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If you have a doctor (like a GP) ask them for a recommendation/refferal, if you have friends/family who have had success with therapy, ask about their therapist or how they found them.

There are places online that are like Yelp for doctors which can provide user based feedback on how effective a therapist is/was.

There are also places online that offer online therapists. I can't vouch for how good they are but a lot seem to boast real therapists at a discounted cost.

There are hospitals and NGO's that are set up to treat people who have certain issues (like addiction, depression, anxiety). Call and ask them for recommendations.

Look around for support groups that help people with your issues. Go to them or ask the people who run them who they recommend for individual counseling.

Maybe there's a sub on Reddit for your city/town that you could ask.

Look up kinds of therapy. There is psychiatry, psychology and using a combination of both. Psychology has different kinds of therapy too CBT (which has been show to be effective for depression), EFT, Gestalt - the list goes on. Read about their differing approaches to get an idea of what is best for you.

(If CBT is of any interest, you can read this [book] (https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Over-Mood-Second-Changing/dp/1462520421/). It's a workbook and the emphasis is on the work. There are lots of exercises that provide real help right away but it takes time so be patient.)

Anyway, once you have names, you can meet or more therapists for a consultation and see how you feel about them and what they offer. Your gut will tell you a lot. If it isn't a fit, no big deal, keep on looking.

For context:

My path was to ask my GP for help and be told I should eat better, sleep better, not drink or smoke weed and get exercise. Fair enough. All of those things fuck with your mood and disposition.

I struggled and couldn't get that all to work but I felt better after a while so I figured I was good.

Then I crashed again and asked for help again. I got bumped up to a counselor that the GP referred me to. He told me to eat better, sleep better, stop drinking and smoking weed, do exercise and gave me some books to read.

I did some of that for a while and then had a HUGE crash.

I figured I was depressed. Took a bunch of bullshit quizes online to self-diagnose. Then I looked up therapists in the area I was in. There was a mood disorder clinic that specialized in depression, etc. that was for people in crisis. It was all psychiatrists.

And, elsewhere, I found a counselor that was reviewed really well online from some random site (I wasn't very fastidious in my research owing to the personal crisis).

The mood people needed a referral so I contacted my GP. I didn't ask for help this time. I told him. I was in crisis, I had tried other strategies. I needed to escalate my care.

He gave me a referral.

I saw that psychiatrist and, lucky for me, he was amazing at his job and figured out I had bipolar 2 instead of depression (it's often misdiagnosed).

Meanwhile, I was on a waiting list for a therapist and she finally became available. I worked with her and she was amazing.

I had seen three psychotherapists before but she was the one who made the biggest difference.

I'm good now. With a combo of meds, therapy, meditation and (you guessed it), eating/sleeping/exercising right without drugs or alcohol, I'm having a pretty great life.

That's just me and my path. I only mention it to show that it can be a struggle to get the help you need but it is so worthwhile.

I wish I'd put my foot down 15 years ago.

It can be a weird process. It can take time. It can be awkward.

But there is nothing more important than fighting through all that to get yourself a better life and better way of being.

Even when I worked with therapists who didn't get to the heart of my problems, I learned SO much about who I am and how to cope with things.

When you think about it, you only learn how to live, fight, love, overcome, etc. from the few people in your family and maybe a friend or two if you have some really close ones.

It makes so much sense to me that I reached out for other sources and support and thoughts on how to live life.

There's no problem or any shame in any of this. It's the most important thing to value in your life.

When you're talking about dealing with your issues, you're talking about understanding yourself and learning how to be the best version of you. If you put work in on this stuff, it changes the filter that you look at life through. And that means it changes your life completely and changes it for anyone who is in your life too. I'm a better partner now. A better friend. I'm better at work.

Feel free to reply anytime to let me know how you do with all of this. I'm more than happy to offer any thoughts down the road.

I did this a while ago, and I highly recommend it to anyone who feels the slightest bit socially awkward: make a goal for yourself to make small conversations with a new person for 30 days.

It could be talking about the cold winds of winter while to the stranger next to you at Starbucks. It could be asking somebody at a bar what they're drinking. And it could be asking the somebody on the floor of Best Buy to help you find something, and while you're making your way down the aisle ask them how their day is going.

I say small conversations and not small talk because small talk is usually "scripted" per se, like the classic "How are you doing?" "Fine, how about yourself?" that we're all conditioned to say. At Starbucks, after you mention the weather, ask them if they have any big plans for the day. At the bar ask them what they recommend. At Best Buy ask them if they're watching any good TV shows.

It's all about finding the connecting points, not about making an impression (unless it's a job interview). If there are no connecting points then so be it, you two probably wouldn't be good friends anyways. If the Best Buy attendant and you are both fans of Black Mirror then you know instantly you have something to talk about.

I used to train Parkour, and in Parkour we would do these things called a "dry run" (not sure if anybody else called it this). They were runs you did near the obstacle, or on something else similar to it, but they were safer. Although the movements were the same, the dry run usually was in a safe location, to help us mentally prepare for our full run.

Going out there and challenging yourself to speak to 30 new people in 30 days is much like the dry runs. Don't put any expectations on yourself, instead relish in the comfort that you're probably never ever going to see these people again, and because of that you are free to train safely.

Edit: Two books I recommend you read: How to Win Friends and Influence People, the most recommended self-help book because people of all walks of life are still trying to figure out other people. The book goes into detail on how to be an empathetic listener and why asking questions is the most important thing you can do. The second book I recommend is Quiet, by Susan Cain, which is pretty much How to Win Friend's mortal enemy if it had one. If you're like me and identify as an introvert, you've probably felt self conscious of your tendency to not talk as much as your peers, in Quiet Cain pretty much turns this taboo upside down, as she delves into the psychology of introversion vs extroversion. These two books changed the ways I interacted with others, and gave me some self acceptance and confidence in my temperament.

it's the question that drives us. (The Matrix) - What do you want to achieve with your post and your video's?
I partially agree with what you write but most of all fail to see the part in which you ask your question.

I get the impression that you are seeking and think that you might be interested in the book from Meng-tan (a google engineer). The title is search inside yourself. It's available on Amazon for as little as 13:59 (link) http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achieving/dp/0062116932

and also for free as a pdf from here:
http://www.randomhouse.de/content/edition/excerpts/346837.pdf

About the Author, he's a really cool guy from Singapore !
https://siyli.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/The-Sun-01-08-2012-p21-Search-Inside-Yourself.pdf

Some other sources.
Here is a far out book,
https://wahiduddin.net/thinketh/as_a_man_thinketh.pdf
You become what you think about most of the time.

Bob proctor:
I think that his model of the mind is really good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urun_rE79_Q
Book: You were born rich.

Richard Bandler:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExGTdhOueCg
Bob Proctor talks about programing the mind, Richard Bandler is the 1st man to study when your interested in that.
Book: frogs into princesses & how to make a great life.

Best of luck & let me know if you find this information usefull to you.

I'm a 22 year old male. I've experienced pretty similar symptoms. I have pretty big ups and downs. I'm a pretty social person and when I'm feeling up I feel I can talk with anyone, be heard, think optimistically, work hard, etc.. However, I will eventually experience the low you described. I was talking to my mom the other day on the phone - she was really excited to talk with me, but I just had no energy to talk with her. It was't because I was mad at her, but it just seemed like a lot of work and I didn't have anything I wanted to talk about. As you mentioned, it can occur within an hour.

I also live a healthy lifestyle. I workout most days of the week eat pretty healthfully. I'm not quite sure the answer, but I do have a few thoughts.

I think accepting that mood swings are natural is important. Even the most social people, hard working people, etc. have regular downtimes. I understand you feel your situation is extreme, but I think it is important to understand mood swings are human and you can't just fight your way out of a low.

However, I think there are things you can take to stabilize your mood. I have started meditating everyday for 45 minutes. I have been doing it in the morning for the past week and have noticed results. I think you have less ups and downs, which is very nice. I'm following the meditations from this book. This method takes discipline, but you should be able to see results. There have been many, many studies on the benefits of meditation.

In addition, if you haven't looked into cognitive therapy, I would recommend reading the book Feeling Good. The basic idea is your thoughts control your mood. If you can have a better handle over your thoughts, you will be able to better control your mood. I've noticed I experience a rapid mood swing (in less than an hour) because of a thought trigger. Sometimes some negative, or seemingly negative event will happen and it will trigger a long string of thoughts that invariably brings my mood down.

Hey,

Congratulations on your decision to get help! You can do it. In you post history, I can see that you struggle with depression.

First, where are you located? Are you in Europe, in the US, somewhere else? In most places, you can find therapists. Are you still in school or studying? Many schools and universities offer free mental health councelling. Check those out! Depending on your situation, you might be able to qualify for government assistance. I am not in the US, but I believe you can check HealthCare.gov to find out if you qualify and take your next steps from there. If you don't qualify, there is a very cool blog post by a psychologist on how to get mental health care on a budget: http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/25/mental-health-on-a-budget/

Let me quote from that article:

"This section is on ways to do therapy if you cannot afford a traditional therapist. There may also be other options specific to your area, like training clinics attached to colleges that charge “sliding scale” fees (ie they will charge you less if you can’t afford full price).

1. Bibliotherapy: If you’re doing a specific therapy for a specific problem (as opposed to just trying to vent or organize your thoughts), studies generally find that doing therapy out of a textbook works just as well as doing it with a real therapist. I usually recommend David Burns’ therapy books: Feeling Good for depression and When Panic Attacks for anxiety. If you have anger, emotional breakdowns, or other borderline-adjacent symptoms, consider a DBT skills workbook. For OCD, Brain Lock.

2. Free support groups: Alcoholics Anonymous is neither as great as the proponents say nor as terrible as the detractors say; for a balanced look, see here. There are countless different spinoffs for non-religious people or people with various demographic characteristics or different drugs. But there are also groups for gambling addiction, sex addiction, and food addiction (including eating disorders). There’s a list of anxiety and depression support groups here. Groups for conditions like social anxiety can be especially helpful since going to the group is itself a form of exposure therapy.

3. Therapy startups: These are companies like BetterHelp and TalkSpace which offer remote therapy for something like $50/week. I was previously more bullish on these; more recently, it looks like they have stopped offering free videochat with a subscription. That means you may be limited to texting your therapist about very specific things you are doing that day, which isn’t really therapy. And some awful thinkpiece sites that always hate everything are also skeptical. I am interested in hearing experiences from anyone who has used these sites. Until then, consider them use-at-your-own-risk." (end quote)

There are also sections on prescription medicine and on supplements in that article. Check it out!

If you are in a particularly bad spot or just need somebody to talk, there are lots of phone lines and services where you can call in for free. One example: https://www.crisistextline.org/depression/ (US-based).

There are also subreddits like /r/depression where you can get help from people who actually know what they are talking about.

​

Good luck and hang in there!

​

​

Read the Miracle Morning (quick & easy read). The author has pulled the best morning routines in 6 steps:

Silence - Meditate
Affirmation
Visualize
Exercise
Read
Scribe - Journal

Apart from changing your life, the book introduces you to a 70k strong community that only inspires and encourages. Every single person has been in your position.

I read the book over a year ago which ultimately lead me to complete 4 triathlons so far and help me focus my mind through meditation.

https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Morning-Not-So-Obvious-Guaranteed-Transform/dp/0979019710

This is a very good book and best of all it is very short.

Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

the summary is if your fat and your friend is thin and you have the same diet and activity level. Its more likely that you have the hormones that cant handle sugars and grains well. If you curb your diet
when it comes to sugars and grains then you will lose weight. If you want to become stronger and have more endurance you exercise. There is also a whole subreddit to teach how to eat healthier.

/keto

There is ample information on the top and the side as far as how to get started right away. Here is a meal plan.

six day meal plan

Naw, you're not insane, as long as you don't hurt anyone or yourself. Don't think in absolutes (insane or sane). I suggest taking a psychology and philosophy course at the local community college. These will help you a great deal in understanding how your mind works and connecting you with more resources. There is a great deal of knowledge from thinkers past.

http://www.amazon.com/Divided-Self-Existential-Madness-Psychology/dp/0140135375
http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Therapy-Revised-Updated/dp/0380810336

The first thing I would suggest is to see a counselor, someone who will listen and give you feedback.


Secondly, I would definitely recommend watching this podcast of author Sam Harris on the Joe Rogan show, in which he talks about minds and dysfunctional thoughts.


I also always recommend a book called "The Power of Now" by Eckart Tolle. He has many videos on youtube as well. In his book he speaks about how people tend to identify with their minds, that is to believe that you are one and the same as your mind instead of knowing that your mind is simply a tool, a machine for you to use in daily life.


Hope this helps!

The big key is you need something repeatable that you can practice. For that I like cognitive behavioral therapy (I would read Feeling Good) and meditation (I like Meditation in Plain English, a free book). CBT is a good way to stop believing things that aren't true and meditation is a good way to help ignore the things that are.

Agree with Sharkus a million percent. CBT is making huge leaps for me, and I strongly recommend Feeling Good. I'm reading it now, a couple of chapters in, and I wish I knew about it years ago. If you get it, please let me know how you get along.

Feeling Good is a popular self-help book that was written by one of the founders of CBT and should give you a good idea of how CBT is useful. It discusses procrastination and lack of motivation in great detail and how to manage these issues. It's a book I highly recommend to anyone suffering from these issues as well as depression or anxiety. You can probably find one cent used copies on Amazon if you search for an older edition.

[mind over mood] (https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Over-Mood-Second-Changing/dp/1462520421/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524532567&sr=1-1&keywords=mind+over+mood+second+edition) is a book which I recommend heavily. It uses the latest research and CBT to help you control your mood, thought and actions. It has exercises which you can do to help you become aware of your moods- awareness is the first step in getting better.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-Skills-Workbook/dp/1572245131/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=dbt+workbook&qid=1565714156&s=gateway&sprefix=dbt&sr=8-1 I had to practice exercises from this when doing group therapy.

Good luck (:

I highly recommend the feeling good handbook for instructions on how to do this. It teaches you how to write out your thoughts in a productive and structured way and identify any distortions or solutions.

A Fine Romance by Judith Sills - http://www.amazon.com/Fine-Romance-Passage-Courtship-Marriage/dp/0345385713

This is the best thing he can read:

https://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy/dp/0762415339

The controversial Iron John. Might be a little over the top for your needs, but it's very good.

Look for a dialectical behavioral therapist or group, especially one who is qualified to help you learn distress tolerance techniques. There are also self help workbooks for this type of therapy on Amazon. This one is basically the same content my past DBT group worked on.

Read this book http://www.amazon.com/The-Miracle-Morning-Not-So-Obvious-Guaranteed/dp/0979019710#customerReviews and start doing "Miracle Morning" -routine every day.

This book is about introverts and it has received amazing reviews: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004J4WNL2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Perhaps Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will help. Sometimes negative thoughts can be helped by creating a habit of thinking positively.

Assuming your male...No More Mr. Nice Guy. I struggle with this as well, I'm to be more assertive and less of a people pleaser.

Feeling Good Handbook. It's known for depression recovery but has great chapters on anger and dealing with people and relationships.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07C5V134V/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523637654&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=quit+surviving+start+living&dpPl=1&dpID=41ySXUL7O7L&ref=plSrch

Here you go. https://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577314808

read, understand, believe and put into practice the ideas in this book

Try this book : Who's pulling your strings.

Emotional Blackmail
Fantastic book. Understanding the trap is half the battle.

Talking therapies and counselling do not work well for depression - simply talking over your problems can end up reinforcing the mental patterns that created them in the first place. Look into Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) instead - it is a meditation based therapy that has a proven track record of helping with depression such as yours. If you can, find a therapist near you that uses it - group sessions will be much cheaper than one-to-one sessions. It is normally done as an 8-week course.

If you cannot find or afford a therapist then there are several books that will help - here are a couple to that I am familiar with and can recommend:

The Mindful Way Through Depression

Mindfulness: Finding Peace In a Frantic World

If you search Amazon for Mindfulness you will find dozens of others. These books include a CD with the meditations on, so you can do the course on your own - it is not enough to just read the books, you have to do the practices as well.

If you are in a deep depression it is advisable to take a course of antidepressants first to get you into a state where you can do the course and stick with it.

Feeling Good by David Burns is a great book about treating depression and self-esteem with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It might be a little difficult for him to read if he has a lot of shame about his moods though so you might also look for another book about CBT that is less about "treating depression" and more about "improving your life".