Depression and Gamification

This isn't an easy topic. In fact, it's the hardest thing to think about let alone talk about. The very concept of depression is downright frightening if you consider yourself strong willed and stable. The reason why it's scary is it doesn't care about your strengths at all. It will tear all your defences down in seconds and leave you to cope with your darkest thoughts with a wall to climb each time you want to feel like yourself again. It is completely apathetic to what you want and can arrive at the very worst of times. It knows your every weakness including the ones you ignore.
Over this year that's what I've been facing. For most of the year I didn't even know, or want to know. The irony is the qualities I have that I thought would help me the most ended up being my worst enemies. Firstly, if you know me, and didn't know I have clinical depression and take antidepressants, then you're likely quite surprised right now. I built a brand of strength of will, openness and positivity. That still is who I am, with pride, which is the specific issue that ended up hurting me the most.

I never treated my own mental health seriously before this year. I never considered it ever being an issue and continued to pile on the pressure on myself by doing more things, working more, taking on more responsibilities but leaving less time to sleep and relax. Eventually I cracked, and I ignored that crack for too long. It was only until I realised how much of myself I had lost over the year that I started asking questions about exactly what the hell I was doing. I went through someone in the computer science department, student support services, my GP and my blood test results before I stopped ignoring the problem. Depression was here and I didn't (still don't really) know the extent of how bad it was.

This blog isn't really about how bad depression is though. It's not a story of how I overcame it either. In this fight I still consider depression to be winning, by a lot. But my attacks and defences against it are getting stronger, and that's what I want to talk about.

How I think I'm going to fight depression

Talking about it

This is one of those great weaknesses I mentioned before. I completely suck at talking about my own issues. I am close to hopeless at talking about how I feel. I have been on medication for over a month and I can count on one hand the number of people I've told about it. I've come to accept that I won't be able to announce my condition to each person I feel should know about it individually. I've waited until I managed to get myself into a position that I feel there's not much to lose by announcing it to everyone. After all, what's the worst that can happen? The best thing that can happen is I let everyone know I still care about them. Whenever I struggle to reply to people's messages I can thank depression for driving a wedge between me and my life. I still care though. I want everyone to understand that.

Exercise

Recommended at first by a wonderful person I've had the privilege working for whom deserved a much better employee this year. I listened, and I've taken it to heart. I walk more, even if it's just to play Pokemon Go. I jog now. I even started an app which guides you through a 7 month period where I have to do circuit training for 14 minutes each day. These things were quite rough to begin with. I was really out of shape. It's not so horrible any more.  

Cognitive behavioural therapy

Truly managing depression isn't just changing the circumstances. I may encounter issues that trigger depression through my whole life. What's important is how I respond. A month into my medication  I realised that it wasn't enough. A good friend of mine made strong arguments to see therapy and I started to appreciate the idea. I'm in the right country as well to seek help, thanks NHS. I see someone every two weeks right now to practise coping and management mechanisms to make things less terrible. Eventually I hope to discover any underlying issues as well but I'll be honest, I have no idea how my own mind works most of the time.

Gamifying my life/Self help apps

Gamification is the act of turning real life into a series of fun events that reward you in a similar way to how completing quests and missions would do in a video game. I do this in a few ways so I'll make a list. I use almost all of these every day now. 

Pokemon Go - walking, social interaction. Pokemon Go is a broken mess but every time it gets me to go outside and walk for an hour it's doing something incredible. Whenever it gets me to talk to someone it's doing just enough to keep my head above water. 

Duolingo - language. I've used Duolingo since 2014 on and off. I failed miserably at French during my time at high school and I wanted to make it right. I gave up each time when everything else in life wasn't going great. I'm sticking with it now in smaller chunks but more consistently. 

Daylio Diary - reflection. One of the most interesting recommendations I encountered when reading up on depression was to keep a record of mood each day. The app I decided to use for this is amazing. It asks me what activities I've done each day (a list I can edit), how I feel on a scale of 1-5 and anything else I'd like to say. That's it. But it keeps me aware of each day, each thing that makes me happy that I should do more and what to avoid if I can help it. 

Elevate - memory, arithmetic. A brain training app. It's free and has no adverts. It just limits a few features I don't care for. I think I appreciate it most of all because it's damn beautiful. 

Seven - fitness. I mentioned this before but didn't explain it fully. The idea of this app is to keep active for 7 months. Each day I do not do a circuit training I lose a heart. If I lose all 3 hearts I start with I have to start all over again. The start of each month refills your hearts so it's not all bad. 

Google Fit - fitness. It tracks walking, running, cycling and tells you the steps you made each day, week and even month. It has it's own goals. Seven integrates with it so Seven tells Google Fit how long I've exercised for. I also use this to track my weight and what my calorie burn rate probably is. 

At the center of all of this is Habitica. It plays like an RPG where I have a character with health points, experience, items and how well I do with those depends on how I manage my good habits and my daily activities. An example of a daily task would be to complete a Daylio Diary entry. If I do so, I gain experience and gold, if I don't do them I lose health points. If I lose enough health points I die and lose a level and an item. If I gain enough experience points I gain a level and more health points. There are enough ways to win and lose that it's quite fun. It requires attention each day but really pays off. I recommend it to anyone. I recommend people who have tried before to try again.

Trying to work 

This is where depression is completely beating me. When it comes to work, my depression is crippling. I will get ready in the morning, stand outside and start walking to work. Things are mostly fine. I get a few minutes into my walk and I'll start thinking about my performance in work so far, what I promised in the interview and how I failed to follow through in any expectations. I think about how I tried hard to push myself each time while at work to concentrate and socialise and go beyond the minimum effort and how when it came for me to go home all I wanted was to kill myself. Working had driven myself suicidal. My preferred method of suicide would be a car accident. Maybe I slip and fall over, into the road, in front of a speeding car. It feels good to think about it at the time. I care too much about my friends and family to ever do it so in my head I will always use everything I can to remember suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Still, the stress, anxiety and absolute panic of being back there is overwhelming. Discomfort turns into pain and I have to realise I can't go to work when I'm struggling to breathe and stand up. 

I try almost every day though. I keep on trying. I might never make it this summer but I don't give up. When I have to do something else during the day I make sure it's good and productive. I have my personal project where I have no external pressure on me. It's my own and I love it. I may never even release the code. That's not the point. 

Reading

I'm terrible at reading. I'm pretty bad at writing too. English was never my strong suit but I always love the opportunity to improve my greatest weaknesses. I recently bought two books called Depression is a Liar which I'm almost through already and a sci fi book you may have heard of called Dune. The reason for reading a book about depression specifically should be obvious. The reason why I've started reading is my mind feels like a maelstrom when left idle. I'll shift to any negative thoughts by default and I can't concentrate on even my own work all the time. Reading a book though? There's no rush. I can read it anywhere, even in nature. The added bonus is I get to use something that doesn't have a comments section.

Being thankful

This is actually an element of CBT but I like to cheat so I'm making being thankful its own section here as well. Basically, I remind myself each day what things have went well in my life and who has been there for me during the struggle. Family, friends, anyone. My mum has never been particularly lucky being a single parent around when I turned 8. My dad ditched both of us. What exactly was stopping my mum from ditching me? We've never talked about it but it wasn't some arbitrary obligation. It was love and care. For that, I am thankful. A mother so caring doesn't actually seem to be so common as I expected. I'm lucky as hell. 

My friends as well, my coworkers and just the people I've met and talked to randomly have brightened my life enough for me to see the right path to fix this. 

So that's everything. Those are my weapons and armour against depression and I train with them every day. I use them even when I don't believe they'll ever work or that I'll ever get better. If you manged to read all the way to here I'm seriously impressed. I started writing this over a month ago.

For anyone that's concerned about me and asks if I'm okay. I won't lie here, I'm not okay. But I'm not just accepting depression to keep it like that. I'm pooling every single resource there could possibly ever be to fight the crap out of this and I'll do what I can to keep remembering that's the kind of person I am.