Depression and what it's really like

Well if you haven't read Christiane F, it's worth reading as the proto-document of the SHOCKING TEEN SHOCKER drug addict autobio voyeur genre. In For Your Own Good, Alice Miller uses it as some primary document explaining why traditional German parenting is all fucked up. I really enjoyed that partic Miller book because it was so German – lots of soapboxing about the problems stemming from generations of forcing little German kinder to be toilet trained at the age of six months.

I did go through a big phase of reading her books maybe five years ago and it was a big part of how I got reconciled w/my parents after years of acrimony from me quitting their church. But certainly not the only factor. Those books are as old as you and I though, Matt, and I have to wonder if there isn't some secretly super outdated malignancy just chilling in there. Like Bettleheim & his refrigerator mothers. I guess sometime I need to start interacting with words, sounds, etc, made in the past 30 years.

your parents sound oddly like mine, Matt P, at least that one thing you wrote. Mine have "borrowed" over 10k from my brothers and I because they're incredibly irresponsible, and use all sorts of emotional blackmail to get their way... their favorite is guilt (we brought you into this world!) completely deny the existence of any of our emotions ("you're being too sensitive!" "you're making it up!"), and use the knowledge that we love them to extract as much as they can regardless of how it affects us.

Read a little bit of Drama of the Gifted Child and seemed good. Check out anything about narcissistic parents, could be a long shot, but I found a lot of answers through that. Headgames are the worst, though, especially when you're a kid ... totally fucks up your sense of reality and personhood... it's like brainwashing. For me it's that stuff that starts the depression cycle.

whooooops, read that post wrong.

that TLG / Spectrum exchange made me giggle because I have been using this image as wallpaper for weeks

http://annavinegrad.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/eibf-krapp-pic-3_lo.jpg

lol what the hell

i dont think i'm actually depressed, clinically or anything, just this week has put such a goddamned fucking strain on me and i'm just, ugh, not handling it well at all. realizing i have like zero friends is really fucking gnawing at me today because i really want someone to talk about all this with. short version - work dumped a bunch of shit on me, working super long hours, have to work all weekend - a portion of it three hours away from home, been traveling out of state a bunch for work too. so i'm going on day four of leaving for work before my son gets up and getting home after he's been in bed, which is normally a huge stress reliever for me - to play with him for a bit. work has made it very clear that this is just how it has to be right now, fine, but my wife thinks they are being unreasonable and sorta basically is implying without actually saying it thats it my fault for not standing up for my personal life. anyway, we just had our second huge fight this week over the work stuff and now i'm just sitting dwelling in a dark room over my laptop and venting my shit for a whole bunch of people who couldn't give fuck one in first place and oh god just shut up jon.

Totally being honest, zero platitudes or false concern:

I give a fuck. Being without a good-sized handful of people to talk to, count on, and generally commiserate with is a wrong and unnatural state of being for any person. I don't even care if how you got to that place is "your fault," you still don't deserve it.

I hope you find some people to talk to that you feel comfortable confiding in. I don't begrudge you if the best facsimile you can find for the time being is the depression thread. It's sounds corny as fuck, but, (at least I hope; I can only speak for myself) this is a safe place where you don't have to shut up.

tired all the time except when i can't sleep, which is when i need to sleep. spent yesterday hiding in the house, haven't been out of my pjs and dressing gown since wednesday night, work called for me but i didn't answer, don't really want to go outside. came this close to going out on a bender but at least i held that off. don't know how long my employers are gonna tolerate my flakiness any more, think i'm pushing it to an end game. shd care more than i do but the fear of unemployment is just vague and nagging and woolly right now. don't really care. concentrating all my energy on not boozing and not doing anything stupid. sucky suck. only person i cd talk to about this is the person i think i shdn't be dragging back into it. don't really care, as long as i can sit in front of the puter and listen to music. not sure how this blindsided me tbh.

i did call my boss this morning tho. am going to see a gp later just so's i can get a bit of paper to stop them from firing me on monday.

Do make steps to fix it if you can - Ive been in your position re work flakiness and I ended up losing my job because of it eventually :| TBH they did me a favour cos the job was a massive part of the problem. Good on you for not falling into the drink at least, thats an impressively good step x

nv, my empathetic best wishes to you and a suggestion that when you see the gp you ask about getting vitamin b shots, they can be beneficial for people who are stopping drinking and having problems with fatigue and sleeplessness.

does this mean i can drink energy drinks with impunity?

if the gp asks if you're still playing fm as hull, are you gonna answer truthfully?

if energy drinks are going to help get the job done then by all means drink them with impunity, whatever it takes is my motto.

estela agreeing with nv on what they both know to be a small evil - imp-unity

energy drinks are probably somewhere on the scale between antidepressants and alcohol

<3 nv <3 'stela <3 darra

thanks for the honest response en i see kay, its appreciated. but yeah, i kinda have to lol @ this thread and how people are super supportive if you are in one of the approved "ilx" cliques, but if you arent', your posts get pointedly ignored. glad my one place to vent makes me feel even shittier about myself.

don't feel that way jon

re: the no-friends thing, I don't know how old you are, but I'm 33, and my social circle has almost completely dried up over the last couple years. We used to be a sprawling group of friends who'd drink and dance on weekends, but now nobody calls me anymore, half because they all assume I'm working, and half because social circles have tightened into smaller groups. I was a little depressed about it, finding myself at home with nobody to call and nothing to do on a weekend, but actively began to strengthen two very close friendships. Two people with whom I'm now talking to every day, having a meal with them twice weekly. Even just a simple small outlet like that, I've found that I don't actually even need anybody to vent to, just a simple non-familial social foil is enough to stave off that feeling of "friendlessness"

jon, i don't really interact much with you around the place, so therefore i'd tend to avoid making either serious comment or flippancy on matters like the above, but i, and, i'm sure, many other ilxors in the same vein, think that your current work/home situation sounds shitty, and hope that it's only short term and resolves successfully.

That sounds airy and twee to me just written out like that, but if it helps that i thought it when reading yr troubles, then please know it's true.

ilx cliques? i ne'er paid those no mind regardless

i'd love to know whose ilx clique i'm in. Ilf i spose?

fist bump

Have not found the clique thing to be true itt. I'm little more than a lurker, and received supportive comments. But depression can certainly make you feel like everyone hates you and is ignoring you.

I'm just so fucking sad and I wish I wasn't sad anymore and it just will not stop no matter what I do. I exercise, I've taken the right drugs, I've had more therapists than I can count, I have a job, I'm a white man in America, with more comforts than 99% of humans could ever imagine and I would give anything if I could push that button. My sadness does not have a reason. I could have a trillion dollars and never experience a rainy or cold day and have the perfect partner and this would still be me. This is who I am. If you asked all the people I've known, the majority of them would name depression as my #1 personality trait. Self-hatred aside, even if they say it with compassion and charity, I've been told and learned so many times that this is true. At this point, after more than ten years, it's bigger than anything else, both to me and to everyone else. Every relationship that has ended has ended because of it, and every relationship that hasn't has been defined by their tolerance and sympathy for it. Before kind, before intelligent, before anything, I'm depressed. How am I supposed to be okay with being this person?

Fuck. Weekends are the worst.

It's easy for friends and romantic partners to confuse an illness with a personality trait. I do it myself, people will say "Oh how is ____ doing" and often it is "he is going through a bad time with his depression" instead of "we had an awesome night out last time we saw each other". But most of the time, both internally and externally, I don't define my friends w/depression that way. I'm not saying "your friends don't actually believe that" but I do get the sense that you're allowing yourself to be defined by a sickness, and in my experience, a lot of people don't do that with their depressed friends.

otm, people in my experience rarely make the distinction between temporary sadness/disappointment and true depression

finally started reading david burns' feeling good pretty seriously, and it's really enlightening. i'm 10/10 in cognitive distortions, and two of them i figured out on my own a while back, which only confirms his rightness to me. definitely recommended for anyone struggling with this stuff. like, it makes the whole thing make sense. i even felt pretty OK this weekend! first time in years.

ughhhh at this

jfc i want to thank ilx and specifically k3vin k for making me feel completely unwelcome here and 100% worse about myself than i already did. the trolls win again.

you're not unwelcome here in my book jon

jon the IA thread would be an empty shell without you <3
totally welcome imo

Jon, ILX is a jungle, and I'm only an occasional visitor, but I don't see that you are unwelcome, and I think you're overestimating the extent to which other people get their feelings taken care of around here. Sure, there are some cliques, but heaps of us are not in any. I won't tell you not to feel bad about yourself because that never works. You probably have some idea of how much of your distress right now is actually because of ILX and how much is other things. I hope the other things get better such that you can cope with ILX bullshit again. Hugs.

i've been avoiding that thread for awhile now, trying not to be so neg about things in general. i'm just really frustrated by ilx right now and just, i don't even know how to address it. i feel really unwelcome here and certain ilxors are piling on me out of nowhere today because they know i'm an easy target. fair enough. but rather than blow up to them today, i politely asked for it to stop. but the response i've recevied so far has overwhelmingly pointed to the idea that people would rather watch people continue to pile on me and hoping to see how far over the edge they push me.

its just frustrating to see that, for the most part, the mods around here not only turn a blind eye to bullying but sometimes actively encourage it.

no it hasn't jon, ppl wished that you wouldn't get so riled up but the main response here and prob in the other thread has not been negative towards you.

like i don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand. it may seem like "hilarious" zings to the bullys, but it bothers me. a lot. i've politely requested it to stop. not one person has spoken up to say, "yeah, it should stop". everyone is instead telling me to "lighten up" or not get "riled up".

i mean, its crystal fucking clear that when i asked for it to stop and the only response from anyone is "lol lighten up" that i'm not respected, liked or valued as a poster.

don't leave!

talk to the people you like talking to, don't talk to the ones you don't. or, if it's beyond hard to deal with, give yourself some time away. Internet always feels WAY more important and immediate than it is when you're up to your eyeballs in it. A lot of this shit is meaningless when you step back. It's just swallowing your pride and accepting that you don't actually *have* to defend yourself. It's just blips and bloops and a bunch of crazy excitable nerds itt.

it is true that the mods have not done anything about it, but one person apologised to you in that thread and said he would not do it again?

people aren't as against you as you think!

well jon the other inference to draw is that ppl are makin their own decision that a hyperbolic taunt so ridiculous simply cannot be taken seriously, it's so bombastic that it's inherently funny. Not because it annoys you, but tbh your reaction is commensurately overblown, but because it's ludicrous. I think that's totally different to ppl not supporting you in calling for the joke's censorship because the dislike you or enjoy your annoyance.

i mean, this month has been a pretty glaring example of what i'm talking about. Mordy realnames aero in a real dickish move. aero asks for Mordy to be tempbanned. boom, its done immediately. k3vin again pops up out of nowhere to pull bullshit with me, i kindly request it to be put to an end, and all i get is "lighten up". double fucking standards much? fwiw, i think aero was 100% in the right with his request.

Mordy realnames aero in a real dickish move

fwiw, that wasn't mordy

but, yeah, i don't need to clog up this thread with it. i'm sorry for bringing it in here, i've just got no one to talk to about this and i'm feeling really helpless and floundering today.

sorry aero for dragging your situation into this, i know its not the same.

fwiw the two things are nothing alike

its not the same, no. but there are similarities in that an ilxor did something that he explicitly requested to not happen, as did i.

if it makes you feel any better, most of ilx ignores k3v

eh, if you're feeling helpless and floundering, this is a pretty good thread to vent about it, even if it's coming out in ilx fight form.

one request was reasonable, tbh. Jon i like you plenty, but have you not considered that the reason ppl are 'meh' on this is because it's not worth the big deal yr making of it? The majority isn't always wrong man.