Depression and what it's really like

yeah. i mean, everyone does that when they don't really care about something. the awful thing about doing it all the time is you're doing it to all your friends.

i think people do it even when they do care! well... okay maybe i am sociopath after all

I need some way of saving up strength/wellbeing for Saturday, as I'm best man at my brother's wedding, but been feeling pretty bad recently. Thinking some kind of jar. I'm bipolar with just over a year since I was last hospitalised, so I was probably the worst choice he could have made. I'm figuring faking it will be fine, I'm fine at that in normal situations, but does anyone have any advice for a high stress situation like this? Also, the wedding will be my last day drinking before starting meds aimed at sobriety (antabuse etc.), so trying to keep my drinking under control will be an issue too.

This is going to be a disaster (he did say he didn't care how terrible my speech is, he's going to have a good day and wants me there, but for some reason that doesn't alleviate the stress as much as I know it should).

This is the bit that I think hit closest:

it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.

xpost, I dunno, I just plaster on the fakeness. Have an escape mechanism. Take up smoking to give you a reason to go outside (I go out for a fag and play a game or two of freecell on my phone) as soon as you're done with the speech (or invent a kilt malfunction to allow you to run straight off to the bathrooms or something). At my own wedding, I planted a couple of drinks at a couple of tables so that if someone engaged me in conversation I could excuse myself because I was over "there" and had a drink waiting for me. Lather rinse repeat).

Oh, I smoke, so hopefully that will help. Just trying to fit both my tobacco tin and a hip flask into my sporran :(

xp totally agreed, i really liked that bit

i mostly liked the frowny face w hat. good look.

and i wish i could offer you some advice, dowd, but i can't. when i'm in that frame, the best i can usually manage = a blank expression and an acute focus on the idea that time actually does pass.

Ha, yeah. I don't know what kind of advice I expected, just venting. I mean, I'm gonna have to be...personable. Not my strong point. As far as faking goes, I'm more a sprinter than a long distance guy.

I went to my two of my best friends' wedding on a day when my depression was at its worst. Didn't have any official capacity in the wedding, but I knew practically everyone there. Almost didn't go. I gave myself a lot of time to escape in between conversations - hung out in the bathroom and other places where I wouldn't have to see people. It was... manageable. The thing to remember is that there are a lot of friends and family there (er I assume), so you don't need to spend much time with any given person. Saying that you have other people to talk to is as good an excuse as any to leave a conversation. I didn't do much talking in the end, mostly just said hi, barely faking a smile. Hope it goes ok for you.

My supervisor at work is refusing to accept what I've tried to make abundantly clear to him: I am DONE with this job, I can't spend every second outside of classes in New Jersey talking to our fuckwit customers and do in fact need to spend time studying now that I have classes, and that I'm more than willing to cut loose and live off my savings while I look for part-time work in Philly instead sacrificing my private life to keep working as much as possible. If I'm too important to keep things running, too fucking bad; maybe they shouldn't have been foisting everyone else's miscellaneous responsibilities onto me for four years and refined their interview process enough that they could have a better than 25% success rate finding customer service personnel who are willing to put up with this and do a reasonably good job. I've already given them over four fucking years, structured literally every aspect of my life (from where I live to what I do in my free time) around being available to them 45 hours a week (50+ after the commute) and I've got nothing to show for it but wasted time and regret.

If you are entirely willing to walk away from a job, then the supervisor can go fuck himself. As long as you are clear in your own thoughts then you have everything you need to go forward.

The reason your supervisor can't seem to accept what you have tried to make abundantly clear is that your previous actions set up a wholly different relationship and set of rules for how you acted. You are changing the rules. Your supervisor is still playing by the old ones, hoping you'll play along. Just don't. The rest is beyond your control. Old saying: there are none so blind as those who will not see.

embrace freedom, TT!

Summers here are hard. This is usually the time when friends graduate and uproot and move away. I have a lot of acquaintances, but I have a hard time making friends that I actually call up to hang out with, and three of those people are leaving. Which leaves me with exactly one platonic friend here in town. Also, the heat makes me want to kill myself.

wow, i just realized i feel like a dirty freak wherever i go. like i'm some kind-of disgusting gollum monster, and i'll crawl out of my cave out into the human world where people spit at me and tell me that i'm a curse on god's creation.

not a great feeling, tbh

it's easier to deal with that feeling when you live in a big city ime

i felt like that spectrum, for maybe 10 years, from early adolescence until a year ago or so, with the worst part being around two years ago when i was severely depressed, barely functional really. sometimes it seems like i just "grew out of it", which isn't helpful to you, but i really do feel better now. i think the reasons i feel better are twofold. 1.) i started making "taking care of myself" a priority... so all the obvious stuff like diet, exercise, SLEEP (the biggest one for me, a lifelong insomniac), whatever. i think that as adults, we are our own "dependents," and if we neglect ourselves it has comparable consequences to what happens to children when their parents neglect them. 2.) i got a dog after college and having to take care of her made me feel like my life had, on the day-to-day level, a kind of purpose, albeit a modest one. that matters, i think. the worst days of my life were idle ones, where everything i did felt arbitrary and consequence-less. also she is the best dog in the world.

it would be a lie if i said that i know, precisely, that these two things are what made me feel better, but i do know that i no longer spend any time thinking of myself as anything like a "gollum monster"... a phrase you used which struck a chord with me because it is similar, although maybe more whimsical, than a lot of the things i would think about myself when i was depressed, i.e. i would think that i was "sub-human" somehow. i don't feel that way anymore.

sorry if all of this sounds like cliches. it's hard to talk about emotional health without resorting to cliched sounding things. i'm sure you'll get better, spectrum. the most important thing is to treat yourself kindly, both in your thoughts and actions.

(that was way too long and over-sharey. sorry. mostly, i wanted to respond because the thing you said about not wanting to meet people because of internalized self-loathing just really registered with me.)

impossible to over-share on depression thread

(also, i basically think that with this stuff, everyone has their own path toward feeling better... not every "trick," cognitive or behavioral, works in the same way for every person. so just, everyone here, i think you should all follow your instincts. if you do what you think is the best thing for yourself, you are probably doing the right thing.) xp to myself

thanks silby.

treeship otm

yup

The wedding went very well - I was feeling quite a bit better by then thankfully. I did manage to sweat many times my own body-weight, but I was able to pass off that as being due to the kilt rather than anxiety (and my kilt is horribly heavy and hot). After my speech I was able to get down to some serious drinking, which is my usual way of dealing with these problems. Today is my first day of sobriety though, so I can't do that anymore. Just need to make it to Friday when I start on Disulfiram.

that's good to hear; good luck dude

I have been swallowed by depression again over the past two weeks, getting to be a bit worrisome. I'm already on a good dosage of celexa which I've been taking for the past year to good effect, but it's like it suddenly (very suddenly) stopped working entirely. it was nice to have a year without daily suicidal ideation but that seems to have returned as well. All of this probably partially prompted by me asking for copies of my psychiatric records from almost 20 years ago, when I was committed three times in the span of a year for attempts and overdoses and weird drug induced seizures. Awful to look at this huge pile of records and think most people do not have this sort of paper trail in their life (I got the records so I could go back to the university and retroactively withdraw from an entire year of school in order to boost my gpa and finally get my degree).

Anyway this is a bit long but meant to say: feel like shit.

hugs and strength. Sorry about the meds situation, hope you'll both keep taking them and go see your prescribing doc ASAP. I'm on the same stuff and I did increase my dosage once…I guess it was after a year and a half. The retroactive withdrawal thing sounds like an awesome move, though, and you deserve to be proud of dealing with it.

wow, depression is a really awful thing. i should be feeling OK right now. i received the "best performance review" of anyone in my department this year, got a higher than expected raise, much love from the upstairs people, and an open door to get an even bigger raise if I fight for it (which I will). my supervisor had some very kind words to say to me. it SHOULD HAVE been a very pleasant thing, but instead I feel worse than ever.

i'm really starting to notice my cognitive dialog now, and it keeps telling me I'm a fucking loser. CBT sez: it's the thinking that's making my reality seem like this. that seems so friggin nuts! but it also seems like it makes sense. i really gotta try it, because I don't want to fuck things up anymore.

fight it man

Does the dialog get more insistent when you actually do well or something goes right?

yes, including when people seem to like me. bug out time.

thanks nhex, i'm not giving up on this.

It's good that you've noticed! You know it's just getting shriller and more desperate because you're that much closer to seeing through that shit. Your psyche has to double-down and try to hold on to you.

^^ in orbit otm. Minds can be stupid petrified iin the face of the unknown and fight like a wildcat to hold onto the worst kind of crap rather than face it.

pretty tired of having feelings when they're always bad

I had a similar issue with citalopram/celexa, akm. I think I ended up shifting to venlafaxine - though I sometimes have similar problems anyway. sometimes I can just have a week where, despite taking my meds properly, I end up getting withdrawal symptoms, and the beneficial effect evaporates. I presume it's a metabolism problem? My psych reckons that my alcoholism can play a factor in the efficacy of the meds too.

Anyway, sorry things are bad (and to everyone else who is having a hard time). Though I know that someone saying that doesn't really change much.

i've been told countless times that if you're drinking then venlafaxine isn't working, which might account for those horrible withdrawals. if you're not drinking i don't know, i never heard of there being after-effects.

Fwiw I've never had a problem with alcohol and effexor (venlavaxine), or experienced it stopping its effect. If anything it has made alcohol intake 'better' for me, as in, no hangovers any more. Odd but true.

Withdrawal from venlax is a right bastard though.

holy crap, accepting these positive things about myself opens up a door to an entirely new world with very far-reaching ... uhhh ... things ... no wonder it's so hard to accept this stuff, there's a lot of meaning and difference involved in one simple acceptance. my entire world hinges on all this negativity, and changing that ... changes my life completely. and that's some pretty heavy stuff. i feel like i'm that kid whose standing on top of a bunch of books in a crime-ridden wasteland, looking over a brick wall to see a fantasy land where giant butterflies attack you.

<3

thanks for the luv silby. have to give props to my therapist (didn't ditch her, just hated her in the moment for challenging my long-held crappy beliefs... which actually helped) and everyone here. can't believe i'm really starting to figure this shit out after a lifetime of feeling like a bitter, alienated drifter.

good going spectrum. up and over!

i really feel like i'm coming out on the other side of this. depression is a really awful condition. it tricks you into truly believing your life has always been and will always be a living hell. and that there's no hope of escape. what a nasty fucking thing this is. anyone who tells a depressed person to 'get over it' doesn't understand what this is like at all. especially if that person is suffering because of a history of abuse and neglect, which adds a complexity and intensity to depression that makes it even more difficult to work through.

my heart goes out to anyone suffering from this condition. this is a nasty, horrible thing to experience.

good going spectrum. up and over!

― you may not like it now but you will (Zora), Tuesday, May 21, 2013 5:58 PM

(and to anyone else to whom it applies too)

ok, things touch and go right now ... some days good, some days bad, still generally sorta eh. workwise i'm going to be getting a big ole raise-ola and I was offered something of a promotion to a management role.

here's the issue. I have no crapping idea what the hell I want to with my life. job's boring, the place is a mess, and it's not even a field I have any interest in. i feel like i'm a huge fucking fake going into this place, like cube land in the 'burbs isn't really my thing. but i'm 30 now and need to make a living; if I don't, I'm fucked... like, homeless and starving fucked. guess that's the way the adult world works, though. growing up man.

anyway, do any of you feel like this? is it common, or is this depression? i feel like i'm way out of touch with the human race, considering i've been living with my head up my ass for a good decade now, so i need to ask for feedback from people. unless that's normal, too, talking to people about shit.

complete list of people who know exactly what they are doing with their life:
- (some) doctors

maybe it's hopeless trying to find a perfect, consistent reasoning for anything. it's destined to fail.

there's just this part of me that wants to overcome this confusion and work my ass off to make sure i'm just not drifting through life. it just takes a lot of clear thinking and hard fucking work. i feel like i'm crazy or I'm trying to attempt the impossible here, but on further inspection my life looks pretty similar to most of the lives of people I know.

upside's I might not be alone feeling like this, and that's pretty cool