Keep in mind different methods and substances work differently for different people. All I can really speak to is my personal experience. I tried three different anti-depressants and a few different methods for coping with depression before I overcame mine. The anti-depressants didn't do much if anything to help. The first I tried was zoloft I think, maybe prozac, it's been a long time and I took it once then had a seizure on the first night. It was definitely not the one for me. I was then put on another which took away my sex drive, again this wasn't really an acceptable side effect for me so I didn't stay on that long. The third I tried was citalopram or cilexa, here at least I did not have an adverse reaction, I stayed on it a while, but it seemed more a placebo than anything significantly beneficial. It may have had some minor effect, I did begin to turn things around when I was on this, though I give my methods more credit than the pills during this period of time. When I stopped the drug I felt no better or worse than when I was on it.

As for my methods, the main lesson was to change just one thing. Focus on that change until it is habit itself, then change one more.

When changing habits, the key is not to overreach. The reasoning for this is that willpower is in ways like a pool, in ways a muscle.

We are cued by our environment, those around us, and even by our own thoughts into familiar roles. We do not inherently have to play those old roles, but to do otherwise requires that we notice those cues and expend willpower to do something other than our default. If our pool of willpower has run dry, regardless of what we want we will revert to the comfort of old habits. When this happens it will undo most of the work to change those old habits as it engages those old familiar pathways reinforcing them anew. This is why one should change just one thing until that thing is no longer new, rather that change is habit itself.

My journey started with mindfulness. This is because if you don't notice being cued and instead act out of habit you'll re-engage the old and make change very difficult to sustain. You'll change and revert before the new has become habit returning again and again the the roles you once knew. I've heard mindfulness described as sitting next to the river of emotion watching it flow past rather than being caught up in its currents. It is important to be with an emotion rather than confusing that emotion with who you are or letting it control your life. When I was overcoming depression it was important to simply be with the emotion of shame, not to believe I was myself a shameful person, or to let myself be controlled by shame. The same can be said of countless other emotions as well. This is why I worked on mindfulness first and nothing else. Change one thing. Wait till that change is habit itself. Change one more.

From here it gets easier in ways. First, with the practice of mindfulness it is easier to notice the cues and to choose to act in a different way. Next because willpower is like a muscle. The more you work it, the larger your pool of willpower grows and the faster it refills. Once I became more aware in the moment, I noticed that certain situations and certain people caused negative reactions of me. Rewiring old habits when you're constantly cued like that is very taxing on your willpower, so instead I chose to avoid them. This helped both conserve my willpower for the changes I wanted to make and habits atrophy over time with disuse, so they took less willpower to overcome when I was again faced with old cues. The way I avoided many of those cues was to take up new hobbies and change my social circle. One of the hobbies I took up was exercise. This was triply beneficial. It helped avoid old harmful habits, make new friends, and is one of the best anti-depressants out there. After one month all three methods have similar rates of alleviating depression but after 3 months the pill has higher relapse rates than either competitor. After a year the pill has about twice the relapse rate of the combination and that in turn had about twice the relapse rate of exercise alone. I spent all my willpower for a good while on cultivating the habit of exercise so my reservoir would not run dry and halt progress. Habits take work to form. Change one thing, wait till that thing becomes habit itself, change one more.

I feel compelled to mention at this point an important caveat; you need to understand that because you should only be working on one major habit change at a time that the rest will have to wait. Through my mindfulness I would notice that I did not live up to my ideal in other areas of my life. This in itself was cue for depressive thoughts, and those in turn for negative behavior. But I would remind myself that I was doing all that I could to get myself out of the situation that I was in. And that's all you can do. You can't expect more of yourself. I'd remind myself when I fell into other roles that I wasn't actively working to fix, it wasn't me the failure, the fallen. Once you're on the ground the best thing you can possibly do is pick yourself back up. As long as I was working toward that, I was doing the best I possibly could. Perfection isn't possible, progress is.

So, that's how I broke my cycle. I changed one thing and accepted that while it may not be the only thing I wanted to change that I was doing the best I possibly could by making progress.