Depression and what it's really like

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.

I think in orbit forgot to jab her elbow into your ribs while tipping you a hard wink and chuckling as she said "you're nuts", so as to alert you to her facetious intentions. What she meant to convey in a lighthearted manner was that your perception of yourself as a shitbag is most certainly warped.

But, somehow I doubt it would have improved your understanding of her banter if she'd said, "You're warped!" instead.

Tsk tsk imo

ps APS etc obv ffs

Leanin on a thread is no great sin if it helps spectrum. Often wish i could contribute more itt tbh but plenty of others do good work here imo (EVEN SPACECADET AND IN ORBIT)

word

i didn't think in orbit was being malicious, maybe a little cranky. it's not a big deal. i need to keep remembering this is just warped thinking, but it's more like ... that positive thinking never happened, and so this is just my natural state. nothing's been warped because i never knew an identity beyond "sack of crap". that's the challenge, learning how to go from pile of human garbage to, at the very least, sentient effigy of human garbage. anything after that is icing on the cake.

thanks darraghmac, i feel the same way when others post on here.

depression clouds your perception of a lot of things; not only how you see yourself, but how you perceive others seeing you, even how you perceive the past. part of you going through therapy and all this work you're doing on yourself is to now be conscious of the veil between you and the rest of the world that's been obscuring what you see and what you take in...now is when you start taking a moment to take a breath, ~lift~ the veil, and consider what's being given to you, instead of taking it at face value like you would in the 'beforetimes'.

brand new world, etc.

sorry that's all kinda shitty metaphors, reads like a bad poem...but you get my drift, hopefully?

yeah, i do. i wish i knew a time before depression. i have little to no idea of the concept of someone liking me. it makes no sense whatsoever to me, like there's a receptor in my brain missing. and it makes sense, i spent way too much time growing up in total isolation, and any attempt to break out of it failed pretty badly cuz of the snowball effect from growing up in a righteously shitty home. this period in my life is like an awakening, and it's not like i'm getting my groove back, it's more like i'm getting my groove for the first time.

trust that. not to the point where you're wide open to *everything*, but for every few encounters that you instinctively recoil from, maybe accept one.

but whether or not you personally understand people liking you, you are aware that this is a thing that happens between people and maybe it's part of your new groove to find out what that looks like. consider it an anthropological undertaking :)

i do know what it looks like, everything's working inside of me, i just have to keep coming to terms with the fact that i'm not a flaming bag of dog shit left on someone's door step. it's happening slowly.

:)

sentient effigy of human garbage

Ok, that made me lol

So far your evidence for "sack of crap" is: You're a gainfully employed dude who escaped a horror-movie childhood and more recently a horror-movie roommate, and are interesting enough that random people want to meet you. Would you have the same assessment about this person if it wasn't you?

thanks PN, it's weird reading it that way.

this just made me realize my problem is i don't have a framework for relationships in my life. this positive stuff doesn't stick because i haven't been truly close to anyone, i never took that risk. i've had girlfriends and friends and shit, but all of that was in a disassociative state so it wasn't totally real to me. so maybe i have to take the risk and venture out and connect with people more for any of these positive things about myself to make sense. woah i don't even know how to comprehend this right now.

can you develop positive associations and models of thinking about other people, then map it back to yourself, like a kind of reverse-empathy?

no, has to be real people. i've done all i can sitting alone in a room thinking.

like, if people think i'm nice or cool or whatever, i'm just going to follow their lead, instead of making their decision for them that i suck.

Yeah I mean other, real people who you get to choose to model and see yourself through.

oh, I get what you're saying. that's a good idea (the former thing you said, i can't put my finger on the latter) ... thinking more positively about people may actually be pretty helpful.

holy shit, I went out with some co-workers tonight and had a lot of fun. the person who invited me said I was a blast! this was probably the most successful social time out i've had out since i was like, 10 years old. therapy really works. and i really appreciate the support here. can't believe things are actually starting to work here! yeah, i'm a little tipsy.

sometimes, while learning to walk, a toddler puts on a crazy burst of speed to get across the floor from one piece of grabbable furniture to the next, and when they don't fall over on the way, they burst into a big smile at the wonder of themselves. rightfully so, too.

that's true, I still have a ways to go, and I should be careful about saying "this is it!" so soon... I've made that mistake before. I'm just happy to see that good things are possible.

damn straight. about time, too. remember this as long as you can.

Hey, look! Today you were one of those people, laughing with their friends and having fun!! Remember last week you thought it would never happen to you? :D You're still yourself and you have an idea of the work ahead but consider that there are a lot of pleasures along the way, not just a destination of "absolute happiness." You're not putting life on hold until you reach that goal, you're actually having a normal life.

ok, back again. i think my social skills are starting to outmatch my emotional ability to handle things right now. i never realized how alone i really am, and how alone i've been my whole life. this is really quite exruciating, especially since my life is so void of people. catch 22 is i need to deal with this ridiculously painful crap before I can even start bringing people into my life. this is real fuckin' blast.

fuck this shit takes a long time to deal with, doesn't it. guess i should prepare for the long haul then.

At least you're starting to see some daylight on the social side, so you know that it is possible for you to have fun with people who do not see you as a bag of shit. Hard as all this is, you've reached a point where going backwards will never look like a viable option for more than a few minutes before you realize you're fooling yourself and forwards is the only way left to you. Yes, that won't feel great for some time to come, but it is the sort of progress that ought to trigger confetti and streamers falling from the ceiling and "we are the chapions" playing at high volume..

Honestly? The long haul is the rest of your life--your experiences have shaped you, and you will never "outgrow" or completely undo them. This is okay, because you're going to be a person who knows totally different things deep in their bones than most other people do, and ppl in your life will see that. Everyone brings sthing different to the table, yours is just a little more different than usual, yeah?

Ever onward! You are smart and self-aware! Uh also have you read the posts of all the ppl on here who lament their own social failures, who are otherwise completely functional, responsible, nice adult humans? It's kind of a big deal that whoever you are, you survived yr past with social skills intact--in fact apparently high-functioning. Enjoy that and consider that not everything in life has gone against you.

orbit, that was killer. so OTM

also Aimless 'we are the champions' streamers made me lol

xp yeah, that's true. the only hurdle right now is going back and making emotional sense of everything. you know, facing myself and reality, i've spent my whole life running away from it all. now i can finally make sense of it, but damn is it hard, and it's going to take a lot of hard work. that's the plus side to this pain, at least i can finally go back and process everything and understand myself and the world for once. i find it funny when my roommates walk past my room, they don't know i'm inside curled up in a fetal position on the floor naked, covered only by a single white sheet and crying my eyes out surrounded by glass from a mirror i punched out (ok, that's a dramatization). i'll play "we are the champions" when it doesn't feel like invisible knives are being shoved into my soul while i'm suspended in the middle of a black hole. i'm sure that day'll come, i've made it this far.

that's true, in orbit. i'm assuming i'll bring something different to the table, but i don't quite know what that'll be yet. i guess i'm lucky in the social thing... that story i told before of people coming up and wanting to meet me, people have been like that to me my whole life, i've even had weird lady stalkers obsessed w/ me and people "fall in love" with me, all the while i sat there completely oblivious to it all. i have no idea why some people seem to like me, but i'll probably understand at some point. i genuinely like people and i like to have a good time and love the world, and refuse to be some phoney ass mfer, so that could be part of it. this is all crap i'll figure out as i work through everything and experience life with an open heart... i guess i'm a romantic, too. anyway, thanks for that.

i genuinely like people and i like to have a good time and love the world

Oh well that explains it. This is all it takes to make people like you btw.

yeah, my therapist said something like that. she was telling me the way i just was in our relationship (kind, respectful, thoughtful, etc.) is the stuff people like. and i thought it was all about being a professional, or wearing snazzy clothes, or being the funniest/smartest/coolest person in the world. which of course did jack shit when i tried it in younger days.

which i guess is an age old story... going out into the world to find the answer, when it was inside you all along.

Well I guess it won't make jerky people like you because they aren't intersted in liking ppl or loving the world. But it will make good people like you, and you will like them too. The End.

they don't know i'm inside curled up in a fetal position on the floor naked

Wait a sec, are you Natalie Imbruglia? That would explain all the stalkers. Either way, it sounds like there's something about you to be liked. Remember that when you get those thoughts of the catch 22. You don't need to be "cured" before you can make great friendships, you have something to offer right now.

xp that is where i'm at now, realizing there are good people who appreciate that stuff and share the same values. to my family, to people like my family, to the people my childhood conditioning attracts me to, those personality traits are a personal affront, or weakness, or tools that can be used to manipulate and control. those are the people i need to say the hell away from! i always felt like a weirdo or an outsider because I actually cared about things like love and respect, but now i'm seeing it's because my family is completely fucked up, and there are unfortunately enough people out there like them to have kept it all going.