The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
First of all, I get you on at least some level. The personal side of me notices that there have been times even within the last few years where quite literally I am only alive because I didn't want to inflict suffering on my family and friends. And honestly I think that's a totally fine and complete reason to keep existing. I'm not sure your exact situation, but hopefully something similar applies.
The religious/more generalized-spiritual side of me says that you should spend some time helping others if you have nothing to be thankful for. Literally and physically volunteer. Despite its spiritual roots, I'm pretty sure this is a quite practical suggestion as well. Pessimistically, say we agree with your claim that you enjoy quite literally nothing and are quite literally miserable 24/7... you can still find a degree of purpose by helping others, which is real.
(On that note, I'd suggest - though I haven't personally read yet - Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, which might jive with your situation a bit.)
The heartless statistics side of me says that regular exercise is quite literally just as if not more effective than meds or therapy, so... do that. Stupid, annoying, but clearly works. It's almost literally the most durable scientific finding in all of depression research, despite being one of the hardest to do for obvious reasons (it may be useful to recruit someone to bully you into it, or do it with you - be vulnerable and ask). The statistics of these kinds of states are weird - for example, I intellectually know, it's an established fact, that if I don't get enough sleep, I get extremely depressed at night before bed. That knowledge doesn't quite help in that actual moment, not a ton, but that does slightly help me frame what's "real" properly.
The more neuroscience/quirky side of me suggests that you break out of mental ruts in a deliberate way. For example, I was also recently recommended, of all things, a book called Impro, a set of essays about improv, but as a life-outlook kind of book. One exercise therein is silly but I do believe it "works": Simply spend a few minutes walking around the room and shouting out loud the wrong names for things. Allegedly, this can help you experience the world more vividly for a few moments. I'm not sure that particular exercise is of value to you, but the general concept of "do something deliberately weird or crazy" might be. Frame things differently, and be a little extreme about it. How this might manifest for you? Do something extremely quirky or way outside the norm as a birthday activity. Show up at a local coffee shop and start complimenting strangers. Go to the bank, withdraw a ton of single dollar bills, and give them away to people. Dress up for some banal errands. That kind of thing.
I was going to reply with all my various objections and nitpicks about these suggestions (like mentioning how I go for regular walks, or my landlords' noise rules, or our anti-panhandling laws), but why bother?
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