In my subjective experience, I am much more inclined to respond very negatively to others' discussions on depression, when I am myself depressed. My personal ex

In my subjective experience, I am much more inclined to respond very negatively to others' discussions on depression, when I am myself depressed. My personal experiences with it are confused by PTSD and ADHD, but I've got a few (too many) years under my belt, and I have hit absolute zero multiple times. The problem with reading online discussions, /I think/, is that it's super easy to end up with a polluted perspective and bipolar esteem/locus of control: everything sucks, catastrophically so, I'm stupid, and it's all entirely my fault; even if it isn't, everyone is stupid & the world has conspired to ruin me. So a description of patterns of thought, of pitfalls hidden as cultural ambitions - patterns socially or environmentally derived - are parsed into "so it's my fault? F___ off -- or it's the fault of society, well I bear that crushing realisation daily, thank you". Our highly individualistic culture poisons perfectly good advice for the people it might benefit, and/or adds to the weight many others can do without. Although "you can change your environment by changing your perception of it" is definitely sound, for so many peoples' valuations it's just another string in the bow of uselessness. There are also, in my experience, two gates that must be open at the same time to allow for slow repair work, or larger positive changes. Unfortunately, they also depend on each other, and when things are truly awful neither are plausible. These are a) a surplus of willpower, no matter how little above the level required to minimally function, and b) a regular sleep pattern. Since depression reduces willpower dramatically, and we are very poor judges of what drains our willpower, the repair process can often feel like Sisyphean whackamole... But eventually, at least for me, I found little willpower exercises I could do every day. At one point, this was quite literally just attempting not to visit my 'stim' websites on first impulse. Eventually I'd still visit them. Didn't matter. That was it. Not even every day. Just every day I could was enough. Until I could do a little more.