What people have done which has helped them when they had no hope Check out the livejournal link-- it's also got good comments
This is very specifically a discussion for personal accounts, not advice.
I'm willing to be that a formal study would turn up much the same sort of thing-- what helped was very varied-- even contradictory between one person and another, though with some overlap.
that was a lot less helpful than I expected it to be.
TL;DR - anything and everything. Do small things. Do something with structure or regularity, or you will want to anyway, (work for several people), consider a terrible mantra about how everything is hopeless but you are still above zero. "I lived through today" or something. pets help some; not others.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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