I defeated my depression by winning small battles against my anxiety

I've had anxiety and depression since I was 6. I became more aware of it as I got closer to adulthood. I had used dissociation to cope early on, but I didn't realize this until recently.

I use to think that my anxiety and depression were two separate issues, but in my mid 20s I realized that my anxiety caused most (if not all) of my depression.

And when I say "anxiety", I don't just mean social anixety. I have anixety about cooking, cleaning, drawing, crafting, exercising, going outside, being in a moving vehicle, etc etc... Anxiety has been controling my life like an overprotective parent and ruining it.

The funny thing about anxiety is that it can be irrational or rational fear. The latter is harder to fight. Anxiety is basically instinct, one that may or may not be helpful.​​​​​ We cannot hide from every non life-threatening threat forever. We'll never experience a proper shred of life that way.

But fighting the subconcious is hard. We're not exactly in control of it.

The brain can process a bad experience with something and label that something in general as negative. So, when you ever think about trying it again, your brain will be like, "No, fam, that brings pain." Bam, now you have anxiety over something that might not even turn out bad next time.

I believe the biggest fear that anxiety stems from is fear of failure, including rejection. It can hurt our pride and/or or make us feel grief for what we ruined. It can make us feel worthless.

It's that feeling of worthlessness that makes me become depressed. And the more I go on not proving myself wrong, even if it's by lack of trying, the more I beleive I'm worthless.

I combatted feelings of worthlessness by bullet journalling. I started by listing goals. No matter how big they were. Then I went under them and wrote out smaller goals I needed to complete in order to reach those bigger goals. I did the same for those sub-goals and so on until I reached goals I felt capable of doing.

The goals I felt capable of doing didn't have to meet regualr standards for a "goal". They could have been something as simple as doing the dishes.

Now, for a "normal" proper functioning person, these goals wouldn't be much of a win. However, for someone who sturggled to get up and do even the smallest of things, it as a win for me. It took more effort and will power for me to do such small things than it would for them.

The point was that I recognized my small wins.

The more small wins I completed, the more I felt comfortable doing them and the more capable I felt of doing something "harder". I never looked at the biggest goal or how far away I was from completing them. Completeing them wasn't really the point.

It would be nice to complete all the goals, but the main point was to improve myself by doing something productive. Not looking at the end goals took away the part of anxiety that repeatedly tells you it's pointless and you'll never make it.

To help keep that part of anxiety even further away, if I didn't complete the goal in the time I had set or I utterly failed the goal, I would just push it back to be completed or retried later.

When they were completed didn't matter. All that mattered is that they get completed at some point. Starting off without serious expectations made it easier for me to start on goals and progress.

I was striving for progress not perfection.

I would write more about it, but I don't want to make this any longer.