Depression and what it's really like

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.

Recovery is painful as fuck. Now I understand why so many people don't bother with this.

Sorry to state the obvious here but things that are worth doing are usually pretty goddamn difficult. I've been seeing a therapist myself and trying to make changes to my life and it's easier said than done. Hope things work out for you

Spectrum otm about painful as fuck. But the only way to put that pain behind you is to go through it to the other side. Otherwise it is just sitting there, like a malevolent ogre, right in your path and you can never move forward, only backawrds, crabwise, or in circles.

Yeah, totally. The crazy thing is that it's always been there, just hidden or constantly dodged, like spending everyday running. Now I'm just letting myself experience what's always been there... it's pretty intense.

It's ok by me if you do a bit of screaming and weeping. You know the kind, where the veins stand out on your forehead and spit flies out of your mouth from yelling, or you wail at the top of your lungs like an inconsolable infant. I can take it. ;-)

At least then you know you aren't depressed for a bit!

what do you guys think of scientology as an approach (divorced from its scamminess)?

wow! when did the split happen?

I like my drugs, personally. xpost

i think there's some apostates who practice and administer the 'tech' on their own.

i don't think it is possible to divorce scientology from scamminess. but the dianetics thing strikes me as a recapitulation of stoicism. read marcus aurelius and epictetus if total self-control appeals to you, but stay far far away from anything scientological is my advice. tbh, i'd nix the stoicism, too.

i haven't read dianetics -- mostly read descriptions of 'auditing' and it seems like it could possibly be a reasonable form of CBT, especially if it depersonalizes unwanted thought patterns as some outside, alien thing, not something to blame oneself for (though i doubt the xenu stuff comes into practice) it's weird to think of scientology as less stigmatizing than straight up therapy though.

Scientology is a scammy scam and its practices are designed to recruit vulnerable people and take their money; it really doesn't have any place in this thread.

xp That sounds horrible, and getting involved with a cult is not a great way to move on with your life. It's like replacing alcohol with heroin. In fact it's completely absurd!

i know someone with both serious mental health issues as well as serious physical health issues who was a scientologist for many years, and i can tell you right now that dianetics will only fuck you up further and there is absolutely no merit in even considering it as a viable option for treating depression.

what about unlicensed therapy in general, though? I get the feeling a lot of bartenders end up being ears for a lot of regulars.

…

Reevaluation Co-counseling is similar to the therapy side of Scientology, without the aliens, but should probably be avoided just as much.

I've started looking into Drexel's social anxiety treatment program. Hopefully it's not students/faculty only and open to the general public.

I've also started lookin into school options, but it's rough- everything for "mature students" is shoved off onto satellite campuses and the courses are all business/IT/accounting shit. It's bad enough knowing I'll never have a real student life without the realization that getting a liberal arts education is no longer a possibility. I just feel I have to do something IMMEDIATELY because I've been putting off my life for so long, I'm running out of time (fucking 30 in 6 months) and I could not give less of as hit about my job and I can't take crying myself t sleep alone after another wasted day one more time.