Depression and what it's really like

I'm officially inviting you to join me for a meal here anytime http://tank-noodle.com/index.php
it's my favorite!

Done!

I haven't given up trying to make it to Chicago! Maybe after the current issue of this accursed magazine goes to press...mid/late July?

Keep chilx informed, we also still want to have giant southern meal -- just don't come the same weekend as my in laws.

I have some friends who really love that place too, LL! I think we should commiserate over anti-depression noodles if I am around when it is colder outside.

done

anti-depression noodles are the best of ideas.

we don't interact much but you've always seemed a good sort to me, WmC, and i'm hoping you find a way to get yourself happier.

I almost feel like depression isn't the opposite end of happiness, but a malaise that saps the emotional impact and energy out of all things other than depression.

that's anhedonia, one of many aspects of depression

Guys I think I'm slowly coming to the realization that happiness is not the right goal? I mean it seems like a losing battle to strive towards something that is fleeting or temporary at best, right? I think maybe there is something else to aim for and happiness is a symptom of that thing but what is it?

Sure, happiness is just shorthand for "able to enjoy the world & things when you choose to." Kind of.

The "something else to aim for" has to be different for difft people, and also could get New Agey really fast, but I would hazard one thing is...utility? Connectedness? To know what your place (probably, roughly, hopefully) is in the world, and to inhabit it.

Absence of loose ends and general contentedness for me, thanks.

Guys I think I'm slowly coming to the realization that happiness is not the right goal? I mean it seems like a losing battle to strive towards something that is fleeting or temporary at best, right? I think maybe there is something else to aim for and happiness is a symptom of that thing but what is it?

I think this is true -- my goal basically boils down to a combo of "fully present and conscious in the moment" + "doing one's best on the task at hand"

xposts

Guys I think I'm slowly coming to the realization that happiness is not the right goal? I mean it seems like a losing battle to strive towards something that is fleeting or temporary at best, right? I think maybe there is something else to aim for and happiness is a symptom of that thing but what is it?

― Has someone else's face gotten in the way of yr foot or elbow? (sunny successor), Wednesday, June 20, 2012 3:51 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Remind me to lend you my well-worn copy of The Gospel According to Peanuts.

Kilby Court is basically my favourite place in USA

― hot knives, wind was blowin' (Ówen P.), Wednesday, June 20, 2012 7:01 AM (8 hours ago)

<3 <3

Guys I think I'm slowly coming to the realization that happiness is not the right goal? I mean it seems like a losing battle to strive towards something that is fleeting or temporary at best, right? I think maybe there is something else to aim for and happiness is a symptom of that thing but what is it?

I think it's better to think about the next thing, or the things you like doing. In the last few months I've been doing an acting class which literally started the week I stopped being eligible for public healthcare funded therapy (and actually was as helpful and in-depth.) I've also been running a lot. It's not that these things make me automatically happier, just that I dunno, knowing I'm unhappy or have unhappiness has been a very peaceful realisation.

I feel like I've stopped thinking about happiness as that unattainable goal or thinking "will I ever be happy" and started trying to just know my own unhappiness and the rest of me as best I can.

It's not like some miraculous transformation but I feel sometimes lately that it's harder to distinguish negativity from positivity, eg tonight I did a big scene I'd been working on at my class and on the way home I just felt entirely quiet and sort of melancholy, but completely relaxed and calm.

Some vague point emerges here which hopefully someone else might relate to...

PS: I had a crush on the acting teacher too.

now it all becomes clear :)

Yeah for me, satisfaction is an aim, rather than happiness. Being satisfied, content, with each moment. Of course, I'm far from that a lot of the time, but thats really my own fault, especially lately. I do worry that I set my bar too low out of disillusion, sometimes.

Rock, I wish you good cheer, many a pleasant sunset evening in your summertime, and a hope the fog clears soon. You've always been a steady hand this board sorely needs at times, and I always note and appreciate it.

Ditto to being content. Letting go of stressing over the things you don't have, or aren't yet. Enjoy every sandwich, as Warren Zevon said, even if you're not dying.

Interview with the creator of Boggle the Owl: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/06/06/boggle-the-owl-loves-you/

Now I'm really depressed.

Okay. This is a question, and it is not meant to be a statement, but I feel like people are likely to judge me as though it is. I just... I guess I just want to know how many of the people who post here have this label as a thing that they live their daily lives under, as opposed to just posting here when they feel sad and like things are shit or overwhelming them... because so much that gets posted here is all motivational and crap, and I just feel like, actually, what is is REALLY LIKE, is that you just want to die, and that you should die, and that nothing pretty anyone else will say will matter, because that actually isn't what depression is like, that's what "being a bit sad" is like, and you know, fuck you guys, you'll all be fine, and I won't, I won't ever ever ever be fine, and I should die right here and now. So, uh, how many of you guys think that too when you read this thread? Is it just me?

I don't know em, the little owl said you shouldn't die and it is getting a lot of reposts.

I'm going to make a little canary who says "cheer up! your other arm works! maybe the broken one can be a conversation piece!"

I'm not really depressed, not diagnosed as such anyway. I completely hear what you're saying.

I like owls. I would just stamp on that owl's head repeatedly while going FUCK YOU, YOU DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE, FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.

(Also, diagnostics are not the only thing... I knew I was depressed for twenty years before I ever even got the inkling of a 'diagnosis'. Yes, that's since being ten years old. And I still haven't had more of a diagnosis than 'take these pills for your depression'. So yeah, I'm bitter. But seriously, anyone who thinks a cartoon owl can lift their depression, can you please just fuck right off right now.)

I don't know if I know what it's really like. I know I've been taking care of a bipolar person for almost 20 years so I've been able to see what depression is really like; and I know that after many years of merely being unhappy, over the past year I've felt something very different and a lot worse.

i don't really feel like going into my credentials for posting here, so i'm willing to stipulate that yes, you are the saddest, most depressed owl of all

xp

I have been very sad at times, and even been so beaten down I was emotionally numb for the majority of several years. But clinical depression and garden-variety sadness or emotional numbness should not be considered as comparable.

If someone says, I'm feeling depressed lately, then it is probably sadness or general numbness. If they say I don't see how I can live with this feeling another day, it's like some horrible blackness has swallowed me whole, all I want to do is die, then odds on it is clinical depression.

But... the owl isn't depressed. The owl is a pretend friend. I am not pretending to be an owl. I am just irritated at an owl pretending to be something that can alleviate the need to destroy yourself completely and utterly and... seemingly other people going along with it. I don't understand why.

xpost to mookie, sorry Aimless.

I like how the owl keeps pontificating what other people are really thinking of you.

Because I really give a good goddam about that.

xp no offense was taken whatsoever, emil.y

I will say that yeah, often depression seems to be very much like other people who are depressed telling you to go away because you're too depressing. Sorry, everyone. I realise that everyone builds their own protective shell in order to deal with it, but I get so sick of that shit, I mean, if you're given a space to talk about how crap you feel, why talk about the shell you've built instead of what's inside it?

for the record, I know I seem like a dorky cheerleader itt telling ppl nice things, but I don't like the idea of ppl itt thinking that no-on'es listening or paying attention to what they're going through. I have no personal experience with clinical depression

and though we're all a bunch of internet strangers I care pretty deeply for more than a few ppl itt, so I'll stand by my sentimental dorkiness :) but that should never invalidate anyone's right to just say that they want to stomp owl heads etc

I am just irritated at an owl pretending to be something that can alleviate the need to destroy yourself completely and utterly and... seemingly other people going along with it.

Lots of things pretend to be this. Organized religion, counseling, friggin accupuncture. Even placebos have their place, but some people -- shock and awe -- actually ARE able to reevaluate themselves via some words that put things in perspective.

I personally thought myself much too intelligent to feel that someone else would be able to give me insight because, paradoxically, my feelings were so fucking common and the obvious version of anxiety and occasional depression that it would be patronizing to address them, or that I was smart enough to see through whatever bullshit because I knew what the world was really like.

Both of those things were anxiety and depression coloring my ability to actually want to get out of it. The thing is, depression loves enabling itself, and your mental state will tend to help the condition along. It is a fight, and some people feel a little fictional owl telling them platitudes is a better inner voice than the one telling them that the owl needs to fuck off. It's a choice what you choose to have as your inner voice.

Not to mean the only two choices are listening to your cynical depression-enabling inner self or a cartoon owl. I'd be pissed if there were only those two choices.

Yeah on the stuff up thread, personally I'm fairly sure I'm not clinically depressed, but I've been chronically sick for so long that my feelings about that and myself are hard to unpack, sort of a chicken/egg thing.

I don't want to die but I suppose there's a whole heap of reasons people can have problems, that are serious and legitimate.

not too into the owl, personally. the depression comix that someone posted to this thread, or was it another thread? - those i liked, though they work differently than the owl is intended to function. i dunno, maybe the owl makes some "authentically" depressed people feel better. i am willing to suspend my disbelief about the owl, similar to how i suspend my disbelief (or try to) that my life is worth living and hope is worth having. have i really had this "condition" for 25 years? geez louise, yeah, 25 years.

i can relate to you, LG, tho i've had a somewhat traceable progression from no depression in the first few yrs, to situational, and more serious in teh past year or two.

more often than i'd like, and with growing frequency, i wish i had a terminal rather than chronic illness. i'm in therapy.

everybody's got their situations that feel heavy and overwhelming and unsustainable, and whatever helps is worth something, however silly it may seem to others, imo.

(oh hai thread i mostly lurk.)

btw, could this thread perhaps be 77ed or at least deindexed? thx

I am depressed and anxious and have panic attacks. Comfortable with calling myself mentally ill. On meds. Pro-cartoon-owls.

mentally owl

sorry I shouldn't turn such serious things into a stupid pun

owl say

http://onemoviefiveviews.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/lgffd-00288.jpg

Boggle needs more slow-motion flame-bucket fights scored to Dead Can Dance song

more owl puns, please

Emily, I have def been diagnosed on a number of occasions with major depression. In he end the real diagnosis was ADD, anxiety and PTSD. Depression can be a symptom of these for sure but now I'm stuck taking anti-deps because I can't deal with being fucked up for a year while my brain readjusts.

Guess who got himself a case of shingles? Whoo-hoo!

I am the best at being the worst.

Oh no! I'm sorry - it's supposed to be really painful. Probably to do with all the stress? Take care of yourself, N.

Definitely to do with all of the stress. Thankfully, I caught it early because, because of it showing up with a few other nerve-y things, I had myself convinced that it was MS, so I went to the doctor as soon as I could.

^You can remove a "because," if you'd like.