How do you deal with your anxiety or depression during these uncertain times?

Since we are facing this pandemic. Some here are now facing anxiety or depression right now. How do you deal with your anxiety or depression during these uncertain times?

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“The only thing we have to fear is Fear itself.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt

… but … be afraid of it!

The single most important thing to do is to find someone else to talk to. Whether that person is a professional therapist or just a close confidant. Fear and anxiety are toxic. They begin to prey on you … but they don’t portray a balanced view of your actual situation. They whisper to you, “there is no hope.”

They lie!

I say this as someone who for many years volunteered at a suicide-prevention telephone hotline. (There are equivalent internet resources, too.) I once literally talked a man down from a bridge. I’ve persuaded them to set down a pistol that was loaded and pointing at their head. (And, sadly, I’ve also heard the gun go off. :cry: You can’t save 'em all.)

Treat your feelings as being “very serious, but deceptive, and actually widely held.” Get help. Talk with others whom you can trust.

P.S.: Also be aware that “depression” can have purely physical, medical causes. Our human brains are fantastic inventions which run on “voodoo chemistry.” (Just consider the effect of a dose of LSD slight enough to fit on the back of a postage stamp.) I once knew a person who eventually traced his profound mental issues to … broccoli. Yes, he had a food allergy. I think they wrote him up in the medical journals.

When this type of depression hits, “your brain” is of course the only thing that can regard your … its … situation is: itself. But it’s looking through the disease effect, while perhaps not realizing what it is actually dealing with. The disease is now interfering with its own treatment – preventing you from realizing that your feelings are actually external to you and that you need to seek clinical treatment. The results can of course be deadly. Some fairly-innocent medications can also have these (rare …) side effects. So, if you’re “feeling depressed,” keep this possibility in mind.

One of the best advantages of “trained psychological counselors” is that they are specifically trained to look for clinical, physical causes. In addition to being "outside of you." In eighth grade I was having some real “adjustment problems” and only later realized that the staff member who had “chatted me up” was the school psychologist. He did help me greatly, showing “me” from a perspective other than “mine,” and he also taught me a lot … including some of the stories and insights that I am sharing here. At the end of the year, I counted him as a friend as well as a confidant. Never mind that this was his role. I guess he’s one of the reasons I volunteered on that hotline: I experienced the power and the personal benefit of “trained intervention.”

Ummm … sorry for rambling so. :smiley_cat:

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As someone who has suffered from depression, I have found exercise to be miraculous. At the least get outside take a walk. Even during the pandemic if you don’t interact you can still get outside and take a walk.

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start here…

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“Luv it!” … ROTFLMAO! … :+1:

People still don’t believe me when I say we’ve never had a television in our house in the last thirty years. Anytime my wife and I are in a hotel room, the TV is never turned on. And, we don’t miss it one bit. “The boob tube” is simply not a part of our lives. (Yes, we have been married that long …) :heart:

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Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with me. I truly appreciate it all.

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Praying for you. (I mean that …)

Really, the first and most-important step in “dealing with mental health issues” is to engage someone other than yourself. Someone you trust. Someone with experience, whose brain isn’t dealing with what your brain is dealing with right now. Although “on-line” resources of course exist, in this particular case I think you need direct face-to-face human contact with someone who is trained to observe and diagnose. (The resolution probably won’t come in a pill-bottle …) This is a situation about which you might well say in retrospect, “why did I suffer so long before I sought help?”

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I already start turning off my TV and I relax my mind by reading some of my unfinished novels and some articles on the internet. Yesterday I found this https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/managing-stress-anxiety.html and it helps me to cope with my depression.

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As I always do, I ignore it.

Seriously though, moments of depression tend to pass so I do usually try to just wait it out. But what works for me might not work for others.

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I’m gonna be cryptic with this clip of this now old Terry Gilliam movie 12 Monkeys about a virus pandemic … “The Great Reset” … “The Great Escape” … :upside_down_face:
great prophecies here:

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“The Great Reset” ~~~ “One world government”

Same here, dude. I might experience depression but I’m not taking it too much.

You’re truly amazing since other people are taking this too much. How are you right now, fenchamazingly? Would like to hear your response :slight_smile:

Try not to think about the future, or the past, the headquarters of our fears.
Simply try to be right here, now, in this very moment, the present.

The last two years or so, I really wanted to do a “brain reset” so I started spending a good portion of the day without technology at all, no PC / no internet / no phone.

Since I had an “artistic debt” I thought that it would be a good opportunity to start doodling and practice sketching. But for others it would be playing the guitar or reading, or writing about plans etc. Walking also as a matter of physical exercise is also about staying offline.

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Overthinking is destructive and mentally draining. It can make you feel like you’re stuck in one place, and if you don’t act, it can greatly impact your day-to-day life. It can quickly put your health and total well-being at risk. So I’m not making my life complicated to overthink. My motto in life is simple. “Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance.” Also, staying active in doing regular exercise is also good for your physical and emotional health. ~Just keep yourself occupied not to overthink~

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apparently the great virtual purge has begun.
strange times, really very strange times.

Try to have a problem solving attitude. Getting depressed just makes you feel bad & doesn’t solve anything. Try this. Fold a paper in half hot dog style. On the left side, make a list of all your problems. On the right side, write down solutions (or anything that might help). Use more than one page if you have to. While this won’t solve all your problems, it will reduce the amount of things making you feel depressed & anxious.

For example:
Problem: I’ve got a lot of health problems.
Solution: Make healthy choices like drink 8-16 cups of water daily, eat 3 meals a day, and get at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity per day.

Problem: I’m extremely sleep deprived because my cat keeps me up all night meowing at my door.
Solution: Designate a closed room for cats with food, water, & a litter box, so they can’t whine at your door all night.

Etc. You get the idea. Putting it into writing makes solving your problems a lot easier than solving them in your head.

We are not greatly affected here, no anxiety/depression. Just doing the normal people what to do. I distanced myself from all people, wear a mask, and keeping my hands always.

Well then, you have confirmed what I had always suspected. When it comes to being prepared for something like a deadly virus pandemic that requires everyone to stay away from each other as much as possible, we artists are indeed among the very best prepared to deal with such things.

Is that a typo or translation error, or do you really live somewhere were losing your hands is a real possibility?