Why am I hopeful even though I am depressed
Why am I hopeful even though I am depressed
I have been depressed. When someone seeks professional help for depression, one of the first few questions people ask is whether you have suicidal thoughts. Luckily, my answer is no this time.
I had real suicidal thoughts around my high school years. I entertained suicidal thoughts in other dark times of my life. But gradually, I got a firm conviction that I would not commit suicide, and it worked this time. Even though I felt terrible every day for weeks and couldn't find any meaning or motivation, I was convinced that all those would pass. There are times when I feel that maybe dying is alright, but those thoughts arise and pass, and I don't really pay attention to them.
Writing this article is part of my healing progress and has been helpful. Somehow, I just really need to imagine someone else reading this article. Otherwise, I'm not motivated to write it. So here I am, sharing my experience. I trust fate and technology will make this article reach people who need it. Of course, I am getting professional help, and people need to seek professional help when depressed. I'm not a mental health professional, and this article is just my own thoughts.
I'll first describe my symptoms and experiences with depression, then attempt to identify the causes. After that, I'll explore what makes me hopeful. Finally, I'll share what I am working on apart from professional treatment to cope with my depression.
Turns out I've been depressed
Like a good old O Henry's ending, my depression is unexpected but reasonable. It is unexpected because I had a fantastic summer last year. From June to August, I went to the US for two academic conferences and a summer school, and I went back to China after four years. I travelled around, visited families and old friends, made new friends, fell in love, made amends, got healthier, lost weight, etc. It was the most fantastic few months of my life since Covid-19. So, when I returned in September, I was refreshed and ready for the final year of my PhD. I carried this positive aura with me that many of my friends and colleagues noticed.
But it only lasted less than two months. Around the time when we changed from British Summer Time to Winter Time, like the shorter and shorter daytime, the positive energy in my life started to slip away. I nearly finished a paper, but I dragged the final push. I signed up for parties and hangouts with friends but found all sorts of excuses not to show up on the day. I thought I had already found peace with an amendment I made, but I got anxious again and repeated my mistakes. Ironically, I withdrew from friends who love me but desperately sought approval from people I barely know. It is ironic because if I just kept a distance from everyone, at least I would not drag people I barely know into my mess; if I just sought approval from everyone, I would get enough love from my friends so I wouldn't be anxious. But I ended up in the worst combination.
My sleep and diet got worse and worse. Week after week, I woke up and felt like shit for two, three, most days of the week. Then I realised I was depressed, with a classic symptom of waking up and just couldn't find the strength to get out of my flat. Some days, I couldn't even shower or brush my teeth. Another symptom is feeling guilt-ridden. I made mistakes in social interactions due to an impaired mental state, and I just felt so ashamed and regretful. I couldn't believe or accept that I had made those mistakes. It usually feels refreshing to take a shower. But at that time, when I started the shower, it was as if all the mistakes I made in my life were poured onto my head with the water. If that was not bad enough, I have been living with a binge eating disorder for years, but mostly, it's manageable. It was almost gone during the summer, but it became out of control as I became more depressed. The binge eating, in turn, made me even more depressed and led me into a vicious cycle: feeling bad, unhealthy eating, bad sleep due to the food, and waking up feeling bad again. Some days, I find some strength to go to my office, and that would be a pretty good day to break the loop for a while. But the days I could do it kept declining.
In the two weeks leading up to the new year, it became the worst because the office was closed. Every day, I woke up around noon and felt terrible. Then, the only thing that motivated me to get out of bed, apart from peeing, was to order a sharing bucket from KFC with six pieces of chicken, eight hot wings, four large fries and a bottle of Pepsi Max. Sometimes, I would add four cookies on top of all that. Another typical binge-eating meal is tons of Chinese takeout dishes, sometimes adding three to six doughnuts. I stuffed my stomach until I couldn't and fell into a food coma. Then, I took a nap in the afternoon. I woke up in the evening, heated and ate whatever was left from lunch, and watched TV shows until I went to sleep. I wanted to cut my hair; it took me a whole week to go out to do it. I wanted to clean my bed sheet; it took me the next whole week to do it. I got out of that swamp after the new year when the office started to open, and I got a deadline coming. At least, I began to get out of my flat on some days of the week.
I realised I needed professional help at the beginning of December, so I made an appointment with the Student Wellbeing Services at the LSE. I got on the waitlist for the counselling service provided by the LSE and was also advised to talk to my GP. My GP referred me to a therapy service, but the waiting list turned out to be very long. The good news was, with a note from my GP, I was also able to access a specialist mental health mentor service from the LSE. I started seeing this mentor at the end of January and got my spot in the LSE counselling service at the beginning of February. I think both services are helpful. Although slow, I am getting better as I am writing this article.
Why was I depressed
As I was waiting for the services, when I was not busy feeling terrible, I reflected on what contributed to my depression. I know I have my privileges. People may think I don't have 'real problems', and all the reasons I list below are not that big of a deal. "Just grow a pair" would be some people's comments. I partly agree with that. But when I was too depressed to even get out of my flat, take a shower, or brush my teeth in continuous days, 'just grow a pair' just couldn't cut it.
In a way, the depression is not that surprising because I knew my mental health had been suboptimal ever since COVID-19. The world seems to get out of it, but I haven't. My mental and physical health took a toll from the stress, uncertainty, and the isolation of lockdown. I've been overweight for most of my life. In 2015-2016, I was in a pretty good state of my life and lost 30kg in nine months through going to the gym five times a week and a strict diet. But the process also made me develop binge eating. Over the years I gained back 10kg, but I was still pretty fit. However, during the Covid lockdown, my binge eating really got out of control, and I obtained more weight than I previously lost. That really affected both my physical and mental health. I felt so bad that I ruined my previous efforts, and I felt so insecure about my body. I've been trying many times to go back to the gym and eat healthier, but I just kept failing. I thought that summer 2023 when I had gone away from my accustomed environment for a few months, could be an opportunity to focus on my health. So, I was thrilled it worked. I was mentally and physically healthy while away, carrying the momentum when I returned.
Therefore, it felt even worse when it did not last. Why? I thought of some reasons. Each of the reasons is not a big deal, but having them together at a lousy time made me depressed. Some of the reasons involve other people, but of course, I'm not blaming anyone mentioned. My depression is a result of an unfortunate combination of situations, my perception of the situations, and my limited capacity to cope.
One apparent factor was the weather. I remember so distinctively that I started to feel bad when we shifted to wintertime, and the weather got bad. I've been living in London for quite a few years, so I am not strange about the weather, but somehow, maybe combined with other factors, this year the weather really affected me.
Another minor factor was that my bike broke. I commute to my office by bike, and I really enjoy it. I feel a sense of freedom while biking. My bike broke around the time shift. I thought the weather was getting colder anyway, and I would just take the bus, so I procrastinated on fixing it. This is a minor factor, but I think it does contribute to my mental health. With biking, even if I don't go to the gym, I still do some outdoor exercises daily, which is good for my mental health. The bus does not have that positive effect. The bus also makes the commute 15 minutes longer (or even more, depending on the waiting and traffic). The actual difference is 15 minutes, but the perceived difference is longer. When I take the bike, I feel I will be there soon. When I take the bus, I feel kind of dreary, even if I listen to music or podcasts.
A more critical factor is the change in my support systems. One such change is in my daily work environment. My best friend in my office, my "work husband", finished his PhD at the end of September and started a new job. Although he still lives in London and comes to the office sometimes, it is different. At that time, I didn't realise it, but it turns out it did affect me a lot. I entered my PhD in September 2020, during Covid-19. When the office opened between lockdowns, he and I were the few PhD students who went to the office as much as possible. We created this incredible bond. My office undoubtedly has other amazing colleagues, but I just haven't made a similar bond with anyone else. One thing that motivates me to go to the office is to have lunch with him and chat about everything. Now, he is not there every day, which affects my motivation to go to the office.
Another change in my support system is in my weekly routine. I have a close friend group of four; we have a WeChat group. During COVID, three of us had video calls every week, and another friend would join sometimes. This tradition continued after COVID-19. Last summer it stopped because I was travelling. After the summer, it got a bit hard to schedule because one friend went to the US to do his PhD, one is working in China, and I am in the UK. The time zone makes the schedule hard, and we all got busy, so we no longer video chat that often.
These support systems are vital because they provide me opportunities for relaxing social interactions and stable channels to outlet my emotions so the emotions don't accumulate. It is imperative because I didn't have a life outside my PhD. Just before my PhD, I had the best time of my life during my master's degree. I really liked the program and made great friends there. Then COVID started in the middle of my master's and kind of ruined everything for me. In hindsight, under the circumstances of beginning a PhD during COVID lockdowns and right after my master's, I made the mistake of not building a life apart from my PhD. My life has been too unidimensional. I've been too tense about my PhD as if nothing else matters in life. I kept suppressing my curiosity and creativity other than my PhD. For example, I wanted to start a blog or YouTube channel, write fiction, do stand-up comedy, etc, but I kept telling myself I'd do it after my PhD. It's not that I am doing my PhD work all the time; it's just a narrow mindset that I cannot start anything along with the PhD.
Coincidentally, I did start to do stand-up comedy. The night before our department's Easter party last year, I just realised I had enough jokes to put up a 15-20-minute show, and I really wanted to do it at the party. So, I prepared a bit the day before, asked the organisers on the day, and went ahead and did it. Although I did it by looking at my phone, it went pretty well. Then, I took the opportunity of attending an academic workshop in Italy to perform without notes. By the third time I performed at a summer school in the US, I was pretty confident about my set. I knew I could not rely on those ad hoc opportunities, and I wanted to go to comedy clubs. I thought I would continue my momentum after the summer. But I started to put it aside again when I came back. I came to know a stand-up comedy course that would be perfect for me to hone my skills and learn more about the industry. But I just thought I wouldn't have time to do it if I wanted to focus on my PhD, job-hunting, and weight-losing in my final year. I went back to a unidimensional life.
Because my life has been so unidimensional, the support systems from my existing relationships became even more critical for my mental wellbeing and resilience. Therefore, as they started to fade away, I became vulnerable to emotional instability. As a result, I was not prepared to have issues with new relationships.
One such issue is unattainable love. I fell in love in the last summer. I felt a sense of connection I hadn't had for years and an affection I never felt before. It is worth noting that I am relatively inexperienced in the romantic love aspect of life, and I tend to project my feelings onto people due to that inexperience. So, realistically, love is probably too strong of a word to use in this case. In other words, here, love describes a romantic interest that occurs with a deep platonic connection rather than the love people feel when they have already been in a romantic relationship for a significant amount of time. We have a deep connection, and she likes me as a friend, but I was getting ahead in the romantic direction too soon. So, the love is one-sided and unattainable, as she is happy in an existing relationship. Even if I am immature, selfish, and devious enough to want to 'steal' her from her current relationship, we do not even live in the same country. I cried, frustrated, agonised, and questioned God and fate. Eventually, I accepted it very well. We remain very good friends. Although platonic, the level of connection we have is rare and precious. I'm happy that she is happy in her relationship, and I get to love her as a great friend. I am surprised by how mature I am in this. But probably, to achieve this maturity, I suppressed too many of my feelings, which contributed to my depression. There is a chance that although I thought I accepted it well consciously, I felt heartbroken and am still healing on the unconscious level. Although inexperienced, I experienced enough to know that no matter how precious and deep I felt about this person romantically, life goes on, and the romantic feelings will fade. That's both relieving and kind of sad.
Another issue is a ruined amendment. I met an attractive young woman last spring at a party. I was kind of attracted to her, but at the time, I just wanted to know her better. I got her number from a common friend and started texting. Because I was not in a good state, I was very insecure and anxious, which made me needy and weird and made her uncomfortable. So, she drew some boundaries. Over the summer, when I was in a better state, I apologised, and she accepted. Then, when I got back, I wanted to repair the relationship. I did not want to pursue anything. I just wanted to keep it friendly, as we have some common social circles. There is a possibility that my mind is rational, but my heart still hopes to win her over. Anyway, we met up and chatted about shared interests, and I really thought I had found peace in this. I was ready to move on. However, as my mental state became worse, I got anxious again. I really thought that I already felt secure about this, but I just wanted to make sure about it again and again. I became desperate for her approval. I didn't exactly bombard her with texts or send anything obscene, but I did send several repeated texts that are normal in the language but validation-seeking in the motive. I guess she sensed the desperation and felt uncomfortable, so she reminded me of her boundaries. Overall, I was paying way too much attention than necessary to this. But I was just very frustrated about how things turned out. I really thought I had grown and become more mature, so I couldn't accept that I made efforts to repair this relationship only to ruin it again with the same mistakes.
All these happen at a stage of my life where stress is expected for anyone in the same situation. I'm in the final year of my PhD, so I need to finish my PhD and find a job. I think I do not feel stressed about this. I know what I want to do with my thesis, and I just need to finish it. I do not worry that much about a job because I know I want to take a break from academia and find a job in the industry. I have in-demand data science skills, so I should be able to find a job; it is just about what job I land. Previously, I had this anxiety about finding a job in big tech companies, but now I don't care about it anymore. I have a growth mindset about my career. I know what I want to learn and how to learn them. I believe my first job after PhD doesn't need to be perfect. It is more about learning from any opportunity in front of me. I can keep learning and figure out a suitable long-term career path for me along the way. But there is a chance that all these chill feelings are on the surface. After all, I still need to go through the grinding process of job hunting. I may have just suppressed the anxiety.
Finally, there is the relationship with my parents. I love my parents, and I video chat with them every weekend. My relationship with my parents is actually better than many people I know. However, there are still issues resulting from the power structure, path dependency of communication styles, etc. Even though I can understand where they come from, sometimes they say something that makes me unhappy or stressed. Readers who made it this far will notice that I am a very reflective person. Among the factors mentioned, I have a basic understanding of how they are affecting me. But this issue is just very complicated due to the nature of the parent-child relationship. I try to be as honest and exhaustive in this article as possible, but here, I'll just mention it. I'll leave the specifics to myself and therapy.
Those are the factors I can think of that contributed to my depression. Rationally, I think that each factor is not that big a deal, but maybe I was not fully aware that each of them has some impact on my emotions or unconscious mind, and all of them combined gradually led me to a depressive state.
Why I am hopeful
Now, after spending quite a lot of time on the symptoms and causes of my depression, let's get into why I am hopeful.
One answer is that I have been there before, so I know it will pass. I was in an awful mental state in high school, depressive and suicidal. My class headteacher was extremely harsh. His educational style was fear and punishment. It might work for some people, but it did not work for me. I already enjoyed learning, so I didn't need that much push. His style was very counterproductive for me. He destroyed my intrinsic interest in learning and made my high school experience traumatic. Instead of studying, I spend most of the time fearing his punishment. Oh, it would take at least a whole book to thoroughly depict and analyse my high school experience. I am actually writing a novel based on that. Anyway, I was in a terrible state during high school, and it continued more than a year after high school. In the worst situations, I really tried to explore ways of painless death for myself. Fortunately and ironically, I was not even motivated enough to go through the trouble to commit suicide. Another fortunate fact is that I grew up in a happy family as a single child. So, I guess knowing it would destroy my parents also prevented me from committing suicide. Deep in my heart, I love them too much to do that to them.
During that time, I started to read a lot of philosophy and psychology. I was very drawn to Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer. Nietzsche's passion for life was definitely what I needed, but it seemed dangerous for a depressive teenager to read Schopenhauer, who compellingly argues how meaningless life is. However, it turned out to be very useful. It is actually empowering to understand that life is meaningless and nothing matters, so you can choose what matters to yourself. There is a Chinese idiom that fits well in this case: 破而后立, break and then build. You must break from the existing meanings imposed on you by society and others and then build up your own meaning of life. Once you accept that life is meaningless, you become kind of invincible because you already accepted the worst.
I also realised that if I could already accept killing myself, accept death, then it becomes not that hard to accept whatever it takes to live. Because death will come anyway, I do not need to seek it. I can just endure whatever it is to survive and then embrace death when it comes.
Of course, it was easier said than done. It took me a long time living in a lousy state to finally decide I was done with all that, and I wanted to start over. That was when I decided to go abroad. It was not easy, but with the support from my parents and friends, I turned my life over. I went from giving up hope in life and playing video games every day to picking up English, regaining my interest in learning, moving to the UK, getting offers from top universities, losing 30 kg, and starting to get my life back on track and thrive. After that, I'm convinced that I have it in me. I fully internalised "that which does not kill us makes us stronger". I know whatever life throws at me, I can always come back.
So, I am depressed again now, and it is pretty bad. But I know that even if it may take time, I will get through it.
Apart from the conviction I got from that experience, I developed some mindsets along the way that are helpful to my hopefulness. The interesting thing is that they are all somewhat connected.
Things may turn out better than you thought if you just stay alive. I remember walking on the street in London and conversing with some friends about taking things for granted. A friend shared a story that when a group of friends were spending a night out in London and taking a taxi, someone said, "Look at us, all dressed up, having fun, and living in London. It's my dream comes true". From that, she realised her privilege. Coming from a metropolitan middle class, she never thought living in London was that much of a big deal. Hearing that story, I said, oh, actually, living in London was beyond my dreams. This conversation reminded me to be grateful. Coming from a small town in China, London only existed in books and films. Not in my wildest dreams, I would be studying and living in London. But look at what life brought me! What a shame it would be if I killed myself in high school. Amazing things are all around if you just stay alive. Even smartphones were beyond my imagination as a child. Of course, as a child, I imagined that there would be such a device in the future, but I didn't realise it would happen so fast that I could have one so soon. I would not be able to experience so much if I killed myself.
Growth mindset. When I first learned this concept in a psychology class during my undergraduate degree, something really clicked. I used to have a fixed mindset in my school years, so I attributed my good grades to my intelligence and ignored my efforts and good habits. I was also worried in middle school about how long my cleverness could last and what if it was not enough one day. Then, in high school, I got a 144 out of 150 in math on the final exam of my first semester, ranking 1st among my high school cohort of more than 1000 people. That made me arrogant, and I believed that I was just good at math. The following semester, I reduced my efforts, and the slap in my face came very soon. I got a 99 out of 150 in the midterm. That would have been an excellent opportunity to learn about fixed vs growth mindset. But at that time, my mindset was still pretty fixed. I thought I just run out of my cleverness. I did pick up my confidence in math later in high school, but my fixed mindset still dominates my high school's study and affects my learning in other subjects such as physics and biology. I also had a fixed mindset about other aspects of my life. I thought I was just doomed to be overweight, shy, and socially awkward. I gradually developed a growth mindset as I learnt new things with a second language, lost weight, and improved my social skills. Then, once I came across the notion of the growth mindset, I found it fits so well with my experience, so I fully embraced and internalised it. More and more, I'm just convinced it is one of the most crucial mindsets one can have in life.
With a growth mindset, I view every setback as an opportunity to grow. It is basically another way of saying that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger but on a more active note. I believe things will pass, and it will only be a matter of time. During this time of making things pass, there are days I cannot do anything other than watch TV shows. That's okay; I just need to get through the days. Sometimes, I cannot get to sleep, and I'm bored of TV shows, which becomes a great time to read. Because the main parts of my depression this time are related to self-acceptance and relationships, I read books about these issues. I think depression represents a crisis in how I live my life, so I also read more generally about life, mental wellbeing, and spiritual growth from philosophy, religion, and psychology. Further, I read history and literature to go beyond myself. I draw great comfort, strength, and wisdom from all these readings. I haven't got out of depression yet, but I can already feel that the experience of the depression, the readings, and the process of coping all together can be transformative in my understanding of myself and the relationship between myself and the world—two of the most essential things in one's life.
Accept fate and embrace randomness. Human beings like to find explanations of things and identify causal relationships. LSE's motto is to know the cause of things. This tendency serves us well in many cases but not in all cases. At certain points, one must accept fate and embrace randomness: there are things out of our control and things we cannot find causal explanations. I spent a lengthy part of this article exploring the possible causes of my depression. That is useful to a certain degree. There are things I could've done better to prevent me from ending up in this situation. But after all that, I just have to accept that things just happen, and I can do nothing but experience it. It seems to be a passive way of life, but it's not. It's about balance. Once you realise there are things beyond your control, you can stop being obsessed with the outcome. You can live in the moment and focus on what you can control. A related value from multiple schools of philosophy and religion, including Buddhism and stoicism, is that nothing is inherently good or bad; we can detach ourselves from this judgement of good and bad and just experience things that happen to us. That helps with accepting things we cannot control.
I planned to have a cross-cultural analysis of fate, incorporating things I know from various cultures, religions, and schools of philosophy. Then I realised it is beyond the scope of this article, requires a lot of effort, does not necessarily help, and could even be counterproductive. It would only make things unnecessarily complex and does nothing more than a clumsy show-off about stuff I don't fully understand. So, I'll just stop here. I'll let fate decide how readers understand what I'm trying to express about fate.
What am I working on
Finally, I'd like to share what I am working on to cope with my depression apart from professional treatment.
A significant possible cause of my depression is that I don't have a life outside my PhD, so I'm building a life now. First, I signed up for the stand-up comedy course. I have already attended several classes, and I'm really enjoying them. I also got to meet new people and potentially make friends from the course. Hopefully, after the course, I'll start to go to open mics and perform in different pubs in London. Second, I began to write more for fun. Because writing is part of my work, I somehow neglected to write for myself. Writing this article is a good start. I have more things to write about, so maybe it will finally be an opportunity for me to start blogging. My previous problem was perfectionism. If I start something, I want to be very good. The end goal in my mind is to become someone like Ali Abdaal and have a Youtube+podcast+blog enterprise. So, I thought if I started blogging, I would have to put out one article per week, and I was never ready for that kind of commitment. Consistency is usually good for an aspiring content creator, but it is useless if it prevents one from starting. Now, I'm going to take a more relaxed approach. I also started to write a novel I had always had in mind for many years. Again, I kept waiting because I wanted the novel to be perfect. I wanted it to be a literature masterpiece with philosophical, sociological, and psychological underpinnings. So, of course, I was never equipped enough to do it. Now I just started writing it regardless of all that.
A lot of my issues about weight, eating, and relationships are related to a negative image of myself, so I'm learning to practice self-acceptance and self-love. I've been fortunate to find suitable schools of thought for different situations. In high school, it was Nietzsche and Schopenhauer; now, it is Yangmingism and Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism influenced Yangmingism, and they share the same motto: 自性具足，心外无物, which means something like the nature of self is fully enough, there is nothing outside of the heart. Thus, Yangmingism is also referred to as the School of Heart. I think the important thing about philosophical thoughts of life is that they are not to be taken exactly and literally but more as inspirations. So, what I'm getting from the motto is that I am a worthy being just as myself; the worthiness does not change according to physical appearance, social status, etc. I do not need to seek validation or approval from anyone or anything else. I do not need to get something or arrive somewhere to love myself. I can start to love myself right now. If it is not apparent till now, my biggest insecurity about myself is my looks. So, it is interesting and kind of funny that during this process of self-acceptance, one day, as I was watching a TV programme, I realised that I am good-looking and not overshadowed even by people on TV.
As my current problem is low motivation instead of anxiety, I am giving myself a bit of push by burning my bridges. As mentioned, I know things will pass; I just need to get through all this. So, I've been processing my feelings and waiting for a turning point. Then I think it came. The deadline for my PhD thesis submission is the end of September 2024. Because I entered my PhD during COVID-19, I can apply for a COVID extension scheme offered by the LSE. I could get a three to six months extension with funding. I thought I would apply for the extension because my PhD was indeed affected by COVID-19, and I could have it as insurance even if I didn't use it. The depression seemed to provide even more reasons to do it. But one weekend, when I was video chatting with my parents, my mom suggested that it might be good to give up the possibility of an extension and use the deadline as a motivation. Realistically, I can finish my dissertation on time, and the extension would only drag my pain. Initially, I was resistant to that idea. Why would I push myself that hard when I am in a bad mental state? But then I realised it is exactly what I need right now. After coping with depression for a while, I was able to process my negative feelings, so now my problem is not negative feelings but low motivation. I am not anxious, and I could use some stress as a healthy way to motivate myself. I felt empowered and motivated to give up the extension and determined to finish my PhD on time. So that is what I am doing now. I had multiple periods of my life when I was hyper-focused on a goal and put in a lot of hard work. They all turn out to be enriching experiences. I can make the next few months another case of that.
It also does not need to be contradictory to my plan of having a life outside of my PhD. I can be focused on my PhD but also take healthy breaks to pursue my other interests. If I can just work on my PhD nonstop, that's good. I can finish my PhD thesis as soon as possible and then have a nice, well-deserved break. If I get bored, I have other interests to fall back on.
I often feel that an essential problem of life is that so many things are easier said than done. Some things are good for me that I understand logically, but it is hard to internalise them fully. Thus, I am not able to carry them out in action. Cognitive dissonance seems to be the psychological term for that. For this problem, I'm again finding inspiration from Yangmingism. A central principle of Yangmingism is 知行合一, the unity of action and knowledge. Of course, this principle itself is easier said than done. One may never achieve it, but it is something to strive for.
I'm particularly drawn to Yangmingism because of the life of Wang Yangming, after whom Yangmingism was named. I'm getting a lot of strength and inspiration from his life because he had significant setbacks but eventually had outstanding achievements. One of the highest pursuits at the core of the traditional Chinese value system is to achieve the 'three immortal': 立功 (secular/material/military achievement), 立德(moral/spiritual achievement), 立言(intellectual/academic achievement). Wang Yangming is a rare case that achieved all three in high standards. I don't want to list things everyone can find on the Internet, just to name a few. Intellectually and morally, he is regarded as one of the four greatest masters in Confucianism; some even consider him the only saint after Confucius. Secularly, he governed different regions of China and suppressed multiple rebellions. He is kind of a philosopher king. His secular achievements make his philosophical thoughts appealing.
Before the end of quite a life, when his students asked for his last words, Wang Yangming said: 此心光明，亦复何言; This heart is so bright, what else needs to be said? I partly view this depression as a crisis of what I want out of life, and that, could be the answer.