I wish I could talk to you or something but the explanation in written words is going to be a long read. I'm trying to make it as short as possible though...
I'm going to assume the absolute worst & compare from my POV:
24/7 lying in bed. Almost every day of the week. Constantly on the phone watching videos, gaming, listening to music, even jacking off 3-4 times a day or harming yourself once in a while. No reason to live, no one helping you in any meaningful way. Sound similar? Yeah man, that's where I was earlier this year. Life sucks
My way of trying to get out of there was to just set my goal to "go outside every day". Doesn't matter where or how long for, just go outside. But I quickly discovered that doing even that isn't possible most of the time.
From my understanding, the issue when you're this knee deep into depression seems to be that you are constantly fighting your own "cost vs reward" center of your brain. Whenever you propose a goal your reward system tunes in and comes back with: "this shit isn't worth" or "you can't do that" and therefore it denies you any slight sip of motivation. No dopamine, no nothing. No feeling of "hell yeah let's do this", just pure fucking nothing. this isn't normal...
So the only way out is to learn how to do stuff without having ANY motivation and without ANY discipline. HOW?
What worked for me is to trick your brain a bit and avoid your reward system. If any goal you set is deemed too high, then the only solution is to lower the goal. You can do this by subdividing your bigger task into smaller steps. The important thing is to keep subdividing even if the smaller step gets stupidly small, and (very important) try and hide from your brain that your atomically small task is connected to a higher goal!
You wanna go outside for a 5 min walk around the block but your mind says: "no, keep doomscrolling!!!" start bargaining in your head:
You don't actually want to go outside, no sir, you just want to get out of bed, put on some clothes and stand in front of the door doomscrolling for some reason. This has nothing to do with the fact that you want to go outside, of course. Still too high? Well then forget the clothes and forget the door man, how about you just stand up from your bed? No more no less! Still too high? Well, how about just removing your blanket. Still too high? Okay, how about turning your phone off? Way too high? Well, how about just putting your thumb on your off switch. You're not going to press it, of course, you're just resting your thumb there for some reason.
Yes, depending on the day you may have to divide into these atomically small-sized subtasks; you can even go to the point of "contract this muscle". But it always works! I mean, JUST putting you thumb onto the off switch is easy, there is no world where your reward system would deny you doing that. Even if it does, you can still try and get a very small drop of motivation by simply starting a countdown from 3 to 1. Clear your mind for this countdown, think of nothing else and once you're on 1 BOOOM finger is now resting on your off switch. GREAT! What now? Well, you can reward yourself by continuing to watch YouTube or whatever, and that would actually be okay. I mean you did it! You achieved something! Yay!
But there is a chance your action actually sparks a very tiny amount of dopamine production and if you can you wanna ride that wave! So, what now? Well, your thumb is resting on your off switch, so why not press it? Boom, 2 for 1, we are getting somewhere. Don't overdo it, tough. Reward yourself by just lying down for a bit and enjoying the silence. I mean, this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact you wanna go outside, no sir! You did it! GOAL ACHIEVED! Next up, throw away your blanket. Too high? Well 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. BOOM, blanket is out and ride that wave: now you're slowly standing up! Great!
Continue to do that process till it "coincidentally" leads to you going outside. You may deviate from that path and that's completely fine! For example, you may push yourself to take a shower and put on some fresh clothes but shit! Now you are back in bed again and doomscrolling. Well, you're still getting closer to your higher goal. You actually didn't lose that much progress, so just start over and continue this process. Even if this shit takes the entire day, from morning to evening, well you can always go outside, no matter the time!
EVEN if you don't manage to go outside that day, what actually counts is that you tried. Because by doing this exact process over and over again you, first of all, slowly master the art of achieving shit without the need for ANY motivation (which is something healthy people rely on on a day-to-day basis) and, Second of all, you give your reward system the space to heal. Every time you do this, the steps required get easier to achieve; you get quicker over time. Even if there are minor and major setbacks (which will happen a lot), you still, in general, are moving forward. THAT'S WHAT COUNTS
You can use the exact same strategy to achieve Anything. Wanna work out but dont feel like it? Apply this! Wanna learn to cook? Apply this!
Shit I'm still having to use this every now and then to get stuff done when my own motivation and discipline are depleted...
But trust me, it will get better, even if it takes alot of time.
