Depression and what it's really like

The family in my head, and my forceful avoidance of them, hurt me far more than the actual family in another state ever could.

I find a piece of paper and a pen to be the best therapy there is - if you have the time and a quiet place - I write out my thoughts and if they are fucked up I can notice it better

"i come from a really small family and i don't have any close relatives out here. i'm tight with my parents but i'm lacking the huge warm "family" experience that a lot of people have.

― arvo peart (get bent), Friday, September 7, 2012 2:28 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

Exact same for me.

― (✿◠‿◠) (ENBB), Friday, September 7, 2012 1:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I come from a larger family, but I'm lacking the warm "family" experience as well.

actually my extended family is quite huge and it never really seemed all that great to have such a thing - mostly the greatest thing is to have people who accept you for who you are

"i come from a really small family and i don't have any close relatives out here. i'm tight with my parents but i'm lacking the huge warm "family" experience that a lot of people have.

― arvo peart (get bent), Friday, September 7, 2012 2:28 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

Exact same for me.

― (✿◠‿◠) (ENBB), Friday, September 7, 2012 11:53 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my fam is all back east and a bit scattered (dad in rochester, bro in chicago area, mom in illinois stix), my wife's family here is pretty small and going through some grim aging stuff + her grandparents just moved up to the bay area, leaving just her parents. and all of her relatives here (distant ones, but fairly numerous) and family friends are between the ages of 65-90. the family experience here is weird, not cold, lukewarm maybe.

hey this whokle "lacking thing" - that's part of depression too. you project this ideal family experience onto other people and minimize their problems and then maximize your own.

"every happy family is exactly the same, every unhappy family has its own problems"

maybe it is the depression affecting it, there's this thought that these feelings can't be overcome or something and it'll never end ... which i get with a lot of things. even today just confronting this stuff honestly i feel a little more at ease. i think i'll start tackling that dr. burns book this weekend.

good for you

I've been really struggling again as this year has worn on... this month, September 2012, marks three years of my attending weekly group psychotherapy, and I'm facing the feeling that, after all that time, nothing has really changed at all, and a hopelessness that it never will.

this is it? 35-70 more years of this bullshit? i don't want that.

i just don't understand why i even bother with it, feel like i've seen or done everything but travel the world and all of it turned out to be shit.

i wish i could say something useful but this is kind of exactly where i am, so.

However far or fast you run, you can never escape yourself.

It's an age-old, well-known reality, but then "cliches happen!"

"three years of my attending weekly group psychotherapy, and I'm facing the feeling that, after all that time, nothing has really changed at all, and a hopelessness that it never will."

Perhaps a different therapy would be better for you

i agree latham, it's okay to shop around for a therapist / therapy that makes you feel better

I have talked to people who said they went to therapy and it was shit - I mean I guess therapists are people too, making mistakes, and since its kind of one of those "art and a science" things maybe there should be some kind of like matching service to match clients with the right therapist or something

I haven't gone to therapy, but I can't imagine it's a cure-all ... no matter what we have to work through, we gotta do it ourselves and nobody else can make that happen... help, yeah, but help only works after we do the heavy lifting, which can seem like a catch-22.

I know several people who've been in therapy for years and they just keep getting worse, unfortunately. The value I see out of therapy, for me at least, is just having someone to talk to about these things... I imagine it'd be a cathartic experience. Of course, issues may vary.

I think there is allot of theraputic value to having someone you trust listen to yoru thoughst ina non-judgemental way - just venting it out - and also to having someone question yoru beliefs too

no matter what we have to work through, we gotta do it ourselves and nobody else can make that happen... help, yeah, but help only works after we do the heavy lifting, which can seem like a catch-22.

Well, you're right, that IS a catch-22. I'm not depressed and I've never been to therapy so take this however you like but that seems like the kind of defeated thinking that keeps you from starting to do anything. And also like the depression talking.

What I'm saying is distortionalertsiren.jpg

Huh, maybe depression's more insidious than I thought, here I was thinking this is good sense. Sure as hell hasn't helped me, though. I think I'll refrain from giving advice for a while.

I just think of the posts from here and the suicide thread recently that rly emphasized that therapy isn't just about revealing yrself to someone who can give you answers or w/e but about having a guide to help you think differently and see opportunities for change where you didn't see them before. But by definition, you won't know or feel like those possible good things are still ahead until you get to them?

My thinking was coming from my own experiences ... always thought nobody could help me til I fixed myself enough for it, but I just realized, nobody ever really tried to help me. A therapist could've caught this shit real quick if I'd gone a decade or so ago ... so yeah, I can see its value.

I have a friend that I talk to and they disagree with my pronouncements - at first I am aanoyed but then I realize I'm wrong, I'm being irrational (ie. People who drive motorbikes must all have a deathwish)

My experience with therapy has been that it helps the heavy lifting. In fact, probably the most important thing my therapist did for me was gradually show me that the heavy lifting really wasn't as heavy as I thought.

I often feel like personality is a pattern and it tends to stay its course unless re-directed by another personality

there are a lot of differing attitudes toward the purpose, value and practice of therapy among therapists so having that conversation or asking those questions (why? how? Etc) w a new therapist when you start is a good idea

word, word

did my first ever therapy earlier this year, 12 weeks was covered by state health insurance, it helped me quite a bit, would have liked to have done more i guess.

mental health is pretty frustrating (obviously.) i find myself feeling silly for 3/4 months of things being fine, and now in the last week or two it's sliding back a little, if not into total oblivion. and it makes me think i was stupid to not be wary during the good time.

the other thing i find is just this inability to show my unhappiness, it fucking drives me mad. i just automatically tell everyone everything is great, even close friends.

i guess cos i don't think people would get the separation that exists between things "everything is ostensibly fine" and the undulating separate line that is "i am depressed by x amount at this given time."

that plus the things i do to escape depression, exercise, drama classes i've been fairly consistently doing, make people think that i'm totally rocking along and stuff, tho they do make me feel better they're also my ways of combatting problems that won't go away, eg my chronic health, a fairly big part of my erratic moods.

and it makes me think i was stupid to not be wary during the good time.

Enjoy the good times. Even when I feel good I have a nagging sense that it will all collapse any moment.

For sure. Half the time, I'm not even waiting for the other shoe to drop as much as I'm wondering how many shoes the universe can realistically still have left to drop.

Like, I have good and potentially life-changing news and I'm mostly just wondering what exactly is going to transpire so that it blows up in my face. That's kinda fucked, right?

feel better garda

that familiar sense of "don't kid yourself" that i get when I'm high on life might have some purpose, like the slave whispering in the ear of a Roman general during a triumph: "remember you're mortal". but at the same time it's kind of the outlier of yr depressive thinking, a little shadow of the lies we tell ourselves that we're not worthy, we shouldn't be happy, everything falls apart. in short, what emilys said, revel in yr happiness when it's there. there's nothing foolish about enjoying the simple joy of feeling good about the world, and maybe if we try hard enough we could make those feelings push their shadows into the dark times.

I do think in general depression is like diabetes type I - a chronic illness that need to manage not really cure, but you can manage it and feel good. It is also a very serious disease because it can be fatal (suicide)- in this sense it would be good if society made bigger strides to support depression management for people (not just a bumper sticker that says depression awareness)

Garda, just a random suggestion to play with: what if there was one person that you told when you weren't feeling good? Not to unload on them, just to tell the fact of it, like, "FYI, I'm in that place again, so if other people ask I'm going to say "Fine" for the sake of not having to explain, but just so someone knows, I'm not." I wonder if it would feel less like you were keeping a secret or "faking it" and more like a boundary that you chose but can break when you also choose to?

I obviously can't speak for Garda specifically, but the biggest problem with that (and one of the biggest obstacles to overcome, more generally, in making depression less of a stigma) is that so many people just shut down or pull out when they know you're going through a rough time (which, naturally, just makes it that much rougher). They don't want to hear about it, and they treat it like it's contagious. Which it may be, to an extent, as I feel like a lot of those people have a really tenuous grasp on their own mental health and don't want to expose themselves to anything but cheery lightness lest their grasp slip. Luckily, I have a handful of confidants who have been through rough shit themselves and w're all reliable sounding boards for one another when it's needed. It makes me sad to know that not everyone has that.

Garda, just a random suggestion to play with: what if there was one person that you told when you weren't feeling good? Not to unload on them, just to tell the fact of it, like, "FYI, I'm in that place again, so if other people ask I'm going to say "Fine" for the sake of not having to explain, but just so someone knows, I'm not." I wonder if it would feel less like you were keeping a secret or "faking it" and more like a boundary that you chose but can break when you also choose to?

lol... hello ex-gf now living with another dude and hence in touch less often.

it's a good idea though, it does help.

They don't want to hear about it, and they treat it like it's contagious.

Speaking as a not-depressed person who has several quite-depressed people in my orbit (friends, family), all I can say is that I'm always glad when people are candid about their struggles. The "but" is, it can be very hard to have a useful dialogue about it. I'm happy to listen, but I'm wary of offering too much feel-good advice ("You should exercise more/play music more/set some goals for yourself," etc), which I know can seem glib on the receiving end. So once you get past the initial exchange -- "I'm having a hard time" "Oh, dude, sympathies" -- it can feel a little stuck. The natural thing on the listener's end is to want to somehow help to make things better, but there's not always or often a clear path to that.

I said, not to unload. Just to tell someone. Maybe pre-agree w that person that you're not telling them so they can put you on suicide watch for the love of cheese, it's just part of your strategy to have someone know.

tipsy otm about the rest.

I did this very thing to/at/with (?) my bff recently and she was like "Do you want advice or someone to talk to?" (which I thought was a good initial question) and I replied that I didn't want either, I just wanted someone to know I was feeling low since usually I keep it pretty well disguised. I mean, I do that on purpose so I don't have to talk to anyone about it, but I wanted her to know because she understands that about me. Also I already do everything that anyone could possibly recommend, so there's really no sense in telling me to get some exercise or work on my sleep routine. It (the low feeling) just needs to wash over and through and out. Afterwards I told a few more people and it was easier.

garda i don't know the situation so well but i don't know that ex-gf is a good choice for that role

i say this as someone who regularly commiserates with not one but two exes but they are in the 10+ years of being split category

nah it's a pretty positive situation, at least i think so. there's no residual need to get back together or whatever, on either of our parts. we just have stayed really close friends, in a really positive way, since breaking up. i totally respect also that now she is living with someone it's natural we don't im as much or that kind of thing. we broke up sort of in a v organic way where we just couldn't go further as a couple, no real falling out.

that's good, i tried to do this with a recent ex of less than a year and, well, it was a disaster

"The "but" is, it can be very hard to have a useful dialogue about it. I'm happy to listen, but I'm wary of offering too much feel-good advice ("You should exercise more/play music more/set some goals for yourself," etc), which I know can seem glib on the receiving end"

This is why sometimes its better to consult a third party therapist type I think - there is only so much listening you can do - its hard to know what to say

i would go back to therapy in a sec but it costs a fortune. i could afford it but i don't want to pay that much. i might start going monthly tho.

that is really too bad. Its so important but as a society we cannot find money for it so people dont have to worry about that. We do not haev the will. We woudl rather subsidize football stadiums

does your national health care not cover therapy?