Care Practices
I struggled with depression for a while. Software engineering, especially remote, can be isolating. This page is what I wish I'd had earlier.
CBT helped me, and therapy in general is a good idea more often than people imagine. But therapy isn't always the first step — and sometimes it's easier to consider it after something else has been tried.
What follows is a set of practices that help before or alongside therapy, and a thinking aid at the bottom for people who've decided they'd like to look into therapy and want to arrive at a first conversation already knowing what to say.
Things to Try
None of this replaces care from a professional. The point is that if a professional feels out of reach right now, there are practices with real evidence behind them that you can begin today.
Bibliotherapy
Reading a book that meets you where you are. Not self-help in the promotional sense — specific books matched to what you're working through. Fiction counts. Memoirs count. A library card is enough to start.
A librarian or bookseller will often suggest something better than the algorithm can.
Dancing & Movement
Of the things I'd recommend, this is the one I underestimated longest. Moving your body — specifically in rhythm, specifically with others if possible — shifts what's accessible to you emotionally. Dance classes, walks with a friend, stretching.
Community Work
Volunteering at a scale you can sustain. Not heroics — showing up for the same small thing on the same small schedule. Food banks, library shelving, garden plots, crisis hotlines, trail maintenance. Structure plus contact plus purpose.
Exercise
The boring one that keeps being true. Twenty minutes, three times a week, most weeks. The bar is lower than the health industry wants you to believe, and the return is larger than most people expect.
CBT Self-Work
There are workbooks, apps, and free programs that teach the core moves of cognitive behavioral therapy. Notice the thought, notice the feeling, notice the behaviour; test the thought for evidence. It's plain and it works — especially paired with a therapist, but also alone.
Ask me if you'd like a specific recommendation.
…And Therapy, If These Aren't Enough
The honest position: if you've tried the above for a season and things still feel stuck, a therapist is worth the effort. The intake form below is to help you arrive at a first conversation already knowing what you want to say.
Journaling & Cataloging
I believe, ethically, that everyone should have structures for journaling or cataloging experience. It's how you find out what you actually think.
You don't need a fancy notebook or a specific method. The load-bearing moves are these:
- Name what happened. A paragraph. What you did, what happened, who was there.
- Name what you felt. A sentence is enough. Specific words beat general ones — "discouraged" is better than "bad".
- Name what you noticed. Anything surprising. Any small observation worth keeping.
- Revisit, occasionally. Monthly is plenty. The point of cataloging is that past entries become available to present you.
The site's seed cards — especially the session seed — are built for exactly this. If you start a local-only journal using the seed card on a page you trust, you have a screenshottable, exportable record with no account and no cloud.
A cataloged life is lighter. When a feeling is written down, you don't have to carry it in working memory — you can let it wait on the page until you're ready to read it.
Care Intake
A thinking aid for anyone considering therapy — not a diagnostic tool, and not a commitment to anything. Your answers stay on your device. When you're done, generate a care profile you can screenshot and bring to a first conversation.
Select everything that resonates. More than one is fine.
What would actually feel helpful?
Who would be in the room, and how?
Optional. Anything that would help them understand where you're coming from.
Nothing you fill in here is sent anywhere. Your answers live in your browser's localStorage until you clear them. The profile card is yours to screenshot, save, or share however you want.