How do I deal with depression, without meds?

Breakups are hard, no doubt about it. So that’s first and foremost what I would say to you, it’s normal to be feeling this bad. Four years is a decently long relationship this day and age. People can become depressed over losing much shorter relationships, I can vouch for that. And even normal people who are not normally prone to depression can be brought to their knees by a breakup that they didn’t want. So seeing as you admit to already being depressed for a while, of course a breakup is going to bring you down.

In reading your post, you dropped a key phrase that most people in your situation would be able to relate to. You said that she has been your motivation to live for the entire time you’ve known her. Allowing that to happen is where you started to set up this trap for yourself, and now the trap has sprung. It’s perfectly normal for depressed people do behave that way with relationships, though. I’ve done it myself many times before. Finding someone to care about and spend time with can become your entire reason for waking up and the main thing on your mind at most hours of the day. But it’s a dangerous way to live, and it’s not really the way that a healthy relationship is supposed to work. A relationship should be two happy people enjoying life together. Relationships don’t work when one person, or both, is using their partner as a crutch to compensate for other problems or to help them stay happy and forget about the way the rest of their live makes them unhappy. To a certain point obviously having a girlfriend or boyfriend is going to make you feel better about things, but it goes too far when they become your entire reason to keep going. All day long on this website you see people talking about girlfriends and boyfriends and simultaneously wanting to die, and I just think it’s a recipe for disaster. People who want to die should not be looking for or having romantic partners. Love is part of life. If you’re obsessed with dying, you’re not in the right state of mind for trying to have a relationship with someone.

Anyways, point is, you have to want to live life for yourself. It’s okay to want to share your life with someone else, but not without valuing your life for yourself, by yourself, first. This 4 year relationship basically acted as a crutch or a bandaid for you the entire time, making it easier for you to ignore the other aspects of life that caused you pain. So not only are you now mourning the loss of your partner, which is normal, but you go into the range of abnormal/unhealthy because you are also hurting from the loss of the crutch/bandaid and real life finally coming rushing back and smacking you in the face because you no longer have the thing that helped you pretend that you were okay. It’s very difficult, but important to try to separate the two. It’s normal to miss the person after 4 years, but you have to try to figure out how much you really miss the person, and how much of you really just misses the protection that the high of being in love gave you from your depression. You might end up over exaggerating how much you miss this person, when really you just miss having the relationship to focus on instead of the rest of your life. They don’t call love a drug for no reason. It literally can act as a pain killer and soothe away some of your depression. Going back to the single life after so many years with a partner can really be a rough experience. Life can seem a lot more dull and worthless when you’re waking up alone in the morning.

An uneven relationship like that, where one person is really using it as a bandaid to help them cope with other problems/depression, is actually exactly what can lead to a breakup like this. There is an unspoken chemistry that occurs during a relationship, a healthy relationship will be two people who want to be together and who also have things they want to do for themselves and by themselves. When there is that emotional imbalance where one person is depressed and leaning on the relationship for comfort and protection, the other person can start to sense the added tension of feeling like it is becoming their job to keep the other person happen, or as you said, being their entire motivation to even stay alive. I’m not saying this is absolutely what caused your break up, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Once you’re able to admit that someone else is your only reason for staying alive, you’re not the only one who can sense it, they can to. And it can make them uncomfortable and scare them away when they feel like they are responsible for you.

I would advise you to not put too much worth into this idea that maybe you guys are just taking a break. It’s the harsh reality that people in love who want to be together do not take breaks. Taking a break is commonly a way to break up for people who just don’t have the heart to say it right away. If a girl is in love with someone she doesn’t want a break from them, she wants to make sure they don’t get away. I’m not trying to make you feel worse, but I’m trying to help you not set another trap for yourself and just end up with more pain. Try not to sit around hoping that this really is just a break. Is it possible that she really could change her mind and this will only be temporary? Yes. Is it likely? I would say no.

Guys also commonly make the mistake of becoming hyperactive in a situation like this, thinking that they need to do something to win the girl back or show that they care. This is generally not the case. When a girl finally makes the tough decision to admit that she doesn’t think things are working out and she wants some space, that’s really what she wants. Some might accuse girls of never saying what they really mean, but this is one of the times where they are flat out telling the truth. A girl who wants space wants space, not flowers or phone calls or apologies. I’m not implying that you necessarily plan to do any of these things – you didn’t really mention either way. Since you went along with the breakup, maybe you’re not exactly planning on how to get her back. And I think that’s absolutely the right strategy. You chose the right path to respect her decision and agree with it, and you should continue down that path by giving her the space and time that she said she wanted. Sometimes guys don’t realize that the best way to show a girl that you’re sorry is to give them exactly what they asked for. Instead we get “bright” ideas like flowers and apology letters, but she didn’t ask for that, she asked for time apart. Maintain your dignity and show her that you can be okay without her, even if you don’t really feel that way inside. There’s no quicker way to convince her that she did the right thing than trying to talk her into coming back. That will just confirm her fears that you are too depressed and that she wants to be alone or be with someone else.

In addition, avoid common unhealthy behaviors like trying to keep tabs on her by watching her on social media websites, talking to mutual friends who can tell you what she’s been up to, etc. These days it’s easier than ever to keep tabs on someone and find out where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing, but it makes it much much harder to move on that way. Maybe you aren’t connected to her online at all, but if you are, it might seem to just hurt even more, but the best thing you could do would be to not have her as a friend, or to shut down your accounts entirely for a while. Nothing hurts worse than reading or seeing pictures of the other person moving on or having fun.

In terms of the title of your post, firstly I support you in not wanting medications. I’ve never believed in them either no matter how hard my family has tried to tell me to give them a chance. Especially in the situation you are in – you just went through a breakup, you’re SUPPOSED to be sad. The whole business of medication tries to make it sound like negative emotions are never a proper part of life and should be medicated away. It is normal to be sad and it is healthier to go through the real grief process.

It might be hard with how low you’re feeling right now but first and foremost, my advice is exercise. Look around online and you’ll find the reports on how physical activity has been proven to be just as effective as some of the name brand anti-depressants. During and after exercise your brain is literally releasing endorphins and chemicals that make you feel good. They might fade an hour or so after the workout, but then on top of it you indirectly get the benefit of getting in better shape, using the physical activity to burn away some of the stress and depression, getting goals for yourself and proving to yourself that you can still accomplish things, etc. Going for a walk/run or visiting the gym might sound like the last thing you want to do right now, but in my years of dealing with depression, I cannot deny that it always makes me feel better. The hard part is getting yourself to do it. There have been times where I haven’t exercised for months, and I keep putting it off, and when I finally try it again, literally in the first five minutes I always find myself saying “why did I ever stop, and why didn’t I start again sooner”. It really works that fast in most cases.

A few other things, similar to working out, that might seem impossible to handle right now but WILL help, getting as much sleep as you can, eating healthy, and getting fresh air. Comfort food can come in handy to drown emotions, but it’s similar to the way that you were using your relationship to avoid your depression in the first place – it doesn’t really fix the problem, it just distracts you from it for a while, and then on top of it you feel all sluggish and nasty. This goes for drugs or alcohol as well. You did not mention if you partake in any of those activities, but try not to. Drinking can make you feel better for the time being, and make you feel a million times worse the next day.

If you have any friends or family who will talk to you about this, don’t be afraid to lean on people, that’s what they’re there for – just don’t drive them crazy talking about the breakup 24/7 either. Even hanging out with people without discussing the breakup itself will help. Social activity helps combat depression. I’m very much a loner and don’t generally want to be around people a lot, but some days even I know I just need to get out and talk to someone else for a while.

Well I think that’s what I have to offer you for now. Just my opinions, none of it is guaranteed to be right or wrong. I have a long history of heartbreaks and recovering from them, because for a long time I used relationships to try to avoid how much I hated the rest of my life too. Maybe just judging by how much I wrote here you’ll be able to tell how important it is to me. Maybe I’ve learned a thing or two along the way and maybe something I said here will help you out.

Oh and I guess I’d be silly not to mention – time. It’s going to take time. People will tell you that and your instinct is going to be to think that they’re wrong, that you’ll never feel better and you’ll never stop missing this person, but you will. It might take along time, but it does start to go away. You probably won’t feel better tomorrow or this week. You will eventually, if you at least try to move forward a little bit each day. If a day comes along where really all you can do is lie in bed and feel terrible about things, go ahead, it’s part of grieving, but don’t do it day after day. Even if all you can manage to do is go for a walk and eat a decent meal before getting back in bed, every little bit will help.

It doesn’t really matter if there are other fish in the sea or not, so no, I’m not going to tell you that. It’s important that you figure out what will make you happy first. Even if you were to meet someone else in the near future, all you’d be doing is repeating the same process, now you’d be using the new relationship and the bandaid and crutch to help you forget the heart break of the last one. It might feel better but it will create the same problem, you’ll just be delaying the inevitable, and some day when that relationship ends, you’ll look in the mirror again and realize that all the same problems are still waiting for you because you never addressed them, you just kept finding a girl to think about instead. I did that for way too long. And every time another relationship failed it just hurt worse than the last time. So yeah, whether or not there are other fish in the sea doesn’t matter right now, you need to be stuck with yourself for a while and try to find out if you can see any value in this life without having a romantic partner as your reason for waking up in the morning.