This may be a personal thread but have you ever had depression and how did you overcome it. (If you have)
I lost my mother a day before my birthday and have been suffering from it for about seven years. Plus a lot of other things that contribute to it.

This thread can be used to share happy stories of overcoming it or just to share your story in general and ways you deal with it.

Yesssss when I lost my job (because I was young and called out every other day) I really wanted to die. But Im too scared of pain to kill my self, any who, it was summer 2011 and I felt so damn poor i had a roommate and had BILls ended movin back with family and that was so hard to do. Being broke really ain't no joke. And it was during Sumer too ugh ! I stayed in the house all summer long.

Yeah. I didn't feel anything. It was like being emotionally paralysed. I didn't feel anything and didn't want to do anything. I didn't go out. I didn't want to speak to anyone. I didn't reply to any text messages for ages. I just cut everyone off. I laid in bed all day every day on my computer. I'd skip Uni, cause my class attendance was optional.

The best thing is diet and exercise. Force yourself to get out of bed and go exercise. Eat healthily and drink lots of water. Taking pride in your appearance actually does so much for your self-esteem, and it's so good for your mental health. Plus exercising releases endorphins and endorphins make you happy.

I had extreme depression for two and a half years. It is the worst feeling and emotions imaginable. It didn't help that I was locked away from society and was living alone. You eventually battle it off. I did it through horrible ways.. succumbing to my own vices and sadness. I lost my motivation. I tried getting help from a psychiatrist, from medication, etc., but what ultimately let me finally find peace and move on was just.. letting go. Basically. Reminding myself that this and this don't matter, in the grand scheme of things, and focused on ways to improve myself instead of focusing on the negative.

That was the best summer I have ever had after two and a half years of, essentially, manic and hard depression.

Yes, still do actually.

I know the feeling of being paralyzed and not wanting to do anything. In some cases people can really ruin you. (i dealt with mental abuse from a family member) It's a really sad battle cause you feel so alone. Especially since it's lasted me so long but everything you said really does work. Exercise really helps remove negative energy plus a clean diet and talking to people who can help.

Yes. I waited until high school was over. When I started to make a lot (this is relative of course) of money and got near a 4.0 in college, my self-esteem rose fairly quickly. Depression was a part of my life for nearly a decade, but it finally ended when these things began occurring.

When I was 15/16 I was like, severely depressed. I spent my entire 10th and 11th grade thinking that everyone secretly hated me; every recess/lunch period I would sit in the toilet cubical and listen to sad songs and cry by myself. And after school I would sit alone on the bus and cry more on the way home. It was a really dark period for me, I just literally hated myself, virtually everything about me. I actually joined ATRL when I was still depressed, some of my posts were just so sad back then literally like even my first thread. Thankfully I overcame it and am nothing like that person a single bit. I really learned a lot from it, I've become so strong that I can just substantially minimize any sadness I'm enduring.

I don't know how I overcame it. I think it was just that I moved schools, so it was a whole new environment, new school etc leaving behind the past... it's like I left my depression there too. I'm not like totally happy right now or anything however, but I'm working my way towards there and become closer every day.

edit: Just read your story OP and I'm so sorry. I lost mine a week before my 10th birthday and it kinda ****ed me up for years. Your mother may not physically exist in this world but she's always watching you, and she's astonished and proud at the wonderful person you've become.

Yes, still do hm.

Congrats to everyone who overcame it

At least you overcame it and realized nobody's opinions about you matter. Even if they are hurtful. And that's a huge step closer to your goal. If you ever want to talk i'm here!

Yeah, about ~2 years ago. I felt numb inside. I would cry for hours on end every single day and plan out how I was going to kill myself. I felt (and honestly still feel to a lesser extent) that there's no reason for me being alive and that I'm nothing but a burden to those around me.

The first step to getting better is acknowledging what your worries are and doing something to fix them. For me it was my image, and focusing on getting healthy gave me a purpose in the beginning.

I've gotten a lot better about my issues nowadays and now know the signs to watch for so I can ~shift myself away from slipping again.

I wish you the best.

Last year, everything horribly sucked .. My home country was (and still is) experiencing the biggest civil war in recent history, I was studying something I really hated and didn't choose at all, I was a few failed exams from totally losing my right to postpone compulsory military service, in other words dying, and that didn't seem to motivate me to move on with my life, as much as kill myself.

Instead of empowering myself and think of a solution, it was only making me feel like a useless piece of scum who is inferior to everyone else and deserves to be beheaded.

How did I treat it?

There was a moment when I decided to drop everything from my hand, and decided to move to a better country and start everything all over again.

Now I have a job, with a horrible salary due to my lack of experience and no degree, but I'm happier about myself than I've ever been. What I'm sure about is that it's not gonna last forever, it'll get better with time, as long as I'm making use of every second to better myself, even if just a little bit.

My parents offered to send me to school, and as much as in need for a degree I am now, I refused. I still insist that I need to achieve it all by myself. I want to be the one to make my own plans, pay my own tuition. I don't want my parents to be involved in the building of myself. Helping me get a visa to where I live now is the last thing I want my parents to help me with.

It might take me ages, but eventually, there will be a day when I'm doing my dream graduate degree, have my dream job in my dream city.

Just always tell yourself you'll have that and it will happen. Even with certain things blocking you from getting that dream at this moment. I wish you the best <3

Yes. I was really sick for a couple years with a neurological disease. It threw off my brain chemistry for months and I would randomly go through severe depression. It would be triggered by anything strange. I had to test out what the triggers were, and work to avoid them. I isolated myself from a lot of stuff for a time, waited until mybrain chemistry repaired and eased myself back into the things I had always enjoyed doing.

I was luckily grounded enough to know that the feelings I was experiencing were not typical for me and I was lucky enough that it was just a temporary condition.

It really did help though to focus on something; I listened to a ton of music and would throw myself into cooking things to distract myself.

Thank you very much

Medication is useless without motivation

And as someone have said, exercising is a great way of dealing with depression ( by exercising I mean, at least in the cases I know, running one hour at day at least and walking)

Currently suffering from depression, it's been 2 years. I don't think I'll ever overcome it.

If you relate money to happiness then of course you're going to feel depressed living in a capitalistic society

I was horribly depressed as a 15 year old teen because of my body image issues. I was thinking about suicide daily and had to take pills for a long time to get out of that.
Sadly, even now I get seasonally depressed during the winter, which I despise. I hope I'll get to move into a warmer country so that my mental health improves.

I've been depressed since I was 13, I guess, so it's almost 10 years for me. It never went away, it just kind of goes dormant for periods of time. It was definitely better when I was hooked on running and eating clean.
I've had a distorted body image when I was a teenager and that period was definitely the worst - I was sad and scared all the time. I cut myself, lay in bed for days and purged a lot.
Then, right after my high school graduation, my grandmother died and I got used by a vile, vile man. It just made me numb. Like, I didn't really feel anything towards anybody, was indifferent about almost everything - I just did what was expected of me at the Uni. Some people say that being numb is the worst part of being depressed, but to me it was a huge relief. To this day I am unable to bond with people. I have never been in a relationship and I probably never will.
I "discovered" excercising last year and it was a huge relief for my body and soul. Rn I don't excercise because of a contusion and the bad things hit me with double force. I never tried to go to a doctor because I see no point in this.
I kind of hold it against my parents that they didn't try harder to help me. Depression runs in our family on both sides, yet it's always being swept under the rug like something dirty. After they saw cuts they didn't intervene, they didn't force me to go to a doctor, I just got scolded for doing that. I was 16 so it was difficult to seek for help on my own.

TL;DR - I was sad, then I was numb and then I started excercising and, as Rihinvention said, it's probably the best solution out there.