What comes after depression?

For about nine months, I didn’t feel like doing much. I was depressed with a capital D. It took all I had to get through my workday. When my obligations were fulfilled, all I wanted to do was binge watch The Good Place and scroll mindlessly through Instagram. It didn’t feel good, necessarily. But it took significantly less energy than it did to do, well, anything else.

In my post, An Ode to My Prozac, I wrote about how I felt when I had been taking Prozac for about three months: “I wake up feeling energized and excited about the day, my insomnia and the irritability that caused so many arguments are gone, and I feel more in control of my emotions and my reactions to other people.”

What I didn’t share was that, during that time, I was still isolating myself from my friends, avoiding physical activity, and opting for solo Netflix and chill sessions rather than make the effort to do anything creative or fun. And while I emotionally felt better, my life didn’t feel like it was improving all that much.

I started to wonder — why am I still acting like I’m depressed, even though I no longer feel depressed?

The habits of people who are depressed

In 2017, The Mighty shared an article outlining their mental health communities habits developed while they were depressed. While some members reported…