ElonMaersk

Can I recommend you take a look at Dr David Burns' "Feeling Good" podcast, and other writings? e.g. https://feelinggood.com/list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/

I don't know which podcast particularly focuses on the things you ask about, although I know some have done - many talk about expectations, self talk and "being a burden".

and the thinking distortions such as: https://outofthefog.website/what-not-to-do-1/2015/12/13/stinkin-thinkin-the-ten-forms-of-twisted-thinking

For one example, "when I'm depressed I genuinely feel like I let everyone down" could include distorted thinking like:

• I feel like I let everyone down, so that must be true that I do: it might be just a feeling and not true.

• over generalization, there are a lot of people who are indifferent and not affected. Your problems don't ruin everyone's lives.

• all or nothing thinking about "let down" being either true or false with no in between; there's no room for people being sometimes happy or sometimes let down, or partly let down, they're either let-down or not. Life is not that black and white.

• all or nothing thinking about time: once someone is "let down", there's no way you can ever make it back up to them, or any way their mood can improve. That's not how life works either, everything changes up and down with time.

• Personalization and blame: Is it your responsibility to control other people's feelings and keep them in good spirits? Did you choose to become ill? Is it fair to hold yourself responsible in that way?

• Discounting the positive: - when you focus on letting people down, are you also seeing that you have people around who care enough to feel let down? That you have people who can and do help you? That you are still able to care about how they feel and you haven't become heartless and uncaring?

• Mental filtering and Magnification: Is it the only thing in your life when you get depressed, having other people buy your food and do your work? Zooming in your attention so nothing else in life happens anymore except that?

• Are you not allowed to be a burden? You must have a perfect life? How many people have a perfect life and can choose to never get ill? Is that fair on yourself to demand that?

None of these are easy to overcome, but it has been extremely interesting to me to try and look for these unbalanced patterns in my thinking and try to deliberately rebalance them, against the negative thoughts trying to keep them unbalanced.

I have helped with some casual at-home gardening. The amount of food a human eats is enormous. Zucchini is easy to grow, one of them has ~35 calories.

At 1KCalories/day (not enough to thrive on) you would need ~30 zucchini per person per day. For a year that's ~11,000 zucchini per person. Family of four and allowing some extra for some to go rotten or fail, you need 50,000 zucchini per year to keep up this barely-enough-calories-to-survive level of eating. If your plant takes a square foot of ground and produces ten zucchini, you need five thousand square feet of dedicated ground. ~450 square meters, maybe with 450 square meters of fertilizer to put on it. Make it 100,000 zucchinis per year to get the family to 2KCal/day, and hope none of them are doing physical jobs, and the family of four needs a square kilometer of zucchini farm with no room to walk through it.

Plus all the pickling and preserving and freezing equipment and effort to keep tens of thousands of zucchinis for the times of the year where they aren't growing. Plus all the grow beds and fertiliser and tools and equipment for everyone to do this. Plus most Americans don't have land, or are young or elderly or have day jobs or other responsibility.

If we really can't improve the situation by centralising and specialising, we must be doing things very wrong.

.

[Yes, yes, potatoes and lentils are more dense. Still, the scale and quantities are non-trivial].