Depression and what it's really like

Oh and of course such groups can only do so much, but I've found them helpful. Everyone has different ways of processing grief so it just may not be the thing for you. The advice above allowing yourself to grieve is good and also not caving to social pressure to be okay with it when you are not. Advice I wish I had gotten is that it's not your responsibly to make people feel more comfortable w your grief and that your grief is totally legitimate. Just my unsolicited advice...

I'm frustrated because my church has a drug / alcohol group, as if everyone who has problems is an alcoholic.

Well, fuck. I'm concerned that I'm really heading towards a major depression right now and its super frustrating because a) I am in therapy and at least talking to someone about it, but b) it feels like I'm sliding into it no matter how hard I try to reverse course or work through things I've learned are helpful for me. Also c) objectively, there is no reason I should be depressed, I mean, there are no major traumas in my life and right now I've got this wonderful little boy that I am thrilled to spend time with.

But I also fear that my joy being around my son is sort of amplifying the other areas in my life that are sort of dragging me down. And, although I'm in therapy, I literally have no one else to talk about these things with - y'know, not even like a work friend to shoot the shit with or anyone to reach out to during that long week between therapy sessions. Its super frustrating because I don't want to feel this way at all, but every morning I wake up more sad than the previous. Fuck.

/emo

Yeah, man, isolation is a quick route to depressionville. I'd advise maybe finding someplace where parents and kids can mingle? I'm not sure what that would be, though, as I've never had to seek anything like that out.

Yeah, I don't know, my hardest times seem to be the work week between times I get to do things like that. I think it mainly comes down to the fact that I really don't have anyone at work that I can talk about non-work things with (I spend all my lunch hours eating by myself) and with no friends I'm in regular, close contact with - my options to kind of get some of this stuff off my chest are limited.

I don't know if you're a single parent, but the Chicago Single Parents Network sounds like something that might suit your needs?

Yeah, that's pretty much why I've decided that I'm probably not gonna do another office job. Even if I have to take a pay cut, I've realized it's important to me that I work in a more social environment where it's almost a challenge to be isolated.

hiding in the house with the phones unplugged :(

Definitely not a single parent, sorry, didn't mean to leave that impression. Its just that our schedules right now aren't allowing my wife and I to spend much time together.

Also c) objectively, there is no reason I should be depressed, I mean, there are no major traumas in my life and right now I've got this wonderful little boy that I am thrilled to spend time with.

Keep in mind that you could be on top of the fuckin' world and still be depressed if your brain isn't allowing it. You wouldn't hear a guy with one leg say, "I shouldn't be hopping around like this when I've got this great car."

well, maybe you would, but perhaps you get my drift.

No, I totally get that, its just a frustrating feeling.

And I think men are also just as capable of getting post-natal depression as well. I don't know if it's an upending of the scales, experiencing all this joy with a new kid and then standing at a four-lane intersection 12 hours later, wondering why it's even worth crossing the road.

Definitely not a single parent, sorry, didn't mean to leave that impression.

Even so, I assure you that there are lots of parents who feel the same drag you're feeling, and I'm certain that there are groups and gatherings and clubs and organizations of people who get together to alleviate that drag.

Isolation is the worst. I used to think I was on top of the world -- working from home, setting my own schedule. Now I'm just under house arrest.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure my current situation is a result of a few things:

1) Career frustration, feeling stuck in a rut and wanting to make a change, but running into lots of dead ends and roadblocks.
2) Feeling like I don't have any friends that aren't really just my wife's friends and spouses.
3) Just a general feeling of lack of what I want to do with my life.

xpost

Yeah, I've definitely come to that same conclusion. I was on track for a while towards becoming self-employed and working from home, but now that seems like a somewhat nightmarish situation in the long term.

Maybe a four-day work week would be something ideal for all of us.

http://gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/102954_o.gif

that seems like a somewhat nightmarish situation in the long term.

11 years and counting ;_;

Maybe it's time to start handing out pink slips.

When I got my pre-checkup call yesterday for my physical next week, one of the questions they asked was if I felt incapacitated by depression zero, once, a few days or the majority of the last two weeks. Which I thought was too small a window for that, and I told them zero because I'm off cycle.

After years of working, I'm still having trouble processing the fact of working life properly. Initial excitement of a new job just wore off, and I became suddenly aware that the doldrums were coming back... Monday through Friday, 8-6 spent working. The majority of my life, working, with tiny impermanent moments of pleasure and frustration woven in between... all leading to one thing: death. Just crashed. These sudden realizations are totally bogus.

in large part that's what's kicking me in the head right now, coupled with a sense of doing this shit alone for the rest of my life, coupled with nobody to tell me to stop fucking drinking

Stop fucking drinking.

Also take a shower and eat something.

will try :\

It won't make you not depressed but at least you won't smell or be hungry.

1) Career frustration, feeling stuck in a rut and wanting to make a change, but running into lots of dead ends and roadblocks.
2) Feeling like I don't have any friends that aren't really just my wife's friends and spouses.
3) Just a general feeling of lack of what I want to do with my life

1) iirc edison always said his lightbulb was the result of ten thousand failures and one success

2) is that really such a bad thing? are they really *just* your wife's friends? you think if you got divorced you'd be friendless

3) it's certainly a tough question and it's okay to feel this way. i think a lot of people feel this way, to be honest.

vahid is seriously a tough call.... he can be like the smartest most hilarious dude in the world for a week and then the next week hes like every worst quality of ilx thrown into one butthurt dude

― and what, Wednesday, April 2, 2008 11:27 PM (4 years ago)

so i mentioned this on another thread, went to see a new psychiatrist recently to talk about my trouble sleeping, how i'll sleep all day on saturday and stay up all night sunday, how sometimes i'll feel amazing and sometimes i'll kinda crash and just cry all day and how between these periods there are these brief intense interludes where i'll do something really stupid (like overindulge in ... things) or really intense (like a shit ton of work or chores or exercise or a huge fight with a loved one etc)

she said "o you might be bipolar" and started giving me lamictal and ambien for when i'm buzzing and now i feel at least 50% better though nowhere near where i'd like to be

but yeah, sometimes you need to get a second opinion to snap things into sudden focus.

The grass is always greener. ALWAYS. Last week around my birthday I was pretty down and whenever I talked w someone who has something that im missing (a wife, a house, a full-time job, etc) they were always saying 'Man, i wish i had the freedom you have!'. Eventually someone asked me 'What's up? Why you feel shitty?' and I slowly listed some reasons but every time i did it felt like a cop out, like it's just some standard life BS that millions of people are dealing with, or even that millions of people probably WISH they were dealing with.

There are plenty of environmental factors that go in to making you depressed, but i think in the end of it all, it's 100% up to you to snap out of it. Kinda like quitting smoking.

I was stuck in feeling #2 for a long time, Jon...but the thing I wasn't looking at is that these are people who, despite alreeady being friends with my husband, treated me as a friend too without me making any effort towards them at all.

I resented the hell out of them for not being my 'real' friends but eventually you come to realize that friends are friends, that company is good, and that if they are good, fun people then who cares how they came to be your friend.

you know? it's just a way of beating yourself to make you feel lonelier than you are, and just cast you adrift even more. I did it a lot, way too much, and much as your inclination fights against you, this is a time when you need friends. don't judge yourself too harshly on this one. yknow, like that dorky religious joke/morality story about the dude in the flood who waits around for god to save him, and he refuses the lifeboat and refuses the helicopter saying god will save him and then when he eventually drowns he asks God 'why didn't you save me?" and God says well I sent the lifeboat and the helicopter...

you know? don't look a gift horse in the mouth. ugh now I sound preachy but I can say from personal experience that no matter how true it *feels* in your head that you should have your own friends, any friends are good friends to have.

hang in there, jon.

not sure "snapping out of it" is necessarily a realistic expectation, but i agree that you have the 100% of the necessary ability to address your depression

Well, I mean I do consider them "friends" in that I usually have a decent time talking to them when we get together in a group situation, but, otoh, not one of those people would reach out to me individually in any sort of way outside of that group dynamic, you know? And, when I have reached out to them, to get together for a beer or whatever, they come up with a reason not to do so. Which is why I find it hard to really consider them "friends", if that makes sense.

Like, yes, I'm fortunate to have them, but I also think its important for people to have friends that exist outside of, and separate from, that group dynamic of being a couple. I really don't have those anymore.

why not?

Let's see, of the really good, close friends I had emerging from college and the years after - one moved to Atlanta and I never really get to see him, I had a falling out with another when she married a convicted child molestor (not kidding), another got married and pretty much went MIA, and the others just kinda drifted off into families and job stuff and we don't see each other anymore.

Like, I'm not afraid to admit that there are times when I may have not been the best at keeping up with people, that was a big fault of mine 3-4 years ago that I've tried to address and improve on.

ok so how come you can't make new friends?

Dude, you're blessed. Wife, some wife's friends, people on an internet message board who give a crap. You're alive, relatively young, in a halfway decent country. Why not focus on the positives? As trite as that is, I think it helps. I mean lord, you're living like a g-damned king compared to me.

One thing I constantly struggle with is that, in my better moments, I think I'm a generally decent guy and pretty easy to get along with. And I have no problem meeting new people and having really good, engaging conversations with people I enjoy being around and would like to spend time with. But, for whatever reason, I'm just never able to launch those interactions into anything more. If that makes sense. I'll reach back out to people I meet and try to set up something, but they always fizzle out. Which, fair, things happen. But its frustrating.

To use a more specific example, one of my wife's friends started dating a new guy and we really clicked at a wedding when we were first introduced. We had similar backgrounds, similar tastes in music, and ended up hanging out a lot that weekend, talking for hours. Since then I've invited him out to get some drinks, to go to shows, baseball games, etc but it never pans out. In the two and a half years since we met (he's still dating my wife's friend), we've hung out one-on-one twice. Its a solid example of someone that I would like to consider a good friend and would really like to hang out with more, but its clear he's not really feeling the same way.

All emo and shit, but this is the situation I keep running into.

I have no idea how people make friends after college. I understand everything you're talking about, jon.

You have to make friends by being a friend imo. Start conversations, share stuff, stick your neck out a little.

It takes some practice, but it works and sometimes it's even easy. Rarely, but it happens.

But anyway, I identify with the feeling of nothing is wrong/everything is wrong. It usually passes, that's about all I have to offer with that one.

Being outside for a while every day helps for me, but ymmv.

There are plenty of environmental factors that go in to making you depressed, but i think in the end of it all, it's 100% up to you to snap out of it.

This week I'm making the supreme effort of suppressing negative thinking, something that has been dragging me to the worst depths.

I probably talk to you all more than IRL friends.

I don't have to meet at a noisy bar to visit with you. I can talk to you while I work. If we're in the middle of a conversation and I have to take a call, it's not at all rude for me to drop out for 20 minutes or two weeks. We never have to have that "So, man. What have you been up to?" conversation.

I dig my IRL friends. They're good people. Sunny thinks I'm just a social butterfly because I go out every six months and play poker or watch the Super Bowl. But what I do when I do go out like that is look at the clock and wonder how much time has gone by before I can get back to the house to see my wife and kids. I spent a good 15 years of my life doing nothing shit, and while it was extraordinarily fun, I don't miss a second of it.

It's funny. There are a couple of ILXors on here that live just around the corner from us, but they have never met 5-year-old Beeps in person. And they might be mine and Sunny's closest mutual friends. I don't know what my point is, except maybe to say friends aren't the be-all, end-all solution to loneliness. If anything, to be brutally honest, I felt more alone at times when I was surrounded by my friends.

I have no idea how people make friends after college.

This to an extent, but to an even greater extent, I have no idea how people keep friends after college. I've retained a small and steadfast few, but the majority of friends (even ones I've been very close to and thought would be around forever) have sloughed off of my life altogether. It's a bummer.

^^^ Yeah both the quote and Deic's new post are 100% otm.

otm Making new friends is cool, but i feel like they always kind of fall off the map and the old friends who stick around are the only ones that really matter.

I kinda feel like women are much better at putting in the work to maintain long-term friendships than men are.

Unless you are heavily, deeply involved in some kind of social scene. That really seems like the only way to make new friends. Over the past few years there are a bunch of people I genuinely liked that I really wanted to be friends with, but I've sort of detached from whatever scenes they were involved in and they just don't have the time to pursue anything outside of those clicks.