t's no secret that depression zaps your motivation to do, well, anything, and can drastically lower your productivity. The constant carousel of intrusive thoughts and worries can have a paralyzing effect — making it impossible to focus on anything beyond the most basic of tasks and making you feel like a failure. Fortunately, there is something you can do to help alleviate those feelings, and it involves reassessing what you think it means to be productive (with or without depression).

Coping with depression is a daily battle. Depression recovery can take years, and there is no such thing as a "quick fix." There are, however, things you can do to bring rapid relief in times of stress, anxiety, and panic attacks. For me, that relief has come in the form of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) — a strange online phenomenon that has been a source of comfort and relaxation for millions since the mid-2000s, even though most people have no idea what it is.

First off, I want to clarify that depression and victim mentality are not the same. The former is a mental illness that no one can choose, while the latter is a mindset that may or may not be a choice. That said, victim mentality does play a role in depression, which is why it is crucial to identify and manage it.

Let's cut to the chase: depression is mentally and physically debilitating. Even if you are do not have low-functioning depression, depression limits what you can and cannot do. To prevent depression from getting worse, one needs to learn to set boundaries. Here's why.

My mental health has always suffered in times of isolation and uncertainty. As someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), I'm at my most content when I'm able to predict and control my surroundings. When that control is lost, my mind conjures terrifying hypotheticals about what "could" happen, and I start to engage in compulsive behaviors to bring order to the chaos in my mind. This exhausting cycle of thoughts and rituals invariably causes me to slip back into depression, and I'm left feeling like a failure once again. So, you would think that the uncertainty surrounding the current global pandemic would have my mental health in a tailspin. But no — it is better now than it has been in years, and it's precisely due to that uncertainty. The uncertainty leading to my isolation has improved my mental health.

There are precious few things to be optimistic about when one is depressed, so you must be thinking I'm cuckoo. Well, allow me to explain. The way I see it, nihilism is a school of thought which believes that life is meaningless. Needless to say, that's a depressing point of view. Optimistic nihilism is, therefore, a brighter outlook than mere nihilism as it proposes that since life is meaningless, we are free to give it whatever meaning we choose.

Yesterday evening, I physically and emotionally disconnected from myself for some time due to depression. I felt like I was watching my meat suit cry because she could no longer take being locked in at home with no physical escape. That's right; I was having a meltdown because of COVID-19's lockdown restrictions since March.

It is no secret that good company is crucial to fight boredom, loneliness, and even depression. However, there is a common belief that good company can only be found in another person. I believe that anything that keeps you engaged and/or entertained is good company. While the ideal situation is to spend time with someone you care about; well, inanimate objects are the next best option. 

If you have depression, consulting a therapist is the smartest move you can make to learn healthy coping mechanisms to deal with it, but self-therapy for depression can help you in a pinch.

The mixture of chaos and depression will increase the longer we continue to face the COVID-19 pandemic. When chaos takes place in our mind, we can have a harder time coping with our depression. I am finding this to be true for myself over the past several days. If you, too, are feeling more chaotic and finding it especially difficult to cope with your depression lately, then let's see if we can figure out some coping strategies that might help.