Depression and what it's really like

Plus walking is sort of like meditating, you can go at whatever pace you want, just let your mind wander the entire time, and not have to talk to anyone.

Getting groceries usually makes me feel a little better, too.

finding a therapist is harder than I realized. tried 7 so far over the course of a few weeks, and they're all booked solid. will have to try 7 more. it's very frustrating feeling like you have noone to turn to, especially when overwhelming emotions take hold. when that happens you aren't on your A game, and other people easily forget about you. it's a vicious cycle. i'm jealous as hell of people who have parents, family, close friends they can call on, but that's not helpful. i feel like i'm driving on 70mph on a road with a BRIDGE OUT sign at the end of it.

keep trying

it's an annoying obstacle, but keep going

yeah, i'll keep trying. starting to feel like there's no point anymore. why go through all this ... just to enjoy a couple more transitory pleasures that are probably only an illusion anyway? might as well just live out the life i was given since i'm just going to be dead soon anyway. it's probably only my biology that's pushing me through this ... slave to my parents, slave to my body, slave to the world, and it's all pain by a different name.

if other people seem more content, better adjusted, that was the life they were born into. they didn't have to do any of this. so i do it for what, to have somebody elses' life that I know nothing about? it's all starting to seem like a farce.

there's mile-wide gaps in them there logic

when you're hungry, you get up and get a bowl of cereal, right? and when you're cold, you grab a sweater or a blanket, right? well, when you're sad, grab some mental health treatment, don't just sit there shivering or starving because you weren't born with a fur coat or a giant bag of potato chips attached to your waist.

if other people seem more content and better adjusted -> well, they're either pretending, they got lucky, or they put in work.

you don't know that they didn't have to do any of this, and you don't know that they don't need to.

you do it to improve your own life, to have a future life that, yes, you know nothing about, one that will be much less sad and depressing than the one you have right now.

why go through all this to enjoy a few more transitory pleasures? but that's what you've been doing ... forever? already? so why not just try to get more pleasure, or as much pleasure as possible, out of those transitory ones?

also there is no life you were "given", you were given a body but your life made itself as a combination of what other people did, what the environment did, and what you did. and if you're not happy with that life, then there is no sense justifying it as having been "given" to you since it never was given to you, it developed a certain way, and you can swerve the path of that development by changing what you do, by changing what other people do to you, and by changing your environment.

it's hard, but it's worth it.

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/2317i28BC9CE8FEAA50AB/image-size/original?v=mpbl-1&px=-1

thanks dude, that's some good perspective. sometimes my emotions get the best of me. a therapist called me tonight, actually. she seemed a little "uh huh", and said she could tell i was "insightful and have above average intelligence". makes me feel a little like she was flattering me to make a sale, seemed odd to say that in a conversation. last thing i need is a shyster therapist.

Well, you don't have to stick with one who you don't mesh with, but you should at least give her a shot. It usually takes a session or two to get comfortable with one.

xp

nah i don't think so, if you talk about your problems on a message board you're clearly 1) literate and 2) probably got opinions so there you go. other people she tells things like "well you clearly care about ..." and "well you definitely can achieve ..." and you don't hear that because you worry too much about shit from an intellectual angle.

Aw fuck, this again. Realized I've definitely begun the slide in the past week.

ive been reading in this book by noted fabulist jonah lehrer that depression (specifically bipolar) makes you a better author.
do you guys feel theres truth to this or is it more fabulism?

A better author than who?

better than some imaginary non bipolar version of the same author, or failing that, noted fabulist jonah lehrer.

when people advance this theory I always think "you can't be a better author/musician/comedian if you kill yourself" so

he doesnt mention him in the book but david foster wqllace did pop into mind readng it.

I think he's confusing correlation and causation.

well his premise is that manic phase fills you with ideas and the depressive phase winnows all the bad ones out and refines the good ones. does that resonate at all?

I'm not bipolar so who knows about manic phases. Being depressive sort of makes all ideas seem lousy, including getting out of bed and eating. Far be it from me to contradict his lived experience tho.

i am not bipolar but that sounds like bullshit of the most refined degree

Being depressive sort of makes all ideas seem lousy

yeah

when i'm at a certain level of depression, having an idea seems like the hardest thing in the world. the ideas only come when i'm functional enough to be "lol depressive" (instead of sitting in the dark and wanting everything to go away).

As an aside to this discussion, fuuuck I am sick of this. I seem to be missing a part of my brain that makes normal people figure out how to do stuff and live at least semi-contented lives. I don't do shit, I haven't accomplished shit. I can't seem to make myself get up and go at all. My phases of approaching normalish functionality are few and far between and are always undercut and unraveled. And I feel it's all my fault(aside from shitty genes/shitty parental modeling), because I'm essentially just a dull-brained, uncreative asshole with zero gumption or grit or anything. It hurts pretty bad, too, because it comes on the heels of me actually being pretty sparkling and charming and making someone fall for me and feeling like there was possibility in life. That was obviously just a chimera.

Chimera is such a great word, I am a sucker for anyone who uses it. I can't even read the rest of your post, I just see the last word and am delighted.

what do you mean by uncreative? in action or intent?

And I feel it's all my fault(aside from shitty genes/shitty parental modeling)

Haha. So except for...pretty much everything that forms you into the adult you are, until you forcibly un-learn those lessons? Oh sure, nbd, you can blame yourself for...well, there's not that much left, really.

Both. Like, a creative person would figure out how to shift perspective, or how to DO or become deeply engaged in something that gave her purpose. xpost

I can blame myself for shitty, further crazy-making choices, not trying hard enough to not suck etc

what youre describng as creative sounds awfully like mania.

a manic episode just multiplies whatever you are into a super brief golden age of yourself, then incoherence and soon the hospital. I would venture to say that it def helps during the manic phase but once you land back on planet depression it makes you hate / delete everything you did which is actually pretty fucking terrible but maybe this guy has a mild version of the disease that he's able to control who knows, famous people and their superpowers.

Howso? I mean, I get that being creative as in making stuff is actually a process of putting in work daily, but I'm not necessarily even talking about that. Maybe I should have chosen a different word, like resourceful. Being able to shift your perspective is not, I don't think, manic. It's realizing there are other modes of thinking, realities available. When I'm depressed I feel extremely learnedly helpless and trapped, even though the gate is actually open. xpost

oh maybe you weren't talking to me, PN

Maybe it helps to be mildly cyclothymic xpost

well this language of opening and closing gates does kind of fit into the discovery and refinement phase of innovation. id hate to think that the cure for depression turns out to be mania though.

I really don't understand how what I described scans as manic?

It doesn't to me

The dumb gate analogy just referred to the depressive distortion of thinking you're imprisoned and can't change anything in your situation xpost. Yeah, maybe I should clarify I'm derailing the thread to talk about me, not talking about the author mentioned upthread

Also want to acknowledge that I don't think depression is as simple as "perspective." For a lot of people it really is quite intractable and nearly impossible to escape. Anything mean I say about myself in no way applies to how I feel about any other depressed person.

even still the hyper focus combined with unusual productivity . it sounds like something more than just being functional.

Productive phases for me mean I'm holding a job, regularly getting out to see people, basically contented, feeling engaged and connected with the world, finding myself interested in a healthy range of things, and having thoughts that are interesting and satisfying to me. Nothing that falls under the puview of mania: staying up for hours, spending sprees, flights of idea, that sort of thing.

What I meant by deeply engaged was having something you do that you are invested in and care about, be it a hobby, a family, a career, art, whatever. I feel like being engaged and invested--with ,of course, a carefree awareness that it's all ultimately pretty meaningless--is pretty essential for a basic level of happiness.

I think you can be healthily detached and engaged at the same time...realizing there is some Self that isn't what you do, but also realizing you need to connect with and do SOMETHING.

that paints a different picture from being creative and accomplishing things. i got the sense of lars from some kind of monster still not being satisfied with being in one of the biggest band in the world,but i guess what you want is to be more like kirk hammett?

I'm drunk as fuck and I have to be up in five hours for work.

Something about the discussion of creativity and mania. I'm not bipolar, just depressed, but the absence of the depression and the normal amazing flow of ideas and jokes and plans can seem like mania in contrast.

I don't realize it is gone until someone mentions it and I realize what a sad hard slog life has been lately.

It's made diagnosis difficult in the past when they ask "Have you had times of extreme emotions or activities and made plans and been active." "Of course that is what fucking life is like what the fuck I've not suffered mania, those were just the moments that I was still alive"

I'm trying to interact with the previous posts, but maybe failing.

then the crushing realization of whatever the hell and that's how I'll feel in a few hours.

put a smile on my face, clean up, drink some water. Take some vitamins, grab the sleep available. Don't take it out on my co-workers.

yeah, yeah, I wasn't being melodramatic upthread. I mean, I really don't do SHIT. xpost