Depression and what it's really like

it can be PAGERS if u feelin nostalgic

RAGE, P.S.

As in, the postscript to anger is resolution and contentment.

heyo!

this is probably a ridiculous question, but why do people like each other? like, why would a person like or accept another person? what makes somebody a "valid" human being?

i cannot fathom a single reason why i belong to the human race. as in, why i'm acceptable enough to even be acknowledged in someone's mind. it's mystifying. i feel like i'm slipping on thin ice when it comes to being shunned by humanity, and I have zero idea why or how somebody could accept me being a person. or even like me! anyone else ever feel this way?

spectrum, i think i have felt that way, but i guess i would ask you: why do you frame the question in such a way that it's only about why people might like or accept you?

if the question is, "why do people like (or accept) each other?" shouldn't that question then be turned into, (sub-question # 1) "why do i like others" just as much as (sub-question # 2) "why do (or would) others like me"? the first sub-question seems at least to be an easier place to begin thinking about this, and may have some bearing on how one thinks about the second.

yes, sub-question 1 is what i've gotten to. honestly, though, I have no clue why I would even like someone else!! it makes utterly no sense to me. i've never gotten around to liking others because I never thought I'd ever be considered a valid person to anyone. it's like a loop that keeps running over and over again.

my idea of why people would like me goes like ... they can use me however they want for whatever they want whenever they want and i have to let them. that's really all i know. personally i have zero interest in being like that to others, and since i don't know anything else, i'm at a loss. i guess this is a little beyond just depression.

"valid" doesn't make any sense as a modifier of "person."

so you don't have to do anything special to be considered a person? cuz that's what i think. my natural state is somehow critically deficient to be deemed worthy of observing as "existing". some real basic shit like that.

do people actually care about each other? that's the kinda crap i have no clue about!!!

this line of thinking to me has always been short circuited by the thought that nickleback has no qualms about being liked.
and if nickleback can help alleviate the need to justify ones own worth, then they also have proven their value

"how you remind me" ain't so bad

c'mon guys, isn't this thread depressing enough

so you don't have to do anything special to be considered a person?

imo you have to have been born? like a fetus isn't a person to me, though i guess this remains philosophically controversial.

i'm reading this book about parents who have kids who are radically different from them, often because of conditions that are usually understood as illnesses. i just began the chapter on disability, and the author, who's a lecturer in psychiatry, describes kids with severe multiple disabilities as "inexorably human" even though they may never speak, feed themselves, express emotion in a way that is legible to their parents, etc.

i'm really sorry you had experiences that made you feel like your value as a person was transactional, it sounds like at a pretty young age and by people who should have been taking care of you. but you're valuable even if nobody likes you! i like and dislike a lot of people; it never occurred to me that i was in a position to render them valid or invalid. i'm not!

i agree man; you shouldn't feel like you're not valid or unworthy of someone else's time. frankly, it's just too much work to do that with every relationship! we all have those thoughts with friends and loved ones, but ultimately everybody is clawing away at time until we finally die, with the hope that until it's finally over things might be not quite so torturous

the man who wrote the book i'm reading, andrew solomon, also wrote a book about depression, which he suffers from: the noonday demon. i haven't read that one, but he seems great. if you haven't already read it, maybe it would be worth checking out? (sorry if this is a presumptuous post!)

i'm really sorry you had experiences that made you feel like your value as a person was transactional, it sounds like at a pretty young age and by people who should have been taking care of you. but you're valuable even if nobody likes you! i like and dislike a lot of people; it never occurred to me that i was in a position to render them valid or invalid. i'm not!

this x 1000!

my parents were basically sociopaths, so i didn't have a great start i guess. my family, including my brothers and relatives, still think they can treat me like a piece of garbage... and guilt me and manipulate me into going along with it! like it's the natural order of things. there are real people who treat me like how I'm talking here, and they're my family... and i still let them do it! my parents invented memories for me when i was a kid to explain why i was so fucked up, and still maintain this constructed reality where I'm some inhuman monster... but they were just lying to me. they're the ones who are completely sick. jesus christ.

I keep forgetting this, it's like it all melts into this fabric of reality that's actually just fucked up. and i blame myself for it all, like there is something fundamentally wrong with me. ugh. thanks for the good words all, i guess this proves that i'm wrong.

are you in a position where you can cut your family off? maybe you should consider it? it doesn't have to be forever if it seems like a scary thing to do.

not "should," but "could," rather.

i'm in the position, i have a career so it's not like i need 'em anymore. i think i might have to cut them off, not only for myself, but for other people who i bring into my life.

i dated a girl for three years and she and my mom got really close, like weird secret relationship close. near the end of my relationship my girlfriend said she was afraid my mom was giving her an eating disorder. cue a few years later and she dropped out of her ph.d. program and entered a mental hospital for, you guessed it, an eating disorder!

my mom destroys people. i almost think she takes pleasure in it. my dad will just scam you or threaten you with a baseball bat (or some cartoonishly violent/fucked up thing) if he doesn't get what he wants out of you. the rest of my family just treats me like i'm a festering pile of trash, like they can somehow make all the fucked up family shit go away by putting it on me. i don't need that anymore.

If all they do is hurt you, and you don't need them for anything, the path seems clear.

spectrum, i feel you on this stuff. it's been totally necessary for me to cut off interaction with my family, and now i'm trying to sort of program myself to care about people. feel like there are a lot of beliefs about yourself and others that you don't have if you come from this kind of situation. it's like you have to do a firmware update except it takes a lot of active work and time for it to catch on. but you definitely have to cut yourself off from the parasites first.

one interesting side effect i've noticed is you tend to notice all the social bullshit people "do" all the time. that can be good or bad depending on what you do with it. feel like focusing on the basic needs and feelings that were taken advantage of when you were forming an identity, the stuff under all the warping, can lead to a sense of empathy with yourself and others and can serve as an anchor as you make your way forward.

for me the difficult part is defining my actions: what to write on birthday cards, how to invite someone to do something with me, how to express affection without having neediness attached, that sort of stuff. but more than that, occupying a positive space in a relationship, figuring out social tools to contribute in a way that i want to based on awareness.

thanks man, it's good to know i'm not the only person who has to do this shit. it's been hard cutting them off because my parents are intelligent people, particularly my mom. she got into college when she was 14, she's definitely top of the tops in the IQ department. and she uses her intelligence to manipulate and hurt people. there's a precision and effectiveness to it where it's like she knows what she's doing. yet feels no guilt or remorse about it.

whenever I tried to break away she used my deepest memories and fears to drag me back in, plus all the damned pretexting she did to me growing up to control me. she designed me to use at her own pleasure. my mind, my identity, all constructed for her use. WTF!!!!

all that counts is that i'm not like them. if we care about this, then we can overcome it, because that's what makes us different.

xp yes, that's the kind-of shit i struggle with, too. like keeping a relationship alive in your mind, with proper boundaries and as a two-way street. the neediness is some of the worst of it, that's what i'm on now... finding that healthy balance between self and other. it's tough.

sorry if i'm blathering on about my own personal shit in detail, this is all new to me and it's just forming now and i have this impulse to just say something about it. :S

i think you should try to be careful about what you share with the internet, but i do wish you the best of luck recovering from the emotional trauma of your childhood.
maybe a support group irl would be useful?

Or maybe 77 is the better place for these discussions... I definitely feel for everyone here and see how sharing this stuff, talking it out, is super useful, but at the same time I am kind of nervous that someone is going to regret something

you're right la lechera, i definitely overshare way too much, and that's gotten me into trouble before. a support group's probably a better idea than letting it all out on a public forum. :{

i didn't say you overshared. i am saying that you could benefit from sharing with people who have had similar experiences and that might be more valuable to you than asking "has anyone ever felt like this" to such fundamental questions of existence here on this feeble little thread. if you're feeling that estranged from humanity -- it's a little over our heads, yknow?

not that people don't have valuable advice, of course, but considering the weight of what you're talking about i think taking it to a more formal therapeutic environment might be a good idea.

yeah, this is pretty heavy stuff, it's been hard to see that because all this crap lives below awareness... that's why i come here thinking it's just depression. think i'll have to take it more seriously from here on out.

this is probably a ridiculous question, but why do people like each other? like, why would a person like or accept another person? what makes somebody a "valid" human being?

i cannot fathom a single reason why i belong to the human race. as in, why i'm acceptable enough to even be acknowledged in someone's mind. it's mystifying. i feel like i'm slipping on thin ice when it comes to being shunned by humanity, and I have zero idea why or how somebody could accept me being a person. or even like me! anyone else ever feel this way?

you're not the only person to have felt this or asked themselves these questions. i don't have any answers to them either, but i guess the "answers" to these questions can't be communicated via simple words, if they exist. i suspect that these feelings are part of the deep end of depression, but the questions and the feelings seem real and reasonable enough - sometimes, maybe. La Lech is right in saying it's not likely that anybody here can help you resolve these questions - even well-meaning people have a habit of resorting to pat answers or extrapolating from their own experience but like i said, these aren't questions to be answered like a quiz?

but i wanted to say you're not alone out there, i've felt - am feeling - the same level of alienation from my species, from life. i hope it helps to know that you're not alone. i hope you get proper help to resolve these feelings in a way that's meaningful and liveable for you.

oh and just maybe it's related to that feeling when you repeat a word too much or stare at something for too long and it loses its signification for a moment - you stare too long at yourself and the same thing might happen

<3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation

Noodle otfm about the semantic satiation effect of depression, which too often turns our gaze inward.

that's a good point, maybe obsessing about it all is making it lose meaning. these are things you experience, I guess you can't crack 'em like a complex problem.

collardio gelatinous otm way upthread

whatever reason it is that makes you accept others = the reason why you are an acceptable person

give yourself the benefit of the doubt you give others

busyness seems like another kind of escapism.

― Treeship, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 1:23 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

from?

― markers, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 1:23 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dealing with the things that are really important to you. being satisfied with your life as it is.

― Treeship, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 1:24 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know i'm a little behind on this, but i firmly find this otm

i overschedule myself so i don't have time to listen to the demon dogs

you could also look at it as: not being busy creates the demon dogs

like a level of sustainable busyness is what keeps the seratonin flowing? idk

As I mentioned, I've lately been using busyness to avoid thinking about the state of my life. Since last week, I got pretty sick, had a terrible, sleepless night where I sank pretty low, missed some work, had a nice long talk with a good friend, and over the last few days have slowly started to feel ok about the general state of things. There's a noticeable difference between how busyness and busyness as escapism feel to me; the former is like driving a car, and the latter like riding a roller coaster. Maybe the word busyness is throwing people off, because there's nothing wrong with being busy. It's good in a lot of ways. What I'm doing is out-and-out procrastination - doing something else instead of the thing I want to/should be doing. But instead of lying-in-bed procrastination (which I also do), it's spending-an-evening-with-friends procrastination.

the former is like driving a car, and the latter like riding a roller coaster

haha i love it

Yeah, I'm not really getting the busyness debate in this thread. Obviously having too much time on your hands is bad & the opposite is also bad.

I get annoyed because I tend toward sloth, and everyone KNOWS that's messed up. But with super-busy people it's like "oh wow, that person is such a great, productive member of society" but I am pretty damn skeptical about the mental health of people who can't spend ANY time alone, and I have known quite a few.

Different people have different levels of extroversion and stress thresholds, too. I know I burn out very easily & need a lot of alone time and leisure time.

i mean 'busyness' as such becomes a problem for me because if i'm *not* busy, i come home and drink. and over time that has repercussions.

so instead of dealing with the problem under the problem--'hey, what am i avoiding by drinking or staying out of the house all the time?'--i just go crazy with Shit To Do, which winds up burning me out and leading to a period of Coming Home and Drinking Anyway.

so there's really no winning here for me, i guess.

really hearing you on the busyness as escapism thing, vinnie.

my life needs more busyness

I think I need to start seeing a shrink again.

imagine if everyone could just go once a week for free