Depression and what it's really like

I will say that depression has enabled me to tap into a rich vein of pitch black humor that I don't usually have access to. Maybe someday I'll get the last few months of my Twitter published, possibly with a forward by Ivan Brunetti.

Ha! I sometimes think the same thing but then I show my 'hilarious' depressio bon mots to people and they are like 'damn I wish the cold embrace of death could free me from the abyss of this joke.'

I would like to hear these bon bons abbbboottttt

haha sometimes i think like why on earth would abbott (among other people) be depressed when she is/they are so manifestly awesome

but despite *not* being manifestly awesome i have learned again and again that things don't work that way. nevertheless i would like to throw my not-inconsiderable weight behind certain ppls' awesomeness

Nah too late now. It's just my general impression that this kind of response is the way we live now/deserving of NYT trend piece

agreed, that is kind of a fucked-up phenomenon. but as other ppl pointed out on this thread being around depressed ppl makes some folks rightly or wrongly feel very uncomfortable. so in the end ya gotta respect other people's comfort levels when it comes to that. like, yeah, it's a fucked-up thing to have to pay to talk to professionals in lieu of working with friends and family support system, but at least the professionals very much want to help and have experience with some of the thornier aspects of giving help, whereas friends and family might be too overwhelmed or whatever to be of much genuine help in that area.

i don't think i phrased things very clearly earlier, but sometimes one is going through difficult times in life and has very good reasons to be feeling down, without necessarily being clinically depressed? and at those times it would be a good thing to have close friends and family with whom one could talk about it, and it kind of stinks to feel like interactions with close friends and family are dependent on mostly just presenting the upbeat keepin-it-positive version of yourself. i understand how being around those who are perpetually negative can make one uncomfortable (i agree & can't stand it either), i'm more.. exasperated by those people i know who don't know how to be supportive through times that are just part of life? or maybe my family's stoic midwesterner style is more dysfunctional than most.

"talk to a professional" & having it be useful is actually a pretty difficult thing to do imho. health care plans currently don't always like to cover this, or cap the number of visits and/or charge a fairly high copayment or limit quite strictly who you can see. the challenge here can be daunting: find someone who is competent + accepts insurance + is taking patients + has appointments at reasonable times vs work schedule + has offices that are a reasonable distance esp. for those who depend on public transportation. this is assuming your insurance covers professionals who talk, and not just the professionals whose job it is prescribe this that or the other medication and say have a nice day.

and if you don't have insurance you are shit out of luck mostly. i have been to some talk therapists in the past and generally most of them were not that good tbh! in retrospect, after experiences i've had, i can't help but wonder why not one of them offered advice along the lines of getting more fresh air and exercise, cutting sugar and caffeine, eating more vegetables and less bread and pasta, moving on from work or school environments that are a bad fit and make you miserable, not hanging around with people who drag you down, not living in dangerous neighborhoods or with difficult/crazy roommates, all of which has made a tremendous difference.

i'm not trying to get real personal.. in general i just think it's a shame that the health care system in this country is set up the way it is, and also that stuff like recessions, long commutes, long work hours, poor wages and benefits, little vacation time, poor diet, lack of exercise, etc. all produce environments in which just about anyone would be depressed.

Yes we all need to cry on someones shoulder sometimes.

The vicious circle of isolation in depression is a bummer, I really feel like it prolonged my depression for years, but I can't see any way I could have escaped it

- feel too tired/anxious to keep up with friends / don't want to burden friends or feel too ashamed to talk about current situation, but can't think of anything else to talk about / friends think you're being rude or weird or just don't want to see them / friends don't want to make all the effort anyway / "oh god they hate me" / more self-loathing, more isolation, more depression

- or, accidentally whine to friends (or, uh, ILX - sorry ILX) / friends don't know how to react, may say "lol get a livejournal" or "lol get over yrself" or may ignore outburst totally / "oh god they hate me" / etc

I am guilty of both sides of this; I've had depressed friends and rapidly felt that there was just nothing to say, talking frequently seemed to result in both of us feeling upset or misunderstood, and I fell out of touch with them all too easily too

think it's hard sometimes to want to socialize when you're depressed because often you either A. don't want to talk about it at that moment, but know you're not going to be able to mask it, or B. you're afraid that you will bum your friends out with your presence and that they'll not want to invite you again in the future. sometimes can be a chore t oforce yourself to socialize in those scenarios.

or, accidentally whine to friends (or, uh, ILX - sorry ILX)

ha, don't be sorry - we choose to read this thread

i don't think i phrased things very clearly earlier, but sometimes one is going through difficult times in life and has very good reasons to be feeling down, without necessarily being clinically depressed? and at those times it would be a good thing to have close friends and family with whom one could talk about it, and it kind of stinks to feel like interactions with close friends and family are dependent on mostly just presenting the upbeat keepin-it-positive version of yourself.

I totally relate to this, it must be fairly common as well. Like I don't really know how else to live, I think honestly some people (and this may seem funny on here) would think I am the most ultra-positive person, as such there's no real room for anything else. Sometimes the cogs just kinda turn on their own and you have to just be like HI, YEAH I'M GREAT! with almost everyone, and there's no real room or time to not be like that.

i don't really think everyone on earth is a "i don't really want to know about it" keep-it-positive-around-me kind of person but i've learned a very large percentage are.

which is fine! but not so much if yr depressed.

yeah i think part of the prob is when would you bring up being depressed...most of the time i meet up with friends to do something fun or something that involves spending time with people i don't know as well or whatever.

my current batch of friends aren't that way at all but it took me 10 years to weed out the bad apples to get there.

(xpost)

it's a juggling act because i don't believe it's healthy to plaster on the cockeyed i'm-forcing-myself-to-look-happy grin all the time, but i've also lost friends and alienated people over the years from being too candid or yakky about this kind of stuff, so i've probably gone much, more inward with it over the last five years.

Yea...I kinda learned at age 25 that nobody likes the person who drops their 'life is dreary, bleak, and useless' on them daily. but it also helped that my life flat out just got a lot better too.

oh, I was thinking of some non-depression-related threads that I've had a brief angst-burst on, but thanks! (xps to Ste)

I'm pretty sure many people irl think I'm a miserable cow, but I've been surprised in the past when I've said something a bit glum and my friend seemed to find this totally out of character, or when a couple of people have remarked on how laidback I am, when I get anxious over little things all the time and my bf is always commenting on what a worrier I am, etc

which surprises me because I don't feel very good at hiding that side away, but I know all too well the awkward silence that follows any gloomy remark (unless done as a wry "gallows humour" one-liner before an immediate subject-change), and the feeling of "guess I shouldn't have said that" - so I do try to avoid it, but it bursts out every so often anyway

i get the "you don't SEEM like a clinical depressive" thing a lot. on the other hand i also get a lot of "you shouldn't be such a miserable bastard." people see what they want to see? i don't know.

yeah i agree with most of what you guys are saying here. and i can appreciate everything you said in that post up there daria, about it being difficult to find someone that's a good fit to talk to on the professional level with all of the insurance issues and so forth. i have managed to find helpful people in the past though for whatever it's worth.

that being said, one sort of peculiar experience which may sound small but actually turned out to be very therapeutic for me involved when i was scheduled to go to an appointment with someone for the first time, but they completely forgot to give me the code that i needed to punch in to get into the building. i tried calling, etc., but there was no answer. since i happened to be "in the neighborhood", i ended up stopping by a bar where a couple of old friends were visiting after work. i had been isolating myself pretty intensely for a month or so at that point, and the experience of being greeted with warm hugs by those guys was probably more valuable than anything that might have been communicated to me by the therapist that particular day.

also yeah it's nice when a therapist gives one some practical life-advice. moment from allen ginsberg's life has always stuck with me after reading it in some biography. basically he is in his twenties, has a fairly cushy job and is involved with some perfectly nice young woman, but at the same time he is actually making himself miserable b/c he is not writing and is trying to push down his sexual feelings for dudes. so the therapist is like "listen, why don't you quit your job, write if that's what you like to do, and meet some nice young man. people will always like you". which i think is true, regardless of the fact that most of us won't have epiphanous moments like that, and never mind the fact that his life partner turned out to be this bipolar guy whom i guess offered some ~challenges~ at times. but nonetheless i think much of people's depression is augmented by trying to be all things to all people or taking on ridiculous burdens of phantasmal expectations, when in reality most people who are close to us in life really only want for us to be happy on some basic level and could in large part care less about the vehicles that get us there as long as it doesn't involve actively harming ourselves and others.

That's wonderful dell. I'd wish everyone in this thread an experience like that, being welcomed in warm, open arms of friends that way.

xp

so the therapist is like "listen, why don't you quit your job, write if that's what you like to do, and meet some nice young man. people will always like you". which i think is true, regardless of the fact that most of us won't have epiphanous moments like that, and never mind the fact that his life partner turned out to be this bipolar guy whom i guess offered some ~challenges~ at times. but nonetheless i think much of people's depression is augmented by trying to be all things to all people or taking on ridiculous burdens of phantasmal expectations, when in reality most people who are close to us in life really only want for us to be happy on some basic level and could in large part care less about the vehicles that get us there as long as it doesn't involve actively harming ourselves and others.

This is so true it hurts. Realizing and truly believing the people close to us want nothing but the best for us, regardless of in what way, how, where that "best" is or unfolds, is one of the things that, for me, proved (and still does at times) hardest to achieve. To come to that realization. I have accepted that I will forever need reassurance in this matter - not in a "i don't want to disappoint my close ones", rather in a "I can't for the life of me believe these people love and accept me without prejudice or a 'catch'" kind of way.

i get the "you don't SEEM like a clinical depressive" thing a lot. on the other hand i also get a lot of "you shouldn't be such a miserable bastard." people see what they want to see? i don't know.

― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Saturday, June 18, 2011 3:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i'm reading this and i may be projecting as someone who has more or less stopped being depressed after some late adolescence/early adulthood bouts of depression, so ymmv. but i know when i felt like dying p much every day, i think my mom struggled with it a lot b/c she didn't want me to be in pain, so i recognize a sentiment of "all these circumstances and what i know about u lead me to believe u should NOT BE SAD ALL THE TIME". i don't know if it is at all similar to what you in particular get.

hm, in the time it took me to write that, it looks like other ppl said similar things

it never completely goes away

been coming to terms with ^^^that fact recently. I've dealt with depression for as long as I can remember, so I'm figuring it's just a part of me. With that in mind I've realized that being depressed is mostly just fucking boring! Being in some damn purgatory of wanting/not wanting to do shit just sucks. Somehow that logic has gotten me out of the house recently. I go find some place else or some other way to be depressed and bored. At least mixes it up.

Feel the need to punch someone, anyone, in the throat. Dunno where that's come from but been feeling it for a while.

Please tell us more. We're here to listen.

oh hai. i think my medication stopped working. not sure how i feel about this yet.

Has that happened before? Can you consult your doctor about this? Recently it seemed my anxiety meds stopped working, but then I realized, considering the circumstances, I would probably have had a complete meltdown without'em. lol

I went off antidepressants (Effexor) earlier in the year, but recently I had to ask my doctor for something else, because in just the last four weeks:

- Both my and my wife's cars were broken into while they were sitting in our driveway.
- We had to have two of our cats euthanized for incurable illnesses.
- My car broke down and may not be repairable in a cost-efficient way.
- Our home was broken into WHILE WE WERE IN BED ASLEEP and both of our laptops and my wife's work laptop were stolen.

After the second thing listed was when I asked my doctor for something, and she gave me a 3-week prescription for clonazepam plus a followup appointment. But adding on the second two items, I feel like I'm suffering from PTSD or something. The pills are barely keeping me together, I can't sleep without the lights on and even then it's only 3-4 hours a night, I feel like I'm coming completely unraveled.

Has that happened before? Can you consult your doctor about this?

it may have happened before. but i've been on this drug (lexapro) for nearly 5 years and so reverting back to how i felt before is a little jarring. i want it to be one way! but it's the other way!

i did talk to my doc today -- we're gonna add buspar to the mix. never tried it; heard varied things about it but will give it a shot.

I really hope it helps. Good luck.

Hope it works for you!

I'm feeling better...really stepped up my efforts to get a new job, rather than just sitting around. Do get 'attacks' of tension/sadness for no reason, but just try and go out for a walk when this happens.

Good luck all!

Phil, maybe get a mild sleeping pill? Sleep deprivation is horrible.

Jel, happy you are doing better. :-)

i took buspirone for a while. it made me dizzy for five minutes or so each time i took it. ime i'm not sure how much any drugs ever helped me. i guess they must have to some extent, but then again, if i'm on the fence about it, how dramatic could the results have been? i don't really get depressed anymore. get sad about life here and there, but when it dips past sadness i recognize it as my neurotransmitters being depleted and i need fresh air, sunshine, nourishing food, moving my body, life-affirming social situations/creative things, etc

still get anxious on occasion, but recognize it as temporary situation in the body, and don't feed it. just try to be as kind to myself as possible and ground myself physically. only reason i am glibly dispensing "easy for you to say" testimony is b/c i was a total mess at one point, like in that movie where sigourney weaver plays a detective or whatever, but now i'm pretty good in general. personally subscribe to the ayurvedic or tcm models that such stuff is caused by psychophysical energies acting up (which is almost a given to a greater or lesser degree in our frantic culture) but i understand if others are like, whatever dude. but yeah, i've become acquainted with severely uncomfortable states and try to make friends with them these days until they pack off and depart, which they always do, obv. it's just a learning experience about things that come and go, aka everything

Our home was broken into WHILE WE WERE IN BED ASLEEP and both of our laptops and my wife's work laptop were stolen.

AHH! AHH! FUCK! I might need to up my dose just reading that Phil. Sorry to hear about your run of fortune. Hope things turn around for you, pronto.

yah, where the hell do you guys live?

Cleveland Heights, which is generally a good, safe neighborhood, but with Northeast Ohio hit so hard by the ongoing recession, and bordering East Cleveland being such a shithole, there's been a real uptick in crime. I am just so freaked out by the idea that someone was in our house, while we were there. I know Leigh-Anne went downstairs for something at like 1:30am -- they could have been in the house then! She could have been hurt!

Oh wow, this is in Cleveland? I know East Cleveland. I'm sorry Phil, that's just awful. Intruders are #1 thing I'm scared of, so I can see how that would affect you and your wife so deeply.

Man, I'm saying, an alarm system can run you as little as $30 a month plus installation.

Our home was broken into WHILE WE WERE IN BED ASLEEP

Phil, I'm so sorry this happened to you guys. Mr. Jaq and I had the same thing happen (including laptop and wallet full of ID and checks for deposit stolen) when we lived in a loft. It took us both a long time to feel comfortable and safe enough to sleep w/o lights, and it kicked my generally held in check OCD up to the point of it being a real problem. I didn't want to medicate myself to sleep - I wanted to be able to react if, heaven forbid, I had to in the middle of the night. So we would have one of us nap heavily while the other was vigilant, for awhile. After a few months, the anxiety faded, only to be brought back in full when some utility workers found my wallet + ID on the roof of another building. It took a lot to stop thinking about this person being in the same room with us as we slept.

Living in a rented place that could not be permanently modified, I ended up getting these for all the double-hung windows and doing the door lock check many times every night. Eventually we were okay to sleep. Do what you need to do to feel safe, get stronger scrips from your doctor if that's what you need right now.

yeah, so traumatic and gross. my unsolicited internet advice -- do what you need take care of yourselves, but of course w/o obsessing or fixating on it . like don't let desperate ppl win over your default peace of mind. thankfully most ppl want to help and not harm you; although it's perfectly natural to fixate on contrarian scenarios after someone violates your home

I've been sleeping with an aluminum softball bat. Like, in the bed with me, holding the handle while I sleep.

: (

I did buy it dinner, though, so I think we're cool.

We're looking into alarm systems, because while police don't think the culprit was in the house very long, it's possible they cased the house for future burglaries. The other shitty thing is, my laptop was logged in to Google at the time for Gmail, which also means someone could access my Google Docs account, which contained a document which recorded logins and passwords for all of our credit card sites, utilities, banking, etc. It was protected, but christ knows what people can hack these days. So I had to go through and change all of our logins and passwords, and report all of our credit card information as potentially stolen.

i had my laptop burgled while i slept once too :( no fun. i "solved" the situation by actually having a good lock on my door. shitty locks are the cause of 100% of burglaries i've been victim of. get a good lock and don't worry about it any more.