I can relate a lot to this having had mild depression over many years. All the advice and attempts at “fixing” the problem can just make you not want to talk ab

I can relate a lot to this having had mild depression over many years. All the advice and attempts at “fixing” the problem can just make you not want to talk about it. You just don’t want to hear the same damn advise over and over again. I think what I found hardest is the assumption that a person with depression in addition to doing their job has energy and motivation to do a multitude of activities which is supposed to make you well. One thing that helped me was to be on partial sick leave. I would go to work but spend less time there. The left over time I would spend on taking long walks. I would just walk through the city and look at old architecture. It was a sort of real low effort activity I could pull off. A lot of other stuff was just too hard to motivate myself to. You need stuff that is easy to do and be given the time to do it. With depression you don’t have energy and motivation to do all the normal chores. The worst is when absolutely nothing is fun or interesting. Everything is just a void. All the things you normally love means nothing to you. For me one of the most painful things was completely losing the joy of playing with my children. I had a lot of fun doing it before depression. But depression more or less permanently robbed me of that joy. You feel terrible when playing with your own kids become the worst chore possible. You so want to like it. But you cannot because something is broken in your head. Only positive I think has come out of it is a stronger ability to empathize with other people who struggle. It is easier to see how people are not necessarily living the life they want to live. They are just managing as best they can.