Asklemmy

Hiking.

I cannot stress this enough.

One of the biggest loops of depression is feeling anhedonic and drained of energy, which keeps you from doing stuff, which keeps you anhedonic and drained of energy.

Go for a hike literally every single day for a whole month. Rate your depression on a scale of 1-10 every day a week before you start, every single day during, and then every day for a week after. You'll see the trend, and hiking will be your new antidepressant.

It's easy. It's walking. It's not competitive, you can go hilariously slowly and still accomplish your goal. You can add hobbies to this hobby, like photography or bird watching. You're probably not getting enough exercise, and being depressed all the time blows.

If you're nerdy and depressed, you may have heard about EMDR, where you sway your eyes back and forth rhythmically while you think about trauma. The doctor who came up with the treatment (that's showing crazy good results) went down the rabbit hole they went down because they noticed walking in the woods helping their depression. They currently think the mechanism has something to do with bilateral stimulation (walking) and constant reframing of your perspective (tree on my right, tree on my left, rock on my right, rock on my left).

Other physical activities are great too, but hiking seems literally taylor made for the depressed.

Do you struggle with anxiety and destructive ruminative thought patterns? Guess what you won't have the energy to do when you're panting for air?

Hiking is a legit way to maintain depression indefinitely. Don't get cozy, though. take a break and your brain will find its way back to it's old antics.

Start playing a musical instrument. Works for me

Running!

I was clinically depressed from 2002 to 2017. In 2017 I lost coverage and was forced to stop taking my medication.

The medication was wellbutrin. It really helped. I hated that I couldn’t get access to it, but I had to face life without it.

After having ramped down off the stuff, I was okay for a couple of weeks then the darkness started to come in.

In my research I found that exercise does the same thing as my medication (it increases hippocampal volume). So I switched from running about 1 mile per week to about 25 miles per week.

And my depression was gone. The medication managed it, allowed me to live my life. The running destroyed my depression.

IMO depression is caused by brain atrophy, which is caused by lack of moving one’s body. We evolved to be moving so much more, and just like your muscles will atrophy if you’re bedridden, your brain will atrophy if you don’t exert your body. Shrinking brain means life sucks hard.

First and foremost I want to second anyone who brought up cooking. Learning to cook a meal perfectly to your tasted is both accomplishing and sharable.

For the geekier stuff, I have taken up Gundam model kits in the last year. You can start off with simply building them straight from the box. There are also a ton of ways to customize them such as repainting, adding decals, create "weathering" effects and "kit bashing" (mixing models together to make your own new model). It has been a very nice outlet whenever I want to be crafty.

Frisbee golf. It's cheap, fun but challenging, and outdoors. Worst case scenario, you go on a long walk and bump into some interesting people. If you're in a medium sized city or larger, there is probably a course and league near you.

The culture is generally very polite and fun to be around. Lots of harmless stoners and 30yo bearded people with beers in hand. In the south there is starting to be some influence from megachurches using it as an enticement, so I'm not sure if it's "cleaned up" a little more down there.

Knitting, crocheting, embroidery, cross stitch, etc. The work is meditative, and you get in a groove waiting to see what the next row or stitches will look like. Producing an object feels productive, and gives a feeling of accomplishment.

Choose bright colors and fun patterns, and it's a lot of fun. There are patterns for all interests, so don't think this is the realm of only little old ladies. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Hiking. It costs nothing and you can create your own meaning from it. You can do the same trail over and over and know the place intimately, or you can make it a goal to do as many as possible and keep track of them all with souvenirs or art or whatever you want. The benchmark for success is what you define. And it's got a bonus of being good for your body.

I'd also suggest traditional music, but maybe keep it simple and cheap... ukulele, didgeridoo, or tin whistle. It's a low bar for entry and it's inherently social, all about jamming and being inclusive. Didgeridoo is more solitary, if that's what you prefer. These instruments have almost no ongoing costs and are great for learning the basics of music.

Instruments arr both humbling and also affirming. You can make noticeable progress and, again, define your own success. All my best friendships came through playing music. It's an endless source of joy for me.

For me getting back into LEGO really helped, it's a nice and relaxing activity. Also depending on your interests a hobby like flying FPV quadcopters can be a lot of fun. Forces you to go outside too which is always good :-)

Go exploring. On whatever mode of transportation you prefer, in whatever area you like. Set small goals for each trip (this is important to keep you from just wandering completely aimlessly). Maybe try to find a new restaurant of a cuisine you've never tried. Maybe find a street or alleyway you've never visited and see what's there. Maybe go find the biggest tree in the park. Basically just go see what's out there.

If you struggle coming up with your own fun goals, try geocaching instead.

I see a lot of physical activities around here, and I strongly agree. Find something that gets you outside and makes you move around. Hiking, biking, running, team sports, climbing - all great. Find whatever suits you and is within your area.

I recently got into disc golf. It's something i look forward to play, and it makes me go outside often and I meet a lot of new people while playing.

I had a conversation with a coworker recently and we got to the topic of working out, and he told he's working out two times a day. He goes to the gym before and after work.

I asked him why the hell he would go twice, like that's just ridiculous and he said well he was depressed, and started working out. Everyone said it'd help with the depression, but it helped only a bit. So he figured well maybe he has to go even more.

It's absolutely ridiculous imo, but.. whatever helps one I guess

Photography.

You can set up a little studio area in your house and start with still life pictures. Search for Danish Still Life Paintings for some ideas - I'm sure there's plenty of YouTube rabbit holes for more ideas. Or, just take up painting!

Photography is also a great excuse to get out of the house and walk around. Whether it's street photography or landscape or close up nature photography, there's always something to take pictures of. Give yourself little assignments - just circles today, just signs, just shadows, etc.

Either way, this is a creative outlet that you can share with others as you progress and get better. Who knows, you might start printing your images and have a gallery showing at a cafe!

Depressed people make the best bread.

Making food, either baking or cooking. They focus you on the here and now and you eat well to boot.

A hobby that has helped me a lot is knitting. It’s simple to learn and it’s another truly mindful thing to do for you.

Adding to all of the other comments, I have to add to the music suggestions: You DO NOT even have to learn an instrument. Learn how to make electronic music (you don't have to make techno or other such electronic electronic music. Just lay down a drum track and add a little sound here and another there. YouTube is full of tutorials for full blown DAW's/workstations and the simplest apps. Get Koala Sampler or some other app for your phone or better yet, tablet.

Even simpler, try an app called Keylimba, the default sound is a soothing thumb piano/marimba, and for just a couple euros/bucks you can get a range of instruments. With it you can just have the thing loop whatever base you put in and just, pluck a sound here and there. I'm a half-pro musician and I still often find myself just relaxing with it. Making a simple chord structure and just chilljamming away. Music isn't hard and difficult, people/society just approaches it in a really backwards way. Anyone can do music. Sequencers and loopers are such an underrated tool for learning. You don't have to mind any theory at all, just do what feels good.

I also have to add - meditation. Get a calm album or find one on YouTube that has music you enjoy, or even look up a guided meditation on YouTube, there's tons. Meditation is great if you can find even a moment to focus/unfocus on it.

Mountain biking.

You have lots of good answers posted but here is the trick...You have to START.

You don't need to sign up at the gym today and build a schedule to work out. That's way too much commitment. Instead just go outside.

That's it. Just put down the phone and go outside. Spend 5 or 10 mins out there. You didn't run a marathon, but you've done something today. Maybe later today you can go outside again. Tomorrow so the same thing. Put the phone down and go outside for a short time.

You gotta start somewhere, so make it easy and start small. Eventually you'll spend more time outside and less time doing nothing. Maybe you see cool plants and start getting into gardening. Maybe you find that walking isn't so bad and you find a park with a nice trail and work into jogging? Maybe the kid down the street wrecks his minibike in front of your house while you're outside and you stop to help and think the tiny motorcycle is cool and get inspired to start riding.

tldr- Don't just pick someone else's hobby. Put down the phone and go experience life outside your home. The hobby will likely find you when you start paying attention instead of distracting yourself.

Roller skating or roller blading can be an alternative to hiking, walking, and running that is loads of fun. This option can cost a bit more upfront for skates and protective gear but that can be minimized if you try to buy second hand.

I like this option since it can invoke more of a childlike fun and still get you out of the house. It's also arguably a cool hobby. Skating and blading works well if you live in a place that's more urban/suburban. You're not competing with anyone (except the you of yesterday). It's great to feel the wind and road fly by once you get good enough.

If anyone decides to try it, I recommend finding a flat, smooth spot and wearing a helmet and pads to start. Watch videos to improve your skills. Connect with other skaters online and in person if/when you feel comfortable doing so.

I was in a similar boat and I really can’t overstate how much working your way into an exercise routine will help. It feels impossible to start at first, but if you just commit to 30 minutes daily of walking/stretching/yoga, you’ll be amazed how quickly it goes from being an awful chore that takes tons of willpower, to a regular part of your routine that feels weird to skip.

Exercise is like a weird super power that genuinely makes you more confident, gives you more energy for mental tasks, and makes the rest of your life better. When I think back on my adult life, my mental health has always tended to go down when I would stop exercising, and it’s only when I would start again that things started getting better

Anything where you get to be physically active or mentally creative.

Passively consuming content is extremely unhealthy in large doses: TV, youtube, even reading is not healthy after a certain point. Humans were meant to be physically active creatures above all, not meant to stare at screens for long periods of time like many of us are doing now.

The best de-stressers are things like playing a musical instrument, painting, knitting / crocheting, hiking / going for walks / runs, exercising, meditating. I would go completely bonkers if I didn't have piano and weight-lifting.

Model railway...

Build your own buildings...

This one, i made myself. https://japix.schuerz.at/p/jakob/402735537014407232

Did not know before, that i can do this... 😊

Made me really happy and proud.

Many people have suggested walking and creative outlets. I think painting rocks is a good way to merge the two together. Go on a walk with the intention of finding a rock you like. It can be big, small, smooth, rough, maybe the shape of the rock reminds you of something or maybe it’s just a rock. Then at home just paint it however. It’s low stakes cause it’s just a rock, it has a clear finish point, it can be as high or low effort as you want. Big, small, plain, intricate, concrete, abstract. Just get a rock and put some paint on it and then you can feel accomplished cause you did something good for yourself.

Working out. Either biking, walking, lifting weights, doing martial arts, etc. It doesn't matter. In some of my lowest points if my life I started working out and it helped. It didn't fix it but it really helped my mood improve. It also raises your self-esteem. I did a couple of years of BJJ and it really made me feel better about myself. Now I go to the gym and lift weights. Looking better and seeing the weights I can lift become heavier do a lot of me.

Music. Pick up a guitar. Thomann sells really cheap guitars that are great for beginners. Learn some songs you love and play along with them. Just look up tabs online and go from there. Eventually, you'll realize that you can use the instrument as a constructive channel to your emotions.

Both (or even most) suggestions you're going to hear about this topic take discipline. There is a reason for that. These things are rewarding proportional to the effort you put in. Seeing yourself improve at whatever you choose ultimately will only happen when you make the time and put in the effort. Do not be discouraged. The first few weeks are always hard but you can build good habits in a short time.

Climbing / bouldering

I concur with most other people in this thread. Any exercise will do wonders. This is coming from a guy who's been into nerdy stuff my entire life - getting into a rhythm of actually wanting to do exercise is alfa omega.

I'm throwing bouldering into the pool of options. I've heard people with ADHD often get really into it because it is easy to get into, and does not demand a lot of prep work.

It can be expensive some places, but if the thing makes me work out without me even "knowing it" then it's worth the money for me.

As someone with self-diagnosed mild depression and probably adhd, I've struggled with this.

Lots of people have suggested running or walking, can confirm, that does help. I would also add music to that. Throw on headphones, start your favorite playlist, crank it up good and loud, and go for a walk/jog/run. No one is watching you, no one is judging you. Silently lip sync sing with the songs as expressively awesome as you can (or sing out loud for real if you can, but I know this would be hard for me, for whatever reason I'm much less self conscious about my ridiculous facial gymnastics as long as I'm quiet about it). Like for real, pretend this is your song, and you're performing it live at your band's concert. Entertain the shit out of your imaginary audience. Belt it out like there's no tomorrow. To quote Straylight Run's "Existentialism on Prom Night," sing like you think no one's listening. Combined with the physical activity, you'll feel great when you get back home. For even better effect, find a bunch of songs where the tempo matches your walking speed. Then you can really get into a groove with it.

I also go on walks with my wife most evenings now, no music/headphones, just kinda small talk and enjoying each other's company, and it's helped get some things back on track with our marriage too. Better communication. Not both of us sitting on the couch silently doomscrolling and ignoring each other.

I can also suggest 3d printing as another good hobby, though this one will cost you, so it comes with the caveat that you'll probably want to have at least a bit of discretionary income if you want to pick this one up. There are tons of free, ready-made models on sites like thingiverse.com, thangs.com, or printables.com. Public libraries sometimes have 3d printers available for public use, and any makerspace worth their salt will have some too, if you're in an area that has something like that. So you can piddle around with it a bit before you really start laying out cash, see if it's something you'll like.

Start small, find a dinky little trinket or toy or something that can be printed quickly, and watch that mfer come into existence layer by layer. It's addicting. When the print bed slides out at the end with a physical object that didn't exist an hour ago, it's kind of fantastic.

Once you decide that you like it, you'll want to get a printer of your very own. You can find very hands-on tinkery printers (creality ender 3 series) for $100 and up, if you're good getting your hands dirty and buying more parts to "fix" some of the entry-level shortcomings. Good, ready-made "as good as your gonna get" options from Prusa or Bambu are higher priced initially ($500+) but won't require nearly as much extra money for upgrades and tweaks. Filament usually costs about $20-30/roll depending on how fancy you want. You can do toys. You can do lithophanes (cool 3d printed photographs). You can print replacement parts for random shit in your house that breaks. Guns. Action figures. You can print an entire fucking life sized Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton (Reddit link, warning to anyone who's avoiding the old site). And all the while, you'll need to read and research and tweak and change and do all kinds of little mental tasks to engage yourself and pull out of your funk.

Your thing will fail sometimes. You'll run out of filament. Your settings will be wrong. You'll end up with a big blob of plastic spaghetti. But that gives you incentive to find and fix what went wrong and try again. It'll come out right eventually, and it feels great when it does.

Once you've gotten your feet wet with models from the Internet, you can get into starting to learn modeling yourself, with Blender or FreeCAD or any number of other apps. And if you thought it felt good when your cheesy little boat or octopus from the Internet finished, let me tell you... When your own model, that you created from absolutely nothing, comes off the printer as a real honest-to-god physical object, looking exactly like it did in your head, it's sublime!

Anyway. Good luck to you. Good on you for reaching out and looking for ways to improve yourself. I hope you find something that works for you.

Exercise. Not kidding, it will help.

And cooking. Healthy food will also help. Make sure you get liver in there.

Lego are hella fun

Already mentioned. But hiking or uust going for a walk. Even light exercise (such as walking) have been proven to improve mood (and bodily health)

Bring a camera and take some pictures.

Take new random routes

Say hi to random people and/or animals

Me and my wife do a daily little walk. We meet neighbourhood cats etc all the time. Its nice and fun

Not sure if they count as hobbies since they're ones that didn't wholly develop consciously, but photography and cryptography are the two that get me by.

Some form of exercise, I like weight lifting (bodyweight fitness is also fantastic)

Be disciplined and go even when you don't want to because when you're there you're glad you are. If you progressively overload every workout you aim for a new best, something to strive for. Then at the end you get the happy chemicals. Working out is amazing for improving mental health, and you get good visual and physical health benefits too.

programming. you can do cool stuff on your own

@QuietStorm I find gardening a great help. Watching something grow, taking care of flowers and veggies is rewarding.

Pick up whittling. This what I did when I was struggling in early covid. The start up cost is low and u can get as creative as u want. Im not very creative so make spoons and give them to family and friends but also make little figures like gnomes, wizards, rabbits, fish.

If u got wood and a semi decent knife, u can start right now

Could try 3D printing. I recently picked up an Ender 3 printer and have been having a lot of fun. I'm in a pretty good spot with a few figures printed and I'm ready to start doing the clean up and polishing type stuff. After I feel like I have a good process I'll start figuring out the best ways to paint.

It's been a fun hobby with a seemingly endless amount of depth, so there's always something to learn or just improve your current process.

The printer I got, plus the filament was around $195 to get started. Budget permitting I think its a fun creative outlet.

try programming. starting to learn python is easy and then if you like it keep on learning.

Gaming! There's so many amazing games out there in all sorts of genres.

I know music has already been stated, but learning an instrument during my episodes greatly helped me. It's not super interesting at first, but if your symptoms are like mine and others, sometimes just having the boring distraction of practicing a scale pattern can be that helpful. Learning the patterns of the major scale and doing that repeatedly can just be a nice way to productively occupy your mind and hands long enough for the episodes to pass when they get bad. And once you get to a point where you passively start hearing different ways to play that scale, you begin to improvise and it can actually go from boredom to fun. Another cool trick is that if you're used to typical 12 note scale stuff and associate Major sounds with "happy" sounds, it can give your brain just a little cognitive dissonance and help jolt you out of some moods if you're in a lighter episode.

Again: it's something that has worked for me. I don't think there's anything wrong with you if it doesn't work for you. But maybe it could be worth trying if you have access to an instrument.

As I don't see it already mentioned - needle felting. It's really fun, simple to learn yet hard to master and can be a great creative outlet. I'm still a beginner myself, but have already managed to make some okay looking things, and as you get better the things you make can be great small gifts for friends and family.

I believe there are some fairly inexpensive beginner's kits you could get that contain everything to get you started, and youtube has some really nice tutorials. There are also several ebooks with needle felting ideas and templates. What I like to do, to not feel too bad when my thing looks nothing like the thing in the picture, is to look up a tutorial to get a basic idea and then amend according to my ability and colors I have available.

In any case and whatever you end up actually doing, I really hope you find something you enjoy.