>It allows for the fact that - sometimes - you don't have the power to change things right then

I think this is the issue with internet comments, my original comment didn't exclude anything either, the exclusion was assumed by many readers.

It seems the "try harder" is assumed almost universally if you suggest an idea that evokes emotions.

>You made a choice and tried really hard to to follow through.

This is a undeniable truth. All actions are based on a choice and follow through. Everything from choosing to brush your teeth and doing it, to choosing to get married and doing it. Why exclude difficult things from this simplistic formula? Because they are hard? Choose to quit smoking, and then you do. How you do it may vary, but that distils all instances of anyone quitting anywhere. (unless some bizarre instance of someone quitting smoking under duress? Even then they still have to choose and do)

How is it possible to change anything in your life with out the formula choose > do?

> this is a list of great accomplishments but avoids expressing that any of this was difficult.

Why would you assume it's not difficult? Because I failed to add this in the description of events? You assumed this.

>Just that anybody can change anything. ... behavior changes

Name a single behavior people cannot change. Go on youtube/google, and everything you'd ever consider changing you will find videos or stories of people doing it now or have already done it.

This is another absolute truth, not a subjective concept. Any behavior can be changed.

> It oversimplifies the situation. Dismisses the many factors that effect motivation and mental health.

Every event/action/change can be simplified, it doesn't make it invalid. Just because someone needs to take drugs to change their behavior doesn't mean that the forumla is different. Choose (take drugs) > do (take drugs) > choose (overcome depression) > do (overcome depression)

Do you believe a psychiatrist hands out drugs without a single action required of their patient? And if that patient chooses to follow that advice, isn't still a simple process? Whether it's hard or not does not change whether it's simple or not.

>this is your own personal framework that worked for you. To my mind, reasons require logic to be available to the person.

Explain how a person goes to a psychiatrist for help, but does not have a reason to do so. Or how a person tries to learn a foreign language without a reason, or go to work without a reason. You seem to be denying basic tennets of how life works in the basic sense.

You have to have a reason to do anything. Have you ever tried to do something truly random? I have tried as pure exercise in thought, it's not possible, you always have a moment of choice right before you do anything.

That reason is based on your thoughts. Which I would clearly lump "logic" and your mind together in the creation of reason and choice.

>It's so dismissive, and I believe it's inherently false, plus it also sounds like it's not even what you really think?

Again, this is an internet forum, with a comment made in a small box. It seems that it wouldn't be possible to discuss curing depression on twitter because you don't have enough space to qualify all of your concepts or back them up with sources to peer reviewed journals.

It's unfair to say I was being dismissive simply because I was being brief. And it's even more unfair to say something is false because it's stated simply.

I have a friend who is an alcoholic. He has an emotional attachment to being drunk, it helps him deal with his emotional pain. But by now, he has a chemical dependency to alcohol, and would likely get sick if he stopped cold turkey. But no way is it the same as a disease like cancer or the flu. He has poisoned his body, not infected it.

So, some people like to call alcholism a "disease" and divorce my friends responsibility from his daily choices.

I know for a fact that you can change what you think about. And that thinking about happy things vs thinking about sad things will affect your mood. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not true.

What made it easier was to see the pain I was causing my family by not facing my depression. It hurt them when I couldn't get out of bed for days. It hurt my wife because she didn't understand what was wrong with me and couldn't help me. I saw that and used it to give me a reason to start facing my depression. One of the many reasons I built up and saved.

I had many people in my life hurt me and justified it by claiming "they were in pain", so I needed to suffer to make them feel better. Well I was now on the opposite side of this. I was causing pain by being in pain and not dealing with it. That is being selfish. And that is how I felt when I was abused as a child by a parent, where their pain was more important to them, than worrying about my pain.

If I wanted to lie to myself, I could stay in bed, get fired and lose my house. But at one point, I stopped lying to myself and said, "I am being selfish, I am taking care of myself instead of my family." And when you stop lying to yourself, and choose to the see the truth, you gain a small amount of strength to do something about it. So I choose to just feel bad, get up, feel bad, go to work, feel bad, come home, feel bad, hug my family, feel bad, etc...

Then I'd fail again, collapse, drown, and have to start over. I had stopped cutting myself years before this, and hadn't actually attempted suicide since getting married, but I desperately wanted to go back to that time where I was closer to everything being over. But I had a reason to not fall that deep again. I knew where it leads, and I told myself repeated don't go down, don't down, you know what's there.

About 9th grade, one night I took a bunch of demerol (heavy pain pills) drank a bunch of wine, put headphones on with a repeating depressing song. Put a bag over my head and an elastic belt around my neck. And went to bed. I woke up with my feet falling through the bed, my breathing was deep, I was gasping but I could barely feel it. My legs fell through the bed, and then I was only hanging on by my arms, hanging over a dark hole. And faces came at me, swirling like a mist, over and over, twisting away and coming back. Then one came right at my face, I almost had nothing left to hold onto, and the face twisted into a horrific skeleton and screamed.

I ripped the bag off my face and floated back up to my bed and I could see my room again.

I tried overdosing multiple times, with all kind of drugs, ended up the hospital a few times. I was committed once, forcefully. I ate bleach, put guns in my mouth, sliced my wrists multiple times. And attempted to put myself into compromising positions where I wouldn't survive. In the wild without resources on the streets with violent people.

There's more, but I am sure you likely have stopped reading now. I was a young boy facing a horrific uphill battle. But I made it. And I can assure you, that no matter who you are, if you have changed anything in your life, it started at a clear moment in time, where you said, enough.