Depression and what it's really like

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.

I like the idea of talking about your concerns as practice. I also like the idea of talking about the fact that you are talking about your concerns as practice. I mostly like the idea of ending up with a therapist that shares more of your ideas about the world.

What she is into could be helpful to some clients; not me, and not you.

I eventually ended up with a therapist that lived in the real world, and understood me enough to know what I would respond to positively. It took years and many tries. I should be seeing her to this day. If I called her up, she help me understand why I stopped therapy and why it was good that I was starting back up. The guilt or shame of ending the relationship incorrectly would be addressed as part of a pattern that I would like to change.

Someone close enough to us to want the same things for us that they want for themselves, and smart enough to anticipate and work with our circular thinking. It's not a job I envy.

edit, corrections --- If I called her up now, she would help me understand why I stopped therapy.

ending up with a therapist that shares more of your ideas about the world, (not the sick ones, the other ideas that are unrelated)

yeah, a therapist who lives in lala land beliefs-wise is probably about as bright a red flag as it gets. i can't imagine it wouldn't seep into all aspects of the therepeutic relaitonship. i'm going to bounce her, i'm utterly miserable thinking about going back there today.

and i was right, she totally "flirts" with me, like wearing provacative clothing and showing off her body. now that my head's a little clearer i'm realizing that it's fucking manipulative. you don't play with fire like that when you're a therapist. this lady's a nut.

she was sorta helpful in the beginning, but i have no idea how much of that was me. i can make a meal out of anything, so to speak ... give me a single word and i can write a dozen stories around it. i feel a little bit better now thinking about getting rid of her, so this is definitely the right ieda.

totally understand getting rid of her as a therapist if you disagree with her methods, i just have a strange feeling that you're going a little ott demonizing this person
she may flirt with you, but referring to her clothing isn't really showing that this is necessarily true
why not just chill about how bad she is and move on?

maybe i am demonizing her, i have no idea. i only brought up the clothing because she brings this sexual element to therapy, like wearing skimpy dresses and playing with her bra, stroking her body, showing herself off and things like that; this is on top of a lot of other unprofessional things. it bugs me out. i just have a lot of issues with being manipulated, i guess. i feel like giving up tbh, i have no idea wtf is going on anymore.

is it cool for a therapist to do stuff like that? if it were a dude therapist, would you like it if he was stroking his junk in the session with you?

Of course it bugs you out if she is actually doing those things are you describe them. Of course. I'm just saying that from my perspective, as a woman who wears clothes and occasionally has to adjust her bra, it's easy for people to get the wrong idea and then attribute some sort of intention to it that isn't actually there. What you said before was that she was "wearing provocative clothing" and honestly, that could have nothing to do with you. I was just pointing out that if you have decided to move on, there's no reason to go into any more detail about her clothing.

You never said anything about "stroking her junk" --that's clearly outlandishly unprofessional. You said she was wearing "provocative clothing", which is quite different imo.

yikes -- this are you describe them should have said "as you are describing them"

maybe there isn't a reason to focus on it beyond it belonging to a whole bag of unprofessional traits. there are far more important reasons not to go there anymore, i'm just angry that i've gone so long with a bad therapist. i hate that i'm so easily controlled and that i don't take care of myself, and people make big bucks and get their rocks off on it. basically i just want vengeance from all the times i've been wronged in my life, partic my family, but it's a hopeless quest. there's nothing i can do about it except move on.

Yes, definitely move on, do not dwell on it. Using her clothing or your perceptions of her behavior (I'm assuming she didn't actually try to sit on your face or sthg) is not a good way to amplify her professional shortcomings, which are ample, as you've described them.

drop the hot potato and bounce

otm
time to bizounce

yeah, i'm just trying to find evidence to justify my feelings, as if my feelings aren't legitimate in the first place. that's what i'm doing here. if i went with my feelings in the first place, i would've left after month 2 w/ no reference to clothing.

there's a whole load of other crap going on. creepy, obnoxious living situation, taking on a management role at work, being stuck in the suburbs, dropping my therapist, having no one in my life, recovering from depression and child abuse. it's so much friggin stuff!! i feel like my brain is going to explode.

there are many good therapists out there spectrum, you will have success in the future. i hope you tell her you are dropping her today and don't drag this out any longer.

And though it's kind of a cliche, shitty experiences like this inform and improve your future decisions. From what you've said in this thread, you're already getting better at recognizing when a situation is bad.

that's true, I am making progress in that regard. I'm actually making a lot of progress, but things are friggin crazy right now. I have to find a new apartment soon because my landlord is a fucking creepy weirdo (yet another case of not trusting my gut), new therapist, new everything. feels like I can't just chill out because there's something "wrong" with most parts of my life now. but it's always been like that, so at least things are a little different this time...

man, recovering from being abused is hard as fuck. the world is so difficult and unforgiving... so many people willing to exploit you, too few people who give a shit. no chances to make a mistake or take a break because everything falls apart and there's no floor or net to catch you.

you guys are pretty cool, though, and thanks for helping me out here.

Spectrum, you definitely have a big streak of self-pity that you indulge yourself in. If you want to fire your therapist because you think she is a bad fit for you, then fire her. The longer you proclaim how awful the situation is, while doing nothing to change it, the more you forfeit any sympathy that others might have for your plight.

Just make a decision and act on it. Yes, that can be hard, much harder than dithering and whining, but when something is necessary then how hard it is becomes irrelevant. Being an adult means stepping up and doing hard things when they are the right thing to do. You have to start some time. Such as now, for instance.

And don't beat yourself up for not doing it sooner. You seem to be making progress with not dwelling on the past, and this is another area where that applies.

The thing is, Aimless, is that I'm not looking for sympathy. The problem I have is I have no idea whether or not my feelings are right or even real, so I constantly need input from others to check myself against. It's way worse than trying to get pity points from people. I need a reality check. That's the childhood abuse crap I'm talking about, not knowing what's real or fake due to nearly two decades of being brainwashed.

The positive side is that I am getting more confident in my feelings, it's just that all this stress is totally shorting me out. I'll be OK, I just need to chill out and assess things from this new position I'm in.

wow, even recognizing that in itself is progress. ok..ok... things are going to be alright.

a few days ago i got back from a wonderful vacation at the beach. we got engaged and andy's whole, extended family was there. on the way home, halfway between here and there in VA, his elderly father got really sick and had to go into the emergency room. hes still there, having been diagnosed with sepsis and "crashing" a lot. everyone seems pretty sure that he will die at any time. andy is there with him, i am home. for several days now i've just been sitting around turning our house into a hovel, eating badly, doing no work, goofing around on the internet and being stressed. sleeping for a couple hours in a recliner at night. last night i wrote in my diary "tomorrow: goals or death"; today i set no goals nor did i make progress on any previously set goals. very depressed, feel powerless, weird to be alone in my house, hard to try to support andy from here, hard to experience that kind of sorrow and fear second hand from so far away, i want andy to come home but if he comes home it means his father died. i really need to get my shit together so that when he does come home i can support him and not just be a basketcase.

also, it occurred to me today that it is not really normal to intentionally view oneself in the most horrible light possible. other people try to make themselves feel better about things - it's naturally where their minds go. making yourself walk through the fire all the time produces no positive result