Depression and what it's really like

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

yeah

Just take the job as the price you pay to keep shit from falling apart while you work on your head and try to get it straight. Go to work, punch the clock, do it the best you know how, come home, punch the air and yell, calm down, think about what your next step needs to be. Try to come up with a plan, even if it seems a bit shoddy. Do not expect happiness to arrive from outside you.

Feeling crazy is just a signal that you need to get a better grip on things - not a death grip on your feelings, but a grip on how your life fits together and where it is going. It's like solving one of those 500 piece jigsaw puzzles, but you don't have the whole picture to look at, just all those odd-shaped fragments of it. It takes a while.

I still think your life would be so much better if you moved out of the suburbs. Sounds like you are pretty professionally qualified. Way easier to dole out advice than to follow it, though. xpost to Spec

I assume young singles scene in suburbs sucks.

always

I hear the pickup scene at Applebees is pretty jumpin'

:-(

i need to leave the suburbs too.

it's good to know there's a "straight" to even get to ... like, being a human being and all that jazz, ridiculously basic stuff. i'm starting to see this has to do with being abused as a kid, and I need to find a therapist who can work with me on that; the therapist I have now is not really that great, I've basically just stuck with her because of the aforementioned issues. now that I'm getting in touch with how I feel about things, I'm really not happy with all this stuff!

living in the suburbs does suck. it's not just the singles scene, but the pace of life, the culture and amenities, the amount of freedom and independence you get in the city, etc.

my landlord who I'm living with has turned out to be a creepy douche, too. i never had this experience living in the city; I've had four roommates out there and never once had any problems, and I even became friends with two of the people I lived with. all of a sudden I move to the 'burbs and I've had two obnoxious, creepy weirdos as roommates. could just be bad luck, or maybe having roommates here is a totally different situation than it is in the city. I didn't really appreciate how much of a culture shock it'd be living in the city for 8 years and then going back to the suburbs.

hmmmm, reading back it makes sense why I've been so angry lately. see, this is the kind-of shit I need to get a handle on. :S

the suburbs have a lot of downsides, but tbh, you must have had really good luck living in the city; all of my friends who lived/still live in the city have had at least one or two nightmare experiences with their apartments, roommates flaking out or owing money, etc.

really? that's not surprising, it is just another place to live. it's just easier to find people I get along with in the city, I guess... two roommates I had were like the kinds of people I always dreamed of meeting when I was growing up. tbh I never really dated or made friends until I moved to New York. maybe I'm a particular case, who knows.

i did have one nutcase pathological liar roommate in the city who stole beer and cigarettes from me; told him to fuck off, and that was that. in the 'burbs I've stood my ground and these people just keep getting in my face like they have nothing better to do with their lives. why would they? there's absolutely nothing going on here, and the people who choose to stay here when New York's across the river self-select this lifestyle (my opinion on it, at least).

Can you "reverse commute" from nyc to your current workplace?

yeah, a bunch of people I work with live in the city. after i get this raise I'm thinking of saving up a bunch of money and getting out of my lease early.

OK, I'm on the verge of firing my therapist. I have no idea if I'm thinking clearly about it, though! If anyone's got the time I'd appreciate their help whether or not I'm overreacting here.

Issues:

She doesn't seem all that professional. She asked me to fill out an intake form that took me a half hour to fill out, but never asked me for it. Who does that? It's like she had no particular plan or use for the thing but had me fill it out anyway. Her office is also in a friggin yoga studio that hosts healing crystal and mind-travel seminars.

She said she loved "Feeling Good" and when I said I wanted to work with it, she was like "OK, just flip through it and pick something you like." The book is over 700 pages and I have no idea what's in there or what I'm doing. I feel like this is her job.

She's into this kooky new age Louise Hay crap and she's pushed it on me a couple of times. One time she had like this deck of Louise Hay positive affirmation cards and made me pick a card from it. The thing had this goofy Facebook meme saying on it, like "Reach for the stars and you can achieve anything!" and she was like "Isn't that perfect for what we've been talking about???" She was so completely serious about it I had to bite my cheek to not bust out laughing.

She's got no direction or plan for anything we do. She jumps to conclusions in what we're talking about and ends up telling me stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with what I want to talk about it. I told her I was obsessing about my career and she jumps in to say "That's OK, don't beat yourself up about it!" I tried to tell her I was using it as an escape from my relationship problems, but she totally brushed past that and I had no chance to talk about it. If I actually listened to her I'd be in a way worse place than I am now.

She actually confirms the distorted thinking I have going on sometimes because she doesn't bother to investigate or think too deeply about what I'm saying. I also feel like she forces conclusions on me. She was like "well, you trusted me when you decided to come here." and I'm like "well, not quite, I actually have a problem with jumping into things too fast and sticking around because I'm out of touch with my feelings." and she was like "No, you trusted me". Problem here is I was raised to accept crap like that lest I get a lashing, so I sorta crumbled under it despite my misgivings. I'm in therapy to get over things like that, not get new doses of it.

I feel like she's minimized my problems into a small box that she feels capable of handling. I remember noticing that she seemed insecure in her ability to help me when I first got there. So it's like ... I go there feeling like I've made huge progress thanks to her, but we almost never talk about the real deep shit I need help with. I feel like I've got this secret thing I'm working on alone here.

Positive sides are that she does have a CBT approach that's helped me out a little bit and some her advice isn't bad. I think having someone to talk to regularly has been critical for me. But I don't think I'm getting my money's worth here, and I've had to fight back on a lot of what she tells me because it's just plain wrong or is simply too weird to get with. I feel like I'm a weird new abusive relationship here.

Is she even credentialed? The yoga studio and Luise Hay books make it sound like she's self-identified therapist.

I'd say thank her and leave and find someone else that takes the CBT approach.

Haven't we been here before? I was surprised when you failed to follow through on this last time this came up.

Fire her if you don't trust her advice. There are lots of therapists out there and they aren't all good.

yeah, we've been here before, I just didn't pull the trigger because I doubt myself... I feel like my normal human feelings are like, alien or something. probably because my parents were both pathological liars united in twisting the truth from me so they could be douchebags. (ahem!)

anyway, this lady has even stolen my metaphors and passed them off as her own! months ago I told her learning to think differently was like trying to learn how to breath in a new way. two weeks ago she was like, "here's a way to think about it that might be helpful..." and she proceeds to lay on me this shit that I told her months ago. it's even in my journal.

funny you say not credentialed, second session she angrily said that a client asked her where she got her degree from, and made me wonder if she was a fraud for being so insecure about it. i've seen that question on countless "guide to therapy" websites, so it seems pretty routine.

man, there's just something about this that stinks to high heaven. i need to go with my gut here. thanks for hearing me out about this... every time I've felt like this I was right about it.

i don't wanna get too real here, but damn, you're stuck in Jersey? my sincere sympathies

Pretty sure you can do lic,ense search on the state medical board site, but either way, it's time to move on.

I checked and she's on there. I think I found the solution: I should talk to her about my concerns instead of piling them up into balls of anger and resentment and then just peacing out.

I'm probably going to leave anyway in light of the hokey new age crap, etc., but I might as well learn how to do this.

i think you should leave before you pay her any more $$ but that's up to you.