I do not have chronic depression (what you are describing) but I know many people who struggle with chronic anxiety or depression, so mental health is important

I do not have chronic depression (what you are describing) but I know many people who struggle with chronic anxiety or depression, so mental health is important to me. I spoke with a colleague who admitted to dealing with anxiety for two decades, which I recognize is not depression but there is some overlap, and the best summary would echo jemfinch's comment if you can find it below. It's really good. In more detail, here's the jist of the conversation I had with my colleague: It is lifelong, but not unmanageable. He tried to "solve" it for 15 yrs before he accepted that it would be lifelong. It is lifelong because anxiety (or discouragement in your case) is a combination of genetic and environmental factors, and your body is genetically programmed to overproduce the chemical in charge of misery. But you have a little control over environmental factors, so you can mitigate the extremely of it. The things in your environment that you have direct control over are your sleep patterns, eating habits, and exercise (with exceptions depending on certain disabilities, but you can try to work around those) These are the long term solutions but they don't remove the problem, they just reduce it. Sometimes you need a now solution when it still is too much. My colleague's now solutions are specific for anxiety, so I don't have a good answer for this, but two friends of mine who have chronic depression go on walks a lot when it's too much.