Depression and what it's really like

self-awareness is a huge part of avoiding that too, and you have that in spades.

Spectrum, if you haven't already, do check out the work of David Burns. It sounds like his activities on identifying and correcting cognitive distortions could help you unpack a lot of the cruddy feelings in your post. It definitely seems corny at first, but the simple act of doing the exercises when I am in a dire state has helped me out.

And please do call a hotline or go to the ER if you feel endangered. We're rooting for you here.

hey Spectrum, another recommendation -> http://books.google.com/books?id=3cn2R0KenN0C

not a self-help book, an academic work that I think an intelligent and thoughtful person such as yourself might find worthwhile esp on the typical effects of traumatic stress and the steps that have helped in turning lives around. there are many who have had these kinds of experiences and a lot of research on it.

tera i am so sorry!

awesome, thanks for the recommendations both of you. i read feeling good by david burns a while back... i didn't make it all the way through, but that section on cognitive distortions completely turned my world inside out. it was amazing to realize that your own thoughts could control the entire makeup of your reality. those sections helped me burst through the worst of my depression a few months back and get to this point. maybe it's time to revisit it.

and thanks VG, i definitely know i can do this.

Thanks, everyone, for more cogent thoughts about depression! I've never truly had to navigate that kind of grief and I do think that's what a lot of depression is at base: feelings of grief, loss, and helplessness in the face of everything. I know what panic sounds like, though, and Spectrum, I'm getting strong whiffs of a panic spiral from your troubled post. Do whatever you can not to be dragged down into it, is my feeling. It's not REAL, like really real, which is basically what the cognitive distortion stuff is about, in better words than I can string together.

it could be, this morning was the grand result of close to two weeks of sleeplessness, roommate/moving bullshit, and way too much caffeine and nicotine to compensate. i went to the gym today and my heart rate was through the roof ... i think i might lay off coffee/nic tomorrow.

tbh i don't think depression is very much like grief at all?

I know I've recommended this book here before, maybe on this thread. http://www.amazon.com/Coping-With-Trauma-Through-Understanding/dp/1585621692/ref=dp_ob_title_bk/192-8570175-2894410

at least look over this link, http://www.menningerclinic.com/education/clinical-resources/coping-with-depression.

He really helped me in person (I was in the hospital where he works) and in some lectures, and his book and papers helped me put the pieces of my past together and form a framework for a future. I'm not completely okay, but I'm alive and am capable or articulating reasons for life and the existence of humanity.

Post I Didn't Want to Put Where It Belongs

There's been a Bruce Springsteen Poll on ILM the last couple of weeks.

One day, many years ago, I called in sick from work. I had a chronic illness, depression, and alcoholism, and there was no way I could go into work that day. I drank vodka and took pills and listened to the Springsteen Live Box Set. I just sat on the floor and read the lyrics in the book and thought about all the pain and meaninglessness in my life and the world. At some point I started hitting my arm with a carving knife and managed to call my wife at her job. An ambulance came and took me away. I was treated for alcohol poisoning and and stitched up.

I've been told I explained how I couldn't take any more shit, everything was wrong, and I was tired of people fucking with me and maybe I tried to start a fight with the guy on the stretcher next to me in the ER. I spent time with schizophrenics and addicts and neurotics in various levels of mental care. It wasn't the first or last time. Things are better now. I still cry when I listen to some Springsteen songs. There is a sense of betrayal when you realize you didn't get what you deserved. Nobody gets anything. There is nothing to get.

My depression is like grief. A selfish grief for myself, but it extends to everyone of us that is screwed before we even started.

do any of you have suggestions on learning better social skills? i never picked them up having spent almost my entire life with nobody to talk to and never having had a real relationship of any kind, on top of having nearly zero life experience beyond minor professional accomplishments.

the crappy skills I have now create feedback loops of stunted relationships and awkward conversations, resulting in people who don't want much to do with me and making it even harder to learn the skills I need. this is something i've been trapped in my whole life and need to break out of if i can ever get better, and it isn't something people are particularly forgiving of.

holy crap I have a lot of work to do, and I have to do it on top of working 50 hours a week, and as each day, month, and year rolls by, more is expected of me out of my life. i'm running up the down escalator for real here. ugh.

Oh well everyone will have different advice about that. I'm all about sharing personal things and trying anything that will increase intimacy/communion w ppl, whereas others will be like, "REVELATION, why the hell would I reveal anything about myself?" You seem perfectly well-spoken on here anyway, and to have a reasonable approach to things.

Social skills? I can't say I'm a smoove operator, but I do 'get' the basics.

People like it when you show an interest in them by asking questions that invite them to talk freely about themselves, their hobbies, their problems, and their pleasures. Try not to ask direct, specific questions about topics that are likely to be sensitive or embarrassing; this will seem too much like prying. Let people volunteer details on sensitive subjects when they feel comfortable doing so.

Mostly it comes down to being tactful of their feelings. This relies on having a 'feel' for the other person's boundaries, which vary somewhat from person to person.

The other thing that most people are drawn to is a sense of humor and a fun, positive outlook. This is not going to be a strength for you atm. For now I'd go with drawing people out with broad questions about themselves and being a good listener.

Like in orbit said, you seem pretty well-spoken on here - it might just be a matter of putting yourself into situations where you can get IRL practice. I've been doing that for a couple years now to get past my social anxiety around strangers, and maybe something like that might work for you. I found going to meetups by myself was a good place to start because even if I came across like an idiot (and I doubt I did, in the end), I wouldn't have to see those people again. In fact, first one I went to was a meetup for people with social anxiety. But whatever feels like the easiest "practice" for you is a good place to start.

Aimless, it's funny, I do know how to do all that stuff. I'm even lucky enough to have a good sense of moment and feeling in social situations, so I've even had moments of ... charm! I don't know what the crap my problem is, then ... maybe it's pride, or the annoying upper middle class standards my extended family foisted on me, or emotional bullshit that I still need to work through, or basic living skills, or lingering depression. Maybe this issue is more complex/something different than social skills.

orbit, that's true, everyone likes different things. i prefer openness/intimacy, too. the place I work at now is into that fake grin/thumbs up "HO HO HOWYA DOIN TIGER?!" bullshit, and I don't have that in me, and I'm not sure I even want that in me.

Vinnie, that's a good idea. Probably make things easier to get desensitized / experienced in talking to people more. I remember the brief moments when I've had a busy social life talking to people was a lot easier. Spending too much time alone, at any point in life, probably just makes socializing even harder.

I think you've established that you need to get out there and talk to people, possibly even some other sensitive blossoms like yourself (kinda joking but kinda not--find a niche that is not like your workplace is what I'm saying, so you have satisfying interactions that feel genuine to you).

my social anxiety used to be so bad that i would struggle to speak at all, i've gradually improved it by just thrusting myself into as many social encounters as i can, as awkward as they were and can still be when i struggle to participate. i realised that it's something that requires practice for me to keep up - i was at a conference alone last week and was finding myself being particularly asocial (at what's already a slightly socially awkward situation anyway), and realised it was probably because i'd holed myself away working and hadn't been in any real social situations for over a week. while i've improved massively and now generally pass for a normal if quiet person, i do still struggle with conversations where i can't kind of passively go with the flow, and find myself resorting to tiresome banalities and getting into a self-perpetuating spiral of being a boring person. i think my basic tactic for this has to be some kind of enforced openness, but i probably have to refine that a bit so i'm not just inappropriately blurting out things i've done or liked or so on lately.

That's an excellent point, sometimes group socialization might sound more intimidating or high-energy but actually it offers lots of downtime per person. Sometimes I find extended one-on-one chat tiring now because there's no chance to regroup or have your own thoughts.

Just a broad hunch here, so take it with a grain of salt. I gather from your posts that you are feeling pretty irritable these days. That would make good sense to me, given all you have been dealing with. It's kind of like when you sleep with your head on your arm and the arm goes dead numb; the return of blood feels excruciating.

What else is possible (according to my hunch) is that human relations have always been something of a threat as well as an allurement to you, in that intimacy was always going to start up feelings in you that you could not control or bury. So, you might be sabotaging yourself in order to avoid going there. iow, you go along just fine until things get too real and that's when your brain reaches for the eject button.

^^ Don't make too much of this unless it rings a very loud and obvious bell in your head. It is very shaky guesswork based on very little on my end.

yeah, maybe Aimless ... last week i had started to really connect with people, like real face-to-face intimacy, and it was real! i did just fine talking to people. smooth, natural, unthinking, it was all the things i've been dreaming of and working my ass off to get to the past two years. and the whole thing completely overwhelmed me, on top of everything else going on. it's actually pretty scary getting closer to people. i could be sabotaging myself, deep down i know all the things i need to do to make all this stuff work. geez.

it's actually pretty scary getting closer to people. i could be sabotaging myself, deep down i know all the things i need to do to make all this stuff work.

Congratulations, you have unlocked the achievement of being completely normal!

really? that's good news ... i think. might explain why people keep their distance so much in daily life. maybe life after abuse isn't the blissful dreamlife i thought it'd be. :S

Right, now we're getting somewhere.

welcome

wishing the best for both of you

thanks all, knowing some of these feelings are normal is a big relief. like, everything's been traumatic scary, but even looking past the trauma, things are still sorta difficult... for some reason i thought it'd all be easy street.

naw man. it's tough, especially at the beginning of the process as others here have said. you can do it, though.

It's okay, kiddo. If we can do it, you can do it.

I also find I have to inoculate myself to social interactions. If I spend too much time alone, which I am prone to do, it's like I forget how to interact with people. It's like any kind of anxiety: avoid the trigger, reinforce it.

yeah, i've experienced that, too. in times where i was socializing a lot it was made easier to keep doing it and there was less anxiety in general. when i'm spending every weekend alone doing nothing, it's like every interaction becomes an epic task.

holy crap, being busy would be a great thing to do. i keep forgetting about the depression component of all this.

watched tarkovsky's solaris last night. what a perfectly fitting film for everything that's going on, though i might be bringing that to the table.

don't watch any bresson films. or rather, maybe you should.

I had a thought which doesn't quite fit here but there's nobody else I can tell. It is possibly not worth telling at all but...

I've had this idea that I blame myself for everything. Well, I've been told that, as I instinctively apologise for things beyond my control, and self-blame is a commonly listed symptom of depression; and it satisfies my self-image as an unappreciated tragic figure. But there are times when I really have fucked up, and my first instinct is not to apologise but to scrabble for excuses as to why it wasn't my fault, why the universe did this bad thing and pinned the blame on me. How can I blame myself for "everything" but not these?

So it struck me: I don't blame myself for everything. I'm not sure I blame myself for anything. It's more like I expect others to blame me for everything.

How did I get here? I don't know. My parents weren't heavyhanded at blaming, and I can't remember being wrongly accused of anything as a child. The only time I can recall being blamed for something which I felt wasn't my fault was a very minor incident as an adult, when my negative thought patterns were probably already in place, and that blew over quickly with no repercussions.

Came to this while pondering my fear of social interaction, thinking through conversations which went badly and I decided the other person hated me. I expected my "self-talk" to have been "I fucked up and am socially inept" but had to admit I'd actually thought "that person was mean and setting me up for failure". More reasonable explanation: we both just misunderstood each other and I overreacted.

I'll regret this post tomorrow. You, dear reader, are probably regretting it already. Goodnight.

PS "depressives blame themselves for things beyond their control" - but then everything feels beyond a depressive's control, doesn't it? Thinking "if only I'd..." after the death of a neighbour you've never talked to may seem irrational, but to the depressive maybe it doesn't feel meaningfully any less in their control than e.g. misplacing something important or being needlessly late for work.

So, from that, maybe it's not just me. Depressives may express similar guilt and dismay at remote disasters as at their own mistakes, but maybe it's not just me who is thinking "it isn't really my fault that dinner is burnt because something distracting happened and how could I be expected etc etc" - the reaction may include blame-like words, but both are viewed equally not as things I could/should have prevented but as just two different motifs stitched into the grand tapestry of life's disappointment

or maybe I really am a fucking terrible narcissist and should stop tarring anyone else with the same brush. Like I said, goodnight.

I have no idea whether you are exhibiting symptoms of depression when you expect others to blame you for everything, spacecadet. All I can say about it is that one of the most interesting facets of living for nearly six decades has been the opportunity to learn about my brain's flaws, faults, crochets and design failures, by watching it at work, retrospectively, after I've allowed it to operate on its own 'normal' terms and suffered some undesirable consequence which then prompted me to go back over what I did and examine its actions in greater detail.

This kind of post-mortem on my idiocy has eventually become a form of meditation and self-realization and it assists me greatly in achieving a certain intermittent humility. But, of course, it does not guarantee I won't make the same stupid mistakes in the future (although it does help somewhat).

Sorry for babbling on this thread last night. I hadn't even drunk THAT much.

Thanks for your patience, Aimless. Your post seems wise.

do any of you have suggestions on learning better social skills? i never picked them up having spent almost my entire life with nobody to talk to and never having had a real relationship of any kind, on top of having nearly zero life experience beyond minor professional accomplishments.

Hey Spectrum, a little late, I feel you on this. The good thing about social skills, like so many other things, is that it's a learned and practicable thing. I like the site Succeed Socially. He is really reasonable and pragmatic, all about breaking things down to the very, very basics, and then practicing them, all the while recognizing that you will grow eventually but not have perfect social interactions all the time, especially while you're learning and practicing. It took me a long time to figure this stuff out – I'm way better than I used to be, socially, but reading this site still helps me out. And it would've helped me a lot more when I was just starting to try to interact with all kinds of people.

This thread is very moving.

Thanks Crabbits. Succeed Socially is a good site, I last read it half a year ago and it opened my eyes to some pretty important things, but a lot of it I just wasn't ready for yet. Maybe I'll look at it again, some of the things on there I've been discovering "organically" through therapy, abuse recovery, and all that, so I can prob get more out of it now. The block with social skills for me are the raw, intense emotions from the past that are present in my daily life that totally hijack any clear kind-of thinking, on top of unrealistically low self-esteem. I'm getting better with that, too, so I feel hopeful.

I think back to how I was a year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, and I've really made a huge amount of progress. It's totally possible to work through this stuff, it's just hard, painful work, and it takes a looooooooong time, and I still have a ways to go.

Like, I've been working on this for about a year and a half now after finally realizing I was abused at around age 28, with 5 months in counselling, and the changes in my life so far would be unthinkable to me even a year ago; if me 10 years ago knew all this stuff, holy shit. Seeing a good therapist put me into an entirely different level of recovery, like the difference b/t driving in 1st gear and 5th gear. I honestly wouldn't have been able to get this far without her, so finding a trustworthy counsellor to work on these issues is essential. I have to thank the people on this thread for encouraging me to see someone, it's really made all the difference in my life.

I've been doing pretty well with depression and anxiety over the past few months, to the point where I feel ready to stop therapy (and my therapist agreed). Out of the blue Saturday night, I felt some really strong depressed feelings and suicidal urges, the kind I haven't felt since things were at their worst. Don't know where that came from, but it was very scary and lasted until I went to bed. The next day... feelings were completely gone. Seems like a total fluke - Saturday had been a good day overall, getting to see close friends, and it's not a particularly stressful or bad time for me right now - but it's not a fluke I've ever had happen before so I do feel a little concerned. Anyway, not really expecting any advice, more just getting this shit out and wondering if anyone has experienced similar.

I like the site Succeed Socially

I tried to read this because it is a thing I need to do but I felt all the muscles in my body tense up just reading about it so yeah, sign me up for continued avoidance

Vinnie, for years after I got out of the really deep hole I'd have occasional days or 2-day stretches where I was suddenly back there for no reason, and then just as suddenly return to being fine the next day. I think it's just a thing that happens and you just need to remember it'll pass (though bear in mind that drinking seems bad for triggering them, or it does in my experience - not that I seem to let that stop me), but it's probably worth hanging on to your therapist for at least a month or so more, mention your concerns, etc.

(^ trying to not just post terrible annoying bullshit that nobody can reply to because you're all too polite to tell me to shut up and then going "nobody replied, therefore I was right that I am a terrible person", but instead I am just offering trite parrotings of the bleeding obvious I guess. sry folx, best wishes Vinnie.)

Interesting, I had had a few drinks that night, though no more than a normal weekend really. Will definitely be bringing it up with my therapist for what was going to be our last session and see what he thinks. Thanks for sharing your experiences with this stuff, spacecadet, it was not trite or obvious to me at all. Really had no idea this was a thing that happens, that's comforting.

Remember reading a profile of the woman who invented dialectical behavioral therapy. She had borderline personality disorder, and even though her condition was well-managed, she mentioned having moments where blackness would sort of wash over her, but it was transient like you described. All this to say it is probably not so uncommon.

hey spacecadet, you are not being terrible, annoying, or bullshitty. Your voice is as important here as anybody else's. Please keep posting. You aren't annoying anybody.

No, you're not. Also, yr dilemma is one I feel almost every time I post.

I get the black tide rising whenever the things people mention over and over itt are not taken care of - sleep, regular meals, exercise, daylight. Alcohol is bad. Anything that reminds me of the more traumatic periods in my life, however obliquely, can bring it on. Sometimes it takes me ages to work out what's happened, but I almost have a checklist now. It helps.

Zora: Yeah I think that's probably what happened to me too, probably something reminded me of those darker times, subconsciously. It may be a good sign that it was so short. Haha I have something of a checklist too, that I go through before "evaluating" the state of my life. Basically when I feel shitty, my thoughts tend to go towards "you haven't made any progress, have you?" and now I make myself go through that checklist before making any large pronouncements about the state of things. Usually something on that checklist hasn't been met, and when I take care of it, the fog starts to lift. Lack of sleep is by far the number 1 thing that sends me downward.

ok, random dumb question, which i know will sound ridiculous. random people at work keep coming up to me and saying they saw me around and wanted to meet me. i've never seen these people anywhere ever. is this a good thing? it doesn't make any sense to me because I have no idea why anyone would want to meet me; i act like this when we're talking and, of course, disappoint them. people have been like this my whole life, approaching me and wanting to talk to me, hang out with me, and whatnot, and it has both confused and annoyed me.

i feel like i can't live up to whatever reason they wanted to talk to me! "you wanted to meet this shitbag standing in front of you? you're nuts"

You're nuts.

You are, in fact, clinically nuts. Apparently this is not expressed outwardly and/or if it is, it doesn't matter because you're super hot/cool so people don't care. You know that you're nuts and not qualified to judge how people see you based on how you see yourself. This is not news?

Sorry, I don't know why I keep bugging on this thread because I'm totally not depressed and I'm the least sympathetic person in the world. Sometimes I want to give some of you a big hug and others of you I want to shake until your heads snap back into place* and those twin impulses seem to bring me back again and again.

*Lovingly, of course.

woah, I wouldn't say that I'm nuts, I just need to learn a whole bunch of shit. maybe i'm leaning too much on this thread, I need to get back into the groove of therapy after a two-week hiatus.