Depression and what it's really like

one can only wrestle it like a pig in the mud and take yr lolz where you find them.

by watching hee-haw reruns, is what you're saying?

no. wrestling pigs.

damn i wish i went to therapy sooner. feels like my whole world is being deconstructed now, which is a good thing considering i've been miserable the majority of my life, but it's also kinda scary and hard to deal with. things are looking up at least.

it's also kinda scary and hard to deal with

This sounds promising. I say this free of irony. If it were easy and pleasant, you would have overcome these obstacles long, long ago. But it sound like you're dealing with the Gordian Knot, instead of a kinked garden hose.

Never underestimate the power of having a partial breakdown... Just the realization that I should be having the time of my life right now without work responsibility, but have instead spent four months being a saddo shut-in.

i'm right there with you man

I have a saddo shut-in club, yr all welcome to join.

i am sick of being a saddo shut-in, but that's not going to likely change until my money situation sorts itself out.

i think that's what's been so weird and frustrating about this round of depression. it's not the vague, inexplicable, all-encompassing, better-off-dead feeling i've had before, at various points since i was a kid, even when times are good. it's entirely explicable and contextual. i'm broke, i'm despairing of lack of options, i'm letting a lot of people i care about deeply because of it, and i can't see any way out of the snarl my life has become. it's depression simply because things external to me seem so insurmountable, not because anything internal has gone haywire. emotionally, i am actually pretty fucking happy, at least when not in the grip of panic and "well, there's always throwing yourself under a bus" over all this stuff, and i have a lot to be thankful for. and i am. i'm in love ffs, which is amazing (if insanely complicated in its own way) and tbh is often the only thing keeping me going these days. if all this shit could get sorted, i'd be in a pretty good place. but it's a horrible six-car-pile-up-mess, and so it's inducing the same EVERYTHING IS HOPELESS bullshit i get from my standard depression.

that said, not much to do but keep on pushing. everything's not hopeless. which didnt stop me from getting laid out with existential despair last night for a couple hours. but you keep going. you hangbonto the good shit. of which i have to remind myself there is a lot.

It's hard to do, but being a depressed lump of apathy should be taken out of doors and aired out from time to time in the quietest spot you can locate. There is something about being depressed in fresh air and daylight that starts one's thoughts leading toward a way out.

Aimless will you host an ilx retreat in a cabin in the PacNW woods someday?

Would retreat!

yeah i have always been a regular walk-taker but they're averaging two to three hours these days, every day. they do help a lot.

can't say the time of year is helping much either. oh it's dark by 4:30? well goody.

I am a most unpromising person to lead a retreat. That implies I would exert some kind of leadership muscle and tell people things they need to hear, so persuasively that they would listen and be improved somehow. A more likely outcome is I would listen to them haltingly try to explain why everything is so bad and hateful, commiserate with them, and be intermittently chirpy and awkward.

Then I would help people find some firewood so we could all spend an evening roasting in front and freezing our behinds, staring morosely at the flames. My experience is that a good life must be coaxed into shape, like a sand castle, except the sand arrives on grain at a time. Not much surprise that even the best ones are rather grossly misshapen.

So there with ya on the broke saddo shut-in

...you hangbonto the good shit...

On the plus side, if you ever need to replace "strongo"...

i blame my phone and my fat fingers.

for everything.

another BSSC member over here

I hate the way I sound when I hear myself talking in therapy. Blaaaaah

So, I've been waiting for a moment on here when it didn't seem like I would be rubbing in it, but, as of the last month or so, I'm doing pretty fucking okay! I've been getting out into the world, going to shows and going on dates, and feeling a lot better about myself. I don't know the exact inciting incident (it might have been Sandy, I'm a little ashamed to say, as a week stuck in my apartment really made me reevaluate things), but I've been trying hard to keep it up. Riding my bike whenever I can, doing yoga once a week, trying to hold my head high and do things that might have been socially impossible before but are only socially difficult now... it seems to be working. I've even reconnected with a lot of the people I felt so horrendous about not talking to.

Maybe the biggest thing I've realized: I'm almost glad I've been through these terrible depressions. As much as I've lost, I have an ability to imagine that other people maybe aren't operating at their peak potential, to (at least sometimes) treat them with a kind of compassion that I don't think I would have if I hadn't been through all this. And I'm still me! I've still got my cynicism. I haven't become a foolish blind optimist, the fear of which (at least for me) was one of the many things that kept me from trying to get better.

I'm definitely not out of the woods. Hell, winter hasn't even officially started. But I'm genuinely, actively glad I'm not dead, and that's something I haven't had for a long time and that I really, really don't want to lose.

Thanks to everyone who's said nice things and just made me feel like I wasn't totally alone here.

hey emilys, how'd it go?

as of the last month or so, I'm doing pretty fucking okay!

i'm doing okay too, which seems weird. i always tread carefully when i come close to feeling happy, because it means something awful is about to happen. i mean, historically, that has been the case. i would make a terrible bipolar cuz i never let those highs come through.

xxpist that is good to hear, en!

definitely good to hear. never be afraid to post good news on this thread!

compassion otm

Agree to the 2 posts above!

Spectrum, it was my first time back in there since June. Having a little bit of a lessesning of my panic attacks (thanks to my xannies) gave me time to remember that I still have a shit-ton of other issues to work out, so I'm glad I decided to start going back, but sometimes I just hate hearing myself talk. I sound like such a whiny asshole, and I feel that none of the charm of my personality comes through. (Yes, I am concerned about being "charming" in therapy.) I don't know, I just feel it's difficult to accurately represent myself and my problems-their context and contingencies and all that-in the very short space allotted. This therapist is always booked solid, so the most I can get is an hour every two weeks, and that's with scheduling out far in advance. And at this point I feel like I need to see someone at least twice a week to do any good.

A lot of the appointment yesterday was us just going back and forth on why I was scared to try my med (v1lazodone). She said she was not trying to be dismissive, but to uncover some maybe kind of irrational limitations I was placing on myself, but it felt dismissive. I was saying how it was really hard because right now I don't feel like I have a good support system here to kind of help me through starting it. (With the health anxiety ingesting any new mind-altering substance, or any medicine really, is a big deal for me, plus aforementioned feared about unmasking mania blah blah blah.) And she was all "you don't need to be monitored like an inpatient when you take this" and that's not really what I meant at all. Just wish I had friends around, anyone to lean on. ugh.

sorry so long & rambling

Anyway, I just took the first dose. Trying to remain calm.

So far: drowsy & feel like my kidneys are being punched, but I can live with that.

digging the more upbeat developments in this thread. good job guys

I guess everyone is cured

Been getting some little push throughs, so the evil definitely still lurks within. This is why I've been kind of "overdoing" it (and worrying myself that I might be having a manic episode. I'm totally not, being actively social and taking on a few projects just feels like it in comparison) to positive effect. I had a pretty terrible, scary day where it felt like I'd just lost all my progress on Friday, but then I had a date to get to and the social pressure of that made me buck the hell up. Which is very, very much not to say "all you need to do is suck it up, whiner." I think, though, that as soon as you feel able, loading yourself up, at least for a while, with external things to focus on is a very good idea.

i'm still nuts, just trying to complain less

it's not really working

a cure for life

I've been incredibly depressed and unemployed and I'm convinced it's one of the closer psychological states to hell that the first world has to offer, so you have my total fucking sympathy man. I'm an underachieving screwball and I ended up with an alright job in my industry so even though this never means anything to anyone that needs to hear it, it can absolutely get better.

I ain't cured yet! Good luck with everything emilys, you can get through it... and it's worth it, too. I don't know what else to say, honestly, I'm still coming along.

Shit's making a hell of a lot more sense day after day, can't believe therapy can actually make a difference. My lady therapist has been flirting with me over the past two sessions, dunno what's up with that ... I guess it's only human. I'd like to BOOOINNGGNGNN! but that's probably not a wise decision.

probably not a wise decision.

otm

otm x 1x10^6

flirting how?

nothing grotesque or unethical. now that I think about it, it's just regular attraction kinda crap, it's my male brain that's all "UNF!". I can deal with that.

attraction/transference onto a therapist is pretty common I think? She's probably gotten it before and wouldn't be fazed if you brought up how you were feeling. I might be basing this on The Sopranos though.

Don't jump her like on the Sopranos, though, for God's sake!

i finished my program! will post about it when i organize my thoughts a little more.

congrats, late great!

silby, I'm pretty sure she's legit doing it, there's a definite difference with the way she's been acting. it's not the biggest deal, i'm not gonna make a move or anything and I don't feel uncomfortable, either, because it's not like one of those things you can control. I'm acting weird about this because it still mystifies me that anyone would be attracted to me despite the fact that this happens pretty g-d often.

You sit in a room together and you tell her important secrets and ideas about yourself and she has to focus on you and your story and how she can help you work through it. Whether or not she's attracted to you, that's a super personal relationship in which her attention is on you and it's not a surprise if it starts to feel weird, and if it starts to become a thing like flirting.

When do people usually sit with us, listen so attentively and take so much care to think about us? When they're family or when they fancy us-- and for you obviously family is a dud, so. Occam's razor suggests, and doesn't stop suggesting, even when you know the relationship is professional its content is so personal that your brain automatically makes the association, and your behaviour starts to mimic the personal relationship. And not just for you, for her also. There's a reason the concept of "counter-transference" also exists. There's a reason the history of psychoanalysis is full of people fucking their analysands!

You are probably an eminently fanciable person. Are you very used to people caring so much about who you are, and how you feel, and who you want to be, when they aren't attracted to you?

That's a good way to put it, mimicing a personal relationship. Everything's still professional, she hasn't crossed a line, I haven't either, and don't see that changing. I guess I just need to come to terms with ya know ... people liking me. It's like some earth-shattering event if someone's attracted to me even though it's kinda common stuff when you're an adult. Good thing I'm in therapy!

so like i dunno

programmed the ~~~suicide hotline~~~ into my phone just in case but i don't really see myself calling it soon

i just know that i try to spend as little time at my house as possible in the last 6 months--sleeping at a girl's place or on the street cause i missed the last train or a friend's couch if i play my cards right--but every night among the small handful i spend here in the filth that is my unkept place i find myself drinking and telling myself this is how i blow off steam between otherwise near-constant activity. very much have the sense i'm avoiding certain unpleasant realities (hi near-5 digit tax bill, hi trash that hasn't been picked up in three weeks, hi 4-months-old housemates who've never met me) by hiding in my room with a small bottle, but the relative brevity lets me push through it and forget it in the ensuing rush of activity.

trying to move into the city since i spend all my time there anyway, hoping i pass any attendant credit checks.

it's as i say: i dunno. the guitar has gone dusty. the notebook stiff from remaining too long closed. the rarely-touched pile of dirty clothes in one corner would probably jump if i made a move to wash it, thank god for drawers elsewhere. the bookshelf would surely fall if i looked at it wrong.

i'm the age my parents were when they got married. my prospects at the moment, to put it kindly, are slim--so it's sort of dispiriting in that context to know i have drawers, in the plural, elsewhere.

i guess i'm just saying i recognize myself today as being depressed despite my best efforts to hide it behind activity and busy-ness.

strength

word, hoos.