Depression and what it's really like

what's the difference between being depressed and suffering from existential crisis?

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life wouldn't be so difficult to handle or survive or work with if i (or we, rather) lived in a healthier global culture and society.

like, is all this war and murder and starvation and pollution and trauma endemic to the human species, or did we go terribly wrong somewhere along the way? i have a hard time believing we evolved to become such a destructive, hateful species. we are capable of so much more.

i don't know. i don't think i'm depressed so much as traumatized by our unhealthy culture.

ws asexuowl

ARGH

Ok, so I have been half-turned-down for a promotion, despite being recommended by the previous occupant of the job and the next highest up at the place because I didn't answer one or two v. vague questions to the woman actually interviewing me, and now will have to be re-interviewed with it.

And everything seems to have broken with none of it being my fault. To fix my laptop will cost... about the same as a new laptop. TY screen for exploding one morning. My bike is fucked too.

Oh and my best friends/only fucking friends around here are moving to Bristol. Fucking ay.

I think I'd be cool but all this shit happened within the same week. I just can't seem to catch a fucking break. I'm getting drunk and listening to Slick Rick loudly. It's not like i've got shit else to do.

what it feels like for me

-- most everything in my life has been a colossal failure (marriage, career)

-- the things other people point out to cheer me up are barely-disguised colossal failures (grad school)

-- the few things i have been successful are small and fleeting and besides i have failed to capitalize on these things (learned how to DJ at age 35, state fair 1st place in architectural drawing)

-- things are not going to get better. if anything they have only been getting worse and worse and judging from the state of my grandparent's generation they are going to get really bad before i die of natural causes, if i die of natural causes.

-- my goals in life have basically shrunk down to appearing stable enough that i don't ruin my parent's impending retirement and twilight of life by having them worry about what will happen to me after they die. then when they die, i can go ahead and die with a clean conscience.

something i have realized is that aside from my family, all of my friends are either a) literally clinically mentally ill or b) indigent

this tells me something negative about my person which i can't really put into words

i often think my dog is disappointed with me or angry with me.

my meds seem to be having an effect. what that means for now is i still recognise all the ways i've fucked up, and all the things that are not good about my life and may not ever improve, but i suddenly seem to have just enough resources to deal with them and sometimes even look other people in the eye and be honest with them. i know i've seen this feeling appear before and i've let it slide away or done things to wreck it, but just observing that pills seem to make me feel even a little bit less flat is enough to remind me that the worst times are not all i am.

i dunno what to say late great, i'm not in your head so i can't know how you feel. but i'm sure your worst times are far from being the sum total of who you are, too.

same goes for all my fellow travellers on this thread. keep hanging in there.

Hey, that's good news, relatively speaking, NV. I'm glad to see it.

glad to see you are doing better nv.

late great, nv, might I suggest seeking advice from a talking owl? Or maybe, you should think of taking up a hobby.

all my hobbies are so antisocial :\

have been trying to think of social activities that don't involve either a) booze, or b) people i'd want to kill unless i was full of booze

target practice lol

good work NV - i guess the thing from here is to use this feeling and not to let it go. the letting it slide thing is easy to let happen

resources - this is a great word

hoy hoy, late great, nv...you are all a+ dudes in my world. there's benefit from just putting one foot in front of the other, even if it doesn't always feel that way.

hugs xoxo

hobbies don't have to be social imo! there can come a serenity from antisocial hobbies too, tinkering about with synths or wandering around with a camera can bring a serenity

didnt mean to say serenity twice and i also meant to put antisocial in inverted commas

painting/doodling/writing too

well anything - i just mean that alone time can also be really valuable

My hobby advice came straight from the cartoon owl.

He thinks it only takes three licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop, so don't listen to him.

ha oh i didnt know anything about any owls

so here's the thing

-- i've been seeing therapists for 14 years. one for 12 years, one for one year during grad school, the most recent for about a year. they have all been excellent. i know all about cognitive behavioral therapy and CBT.

-- i've been taking SSRIs for 14 years, and mood stabilizers for about 4. big doses. my doses nowadays are bigger than ever.

-- i have hobbies, all sorts. creative things like music, outdoorsy things like camping and cycling, fulfilling things like gardening and community service, snuggly things like a doggy.

-- i have a very very supportive family and several - not many - very close and supportive friends that i've had for a long long time.

the thing is i rarely feel any pleasure and i haven't for a long time. i am always focused on the negatives. if something goes well, i only think about the parts that went wrong. if nothing went wrong, i think about all the other times something went wrong and criticize myself for not doing it perfectly every time. my therapist tells me i've coped with criticism by internalizing the criticism, predicting it, and beating my critics to the punch. now i'm too good at criticizing myself and can't stop. it is great to know this, but i want to stop.

i want to be able to wake up w/o dreading the day and thinking about what can go wrong and what went wrong yesterday. i want to leave work w/o feeling like i'm slinking out, having barely avoided being fired. i want to be able to turn my back on people w/o imagining that they're thinking bad things about me. i want to go to sleep at night not thinking about the worst parts of the day.

i understand that your worst times are far from being the sum total of who you are but i want to feel that, and the only times that i do feel that is when i'm just off a manic tear and doing something like admiring my house after cleaning it from midnight until 5 am (even though i rarely have guests) or admiring the 12 hour straight unpaid indesign job i did (for a not-very-important school event which does not need a professional quality program or flier) or the 40 hours that i spent on a mix (that nobody will listen to) etc etc

what about meditation or something that will help you get away from the self-talk for a while?

not to be all hippy-dippy, just curious

yeah, it's odd, the one time i was really happy i was

-- working minimum wage

-- cycling 30-40 miles per day

in my minimum wage jobs i was busy attending to tons of menial tasks (filing, dusting, moving and packing boxes, watering plants, washing dishes) that got my mind off of everything. and when i was cycling i wasn't thinking about anything but counting my cadence.

maybe i will try that, it is a good suggestion.

i have tried in the past and not been successful but i think it is a good idea.

that makes sense too

teaching has this emphasis on reflecting on everything you did as a sort of continuous improvement model and in locating all the sources of student behavior in your own actions and changing them as needed

i think this is an excellent idea in theory but in practice - for me - it has basically been a mandate to beat myself up every day.

Maybe you could try reading some philosophy type stuff on happiness

I could say what things that work for me but they're all finely tuned to my personality

Perhaps if you took the Big Five Personality test and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator I could try to give advice suited to your personality

I'm sure there's universal advice out there but I'm only focused on deviations today

What sort of thoughts make you smile to yourself?

sorry for whining, i just feel like there's a 500 lb weight on my chest today and i'd like to get it off my chest if you will

infj iirc

no way man, voicing that shit is *important*

yeah but i'm seeing my therapist in 24 minutes, surely it could have waited

I gotta take my Myers-Briggs over again to figure out what I have to say if I have to say anything

I'm probably here in this thread right now because I saw my therapist/med-prescriber a couple hours ago

meyers briggs has done poorly in empirical studies iirc

keep making mixes

not sure what your leanings are or thought style is, but reading about buddhism helped me put the crack in my life-long depression. it's not a cure-all, but the noble path, insight and breathing meditation, and nature of self and reality stuff is pretty damn useful as you figure things out.

helped me see how untrue the negative self-talk was cuz values are subjective and there is no objective truth re: our emotional selves and interpersonal/social shit, my equal place in humanity, etc. etc. dunno if this is just my own stuff, but regardless it's a good stepping stone to expanding your mind ... that's what it feels like getting out of each piece of depression, a totally unknown but actual reality becomes apparent in the mind. sorta a weird feeling ... maybe closest comparison is culture shock where going to a foreign country for the first time blows away your whole idea of how society can function.

then again my current therapist has a freudian orientation which iirc also "discredited" and she's in charge of a clinical mft program and has been amazing so who knows maybe the meyers briggs will be useful anyway

you're INFJ and I'm INTP.
how much of a J are you? Like, how much do you desire control and routine?

does this picture make you smile?
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/imdemo.gif

no no we know faces can't turn into those

i really like buddhism, i used to read the heart and diamond sutras often and i've read a lot of pema chodron, and i like her, and i particularly like dt suzuki and alan watts even though that's not quite exactly the same thing

but even though i find that stuff has been useful for clarifying my intellectual ideas about life philosophy and reality and being and nothingness it's not really translated into a sense of contentment

then again i suppose they'd all say i need meditation too

are you really smart?

it's never too late to get stupid. and stupidity does have something to do with happiness

at least for me

i am definitely a creature of habit, down to warhol-esque eating habits

control maybe not so much but i do hate uncertainty ... i guess though that's more of an EJ vs IJ thing?

like i find my lack of self-control distressing and i have trouble rolling with the punches

am i really smart?

well i am posting to ilx on a macbook pro.

I think lack of self-control would be a good topic for you to bring up to your therapist. It seems like a topic that could be quite rewarding