Comment by helboi4

Erm a lot of things. Diet and exercise are literally key. Diet less so, I can be depressed with a great diet. But with adequate sun exposure and exercise it's pretty hard to be super depressed unless you have a serious chemical imbalance. (edit: I also think having goals in your exercise that you actually care about somewhat helps).

I go outside and stare at the sun every morning for like 5 mins (this is so key I can't even overstate it). I take a cold shower after that (proven to increase your baseline dopamine). I exercise almost every day. I try to never spend a whole day in my house unless I'm sick, preferably spending the majority of the day outside my house. I try to get 8 hours of sleep at least 5 out of 7 days a week, by which I mean 9 hours in bed with the lights off. Being in bed 8 hours isn't sufficient. All this makes me feel awake and sorta alive.

I keep a journal where I set myself goals for the day and I reflect on my performance and my state of mind at the end of the day. Sorta a bullet journal deal with a bit more feels but in a practical way. It's for monitoring and encouraging iterative improvement and for analysing and mitigating negative thought patterns. This allows me to keep myself accountable but also just cope when I'm literally crying in the evening for no reason. It's like my emotional support book.

I was having trouble with caring about anything I usually would. I just started trying to act like I cared. Like acting curious, being highly engaged. And it sort of leads to you naturally being more interested after a while.

I try to create social interaction for myself every week even if no-one invites me to do anything.

I have Freedom app on my phone blocking most stuff for the first 5 hours and last 1 hour of the day. I also don't listen to music or podcasts in the morning. This leaves my brain feeling less sluggish and helpless.

I sign up for really random stuff sometimes just to make my life interesting.

Lastly, I do a lot of deep breathing when I'm trying to get things done because I tend to get anxiety about literally any task.

Edit: I don't know why I need so much going on to make myself function like a normal person. But it works a lot better than not doing this because otherwise I literally curl up into a ball, give up on life and get fired from jobs.