Depression and what it's really like

on the contrary, writing down your scattered thoughts can help, even if you don't know what you're writing about

it's possible to figure it out spacecadet, thoughts and feelings don't come from nothing and aren't infinite. there's usually a pretty limited place, theme, reason where it's coming from ... it just takes work and introspection to suss it all out. a therapist can def help with that, even just talking about the feelings themselves can sometimes push things forward because it forces you to organize everything for an audience.

i spent most of my life wandering around completely confused about everything, thinking i was some unique screw up, my life was doomed, etc., but after two years of work and 3 months of therapy, things are starting to make a hell of a lot more sense and feel genuine hope about it all. but yeah, there's no one true problem, shit's messy and complicated and takes a lot of work and effort to get through. at least that's been the case with me, but it's worth it. it's possible, just for the sake that we're pretty limited in our thinking and feelings, so you can figure out what's going on.

It was 1:1, I just got in touch with the local branch (they have different ones for London boroughs, it could be different elsewhere) spoke to a counsellor about some of the things I thought were wrong, and whether it was the sort of things they could help with and took it from there. I was actually seeing an art therapist which I was pretty sceptical about but she wasn't at all pushy about it, and I did find myself getting into painting as part of the sessions.

Anyway depression thread, I've spent the whole weekend knowing that I've been too depressed to drink, yet incapable of even thinking of coping with said depression without drinking. Hoping I can finish this wine and be in bed by 10 and tomorrow will just be fine.

Right now I'm staring at the clock at 8.25am, trying to work out a reason why I should bother going to work, or bother doing anything at all ever again.

So you won't dig yourself too deep a hole to get out of once this feeling passes?

Precisely the thing that forced me out of the house, yeah. I thought of sitting there all day, knew that would be even worse, and got on with it.

I feel like utter shit. But it is circumstantial, and partly my own fault, and I guess I'll get over it sooner or later. Sigh.

:(

Im just sick of the uncontrollable wobbly-lower-lip thing happening 32423x a day at work.

Unfortunately after 15+ years of feeling like a sad lost fuckup I never managed to narrow down exactly what the problem is and after a few previous attempts I'm low on hope that I can get anywhere. These things seem to work best if you can walk in with a specific list of symptoms and have the counsellor go "you are clearly afraid of x ever since y" and you go "wow, you're exactly right, now draw up the ten-step plan", rather than "well, I've never really felt that specific fear any more strongly than 6000 others, but... I guess, if it might help, I'll agree I'm a case of whatever you wrote your thesis on?"

Obviously everyone is different, but personally I found that counselling, while seeming sort of innocuous at the time, if still worthwhile, seemed to help me in ways I can't really put my finger on in the months that followed. I sort of had some specific symptoms but the counsellor didn't draw conclusions or give me any direct opinions of his own, just let me talk about how I felt really. though my problems were sort of based around fallout from health issues, they had sort of grown hard to separate in this way.

IME he/she wouldn't give you a solution or diagnose you as such, you'd explain how you feel and you'd explain when you feel that way and you would talk and some things might become more clear to you.

I think clarity is sort of what it can bring, a discovery of things that you need to do or things that make you happy that you hadn't realised are important. (personally I found counselling let me say aloud and really embrace the fact that I love doing things on my own and spending time alone, which has made this a real outlet, as I have always been extroverted to an extent.)

I personally found that just acknowledging to myself that I had the right to counselling and that I was unhappy was a big step, counselling wasn't a silver bullet but even 12 weeks at the start of January 2012 (which were quite painful at the time) had me thinking "how the fuck did this year improve so much" by the end.

I suppose the point I'm trying to offer is that you don't necessarily need to have perfect goals or ideas or even to fully work through all your issues - even a small improvement can yield real benefits. That's my experience. I probably could have done more counselling and I'm sure at some point I will, but the little I did made a major difference and rewired me in a way that has lasted.

entering counseling was a turning point for me. no matter what i tried to figure out on my own, there's something about talking to somebody about this stuff that makes a huge difference.

Unfortunately after 15+ years of feeling like a sad lost fuckup I never managed to narrow down exactly what the problem is and after a few previous attempts I'm low on hope that I can get anywhere

in what ways do you think you are a fuckup?

i wouldn't answer that til i know what she charges APS

entering counseling was a turning point for me. no matter what i tried to figure out on my own, there's something about talking to somebody about this stuff that makes a huge difference.

you just can't get clarity on some things - lots of blind alleys and emotional loops.

i'd settle for them landing me with a less-clear fog that steered me towards productivity

it's weird, as i'm overcoming this stuff i feel like i'm losing my personality a little. maybe i'm just drained and raw from dealing with years of pent-up emotional trauma and trying to rebuild my life, but i feel sorta like a dead fish right now. i hope this doesn't last forever.

i also feel like i have to keep this secret from everyone, so people don't know why i'm in this sorta mellow, washed out state. it's a little frustrating. i don't think i could tell people, "yeah, i had the type of parents who tried to kill me when i was a kid and i'm in a heavy place right now, i'm still cool with y'all".

maybe it's just my job, everyone's got this corny, faux-happy thing going on all the time. "hey buddy joe, how ya doin?!? haw haw haw!" and i'm really not in the mood for that right now. my other jobs i could actually talk to people like human beings, so maybe it's just the environment. anyway...

uh I'm feeling better than I did on Sunday (thanks/sorry) and tbh I can't remember the specific frame of angst for the fuck-up thing, but, I just feel like I'm drifting, I guess.

University dropout, job I'm not good at or excited by, feel like I still haven't worked out what I actually want to do with my life or who I am, have no life ambitions or priorities, do I have any interests left even? Feel so boring and incompetent, a disappointment to the few who used to care, no way of being any kind of entity of even mild interest to anyone else. New people ask "so what do you do" which means "you have 15 seconds to sell yourself as an interesting person who does stuff I want in on" and there's nothing to say. Also p. sure I'm the kind of shambling weird-looking creep that people immediately want nothing to do with anyway.

Get occasional bursts of the idea that I should at least make myself more saleable at this job I fell into (computer geek) by spending all my free time ~learning~ and ~practising~ and ~updating skills~ but rarely find the motivation to get started and give up at the smallest hurdle. Been finding it impossible to concentrate at work lately and getting fuck all done which I feel guilty about. Feel like I'm too busy 1. hating myself and 2. hating having to be within 2 metres of anyone else to have any spare brainpower for thinking. Facing some are-they-aren't-they relationship problems too which are amplifying all the background self-doubt noise of my head.

I dunno. I felt like yesterday I had distilled the essence of my fuck-up-ness in my mind, mentally composed a neat summary of My Problems to take to a therapist and it made me cry and I forgot it again, and I don't know if I'm not upset now because it's not that bad after all or because I've blanked out whatever clear freezeframe of horror I glimpsed.

Heh i realise otm is not a helpful response but otm

more helpful and a lot quicker than my previous course of "talk therapy" tbh

it is nice to know I'm not the only one, but then this is ILX, if we didn't all think way too much about things while still not working out the basic life coordination thing we wouldn't be here I guess

anyway now I've thrown that into the void I'm going to bed since I got approx no sleep last night from worrying about nothing in particular, so, goodnight

good night!

night night! try not to let yr thoughts churn.

word man

sweet dreams, aps; everyone. May this be an inauguration day in more ways than one.

A friend of mine sent me the poem below today (an old fave) and, I'm not sure why exactly, but I feel like posting it here, of all places.

"America", by Allen Ginsberg.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

thx

xp i remember getting drunk with friends about 15 years ago and one of them replaced the word "America" in that poem with the word "Teletubby" and it was the most hilarious thing ever ... at the time.

I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.

hi depression thread

*waves*

I've been super lonely lately. I moved across the country from my partner and it's pushing two months since I saw her and another month to go (unless I flip out and buy some plane tickets). Keep coming home from work and suddenly realizing how lonely I am. I have made a couple overtures towards making friends around here and it's not going too terribly but as it is I spend a lot of time alone. Also this is my first real full-time job. And my new apartment, while pretty great, is also pretty empty. I have a whole "den"/glorified foyer that has nothing in it except a bicycle, and I'm tired of going to Ikea. Basically I don't have anything to distract me except for work, and once work is over I have these nightly bouts of feeling familiarly terrible.

can you do the whole "watch a movie with a pal through skype" thing?

that would be awesome, I have never thought of that, she and her sister have been watching lots of samurai films lately. I should propose that.

I JUST CURED DEPRESSION.

skype it up. makes the world feel nice n small, even for an hour or two. :)

thanking u and my SSRIs xp

we facetime when the timing works out but we don't usually have a lot to talk about other than breaking news

watching a movie w/ her via vidchatz sounds like the ticket tho

google hangout

I mean don't worry guys we know about the internet

webcam bro

ok I lol'd

I'm fairly sure that I'm clinically depressed but only when I'm in work. I'm pretty much OK the rest of the time. I've never enjoyed my job but now I really hate it. It's not like there's been any changes here so I don't know why that is :s

silby, it is urgent that you find a baby asap (hint: any baby will do, if the parents are looking the other way) and take long, deep, refreshing wafts of baby scent into your nostrils. if this proves too difficult on short notice, a puppy will do, but instead of sniffing it, you must romp with it.

good luck

Haha aww that's the cutest advice ever but also very true and good.

Why do babbies smell so good!? Especially their heads!

somewhere glaxxo is patenting baby head reuptake inhibitors...

xp - the 18+ club I went to in college was Club Babyhead, it did not have a good smell.

blurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhh

ok, i have another therapist question if you guys have the time ... i've found the responses here pretty helpful for keeping me straight about things.

i'm starting to open up to my therapist, like, the first person in decades; i understand it's essential for me to start building bridges to other people so i took the leap. but the idea of trusting her keeps coming back to me, and it could either be trauma or legitimate concerns, and at this stage i'm not totally sure what's what yet.

anywho, my therapist talks about her other clients to me from time to time, usually related to something i'm talking about. it's usually straight forward like, 'another client with a history like yours has a similar problem' or some such. sometimes it's a little judgmental like, that i'm making progress faster than some other clients she's had (though that's been w/ clients she no longer sees). she probably says that stuff to make me feel better or that i'm not alone, but i'm worried that she'll talk about me to her other clients and i feel a little uncomfortable with that.

is this something to be concerned with? has anyone here experienced this?

Any therapist is going to guard your essential privacy, by which I mean your identity and the details of your sessions. If they violate that duty, they should have their license revoked.

Most therapists will not see any harm in making highly generalized and impersonal references to clients they have seen, for the purposes of illustrating a point. Clients understandably see their own cases as unique, painful and difficult. Therapists see so many cases that from their perspective it seems the whole world is in therapy and many of the cases have strong resemblances one to another.

If your therapist in speaking of other cases to you did not broach essential confidentiality, but rather spoke at large, with the clear aim of helping you understand her point, not merely gossiping or chattering, then I'd accept that as professionally acceptable behavior and wouldn't worry about her discussing you with anyone else -- unless perhaps she consulted on some aspect of your case with another professional. That's allowed. It is even smart to consult if she is feeling doubtful about the best approach to meeting your needs.

addendum: since it bothers you, bring it up. tell her that you've noticed her referring to other cases from time to time, in a general way, and you have uneasy feelings about her saying anything about you during other sessions with other clients. her most likely response would be, ok, i'll respect that. when you are further along, this may not seem so threatening as it does today.

Aimless otm. Bring it up, if only that yr therapist can be aware of any underlying insecurities there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cph-lckkLs8

thanks, i might just talk to her about it. i don't think there's anything to be worried about, she's not as bad as that larry david clip, but might as well talk about it as part of the whole deal.