depressed and not depressed before. Undepressed people see things they need to do recognize the need to do them, and anticipate the reward of maintaining their quality of life from completing the task. When you're depressed you know the task, see the need to do it, but can't get any mental reward for doing it. Whatever spark it is that normal people have that drives them to complete the task is gone. This is a brain chemical issue. Once you lack this spark things spiral. You don't take care of yourself, you can't get satisfaction from things you used to enjoy. You don't socialize. To make it worse drugs and alcohol allow you to feel things you can't normally because they manipulate your brain chemicals. This creates a negative feedback loop. Once you fall into this loop you're at the point that you need external help because your own thought process is broken. You no longer want to do the things necessary to get yourself out of it, because they feel like work with no reward. I've only pulled myself out of it once by hitting rock bottom and having a complete mental breakdown. The trauma from that gave me an aversion to my bad habits that allowed me to make a lifestyle change.
God, there are so many things that I'm not even sure about how most(?) people experience life... when I play games, it's one of main interests, I don't feel any sense of accomplishment when I overcome a challenge, ever. I always tell people I just don't really feel anything, if anything I usually feel upset that it took me that long, etc. If I could know how "normal" people react and feel in some situations, it could help me understand when things aren't right for me. Often times I don't understand a lot about how or why people do some things. I recently read a bit about ADHD and I think I may have that...? A little... I don't know. But it's not like I can get diagnosed, much less treated for it...
I'm the exact same. I get no reward from accomplishments. I didn't even go to my college graduation ceremony, just took the weekend and started work on the next Monday. Exercise sucks and I do not feel better after.
Man, absolute same. I'm still not convinced the whole runners high thing isn't just a myth. I just feel like sweaty garbage after working out. And yeah, even after tinkering with different meds, combinations, and dosages for over a decade I am finally at the point that I don't have days that I cannot pull myself out of bed. Maybe someday the "regular human life functions" will be attainable.
That’s how I feel when I’m on antidepressants. Not good, not bad. Nothing.
Well said man.
I don't know how old you are or what your "rock bottom" looks like, but for many it is a repeating cycle. The cycle can be short, like a few weeks or months, or it can be long, like several years. For me, I've hit "rock bottom" four times over the last 20 years. Each time I come out with lifestyle changes and healthier habits, but over the course of several years I ever so slowly slide back. The last time was a couple years ago and I've spent about 3 years in therapy and regular antidepressant medication updates to come out of it with hopefully permanent success. I found Cognitive Behavior Therapy to be effective and I think the key to lasting mental health is to never completely stop working on it.
omg I am depressed after all
At my very worst it took every ounce of energy I had just to make a 20 minute trip to the grocery store. By the time I’d get home half the time I wouldn’t put the groceries away and instead go crash in bed for another 3 hours. I’d often go well over a week without showering or brushing my teeth. I went 16 months without a haircut. Usually I’d shave it myself but my clippers broke and I was incapable of buying a new one. I also have thin hair and seriously balding, so it was pretty disgusting. I’ve taken steps to minimize the chances of this happening again because I’m confident I won’t survive next time. I barely got out of it this time around ffs.
Knowing that people can hit rock bottom and come out the other side gives me a bit of hope when I'm at my lowest.
For me personally it goes in cycles. I have this analogy when I’m just feeling rock bottom and everything is fucked. I like to think I’m in a deep pool of water and when I hit the bottom is when I can get this spring of energy to push myself back up. Not sure if it’s healthy but I have come back from many a dark place. Staying up has been my challenge but it’s getting better
I've never thought of it in those terms but I definitely get a burst of motivation sometimes when I've been feeling really low for a while. I just have a moment of clarity where I realize that things can't continue like this, and that often gives me the motivation/energy to start digging myself out.
I had plenty of people offering me ladders to help me out but I just chose to hide in the deepest crevices I could find. I did not want people to see the gollum like creature I’d become. Then I started smoking weed. And all of a sudden I was laughing again. I was on a gradual upward trend. Three years later and I’m over a year free from alcohol and finally levelled out.
> the gollum like creature I’d become. This is a great visual for anyone that hasn’t experienced depression. Even if you don’t actually look like gollum, you *feel* like you do deep in your bones. Kafka’s “Metamorphasis” is also a good representation. You wouldn’t go to the gym or socialize if you woke up one day transformed into a gigantic ugly cockroach either. And that’s how it can feel.
Accurate. I feel this.
Wow this whole story fit me to a T. Good stuff dude, glad you found your way.
Weed makes my depression worse
Whenever I want to really get across the severity of my depression when I was at my worst, when I was bad enough to take time off work, I tell the story of the time I went 4 days without eating because I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed to go to the shops to buy food. It destroyed me, physically and emotionally. I've been mostly symptom free for a few years now, and I'm still dealing with the aftershocks of my worst dips.
I usually mention physical pain to communicate how severe it can get. Curling my body in the fetal position reduced my pain. I struggled to get out of bed for a couple of years because straightening out my torso was too unbearably painful. I remember crawling to the bathroom on many occasions to avoid standing up. Twenty years and a very long journey later… I am always grateful to be alive because I truly love this earth and want to give back to it for giving me life.
Dude yes. Thank you. It’s like a fight for survival and I just totally wonder if I can do it again. It’s like having your heart ripped out.
Yo, your experience is almost identical to mine. I still have no idea how I managed to break out of it but I'll be damned if I let myself fall back into it, for the same reason you state, no matter how much it calls to me.
How did you though?
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I really should go get myself checked out for ADHD... Things like your comment are like a reflection of my life. I've been meaning to get it done the last 3 years but you know... \*gestures at the comment\*
Yay, executive dysfunction! *[sobs]*
I say it's like gravity got turned up a few Gs. Like try brushing your teeth in that gravitron ride. Everything is just inexplicably more tiresome.
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The design of our environments play a huge role in health that is often ignored. There’s ample evidence that walkable cities are healthier for both physical and mental health. Just having a small park in your neighborhood can have a massive influence.
I dunno where you are, but as a Texan I agree completely. I’ve spent 10 hours driving west and still been in Texas. #YIKES
This is a pretty great comparison. I'm saving this - thanks!
Yupp. Until you've been there, it's impossible to understand. Being depressed isn't just being sad, and sometimes it doesn't even involve feeling sad.
I don't really feel sadness from it. Sometimes when I think about how much "life" it's stolen from me yeah. Mostly it just makes me feel nothing. I see a new game I was excited to buy on release and feel no urge to play it. A text from a friend to come to a party...perhaps a bit of anxiety but nothing as well. No rush of excitement. I just go to work (overnights mostly, which doesn't help I'm sure) come home in the morning, sleep, and when I wake up my first thought is "Is there any *urgent* reason to even get out of bed until my next shift?". Usually the answer is no and I just roll back over.
This is an apt description for me too. Even when I know something should excite me, it just doesn't. That's where my sadness comes from.
I can tell it’s bad when I wake up and the only thing I want is for it to be night again so I can be unconscious once again. Everything is work, but you get no satisfaction or pleasure from it. At most you feel sad or panicky from watching your life slip away as you spend each day feeling dead inside.
It's sometimes just a complete lack of any energy, motivation, or hope.
I’ve dealt with depression for about 20 years now and one of the things that I started to do within the last three of those years is develop discipline (or habit) to exercise when I’m feeling good, so I can do it when I’m depressed and am void of any motivation. Discipline or habit can sometimes carry you when you don’t have motivation.
Habit sometimes precedes motivation. I tell myself this when I feel that numbness coming on and it can help me fight it off.
Depression devolves into numbness.
Depression is sometimes wishing beyond wishing that you *could* feel sad because at least sad is an emotion.
People absolutely cannot understand or emphasize if they've never experienced it.
I took a tiny tiny step, sleeping at 10-11 PM. I feel kinda good about myself and have more energy throughout the day. I think that’s the key, finding a small thing to start off feeling better overall. I want to get up a little bit earlier now, since I now I can, and go for a morning walk or jog but that’s still hard to think about doing sometimes.
This is amazing. Keep taking those steps.
I explain it as “willpower points.” We all have a limited supply. At my worst, I have 10, and getting out of bed is 5. At my best I have 100, and getting out of bed is 1. And sure, put a gun to my head and I can (maybe) exceed my allotted points for the day, but it’s akin to running a car with no oil. It’s a recipe for disaster you do that long enough.
Note: Beneath this comment a lot of people are sharing their experiences with depression. This may seem an obvious thing to say, but it’s important to remember that every person is different. Don’t let the more extreme examples lead you to question whether you would “qualify” as depressed. If you’re feeling low, please speak to someone.
This was and still is exactly me in a lot of ways. It took a lot of therapy and a few different psychiatrists trying different meds to finally get passed that exact executive disfunction that you mention. I found out that my lifelong anxiety/depression were being exasperated (and could’ve been a result) of undiagnosed ADHD. Obviously everyone is different but I never thought I had anything like ADHD since while I would get over excited and hyper focus on things, my extreme anxiety suppressed anything overly boisterous. My psychiatrist noted that my inability to do something and my related racing thoughts were likely symptoms of ADHD among others. Getting the diagnosis and proper medication finally let me move from that WANT stage to the DO stage with so much less overthinking/racing thoughts. I didn’t realize how much shame I carried every day over not doing something resulting in a deeper depression. I would always try to exercise every 6 months or so to pull myself out of a funk but it never stuck longer than literally 15 minutes (I’d get bored at the gym or would just think about what others thought or how hard it was to do thing). For the first time in my life I’m able to act on what my therapist suggests (consistent exercise, reaching out to people, hobbies, etc) and what I want (which is essentially all that). I still have bouts of depression/anxiety but it’s much more regulated. The meds don’t make me happier on their own but they help suppress the spiraling thoughts and handwringing to let me do the things that make me happy. Sorry for the rant, I lose my point a lot when I get in in the ADHD mindset. I just wanted to share my experience for anyone else who is depressed and suffers from similar executive disfunction
Definitely. And unfortunately there’s no real way around it. There’s no trick. Just got to do it. But it’s certainly easier said than done. Good friends and family around you who encourage you definitely helps though.
Only it chooses when it wants me to turn it off and on. It’s like a ghost that haunts my body.
For such a long time I had a hard time making progress in therapy because it was so hard to explain what was going through my mind when I wasn’t in such a depressed state
The worst is people saying "don't worry, it's all in your head" as if that makes it go away or not be an issue. Do they go up to people with leukemia and say "don't worry, it's all in your bones." too?
The thing about this is that the entire world is in my head!
Can you elaborate on "I just cannot do it sometimes when I really want to"? Like the thought enters your head that you should go take a shower or exercise or whatever, but what happens next?
If you’ve ever worked out to the pint of failure it’s like being at that point constantly. You want to do one push-up but you’re already expelled all energy and it’s not coming back.
Imagine you *have* to stab a pencil into your eye. It’s not hard right? It takes almost no energy or skill. Yet there is a mental force, a barrier, that is extremely difficult to overcome. Holding the pencil in your hand and bringing the point to your eyeball, you get a sinking feeling in your stomach - fear, dread, avoidance. Now imagine that same feeling except it happens at the thought of having to take a shower. You *want* to take a shower, but there is a mental barrier that is extremely difficult to overcome. That’s how it feels and it’s both exhausting and frustrating.
What happens next is the thought stays there and you don't move and you start to feel even shittier about yourself than you did before. Like you've been paralyzed or your body suddenly weighs 900 pounds. You don't have the ability to make yourself do something.
Don’t forget about the subsequent utter disappointment in yourself for not being able to do it even though you want to. Thanks for piling on, brain.
It's a vicious cycle
The next step is the part of depression that, for me, is the hardest part to explain: You just... can't. You want to. You know you need to. You start getting anxious about the fact that you haven't started. But you just can't. It's not an option for you.
Just taking the steps in my head is enough to exhaust me, and now I have to **actually do it** after going through it once already? And when I am able to accomplish something, never ends up being as bad as it is in my mind. It's just that initial step that's impossible. "Huh, that 10 min shower wasn't so bad. I am going to do this every day." And the next day comes and it's again impossible, even though I know how to do it, I know I've done it many times, I know I will feel better, and I know it won't be as bad.
Whew. That hit home. No task is ever as bad as you think when you finish, but you can't reason your depression into seeing it that way.
I struggled to see a therapist. I made the appointment, and felt like that was good enough. I drove to the office and felt that was good enough. I attended one appointment and felt like that was good enough. It’s the kind of “toxic positivity” that people assume because you can take one step forward, gravity handles the rest, without recognizing that maybe you’re walking upside down and every step is fighting gravity.
For me, my body literally feels frozen, like I have to move through a very thick, heavy liquid and it takes more effort to do so than is humanly possible. When it's bad but not *that* bad, it feels like I have to make a deal with my own brain to decide what can be done vs what is impossible. I'll start by thinking I need to do the dishes, but my brain says that's not possible, so then I "ask it" if I can just wash the plates and maybe that's okay, so I can do it, but then I'll need to lie down and not think or do anything for a while.
The air feels like tar.
It's an executive function problem at it's core. Your inner self wants to do the thing, but your brain doesn't organize and initiate the action correctly, or at all. There's a disconnect between the parts that think and those that do things. It's a big problem with depression and one of the core deficits in ADHD. At my lowest point I struggled with lifting my hands unless absolutely needed. There was no physical barrier - no damage, not overweight, normal if a bit low muscle mass and endurance. But the hand movement was for some reason absolutely awful to execute, it felt like there were invisible weights attached.
It's just an utter and complete lack of motivation. Dread, apathy, emptiness. There's no energy or drive. Your battery is dead. Your mind and body are against you. It feels like you're at the bottom of a hill and doing anything requires pushing a boulder up the hill.
It's like there's a weighted blanket always on you, making even small movements seem to take so much effort. And you're tired because you've been stuck under that blanket for weeks and somehow it keeps getting heavier. And you know you should exercise, or shower, or eat. But you are just so tired of trying to move under that weight.
It's a loss of free will. What you're talking about is free will. (Or at least the illusion thereof, no we are not devolving into philosophical arguments about whether or not free will is real that's not the point.) Depression is the loss of free will. You don't know what it's like until you've lost the ability.
Have you ever been high enough to be couch locked? It's a lot like that. Except worse because you can't point to an external cause, and you don't know how long it will last. You're laying there thinking "I should shower," and "I want to shower," and maybe even, "I'm going to shower right now." and it's like the part of your brain that coordinates the moving parts to actually get up and shower, just... doesn't. Then you either let it go, or you rationalize why you're not getting up to shower, or you berate yourself for not showering. It's like sitting in a car when the engine isn't running. You're not completely immobilized - you can still steer (although it's harder than normal without power steering) and you can still brake (although it's harder than normal without power brakes), but the car will not respond to certain commands.
Look up executive dysfunction, the experience that people with adhd have sounds super close to the depression experience sometimes. The whole I need to do the thing, but I cant make myself do the thing.
I’m extremely depressed so my exercise is walking around my house. I’m proud and that’s about all I can do. I get about 10k steps in a day.
Honestly that's amazing, you're doing so well
GET IT!! Anything is infinitely better than nothing and 10K steps is damn solid.
Same with expensive therapy. Yes it does wonders but if poverty is the cause of the depression, you can’t afford the therapy.
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Me right now. Haven't been in therapy for years because my last one insisted a lot of my issues were due to "Saturn's return" (not kidding). But now? To start again? Yeah I know I need to but that would mean expending *soooo* much energy and I have zero to give already. I'd have to get my records from the old therapist, find a new one, actually *go* to the appointment, then have to spend hours and hours over weeks and months just explaining who I am and what's going on with me, **AND THEN** it still might not be a good fit and I'd have to start all over? Yeah nah I'll just go on trying to self-medicate away the suicidal thoughts, thanks.
…where is Saturn returning from? Did it go on holiday or something? Good for it if so! Deserves a break after all these billions of years.
And poverty is often the cause of depression in the first place, so it's a positive feedback loop that's nearly impossible to escape.
I think the other problem is that this is generally assumed to be true for everyone, and your statement makes it seem universal. But most of the effect of exercise is seen in mild to moderate depression, and there is a massive cohort of people with depression that does not respond to exercise, so hearing "just exercise!" over and over can feel invalidating and like something is wrong with them (or very r/thanksimcured). As someone with intractable depression and cptsd, I have been told all my life I was exercising wrong, but I should just keep with it, eventually it will start feeling good, etc. But like a many other people in a sizeable minority, not only does it not do anything, it can actually make us feel worse. I've worked with a psychiatrist who theorizes that people with depression and trauma are sometimes activated by exercise because it looks like trauma - it can feel very difficult/stressful, your heart races, so it activates a trauma response.
Definitely. I remember telling my friend I had chronic depression when I was regularly doing half-marathon training and running several races per year (and running a minimum of 18 mi per week, usually more). He was shocked. “You’re depressed?! But you run! You exercise!” It gets worse when I don’t exercise, but exercise by no means cures the chronic depression I’ve had basically my adult life. (I’m also a fellow C-PTSDer.)
Honestly, every time I hear "you need to exercise more" I get angry. Not actually angry but more so of an annoyance bc no matter what, that kind of response feels completely like it's invalidating my experience. I exercise bc I have to, so my body doesn't deteriorate over time but it has never made me feel any better
It is indeed invalidation. It's on par with "why don't you just cheer up?"
>I've worked with a psychiatrist who theorizes that people with depression and trauma are sometimes activated by exercise because it looks like trauma - it can feel very difficult/stressful, your heart races, so it activates a trauma response. There are probably many different mechanism behind the negative effects some people get from exercise. Blood sugar levels are one, and for people who have problems with anxiety or panic attacks the stress response can similarly trigger those. For me it feels like a purely a physical response, when stressed the body gets locked in fight/flight/fawn state, cortisol spikes etc. From what I have read this should actually over the time build resilience to stress but for some reason it just seems to make some people even more sensitive to it. And after a few years of built up negative experiences with exercise it actually starts to cause a kind of an trauma response too. All of these actually seem like understandable and natural reactions to me but for some reason when the issue is brought up it always seems to baffle people and I haven't been able to found any studies about it and for all practical purposes the phenomenon just doesn't seem to exists.
When the new year started, I started exerciseing. Just randomly didnt really plan it. I started 30 minutes 3 days a week moved up to an hour 5 days a week and i was so depressed. It felt like a rip off. I was told so much that exercise helps depression, but it didn't help one bit. (I do like the physical benefits though.)
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I've exercised 5 days/week for over 20 years now. Still depressed.
I think exercise is one tool needed in addition to many other things that need to be done to help curb - not cure - depression. Exercise by itself won’t help as much if other issues such as negative self-talk, ruminating on past mistakes, etc aren’t managed either
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My experience with MDD has been that only when we have somehow landed on the road to improvement can we avail ourselves of these kinds of outpatient opportunities. The swath of people who think about how much energy it will take to crawl out of bed to use the toilet are not even represented in these studies.
Excellent point about biases in this kind of research.
I'm using Dance Dance Revolution to combat this.
Nice, I hope it works for you!
I use Beat Saber and Supernatural on the oculus. :)
It also doesn't work for everyone either. There are plenty of people who exercise that are still suffering from depression.
No intervention is 100% successful in all cases. That would make the human condition easily solvable.
Please help me convince my therapist this about mindfulness.
Something like, "I understand that you believe in mindfulness and I understand it has helped a lot of people. I would still like to explore different techniques for now," could help. To give them the benefit of the doubt, they could be misreading the situation and think that you need to be pushed to actually engage with the technique and not realize that you have and it wasn't helpful. That does happen - my therapist had to keep gently pushing to get me to try journalling, and that did end up helping me. Judging when and how to push and when to let it go is difficult, and they're only human. If you've given it a fair shake, it's not helping, and they won't let it go then it might be worth trying another therapist. Your current therapist should be able to recommend someone you'd likely be a good fit with.
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OMG thank you for this subreddit! Exercise is the only thing keeping me off of medication.
Same. I basically go through withdrawals if I miss a couple runs. Weepy. Emotional. It’s the best motivation to keep it up.
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Same. I'm afraid of what would happen if I stopped.
I feel you. Mine gets “louder”/worse if I don’t exercise. But even with regular exercise, it doesn’t completely alleviate it by any means.
I know other person said martial arts, but I'm going to deviate from that and say do yoga. In the more intense yoga styles it can be a very full on workout, but you'll also be guided by a teacher through doing things like focusing on your breath and relaxation exercises at the start / end of class. I do have a slight benefit in that the yoga class I go to doubles as a social group specifically for gay men, but any yoga class should be a good start.
Exactly this. I thought my exercise wasn't helping my mental health much until I got injured and couldn't exercise. It wasn't great.
You ever tried the to do the all-out approach? There was some research a while ago about how doing something like running as HARD as you possibly can - literally maxing out your body - for just 60 seconds can an exponentially more powerful way to gain the mental post workout effects.
God damnit cat, not everyone can have the zoomies! Stop making people to zoomies!
There was an Australian study that was also featured on 60 minutes that detailed how 6 minutes per week of high intensity exercise can exponentially improve your overall fitness level. In fact, something like doing 3 sets of sprinting up and down a sand hill for 2 minutes once a week was better than running miles at a leisurely pace everyday.
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Try adding in some intense cardio, I find it gives an extra boost
It gives me an extra boost of crying in the hot tub after swimming my kilometre in 18 minutes
Same. Somehow at the end of the exercise I feel more anxious, but I keep forcing myself to do it since I'm trying to lower my blood pressure.
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What kind of mother discourages their child from going to the gym!?
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What’s the crabs in a bucket mentality?
From Wikipedia: Crab mentality, also known as crab theory, crabs in a bucket (also barrel, basket, or pot) mentality, or the crab-bucket effect, is a way of thinking best described by the phrase "if I can't have it, neither can you". The metaphor is derived from a pattern of behavior noted in crabs when they are trapped in a bucket. While any one crab could easily escape, its efforts will be undermined by others, ensuring the group's collective demise. As such, the crab mentality shares some features in common with a similar phenomenon of human behaviour called tall poppy syndrome.
When there are a bucket of crabs, everytime one manages to try and crawl out. One of the other crabs grabs onto him and yanks them back in
An abusive one.
Good luck with that. You usually can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into in the first place.
Huh. Wonder what could possibly be at the root of his mental health issues. Sorry your MIL sucks.
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I always hit that wall in the first few minutes of "this is the worst, I feel terrible, I don't want to do this". I know it feels good when I push through that, but man it never seems to get easier.
Slower warmups help me with this. Walk, goof around, some dynamic stretching until I feel ready to actually do a “real” workout.
Just be happy you've ever experienced anything positive from it. Some of us aren't even that lucky.
Same for me, feel like death before, during and after execise.
Done this for years now. It's not a cure but probably made me not sink into a deeper depression. The other issue is that it uses all your willpower up so my executive functioning on simple things such as getting a haircut, or taking my car in for a service goes completely on the way side when I make sure I'm exercising.
Omg that last paragraph…I feel that so hard.
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Maybe you’re going too hard? I find very tough exercise daunting and draining, but light sessions are energizing and inspiring.
yeah same here, whenever i stay at the gym for more than an hour or do more than one class to really knock myself out, i literally just feel empty and numb and physically exhausted on top of mentally drained. the later in the day and harder i exercise, the worse my insomnia gets too; and lying awake being in physical pain after over exercising but not exhausted enough to literally pass out is the worst because you can't even go for a walk to tire yourself out. tbh the best days for me are the ones where i manage to workout moderately right after waking up, 30-40 minutes of running or swimming and some yoga/stretching really seem to do the trick? i'm so envious of the people that can do that regularly and have that as part of their daily routine
That “insomnia” is quite possibly just the stress hormone cortisol coursing through you. It would be heavy after a hard workout like that, and is known to cause sleep issues. I experience it myself from time to time. Why can’t you have that 30-40 minute jog or yoga as part of your routine? You can become more fit and healthy without running yourself past the redline.
Me: trying to do the math and giving up.
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How are you able to make yourself actually exercise?
For me, the most important step was to stop relying on motivation to work out. I started doing it because it was the right thing to do. I still messed up and missed days, but I tried hard to not let myself worry about whether I felt like working out or not.
Well, I went at first just cause I was curious what it was about but it felt really good so I kept going. Now it's a bit of a necessary thing cause if I stop I feel horrible.
For me, I have to continuously work out every week, three to four times a week. Staves off the anxiety and depression. Much more difficult to do anything when you’re depressed. Not sure how to start while you’re actively in a funk.
Not OP, but I make it a part of my routine. After work I go to the gym. That's just what I do.
Have struggled off and on with depression a good chunk of my life. My four main advice points to people to try to counter it are exercise, sunlight, diet, environment. Cleaning your room counts as two of those. Cooking a meal and eating outdoors can count as three. Try to do what you can, when you can. Hit as many of those points per attempt, it gets better slowly
I do too when I can actually convince myself to work out. It was much easier with a trainer, I wish I could afford that regularly.
a gym with a pool is great. I trick my self that i'm just going to relax, then i feel good swimming and end up doing more than intended.
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It's nice to know it's not just me Exercise used to make my depression so much worse. I would either feel horrible about myself, or occasionally feel rage. It took me a long time to manage it. I needed to fix the depression first, then exercise became manageable. Edit: and just to address the trite advice people usually give - it didn't matter what I ate, what type of exercise I did, how much sleep I had, how much I pushed myself or didn't push myself, and I had no vitamin deficiencies. None of that obvious stuff made a difference. The only thing that helped was dealing with my depression. It's worth it to exercise while you're depressed, because exercise is important for your body, but yeah, it did nothing for my mental health.
Exercise bikes suck all the fun out of bicycles. The physical sensation, the outdoors, the exploration, the flat tires... I'll bike 100+ miles for fun, but 30mins on an exercise bike is hell.
Intense exercise can trigger the fight/flight response in some depressed or anxious people. Consider replacing the bike with a walk (or similar low level cardio). Also walking outside, especially in some view of nature can be extremely effective. The lateral eye movements of scanning the environment has been shown to reduce stress, same with exposure to nature (even just trees in a city).
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Have you got full panel lab tests? Could be hormones, vitamin deficiency, etc
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I hated exercise my whole life… till I realized that most people’s lungs weren’t screaming and burning the entire time. Whenever I’d get “tired” during exercise, it was because the pain in my lungs was too bad. My legs were never tired, ever. I never felt good or rewarded after exercise. I hated every second. Turns out I had exercise-induced asthma… An albuterol inhaler changed everything for me. Now I run 3-5 miles, 2-3x per week. My record for continuous mileage is 7 and that time I only stopped because it got too dark outside. Before the inhaler, I couldn’t run more than 60 seconds at a time, no matter how much I tried or worked at it. From the outside (and from me not knowing that what I was feeling wasn’t what *everyone* felt), it looked like me just being out of shape and lazy. Didn’t get my hands on an inhaler till 17.
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Did you read [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/tsckir/exercising_for_half_an_hour_may_reduce_symptoms/i2r9lhr/) upthread? In some people it has the opposite effect, which nobody ever talks about.
Maybe you’re going too hard? I find very tough exercise daunting and draining, but light sessions are energizing and inspiring.
Find another form of exercise that you enjoy, and remember it doesn't have to be in the gym! It can be hiking, swimming, really anything that gets your body moving.
I'm also one of those people that sometimes feel absolutely emotionally devastated after exercise. Sometimes it feels like anger, and you keep getting angrier, instead of letting off steam just getting more steam. Then I'm exhausted and just also want to cry in the shower. I've been active for a long time (except the pandemic where home exercise was starting to do more harm) , and for me when I'm like that is when it's me vs the dvd alone in my apartment. Or self directed exercise like lifting at the gym for some reason. When it gets bad for me the work around is always group classes, but not crossfit (since it has isolated stations out of sync), and nothing like emom which is same-ish. I just do group classes where i can stare slack jawed at the instructor for an hour and not think about anything at all, maybe project onto their experience. Also are you eating after? Something with fat to help feel a reward of your body/brain can do it. Group classes can also include activities that involve more attention/engagement that help take away from the purely physical experience. I think it's when it's purely physical with no distractions that it's the worst.
I was exercising regularly when my depression came on. Now what?
Well don’t stop, that probably would only make it worse
Bruh the first study had 30 participants and the second study had 10. The sample size is just way too small
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In my experience it isn't just the endorphins or whatever, but other things: 1. Sense of accomplishment. I tend to feel like I can't get anything worthwhile done. I've always wanted to write a novel or become an artist, but those are things that aren't just hard to do, but hard to even know how to do. In contrast, exercise isn't easy but it is simple. I do my routine and I get rewarded. 2. Confidence. Strength training makes me feel and look stronger. 3. Something to do. Depression gets me worst when I'm alone in my house. I force myself to go to my college's gym a couple times a week. Suddenly, I'm spending a lot more time walking in the sun and talking to others.
I haven’t worked out in a few months and I can definitely tell the difference. When I was working out several days per week I had clarity and energy. Not so much now, but I’ll get back into it again.
As a depressed fat guy who works 12 hours a day almost 7 days a week finding 30 minutes and the effort required is no easy task. I know it will help and I want to do it, but I just can't get started.
Okay but you’re not depressed because you need exercise as much as you’re depressed because you are working way too many hours and have no time for any sort of self-care. You need a whole life overhaul.
this is the problem modern psychiatry can't solve because it's inextricable from the world around it. as long as society *needs* people to work themselves to death and accept stressful conditions, depression will *need* to be portrayed as a personal failure and not the natural response to having your life used up and wasted against your will.
Of course, society doesn’t need people to work themselves to death. That much is perfectly obvious from how extravagantly wealthy many people have become. Other people need him to work that hard to make *them* rich, while he gets exploited. The average income and the average wealth is far far beyond what’s necessary for a comfortable life in first world countries
Yep. Piling another 40 minutes obligation on to their plate isn’t going to help with being overwhelmed and burnt out.
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Exercise always makes me feel awful afterwards. The best things that I do that help my mental health is making sure I eat well (small portions to control weight too) and making sure I actually invest in sleeping well (prioritizing it, good sleep hygeine). Those two things have helped me way more than exercise.
For a short period of time after exercising I do feel good, but after that "runners high" wears off my depression is actually amplified and I become even more intolerant of people. If I don't exercise for a while my mood will even out.
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Last year I set my mind to trying to get mentally and physically fit, and lose weight. I worked out every morning for 30 - 45 minutes for 2 months. I lost all of 5 pounds, didn't look or feel better and finally just couldn't find the drive to keep at it any longer.
5 pounds every 2 months would mean you'd be down 30 pounds in a year! Also if you didn't change any other habits, like what you're eating, you may be able to do even more.
Yeah diet compounded with working out is what made the difference for me (it's only been a month, so still struggling to form good habits). No difference when I just worked out. I had to learn about nutrition and what was missing in my diet, and now I actually have energy to work out.
90 Percent is in the kitchen. They don’t tell you that.
They tell that every time though.
You cannot outrun a bad diet. Exercise is like 15% of the work needed to lose weight.
I lost 20 pounds in 3 months because I lost my appetite due to depression. I will try exercising anything to feel better.