I send you each a hug and a thank you, just being heard, knowing kindness helps so much!
As someone who has had bouts of depression, here's one of the most unfortunate aspects of it, any advice anyone might give us is always going to be hard to take.
If it made you laugh I could say "one of the most depressing aspects of depression is advice depresses you", (or at least it did me, and most would probably acknowledge how hard it can be to take advice with any kind of problem).
What makes any of us well, or feel better can be, (or seem), unfathomable, and I have that on good authority believe me. The mental health staff assisting me seven years ago, when my life came back together, asked me what I thought had lead to the improvement?
We have to conclude therefore that if they don't know, no one really knows, as they're the professionals aren't they who had done as much as possible to try to help me! There was just one thing both they and I believed had no negative sides to it, (my learning my daughter had given birth to a son a few months earlier), but even this news, good as it was, could only have been a part of it.
The encouragement I received from someone who was almost a stranger, who repeatedly gave me simple positive messages like: " keep going Graham", when he saw any improvement in me, played a big part too!
Why did it help that he was a near stranger, (or almost a stranger, as the son of someone who rented my fathers land) you might wonder?
Silly as it sounds, because I knew when he tried to encourage me, or give me simple positive messages, "he wasn't just saying that because it was the right thing to say", (if you see what I mean?).
Anything else I say, (and you already know how long winded I can be), will amount to my falling into the trap of advising you, "so you'll have to do without my advice m'girl"!!!!
