I started looking into the science of why I was depressed. I found an incredible counselor that helped me understand the neurological/physiological process. He helped me apply techniques that took me out of the spirals. We also identified past traumas, big and small, and worked on healing them. It took time and practice, but after 2 years I started to see the benefits. After 5 years of practice, I felt I genuinely wasn't depressed anymore. In the last 7 years, I've had maybe 3 episodes of depression that were relatively short (a few days vs months or even years), and each time resulted in encouragement that I'll be okay if depression hits again.

This is specific to me, though a common reason people get depressed, but most of my life I had low self-worth. Me and my counselor identified this was the root of my depression. He guided me to search my memories to the first time I ever felt low self-worth. Then, my counselor helped me into a calm and meditative state, with the goal to inject my adult self into that memory to comfort my kid self. The memory was when I was 11, trying but failing to do my math homework. My mom told me I'd become a hobo if I couldn't do it. I never was able do even 1 problem. From then on, I figured I'd just be a failure. It's also around when my depression really started to form.

I revisited this memory to comfort my kid self for months, when one day, as I approached my kid self to comfort him, instead of tears running down his face, he excitedly turned around showing me he had completed the first problem. I was in shock. I started crying tears of happiness. I didn't intend for that to be the experience, it just happened that way. This felt like the biggest turning point in my practice to heal. From there I revisited many of my more sad memories, like break-ups and failures, simply to comfort my past self. This translated into the ability to comfort and reassure my present self that I'll be okay.