How to Get Out of Functional Depression

How to Get Out of Functional Depression

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what is depression well according to
Google depression is feelings of severe despondency and dejection whenever it
comes to depression there seems to be two main forms that we can categorize it
in and that’s important because the category that your depression might be
in can tell you how you should approach it so the first is something called
dysfunctional depression this is when everything on the outside should
indicate happiness however on the inside you feel the common symptoms of
depression things like loss of interest in things that you once enjoyed the
regularities and sleeping being tired without energy and trouble concentrating
however there is another type of depression one called functional
depression and this is when you’re experiencing a low in your life due to
environmental causes so what is so special about something called
functional depression well unlike dysfunctional depression which is
usually approached with medicine or therapy functional depression you can
actually control it by changing your environment now in my life I’d say there
are two times that I had depression and both were functional meaning that they
had a reason number one was in early high school and this was more just
social anxiety that presented itself in the symptoms of depression so I’m not
gonna really count it everyone has social anxiety at some point and I
should have had the symptoms of depression because I really sucked
having conversations with other people eventually throughout high school I
worked on it my confidence improved and the symptoms seemingly went away
the second time in my life that I’d say I’d had depression was my very first
semester of college now let me get down to it I had no friends I did not love
what I was learning I was in my dorm room when I wasn’t in class and my diet
and exercise sucked and to an outsider there’s no wonder my brain was like dude
there’s something wrong here and at this point in the video I want to say sure I
felt lonely before and I felt useless but I’ve never had dysfunctional
depression or been medicated for it so it’s important to say that I can’t speak
for those who have and I hope that one day we find a better treatment for him
this video though and the following advice that I’m going to give is
specifically for people who have a form of depression that can be relieved by
their own actions the issue with this though is that you don’t know if certain
actions will actually help you until after you’ve performed them so let’s
move on to an analogy that helps describe what functional depression is
imagine this you touch a hot stove and it really hurts right so you lift your
hand up imagine what would happen if your brain didn’t
process and it didn’t feel the pain of the burn you just left your hand there
because you didn’t know that it was painful and so what happens your hand
just starts to melt into this mashed potato lump of flesh that’s not really
good for future you who maybe wants to do tool or hold things well it’s the
same with depression most of it is functional which basically just means
that you’re sitting in your chair all day long or maybe you don’t have any
friends or because you’re drinking every night we’re doing a ton of drugs that
mess with your brain chemistry in a negative way or maybe it’s simply
because you’re not doing what you love it is your brain saying the stove is hot
do something to change it so for example when I was in college I
got depressed because I was in my room for 16 hours a day doing homework I
didn’t have any friends and I was studying something that I wasn’t
passionate about so it’s no wonder that I got depressed eventually I dropped out
and guess what the day that I came back home was the happiest I had been all
semester now I’m not saying depression has something to do with what’s going on
in your life but if you have depression there’s probably a high chance that if
you fixed something in your life for the better you would probably also feel
better now the psychology behind this is that according to evolutionary
psychology almost everything that happens to us has a reason including
depression psychologists surmise that one function of depression is to allow
you to think about your situation and possibly find a solution to improve it
there’s another theory that suggests that our current environment is changing
so rapidly that our thousand-year-old bodies can adapt to the new technology
for example people are indoors and receiving way less sunlight than they
used to they breathe in much more harmful chemicals on a daily basis in
general they live more sedentary lives and certainly social media apps are
changing the base lines of neurotransmitters like dopamine and
serotonin so for example if you get dumped by some girl that you really
liked you probably should be depressed for a short period of time your
environment is going to drastically change for the negative and your brain
wants to consciously figure out what caused that negative shift were you too
clingy or controlling or did you let yourself go did you just stop doing the
things that made her smile your brain is trying to figure out what caused that
negative emotional shift but it’s simply not as easy as figuring out that your
hand hurts because your hand is on the stove this causes a lot of problems and
is why depression is very difficult to figure out
another example if you lose a million dollars in the stock market you should
also be depressed the normal response to that would be to feel a little down to
process those depression symptoms for a few days or maybe weeks and then come to
an understanding of how you actually made that decision to lose how much
money so without further ado here is a list of things that you should quote fix
to give yourself a fighting chance now it might be worth noting that in my life
when I look at the best the happiest and the most joyful memories all of these
things are present I also want to note that this isn’t like a put a magic
crystal next to your bed and you’ll wake up with more electrons in your body and
that will translate to higher energy levels and it’ll raise your chakras and
this isn’t like that these are mostly things that have actual studies backing
them so number one get on a regular sleep schedule this one is first because
it’s the most important wake up and go to sleep within 30 minutes of the same
time every day and also try to make sure you get at least seven hours of quality
sleep usually fixing these two things helps most people if you can’t sleep
seven hours a night you might have something called insomnia in which case
you’re fighting a double-whammy depression and insomnia and you should
definitely reach out to a professional number two start a routine now it
doesn’t have to be super complicated just try to have a morning routine or
have something you can rely on we all need a balance of chaos and order
and right now you probably have too much chaos see in our lives when we have too
much order life starts to get boring however when there’s too much chaos you
start to have anxiety try to give your life some order and set up a routine
number three go to the gym if you can add the gym to your routine you can
knock out two for one even if it’s just the elliptical for 15 minutes or 20
stinkin push-ups it doesn’t have to be that hard but if you only knew what it
did for your brain and body you would start going number four get on a
healthier diet this one’s pretty simple no caffeine after noon less processed
foods and keto if you can heck try a 24-hour fast every now and then I might
go more in depth on what a healthy diet for your brain is later well let’s move
on the number five number five is pretty simple
stop taking illegal drugs this includes alcohol even though it’s not illegal
alcohol completely ruins your sleep and it greatly diminishes your
decision-making capabilities most cases drugs do crazy things to our
brain chemistry some irreversible so do yourself a favor and cut back if not
stop most drugs are correlated with depression too so that should be one big
red flag number six is to expose yourself to
something new do something creative or learn a new skill listen to new music
take a course order something new at your favorite restaurant or travel to
some unexplored places near you just exposing yourself to something new has
been found to help with functional depression number seven is to set a
small goal and then try to achieve it you can try to do five push-ups a day
for a week or you can try to talk to three strangers a day for a week
eat less than fifty carbs per day for a week try to keep it simple and your
whole perspective of life will change now this also helps with motivation
sometimes you just need some natural dopamine from actually achieving a goal
that you said the trick here is to make it a small achievable goal number eight
is to listen to some more upbeat music seriously though if the prime words and
your choice of music right now are pain suffering or alone and other negative
words like that what are you expecting your brain to do with it start to listen
to inspiring music there are literally thousands of motivational speeches on
YouTube you should try one of those next time listen to music that talks about
how you want to feel not how you’re currently feeling last on our list is to
think positive now I know this one is pretty difficult for a lot of people
they say ninety-three percent of your thoughts are thoughts that you had
yesterday the trick here is to stop a form of negative thinking called
rumination so this is pretty interesting and I first heard about rumination in
Martin Seligman’s book learned optimism in which he talks quite a bit about
depression rumination is the act of thinking about a thought that has a
negative emotion over and over and over again the author says this is one of the
main causes and symptoms of depression in most people now a simple trick I’ve
learned to stop ruminating is to start meditating and short meditation is just
not thinking and if you do think about something which you will you say oh that
thought popped into my head I understand that it’s most likely an automatic
thought let’s let it pass and see what comes on next and then you try to think
about nothing until the next thought pops into your head now this seems to
build up the ability to let your thoughts pass without affecting your
emotional state it’s very powerful when it comes to
ruminating are you ruminating on a daily basis I highly suggest to try meditation
even if it’s just a hundred 20 seconds in the morning you are essentially
building the bicep of your brain or training your emotional regulation
muscle also as a little bonus tip here I’m gonna suggest to journal this allows
you to track your days including your emotions and feelings even if it’s just
as simple as writing down the after version of a to-do list which is like a
done list what it does is it gives you a clearer version of what happened in the
past week or past month because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about
studying memory in the past few months it’s that humans have horrible memory
when it comes to remembering what actually happened without biases or
misperceptions so writing down what happens in the day that it actually
happened helps keep your mental timeline concrete and prevents time from
corrupting your idea of the past so maybe you want some proof that some of
these things work well let’s say if I wanted to make a depressed person here’s
what I would do I would take everything I just recommended you to do and then I
would have them do the opposite I would give them less than five hours of sleep
a night and I would change when they go to bed every day then I take their
routine and just throw it out the window if they have a job I would fire them
because jobs are usually the best form of routine for most people then I would
get rid of their daily walks I’d keep them inside for most of the day and
probably include lots of laying in bed just watching Netflix next I’d give them
a crappy diet I’m talking like fast food three times a day with sugary drinks and
fat cakes for snacks then I’d add in alcoholism and maybe a few pain pills
here and there and especially some illegal stimulants and if that isn’t
enough I’d let them listen to depressed sad music for maybe four hours a day so
much so that they can eventually start to sing along and if they’re not
diagnosed with chronic depression yet then all I’d have to do is surround them
with a bunch of friends with the same habits do you think someone like this
would get depressed I guarantee that they would this is actually called the
inverse rule and it’s a secret decision-making heuristic that I like to
use pretty often so if you’re feeling like the person
that I just described you probably need to seek out professional help because it
is very difficult to change many of these things at once by yourself
so ending this video I’d like to leave you with a quote to think on Viktor
Frankl once said when we are no longer able to change
situation we are then challenged to change ourselves also I want to let you
know that my goal with this video was to give you some actionable some practical
advice and ideas and things that you can change in your own life that might help
you relieve some symptoms of depression I want to make it clear again that this
is specifically for functional depression and there seems to be no way
of telling the difference between functional depression and dysfunctional
depression until you follow almost all these things and if you do all these
things and you’re still depressed or maybe you watch this list you think to
yourself those won’t help or I’m not actually going to do those then you
probably should reach out to a professional who has the skills and
tools to properly help thank you guys so much for watching you should leave a
comment below in what you thought of this video I’ll see you in the next one

28 thoughts on “How to Get Out of Functional Depression”

  1. Man. I love the video, but I clearly have dysfunctional depression. Didn't know what that was, but then you explained it…..and that fits my situation perfectly. I hear shrooms help relieve depression, although I haven't tried this yet…..but I will once I can find them. It's not like you can just go to a gas station or super market and buy them. I wish I had functional depression, coming from dysfunctional depression, functional depression would actually be a step up.

  2. This is extremely helpful, thank you. I've been trying to help someone long distance. It's one thing for me to say these things, and quite another to present them in this fashion to back it up. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  3. Keto gives you the low carb flu. It sucks. I would not want to go through that compounded with depression. Also, it's really not proven to be that healthy. If losing 10lbs in water weight is your goal, then give it a try.

  4. It's a shame you recommend Keto, and put an icon of meat. No veggies? Meat is loaded with antibiotics which screws with your gut biome, which helps produce serotonin. It's also terrible for the environment and causes you to murder other sentient beings.

  5. What to do when you are in a state of functional depression but barely functioning because of a chronic illness that attacks your body and brain. If nothing can fix it, how do you accept the effects. Doctors say, you must accept this is your life now, functional zombipathy.

  6. Great explanation and recommendations! What about dysfunctional depression? Is there also something I can do on my own to "change my mind"? It's really exhausting if you changed your whole life (diet, exercise, hobbys, routines, etc.) but the depressed mood stays your best friend…

  7. Steps from the video to get out of functional depression:

    1. Get on a regular sleep schedule and sleep enough, go to sleep withing the same 30 minute interval (e.g., always between 11:00 and 11:30 pm) and try to catch at least 7 hours of sleep
    2. Start a routine to keep some order in your life. This could be a morning routine. Going to work also forces you to follow a daily routine. Too much order in life == life becomes boring, too much chaos == we get anxiety.
    3. Go to the gym (or do some exercise)
    4. Get on a healthy diet. Try to eat less processed foods and sugar. No caffeine after noon. Try a 24 hour fast every now and then. You could also try a keto diet. And a personal addition: Drink enough water throughout the day. I try to get to 3-4 liters every day, if you do a lot of exercise, you might need more.
    5. Stop taking illegal drugs. Alcohol also has a lot of detrimental effects, so also stay away from that, even if it is legal in your country.
    6. Expose yourself to something new. Maybe try to learn a new skill, take a course, listen to new music, order something new at a restaurant or visit a place you have never been to before.
    7. Set a small goal and try to achieve it. Being able to achieve goals and having small accomplishments will feel rewarding. Keep the goal small and achievable.
    8. Listen to more upbeat/happy/inspiring music if you otherwise listen to negative sounding music (depressed lyrics, etc). Listen to something that signalizes how you want to feel, not what you feel right now.
    9. Think positive. 93% of your thoughts are the thoughts you had yesterday (Rumination == act of thinking about a negative emotion over and over again, which is one of the main causes and symptoms of depression). If you catch yourself having negative thought patterns, it can help you to practice meditation and to learn how to control or redirect your mental focus. It will help to build up the ability to simply let your thoughts pass without negatively affecting your emotional state.

    Bonus Tip: Do journaling. Track your emotions and feelings throughout the days, use it to keep track of information so that you don't have to rely on your memory, which is horrible (how accurately can you remember things you did or ate 5 days ago)

  8. I'm not depressed, just tired of being poor. However, I'm applying to tons of jobs to better myself and put myself in a better situation.
    No luck so far, but I'll find a new job soon that will allow me some financial breathing room!

  9. Please respond bro you videos helped me start a busines and get my life together. Km having a really hard time I need someone to talk to please.

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