Depression and what it's really like

Garda, there's orgs like the westminster pastoral foundation that provide counselling/therapy at a reduced fee.

I think that MDMA experience might be quite common.

From the classic Nick Saunders pioneering book 'E for Ecstasy':

When we got off the train I took deep breaths and the air felt wonderful. It was good to be alive. But the intellectual part of myself asked "What is different to normal? Why isn't life always like this?" I deduced that I was simply allowing myself to enjoy what had always been there. I realised that I had got into the habit of restraining myself. It was not this drug-induced state that was distorted - it was what I had come to accept as my normal state that was perverse. I then realised that over the past few years I had been mildly depressed. And, what's more, I could see why: some years before I had felt cheated in a business deal, and had carried a resentment like a burden ever since: instead of hurting the person involved, I had been grimly taking it out on myself. This realisation and the experience of a few hours 'freedom' was just the tonic I needed; I let go of the resentment and started afresh with new enthusiasm.

The first bit does perhaps lend itself to parody: '...I took deep breaths and the air felt wonderful. It was good to be alive. I wondered why anyone could possibly feel they need drugs, then I remembered: I was on drugs' (I think I heard a Simon Munnery/League Against Tedium routine along these lines]

http://www.panicaway.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/David-Burns.jpg

god just looking at dr david burns cheers me up

finally got feelin' good! in the mail, need to get on this. never realized how much depression twists your thoughts: a few months ago i went on an interview at a cool industrial design firm ... i was a total jittery, chain-smoking, patchy haired wreck at the interview ... thought i bombed that shit because i was a total losar and beat myself up for a good two weeks after it (and added it to my Things to Beat Myself Up For list and Things to Defeat to Not Be a Loser Anymore). they just called me back for a second interview. depressed reality is some real bullshit.

Cool industrial design firms and jittery wrecks kind of go together.

I think the most cheering thought of all is this - most depression results from illogical thoughts. Depression is not inevitable

Hey, congrats on 2nd interview!!! And Latham otm.

Thanks. Realizing it's just thoughts, memories, and conditioning, and not how things really are, is pretty liberating and I'm starting to feel authentic hope. The emotional stuff is what gets ya, family shit and all that, but I'm coming to terms with it all ... life's too short, and if living a good life requires making difficult decisions, so be it.

write it down and put it somewhere you can read it next time you're feeling depressed

cripes, after doing some soul searching i'm starting to realize depression runs pretty strongly on my mom's side of the family. i wonder if there's some genetic thing going on here ... and what that means for recovery. i share a lot in common with the depressed/dead people on that side, a lot of it good, except for this. don't want to go hemmingway style, doubly cuz i have jack squatto to show for it.

maybe not for you, but yes it def runs in families

I didn't think depression ran in my family until I realised denial of depression does.

My maternal grandmother was a substance abuser who was constantly in RX induced near catatonic state and eventually committed suicide
My mother has extreme anxiety/depression and is at heavily medicated 24/7
I consider myself pretty lucky to "only" have come away with GAD.

I didn't think depression ran in my family until I realised denial of depression does.

Suuuuper OTM.

needed a snare drum at the end!

and the sound of a bomb going off

just cos i'm irish no need to bring terrorism into it.

come on man i'm iranian, i gotta bring terrorism into it

you can't spell iranian without ira, so i think we're grand here.

omg

to be honest, this thing just never ever goes away. it never will. but at this point I think that if you are lucky enough to survive the are-you-sick-are-you-not psychiatrists and find correct medication that doesn't kill you, you can keep it under relative control (as if it were a debilitating disease) by treating yourself like a soldier with all the fucking exercise, stupid healthy food and endlessly annoying new age therapy. remove alcohol, drugs, bad company too ie. most fun and then you got a chance, maybe ...

treating yourself like a soldier with all the fucking exercise, stupid healthy food and endlessly annoying new age therapy cutty

come on it's not that bad!

my psychiatrist actually told me yesterday i should forget about finding a job, live on disability, and concentrate this month on getting back up to a few miles a day on the bike! she said it would be better for me than any sort of meds or whatnot she could prescribe

uh... wow

but yes, wolves has got it down

Dad committed suicide, Granddad had...something wrong with him. PTSD, schizophrenia..not sure. Seems to be some alcoholism, anxiety, and pretty intense trait of volubility on mom's side. That's mountain-folk for you. Don't really know how deep or far back it all goes, but prefer not to know.

It's all over my family. More the rule than the exception. There isn't one of us (on my mom's side, which is the only side I have any contact with) in the last three generations that hasn't been treated for depression. I suppose, if you were so inclined, you could find this comforting. I do not, for some strange reason.

have been having the most shittiest week, logged in, read this thread, realized i'm not alone, now feel a smidgen better, thank you guys so much for being honest and real. love y'all like the worthwhile, beautiful human beings you all are. xo

i'm also of the opinion that depression is a symptom of an unhealthy society/planet. the reason why it's so difficult for so many people to overcome is because we can change ourselves as much as we want but the fact is we're still living in an unhealthy environment. how exactly does a person maintain sanity when they're surrounded by insanity? you need to be, like, some superhuman zennn master or something, to block out the world around you and focus exclusively on inner peace.

i do think depression is completely curable. 100%. but in order to cure depression we need to cure the world. yada yada.

anyway, i'd take hug therapy, laugh therapy, and love therapy any day over talk therapy. cuz really, at least in my case, i'd say 99% of my issues stem from a lack of love and affection, not just in my own life but from observing the lives of others.

and yeah, i don't watch the news anymore. don't read the paper. don't take part in protests. avoid all angry, depressing, violent news or conflicts to the best of my abilities. last thing i need is a bunch of bullshit bad news to push me over the edge.

do you, uh, love yourself? talk therapy was important for me in that regard

can't sleep, endless parade of past fuckups plays when I close my eyes

same here, dude, same here.

do you, uh, love yourself? talk therapy was important for me in that regard

― the late great, Sunday, September 23, 2012 11:44 PM (Yesterday)

yeah, for sure, big on the self-love. i'd say loving myself is the reason i'm still fighting the good fight. that and the nagging feeling that there's more to life than the reality that seems to exist before my eyes and i damn well want to stick around long enough to figure it out. otherwise i have to start life all over again from the beginning (assuming you believe in reincarnation, which i do) and work my way back through to my current level in the game, which would suck. sorta like, we're stuck in a video game and we have an unlimited amount of lives and that's great, you can fuck up countless times and start all over again, fresh, but when you're level 1,254 out of 2,500 and it's taken 3 decades to get there do you really want to start the game all over again because you haven't picked up enough gold coins along the way or do you wanna focus on picking up all the gold coins from here on out and finish the damn game so you can move on to something bigger and better..? sorry for the uber geek speak but this is pretty much the way i see it (life).

but yeah, i love myself, and i love others, regardless of who they are or what they've done. i'm just often bummed out that so few other people have the same capacity or understanding of love for themselves and others. like, sometimes i feel like i'm the only lover in the world. i know that's not true, but it feels that way sometrmes.

i need to join a yoga/meditation group. i think that'll help a lot.

just realized i've been suffering from this since i was 11 years old. almost half of my life lost to this shit, my entire youth GONE FOREVER, spent in total misery, and now that i'm picking up the pieces, everyone my age is about 18 years ahead of me in life development (well, i guess as far as relationships and emotions go). i'm starting to feel a little bit again, and i look around, and everyone's married, settled down, kids, houses, about to turn the burners down on their lives to a simmer. and here I am, excited that I have the chance to really live for once ... and everyone's like, done already!!!

it's nice to know there was a time before depression, however short that was ... it's at least a frame of reference that this negative, miserable reality isn't really how things are. but it's a little annoying how so far out of step i am with my peers, and society in general, at this age. feels like i can't win here. nobody out there to share these feelings and experiences with cuz they all did this about 15 years ago.

God, I'd hate it if my kids would start suffering from depression as well. But it seems the insecurity thing has already been picked up by the youngest. Shit. But that's more to do with her older sister being a high achiever. We'll see how it goes.

show 'em you love them and care about their well being, and do something ... i imagine that'd mean something to them at some point. my mom suffered from depression, too, but she didn't give a rats ass about me, so when i was very obviously slipping into a really bad place, she didn't even blink an eye, and when i reached out to her and my father, they just brushed me aside. so yeah ... don't do that at the very least.

I probably need to be back on antidepressants and/or in therapy of some kind. I am literally at the lowest point I can remember being at in ever, basically. I have no motivation to do anything at all. Going to work every day is like going to fucking jail, and by the end of the day I'm so unhappy I can't be arsed to go out, or do anything around my house, or anything. I'm in the most vicious of vicious circles.

I actually told my wife this morning that my mental state might improve 1000x if I actually got fired and collected unemployment for a while, regardless of the damage it would do to our finances and our marriage.

just realized i've been suffering from this since i was 11 years old. almost half of my life lost to this shit

Feelin' this whole post a lot.

Hm. Worth having as a side-thought that it's entirely possible that depression has given you other knowledge you don't value right now but as you get lighter and less depressed in the future you may realize you have added perspective on people, the world, problems, the value of things relative to each other, that kind of thing. No experience is worthless (or almost no??) but you may have to turn things inside-out and inspect the seams a few times to find their sometimes very well hidden benefits. :/

I don't mean to be glib, I've just been feeling this post since I read it at like 7.30am, about how this is a "waste" of time. I've told myself the same thing about certain periods of my life but I have to remember to trust that it's only a waste if I don't find anything to take away from it.

Oh sorry, not 7.30am since it was only posted an hour ago. So I've been thinking about it for an hour!

No experience is worthless

it involves the destruction of experience more than being one itself

Also (keeping in mind that I'm personally terrible at this) try not to compare where you are in your life with where other people are at. Yeah, most people my age are "further along" than I am and seem to handle adulthood (or, rather, grown-up-hood) with a lot more facility, but how can constantly refreshing those comparisons in my brain browser be anything but detrimental to me finding and staying on my own path? It's kind of on the opposite end of the self-sabotage spectrum from diminishing your own pain because there are others in the world who are worse off than you.

Yeah, no good can come of it

almost half of my life lost to this shit, my entire youth GONE FOREVER, spent in total misery, and now that i'm picking up the pieces, everyone my age is about 18 years ahead of me in life development

let me be the first to say ... Wrong!!

:-)

yeah, it's not like there's nothing to gain from the experiences i did have. mostly life lesson kinda shit, compassion for people who struggle or weren't gifted an easy life. a lot of it was beating out the really poor way my parents raised me... school of hard knocks kinda shit. but maybe i have a chance to break the generations-long cycle of BS my family's been stuck in.

only bad thing is i never developed deep emotional relationships with anyone, which is a pretty essential part of the human experience. all relationships and friends were like my parents: narcissistic aholes, maybe even one legit sociopath in the mix. depression made getting over that hump seem impossible... compounded with the fact i never had anything in common with anyone i grew up with! or work with! not many people seem interested in life outside of football, beer, family, and 1-2 recreational activities.

let me be the first to say ... Wrong!!

:-)

maybe that's not universally true. it's just tempting to look at the people you grew up with, work with, and see the lives they have and then feel envious about it. phonecalls with the person you're going to marry ... your mom and dad call you to tell you they love you and about meeting for dinner over the weekend ... cruise vacations with massages, pictures of friends and Good Times on your desk, crew of best buds going out to the shore to party ... basically just living life. and then i see that and realized i never had any of that, wasn't even capable of feeling it for a very long time, and it's like ... jesus christ what did i miss out on. and i want to experience it, too, but everyone my age is done with it already, or are locked into their own worlds. poof! gone.

it's very frustrating not "making the most of your life", especially when you're aware you're gonna die one day. and then have this illness which makes it really difficult to do anything or enjoy anything ... all the while being completely aware of what's going on. it's like torture.

not many people seem interested in life outside of football, beer, family, and 1-2 recreational activities.

All this means is that those people are probably kind of boring?

not many people seem interested in life outside of football, beer, family, and 1-2 recreational activities

well, for some people that qualifies as deep emotional relationships, and by their metric you've probably had very deep emotional relationships.

but leaving aside learning from negative experiences, it sounds like you're focusing on the negative experiences at the expense of whatever positive experiences you must've had. even if they're outnumbered by bad ones 10:1 there's a perfectly good rationale for focusing on the positive ones instead - not that that's natural or easy to do!

also focusing on an idealized "what could have been" or "what should have been" is a real motherfucker. i mean, there's going to be people in their 50s who made fortunes, went waterskiing in cabo every summer and had mad strings-free sex and they're going to be sitting around going "oh man, i wasted the last 18 years i should've been sitting on top of annapurna with monks contemplating my navel"

"i wasted x years of my life" is an argument you can always win with yourself, if you choose to argue that route