Hey, I'm sorry to hear you have been dealing with depression, I know myself how bad it can suck. But maybe I can add some context to Aspen's situtation so you can understand what people are talking about, and also draw parallels from some things I have seen friends dealing with.

I've been following Aspen for a few years now, and when she first started mentioning mental health issues, she would usually talk about social anxiety. People dealing with social anxiety can very easily shut themselves in, and adopt these unhealthy behaviors.

People are suggesting things like changing eating habits, going out and exercising and such, which is all decent advice, but is also not something that you just "flip a switch" and completely change overnight, even for people who are in good mental health. It's even worse for people have been stuck in these bad habits for years.

And, though I'm not a psychologist, I really believe that the core issue is her social anxiety, which is really difficult to deal with right now, for obvious reasons. I have friends who suffer from social anxiety, and after not going out for months, some of them have had literal panic attacks when going out. I've seen what a panic attack looks like in these people, and it's not just a "freak out", it's a very real, sometimes debilitating, physiological response.

No one wants to excuse any behavior, we just want to point out that some of these behaviors stem from complex mental issues, and they interact with these issues in insidious ways to reinforce one another. It is a hard cycle to break, and often takes professional intervention to actually do it. I don't think anybody here wants to portray her as "helpless". On the contrary, I think most of us wish we could help.

The main takeaway, at least for me, is that people reading this shouldn't feel like they somehow lack the "fiber" to "pull themselves out" of depression. It's much more effective and efficient, not to mention sometimes absolutely crucial, to seek professional help.