Depression and what it's really like

sorry, that was sorta tongue-in-cheek, i just find that kinda stuff funny and absurd. sentiment's the same though, 4th of July and all... family friend BBQ fun day with fireworks, and i'm sittin here gettin stoned and chain smoking. guess it could be worse.

tuff love from in_orbit is OTM -- don't let the beer commercials fool you. those ppl are actors, acting. they undoubtedly have plenty of misery in their lives.

xpost uhhh.. getting stoned rules.

ugh flipflops

haven't been 'depressed' outright, my anxiety was out of control for a while but seems to be stable for the last few months. But I'm having a hard time with self-image, and constantly feel like when I'm discussing anything with anybody that I'm automatically wrong and should just shut up (even when I'm clearly not). As well, I've found it hard to date because I'm too unhappy with myself atm to have the confidence necessary to strike up an earnest conversation.

really have just decided to keep being social and hanging with friends and new people, but to wait to date again until I've gotten grounded again like I was back in 2010.

gonna go to a 4th of July party today and kick back brews with good peeps.

and constantly feel like when I'm discussing anything with anybody that I'm automatically wrong and should just shut up (even when I'm clearly not).

You know this anyway, but this is a fairly good sign of you being right, or at least, you're not assuming you're right about everything which wd being its own problems

yeah. and I did have one of those phases in my early 20s (I mean, I'm sure we all do at some point).

I think part of it also has come with me getting older and feeling like I owe it to the world to be responsible and have 'opinions' on things. Where sometimes, it's ok not to have one if you don't know enough about the subject. and it's always ok to 'change' it when presented with new evidence.

u otm tho

Somewhere on this thread is the phrase "a self-pitying streak a mile wide", which I have been dwelling on lately, because yes, I do have one. I feel like as a kid I learned that feeling sorry for me was the one positive response I could effectively trigger in other people, and now it's a habit I can't shake off.

I've wallowed in problems for years and every minor setback is a disaster and prompts floods of tears and complete learned helplessness. I ruined my last relationship, according to my ex, because I was "always so negative" and not working hard enough to overcome my problems (sure, him meeting some young blonde PhD-studying fitness chick instead of my fat university-drop-out arse seems like a trigger too but apparently that was a mere sideshow). I've let opportunities at work pass me by without knowing why, and I'm beginning to wonder if I'm self-sabotaging because some stupid subconscious part of me believes there are more pats in the head in life down the route of being a go-nowhere fuckup.

Which is obviously not true! I don't even know anyone to feel sorry for me any more because my incorrigible whining nature has long since driven everyone away and is obviously not a great magnet for new friends. Plus I know I've found other people in the past draining because whatever good or bad things happened they only ever wanted to talk about the same ancient sticking point, and I know I don't find other people's feelings enormously interesting, so why do I sit here like a toddler refusing to go on a nice day out because other people aren't listening to mine?

I dunno. Sorry if this doesn't seem like the right thread. It seemed more on-topic when I started. But, how can I get over being self-pitying? How can I stop feeling left out that other people are not feeling sorry for me, forget about how wronged I feel over whatever minor details, and get on with life?

"learned helplessness" is a Martin Seligman phrase, and for all my initial hostility i can't help but feel he talks a lot of sound, scientific sense. maybe check out one of his books on Learned Optimisim? i'm pretty convinced now that thinking style and the way we respond to setbacks and difficulties is a) ingrained from childhood, b) responsible for a lot of depression and c) capable of being relearned.

i'm on the waiting list for cognitive behavioural therapy to address these issues - i don't see it as a panacea and i'm sure it will be hard work but i know other people on this thread and this board have had positive experiences with it. your intuition that the way you think about setbacks doesn't help you get over them is true, i think, but that's no cause for self-recrimination. recognizing the possibility of a different way of thinking seems like the first step. i see in myself over the last few weeks a difference in the way i talk to myself and the way i think about, um, LYFE that if i can sustain it is gonna make me fuck myself over a lot less often, i hope. it's not like we can make shit not happen, but i believe we can cultivate a better response to the happening of shit.

"Optimisim" is not really a thing, obv

I should reread that Seligman book (perhaps I mean "finish reading", because I don't think I did), because I did like and relate to the early chapters, and not just have a strop about the chapter where he goes "according to our personality test the applicants who lied most about everything being great made the most profitable insurance salesmen, so I told the managing directors that only optimists should ever have a job"

ahem. there I go refusing to get out of my rut again.

anyway, yeah. I have my first session with a new CBT practitioner soon and am trying to get some issues prioritised in my head before that. I think the service is really only intended as a 5-session emergency response to major depressive breakdowns and not for the working out of longer term issues but hopefully it can be a starting point to work out what I actually need.

is there any particular approach you've found useful to changing the way you think/describe situations to yourself/etc over the past few weeks? glad you've been making some progress, hope it continues to work out for you

i guess i've focused more on "what are the practical problems i can address?" than worrying about the underlying shit? like when i catch myself giving it "oh poor me i am gonna be lonely forever" i've tried to stop thinking that pretty quick and recognize it as some shit i tell myself so i can do something destructive.

as i understand it the point of CBT is precisely not to address what might be underlying, but to look at the surface mechanics because they can be worked on. i have a problem with that too, and a problem with Seligman every time he talks about stock portfolios, but yeah i was using it to avoid, i think. i can take those ideas that seem proven to work and try to make myself less self-defeating without giving up things i believe. and maybe i can go after the underlying stuff once i've learned to do that without feeling crushed by existential despair? but maybe i won't want to.

there's a difference between shallow acceptance of the status quo and welcoming acceptance of the craziness that is life, i hope. i tried to do the latter for years but my own sourness got in the way.

i dunno, every effort to get better feels glib, sometimes. but focusing the problem on my attitude feels like a plan. i can't stop society being a mess and i can't make other people be different, but i think i can learn to not get so worked up about the dumb shit i can't change - if i can learn to do that, i'll worry about what happens next afterwards

Recognise a lot of what you describe aps.

Youse two are two of my faves. Hopefully kicking the ass out of this wont turn yis into happygolucky bores but if it does i guess i could live with the tradeoff. I guess.

thx dude. it's taken a long time to recognize some differences between wallowing in my own problems/being inescapably stuck in them/being responsible for everything that ever happens to me and all the rest. secretly i know there's a slice of me that derives much comfort from being effed right up.

I’d been wondering about how this thread had kept on going for so long.

Then I looked at the original post – good grief, who the hell IS this? – then realised with some shock that it was me who started this thread.

The person I was in 2001 is pretty scary to look at now, it has to be said.

How did I escape that person, move beyond these barriers? It’s documented well enough, you know what happened.

Some counselling did help initially, but ultimately it was down to the “safety valve” in me which said DON’T SHUT DOWN, TOO MUCH STILL TO DO. So you keep on going. Can’t describe or delineate it; it was just there.

It was like the actual “me” had been put in a storage box on a shelf and a messed-up ghost was wandering about the place in my absence for maybe five years after this. And then, when “I” was ready to live again, I came back down to earth.

So I certainly don’t feel like I did a dozen years ago. Nowhere near it. I can’t offer advice to anybody else. Things just happened or the chance for things to happen arose and I took advantage of those chances because the alternative was unthinkable.

And as it turned out the whole thing had just been a prelude to the life I live now. And, as I say, I couldn’t be further away from how I was, and how I felt, in 2001. It’s maybe not an example for anyone else – isn’t it hugely irritating when someone says to you: “well, if it worked for ME, then…”? – but it’s just how I dealt with it and moved beyond the inertia, the ideations and the self-loathing.

OK, that’s all I have to say, resume business now.

12 years is a long time; spiritualized are still the same gratifyingly easy target, mind

<3 dmac and NV. Noodle I think we have the same way of thinking about many things (also I always enjoy your posts) so I wish you luck and look forward to reading about your adventures in getting better.

Glad you're doing better now, MC. I would like to find the "too much still to do" safety valve (I guess it has come on to some extent when needed as I'm still here and not going anywhere) but I've been lost and saying "but I can't do stuff, any stuff" for so long that I can't even think what might be out there to be done, by me, stupid messed-up lazy not-stuff-doing me.

But enough about me! I need a plan, I don't know what the plan is but that it involves going "enough about me" is near-certain

i said it somewhere else but the thing is, in an odd way, you might have to spend some more time thinking about you - just differently - in order to reach the "enough about me" stage. i have definitely spent too much time cossetting the wrong personality traits at the expense of ignoring others.

After I realized my guilt at letting other people down overrode my depression inertia, I found a similar safety valve. When I feel down, it's really tough to do anything that would only benefit myself, but I can still make myself do things that involve other people. And that in turn helps keep me from dwelling on shit or feeling useless and can help me pull out of the depression.

That said, I may start therapy again after ending back in March. Don't know if anyone can relate to this, but things have going objectively great lately - lots of time spent with close friends, successes in my career and hobbies - yet I still feel empty. (And guilty about feeling that way, let's not forget that.) I enjoy things in the moment but once I'm back home, I feel lonely and useless. It's gotten to the point where I noticed I was overscheduling myself being out, almost like I was afraid to be home. Cognitively, I recognize that I'm loved and that I provide value to the world, but I just ain't feelin it. It's a tough nut to crack, and talking to friends hasn't seemed to help, so back to the therapist I go.

Don't know if anyone can relate to this, but things have going objectively great lately - lots of time spent with close friends, successes in my career and hobbies - yet I still feel empty. (And guilty about feeling that way, let's not forget that.) I enjoy things in the moment but once I'm back home, I feel lonely and useless. It's gotten to the point where I noticed I was overscheduling myself being out, almost like I was afraid to be home

Yeah, this has kinda been my story for the past year or so. On the plus side, I've been productive, and I can convince myself that I have friends that care about me, and I have a financial cushion, but yeah, then there's the rest.

Someone once told me that the key to being happier is to have an "external outlook and an internal locus of control" - and that's kinda what I try to force myself to do when things feel super bleak

control of what?

"external outlook and an internal locus of control"

Haha not sure I understand either half of this!

External outlook - avoid corrosive narcissism

Internal locus of control - mindfulness of toxic thought patterns to avoid

I think

Internal locus of control refers to a belief that your own actions are a factor in events that affect you iirc

that would seem less productive if you already believe that all your decisions are terrible due to depression

There are different kinds of depression. Some people feel powerless before a vast, cruel, and absurd universe and others feel awful about all the opportunities they could have seized and didn't and hate themselves for being the architects of their own misery. I have felt both ways at different times. More the latter though.

re: seizing opportunities, i wonder how much American culture aggravates the impact of depression for us USers. we're morally obligated to make something grand of our lives, usually involving $$$ or status or great careers, or having expensive well-developed hobbies, global adventures in self-discovery, doing marathons and mud runs, etc., and if we don't then we suck because of, well ... culture.

like, i've done OK with my life, pretty damn well in fact considering where I started out, but damn if I don't feel like a loser because I'm not out there on the edge just LIVIN IT UP. don't have much to brag about TBH, no mystical hikes through Southeast Asia, no glittering big city career, no obsessive foodie culinary expertise. most of the work I've done is just trying to survive.

but it never feels like there's ever enough because there's this push to do MORE. MORE. MORE. i feel like there's this cultural restlessness that causes a really bad friction with depression that just makes everything worse.

and side note about personal responsibility here, I see myself as an architect of my own misery, too. it's like being depressed gets even worse with the above, because if we aren't living up to the standards of society, then it's our own personal moral failing. there's no account for the multitude of factors going into a person's condition in life: get over it or be ground up and have your innards decorate the factory floor.

for me it creates this incredible pressure to get better as fast as possible no matter the cost, because all of this is my own fault completely severed from the reality of life. and as hard as I work, it's still really friggin' difficult. but there's no account for that ... produce or die.

woah ... uhhh, by what I mean, I feel you Treeship. yeah, I'm feeling pretty intense now.

Some people feel powerless before a vast, cruel, and absurd universe and others feel awful about all the opportunities they could have seized and didn't and hate themselves for being the architects of their own misery.

One of the questions on the self-esteem questionnaire I had to fill out for my old therapist was something like "I am a lucky person" (strongly agree/agree/somewhat agree/etc), and I never knew what to tick for that one. I mean I do feel like I got a bad hand of cards mentally and looks-wise but I also know I got some good opportunities handed to me and I fucked them all up, so...

Not going out much right now but definitely relate to this: I enjoy things in the moment but once I'm back home, I feel lonely and useless. Case in point: yesterday, had fun times with nice people, crashed hard when I got home, partly because it's a reminder that you do actually have feelings apart from the usual big grey wall of sadness-to-nothingness, and partly because my brain picks through every dumb thing I said or every joke that fell flat for the rest of the day. (Hell, I get flashbacks to dumb things I said or didn't say from years ago, why not add some new ones to the pile?)

Also, these people were my ex's friends and I was there with my ex and palling around and it felt like the old days, but it isn't the old days, and I did not do v. well on my good intentions of not wanting anyone to feel sorry for me, since I was annoyed that nobody even asked if I was doing OK after the breakup, which they may now think involves exactly 0 bad feelings on my part since we put on a good show yesterday. Eh.

caved tonight and called my ex-girlfriend out of loneliness/desperation. she sounded good. was out with friends and having fun and couldn't talk. i am happy for her and wish her the best but... i am only human. i need to move out of the suburbs as fast as possible. this isn't a life for anyone.

also, just putting this out there but does anyone want to make a depression board on 77? i know that i for one would be less guarded over there. just a thought.

eh let's not get board politics into this. just deindex this thread from google?

That would be cool. I dont want to cause a stir.

But yeah i could use some empty reassurance if its not too much trouble. I feel low.

treeship, you seem cool. it's not your fault that the world is shit.

Thanks nhex. You seem cool too.

things turned out okay in the end w/r/t another opportunity, but i had a shitty job interview on wednesday with a guy who was just dripping with antagonism and arrogance. he belittled me in front of other people and i sucked it up and said "i understand. thank you." i still haven't recovered. i wish i'd had the guts to tell him what i really thought of his attitude.

i like to think of myself as some kinda fearless fount of righteousness but when push comes to shove i'm a total doormat.

That sucks gb. People who power trip at work - who take corporate hierarchies at face value, as a pretext to entitlement - are the worst kind of scum.

fuck that guy

Fuck everyone who needlessly makes life worse for people.

sorry you're feeling low, treeship. afaic, you're good people.

thanks contenderizer. i had a scotch and soda and i feel a bit better. my main issue is related to isolation due to my living situation and really, since that's a tangible thing that i will have fixed before the end of the year at the latest, i'm in pretty good shape.

yeah, i feel you. i'm similarly isolated, out of my habitual places and routines, and it kind of wears on me.

i'm really feeling this book "on depression" lately--the guy is head of the tufts mood disorders program, and he takes a really wide ranging view of depression (historically, socially) and the way its treated today and comes out with the most sensible thinking i think i've encountered on the use of pharmaceuticals to treat this stuff. as i think i've said before, my personal experience with a variety of SRIs showed them--for me--to be as much an anti-personality medication as an anti-depressant. i lost the lows, but i lost the highs too, and found myself in a sort of boring stasis where i wasn't especially interested in or excited about anything. to see the guy recognize this and talk about why it happens was really comforting. def recommend the book.

Treeship: Two things. (1) We seem to have similar problems; i.e., loneliness in the 'burbs, getting in touch with the ex-gf, feeling that your life isn't for anyone. (2) And more importantly, I'm sorry to hear. Have to say it: you're one of the nicest users on here and only one of few who've made me feel somewhat welcomed, even though this is only a unreal/virtual space.

As for me, I hope to remedy my situation by moving, as well.

The only thing is that my ex actually has responded and is showing an interest. But I know I shouldn't lead her on for reasons I won't get into here.

Anyway, in terms of depression, I'll just say I know it all too well. Has anyone ever seen this site?

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

an* (argh)

thanks crisomhexagon. relationships are kind of stupidly painful and difficult, to an extent which is almost funny, in my opinion. the fact that anyone puts themselves through all of that, and that i will most likely put myself through all of it again, is a sort of miracle of human resiliency.

re: seizing opportunities, i wonder how much American culture aggravates the impact of depression for us USers. we're morally obligated to make something grand of our lives, usually involving $$$ or status or great careers, or having expensive well-developed hobbies, global adventures in self-discovery, doing marathons and mud runs, etc., and if we don't then we suck because of, well ... culture.

like, i've done OK with my life, pretty damn well in fact considering where I started out, but damn if I don't feel like a loser because I'm not out there on the edge just LIVIN IT UP. don't have much to brag about TBH, no mystical hikes through Southeast Asia, no glittering big city career, no obsessive foodie culinary expertise. most of the work I've done is just trying to survive.

― Spectrum, Tuesday, July 9, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but it never feels like there's ever enough because there's this push to do MORE. MORE. MORE. i feel like there's this cultural restlessness that causes a really bad friction with depression that just makes everything worse.

― Spectrum, Tuesday, July 9, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

These posts ring true, very much so. And the crux IMO lies in the phrase "morally obligated to make something grand of our lives".

The tricky thing about this is that "making something grand of our lives" may simply be an extension of aspirations that are genuinely ours, and therefore worthy of being nurtured. So, for example, we may wish we had a successful creative career in a big city not simply because we'd have something to brag about, but because there's a part of us that, since childhood, has been drawn both to creative endeavors as well as to metropolises with intoxicating quotients of mystery and possibility. Depression doesn't seem to care about this distinction, because it can feed voraciously off both. And that's, well, the sad thing. Depression takes what may be perfectly wholesome, healthy aspirations, and uses them against us. No need to personify the thing either, so another way to put it is: depression is actually a version, but a hypertrophied, counterproductive version, of our moral selves. The reason it is so persistent, the reason we give the self-hating so much rope, is because it begins from a good place and is driven by a drive to do the right thing. In short, it's hard to argue with its arguments; indeed, it's exhausting to argue with its arguments.

I just think of a boy, nine years old, and his wide-eyed wonder at the world and its infinite marvels. Then I think of that same boy, ten years later, wanting badly to participate in that world and live life fully... but already terrified because of the dark places he has found himself in, again and again, through adolescence. I feel sad for that boy, truly sad, and wish him the best. Most of all, I wish I could talk to him and tell him a few things that have helped me, just in the past few years. I'm not sure those words would help him, but maybe the sense of solidarity would?

That boy was me, of course, by the way.