🧠 Day 13 – Depression is Slow, You Can Out Maneuver It

The internet was down this morning, which usually would’ve turned my entire routine into a dumpster fire. Not today, Satan. Crushed 30 minutes of cardio and knocked out Lesson 10 of Pimsleur’s Japanese. I can now tell time with the confidence of a slightly malfunctioning Roomba and count to ten without sounding entirely blackout drunk. Plus, my Duolingo owl’s death stare has kept my 12-day streak alive.

@rewiredwithdrew

Not broken, just stagnant. If you haven’t sweat, suffered, or swallowed sunlight — you haven’t actually tried to fix your depression. #mentalhealthcheck #depressionrecovery #depression #disciplineovermotivation #moveyourbody #noexcuses #rewiredwithdrew #mindsetshift #cardioismedicine #sunlighttherapy #stopwaitingstartdoing

♬ original sound – RewiredWithDrew

Last night? Family walk. Non-negotiable. No whining, no scrolling—just movement, connection, and laying another brick for the new me. Cookies (my dog) even came for the walk this time!

But enough of the feel-good montage.

Let’s dive into depression. Real depression. The invisible enemy. The “smiling on the outside, imploding on the inside” depression.

🕳️ What No One Ever Admits About Depression

Over 280 million people globally, 21 million just in the U.S. annually – and it isn’t about being sad. It’s about your brain glitching out harder than Windows Vista. Interest? Gone. Focus? Nonexistent. Memory? Goldfish-level. Tiredness, guilt, worthlessness? Check, check, and triple check. Yet somehow you’re still checking boxes, smiling at meetings, and faking functional adulthood.

This sneaky brand of depression is dangerous because no one suspects it, until it’s too late.

Our standard response? Pop a pill, cross our fingers, and pray for serotonin magic.

💊 The Great SSRI Scam Nobody Wants to Talk About

SSRIs and SSNRIs trick your brain into thinking it’s flooded with serotonin. Basically, it’s financial fraud for your feelings, inflating emotional wealth with monopoly cash.

Sure, short-term, they can help stabilize you. But long-term? Welcome to emotional purgatory. Sex life? Good luck finishing. Joy? You might as well search for Bigfoot. You’re a certified zombie, numbed-out, and flatlined. You didn’t solve a thing, you just pressed mute on your life’s alarms.

And quitting? Say hello to withdrawal hell. The serotonin rollercoaster crashes, and depression roars back with a vengeance like it’s a Marvel villain in the third act but with cluster bomb headaches and suicidal ideation.

Here’s the twist, you never actually fixed anything. You just postponed the inevitable showdown.

⚡ Real Talk: The Spicy Truth Bomb

You can go a few minutes without air. A few days with out water. A few weeks without food. But what about movement? Not moving is addictive, appealing, and dangerous because it might not kill you in a few minutes like air, its comfortable… but it’ll rob you of life after a few years. Movement is just as necessary as air, food, and water.

Hot take: Depression only exists if you don’t work out – our body needs movement, it’s what it was built for.

Depression is slow, you can out maneuver it. If you haven’t sweated, suffered, or swallowed sunlight before reaching for pills – you haven’t started to tackle depression yet. You’ve outsourced your toughest fight without throwing a single punch.

You don’t need Prozac. You need a purpose. You don’t need Lexapro. You need a reason to get off your ass.

Sunlight, cardio, nutrition, and discipline will outperform SSRIs every single day. Movement is medicine. If you’re not moving, you’re stagnating.

🔥 Your Anti-SSRI Starter Pack (Expanded Edition):

• Sunlight: Within 30 minutes of waking up (or between 7 & 9am), drag your lazy carcass into natural light. 15-minute walk. Rain or shine. Your excuses are boring. I’m super guilty of not doing this, by the way.
• Cardio: Sweat until you curse my name. Hate me now, thank me later. Your brain will thank you by not being such a jerk.
• Daily Writing: Not some cute, glittery diary nonsense. Unleash your demons onto the page. Think of it as a trash dump for your darkest thoughts. Better out than in.
• Inner Voice Adjustment: If you wouldn’t say it to your best friend, stop saying it to yourself. Seriously, shut that inner asshole up already.
• Stop Justifying Your Existence: Why are you wasting energy justifying your choices to people who don’t have their shit together? Would you ask a vegan for barbecue recipes? Exactly.
• Mental Mirage Check: That garbage narrative you assume others believe about you? It’s your own lousy self-image projected outward. You’re the director of this horror film—cut that scene.
• Do What’s Required, Not Your Best: Your “best” is an emotional roller coaster. What’s required is cold, hard logic. Depression thrives on your emotional excuses. Starve it out.

💡 “Doing Your Best” Is a Pathetic Cop-Out

“I’m doing my best.”

Really? Are you? Or are you just doing enough to not feel guilty while staying exactly where you are?

Let’s be honest, “your best” is usually just a euphemism for “whatever I could manage without actually suffering.” It’s the participation trophy of effort. And depression eats that sh*t for breakfast.

It loves when you hit snooze. It thrives on your “I had a long day” excuses. It grows every time you opt for comfort over progress. “Doing your best” keeps you stuck because it gives you just enough dopamine to not hate yourself, without doing anything that actually changes your life.

Here’s the truth:
You don’t need to do your best. You need to do what is required.

Required doesn’t care how you feel. Required doesn’t negotiate.
Required gets up when you don’t want to.
Required shuts up the inner victim.
Required finishes the damn workout, eats the right food, does the hard thing.
Required doesn’t wait for motivation. Required moves anyway.

If your house was on fire, you wouldn’t say, “I’m doing my best” while lying on the couch.
You’d do what’s required to survive.

So treat your mental health with the same urgency.
Your “best” might get you sympathy.
But doing what’s required? That gets you results.

🪞 The Real Mirror Isn’t on Your Wall—It’s in Your Mind

Depression’s favorite trick is convincing you everyone shares your worst opinions of yourself. Think you’re lazy? Now you’re sure everyone sees it. Feel unlovable and overweight? You start hallucinating judgment from strangers, coworkers, and friends.

You’re not seeing reality, you’re staring into the distorted funhouse mirror of your self-loathing. Smash that damn mirror and build a new reflection.

When you think negatively about yourself you assume other people also believe that same thing about you. Therefore when people do things that reaffirm your own thoughts about yourself – small actions, small things, you will believe that they believe the same thing that you believe about yourself and therefore you will then blame them for thinking those thoughts when you’re thinking them.

So you are creating a reality that is negative about you, in your own mind, and then you are looking and finding that version of you in other people, even if they don’t believe it because that’s your version of you.

Instead of thinking “I’m wonderful” you think, “oh I’m ugly and I’m fat”, like “I think, they think I’m stupid”. You are your worst enemy. Love yourself.

🔥 Snarky Wisdom for Your Walls:

“Younger me never thought older me would exist.” Older me is pissed at younger me’s bad decisions. But older me is done being pissed. He’s building better shit now.

“Stop waiting to feel ready. Ready is a decision, not a feeling.” Depression wants you to “wait till Monday.” Screw Monday. Decide. Do. Repeat.

“Imagine a trump supporter doing better than you. Yeah… now go study and put in the hard work you don’t want to do.”

📚 Required Reading if You’re in a Rut:

Mel Robbins – Let Them People doubt, underestimate, or don’t support your comeback? Good. Let them watch from the sidelines as you dominate.

The Let Them Theory is a two-word mantra that serves as a middle finger to the exhausting habit of micromanaging others’ opinions and actions. Instead of spiraling over your coworker’s passive-aggressive emails or your cousin’s unsolicited life advice, Robbins suggests you simply “let them.” It’s not about apathy; it’s about reclaiming your peace by focusing on what you can control – your reactions, your goals, your sanity. Think of it as emotional judo: redirecting the energy you’d waste on others back into your own growth. So, the next time someone tries to rain on your parade, just let them – and keep dancing.

Dr. Joe Dispenza – Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself Same thoughts = same garbage life. This book helps you uninstall the mental malware and build something worth waking up for.

Dr. Joe Dispenza argues that your thoughts and emotions are not just reactions but the architects of your reality. Stuck in a loop of negative thinking? That’s your brain running on autopilot, reinforcing the same neural pathways. Dispenza san combines neuroscience and quantum physics to show how you can rewire these pathways through intentional thought and meditation. The goal? To break free from the mental habits that keep you anchored to your past and to consciously create a new, empowered version of yourself. It’s not about wishful thinking; it’s about deliberate reprogramming. So, if you’re ready to stop being the person you’ve always been, this book offers a roadmap to becoming the person you want to be.

🎯 Final Call-Out

You’re not broken—you’re just poorly trained.

Those pills, thoughts, paralysis? Not fate. They’re your starting blocks. Your finish line? That’s built from sweat, discipline, ugly self-awareness, and relentlessly showing up.

So what’s it gonna be? Scroll, sulk, and postpone? Or step up and prove yourself wrong today?

👉 Join the challenge 👉 Come hang in the Discord

We’re not waiting for ready—we’re creating ready. Today.