I have both anxiety and depression. My guinea girls really help, but what helps the most is ignoring my instincts. Normal people subconsciously want to be healthy, want to be somewhat active, but my instincts tell me to avoid people and stay in bed for weeks at a time. Class is stressful, better skip it. Friends might secretly hate me, better avoid them. I slept too much and got a headache, better sleep it off.
I do need to force myself to go to class, to wake up, to be social. It helps that the girls yell at me for veggies every morning. It helps that they need their laundry done, or else I might not do mine. They need veggies, so i need to food shop and not live off ramen.
I went on a trip with my major for the past 3 days leaving my bf to care for them. I got home like 4am this morning and when I finally got up at 2 to feed the girls they saw me and started popcorning and freaking out. They were purring when I touched them and popcorning and ignoring their veggies to squeak at me. It felt really nice and gave me a lot of motivation. Now I'm baking a cake.
i read something once "depression is the emotional equivalent of wet newspaper all the time, but with bursts of self loathing and spiraling pain for no reason." Now imagine that newspaper is also slowly burning from the corner. And you can't put it out. That's anxiety. It also comes with feelings of worthlessness, no fulfillment from anything. You don't wanna try because you KNOW whatever it is will turn out terrible, but if you don't try you fail automatically.