I've been on a few different antidepressants (plus a couple of other things) mostly for fairly short periods of time over the years. The best one, for me, was Cymbalta & I was on that for a year or two (memory fails me...) What I used to like to say about Cymbalta was that it kept a floor under me. I still had to work at keeping myself up. But whenever I'd begin to dive for the bottom, the Cymbalta would seemingly kick my sorry behind back up to a more manageable level. So that was helpful. I went off of it when I changed health insurers & the out-of-pocket cost skyrocketed!

I've been off psych med's for several years. I'm officially retired now (as opposed to before I reached age 65 when I was "unofficially retired", so to speak.) I don't do anything in particular to manage depression & anxiety. I just know what it is I have to do day-to-day & I do it. I've pretty-much always been that way. It often wasn't pretty. But I always just forced myself to do whatever happened to be staring me in the face at the moment. Being here on PC replying to other members posts actually helps. Plus we have a small dog we take for fairly long walks a couple of times a day every day regardless of the weather. I often don't particularly want to go. But we live in a townhome & have no yard so there's no choice. We have to go. And I suppose that helps too.

The only other things I can think of are that I have a fairly set routine I pretty-much follow day-in & day-out. So I don't have to think about it much or psych myself up to do it. I just do it. And I mostly try to steer clear of anything unfamiliar or overly complicated that would be likely to stoke my anxiety. Plus I listen to soft quiet music & I avoid watching anything on TV that has the potential to be violent or in some other way upsetting. (This includes the news. I'm an old man. And there's nothing I could do about any of it anyway. So why aggravate myself with it?)

Oh... & then there's my old friend... "compassionate abiding". It's my go-to practice for coping with all manner of anxiety, intrusive thoughts, etc. It comes out of the Buddhist tradition. But here's a mental-health-oriented description of the pracitce:

Relieve Distress By Allowing It: Compassionate Abiding 101 | Mindset: Perspective Is Everything

Thanks for asking!