Depression and what it's really like

oh at some point there was a citalopram to escitalopram (celexa to lexapro) switch; same active molecule so nbd.

do psychiatrists ever have evening hours? is that a thing?

I don't really want to have to take time off work for this

Yes! My standing appointment is at 5:30 but I know that she sees patients later than that as she's offered me an 8 o'clock before.

Actually, I'm seeing her at 8 tomorrow night.

psych i'm trying (desperately) to see basically works like 14 hour days and does nothing else

yeesh

I need to get an appointment with a real therapist person who can help me. Please bump thread in two weeks if it's not already bumped to make sure I have figured that out.

crut, IME, psychiatrists and therapists commonly do evening hours.

mh, I'll bug you if you do the same for me. I've been "looking for"* a therapist for months. It's hard when you have so little info to go on and "fit" is such a consideration.

* - following up on recommendations; discovering they don't take my insurance
- staring at endless Psychology Today therapist-finder profiles
- getting bored and searching for the most fringey, wild-eyed shrinks on Psychology Today's profiles

BTW, the magazine's crappiness aside, Psychology Today's therapy-finder seems pretty good. Certainly better than any the other resources I've found online, most of them sparse and Yelp-like.

god this is so fucking stressful idk if it's even worth the effort

finding a doctor I mean

based on the business model of every office I've called so far, it seems that people who work day jobs must never have mental health problems, ever

i know, it sucks... but it is worth it

oh, trust me, they do

plus you know, it's just a lot easier to lie about it to the office, it's none of their business anyway

if your spouse is done with you and your children dont want you around and youve gotten all the help you can is there any other course of action than the obvious one?

sunny i don't know you or your life but i really truly feel that those two things you say are almost definitely not true, ESPECIALLY THE SECOND ONE, and that these thoughts are symptoms of an illness, not actual objective facts. you are sick and unfortunately there isn't an easy cure or even a one-size-fits-all prevention plan. but you're still so young! there are probably lots more ways of dealing with this you haven't found yet!

these are just platitudes, really, but you're so awesome and funny and smart, it sucks to read how much you're struggling <3

Justine OTM.

yeah I gotta co-sign justine.

i know it feels true, sunny...but that's how it gets you. you gotta fight against it however you can. when you can't fight anymore, like now, you gotta get someone to help pull you out of that hole. call a hotline, anything. don't let it pull you under.

gore!

do you know what the worst song to have in your head when you can't stop thinking about dying in extravagantly gruesome ways and you can't stop thinking about your loved ones and their cats dying in extravagantly gruesome ways is, it's "happy" by pharrell

i've been having these thoughts pretty much every day for 7-8 months, typically when i'm in cars or before i open doors, and it's not too bad, but today it's just been completely nonstop since i got out of work. and my brain keeps telling me that it's completely logical. not 'telling' me but just sort of stepping in the way every time i try to convince myself it's absurd. i don't want to die/i don't want to kill myself, but at a certain point when it gets like this the thought of [gore redacted] starts to seem comforting

I read an article about these compulsive thoughts, I think? In the last year or two, it was a guy who imagined killing his kids, I think, and it was just so awful for him. Did you see/do you remember that?

brains. you just can't trust those suckers. you can't even housetrain most of them. so, if your brain is telling you it's logical to die asap, you just look that sucker in the eye and say, I know your depraved ways and I'm not having any of it, you hear? you're the same one that told me to try snarfing a scotch bonnet pepper raw to impress my friends and look how that turned out! la la la la I can't hear you.

i didn't see that. maybe i did. i'm aware intrusive thoughts are fairly normal even with people who don't have depression, i've gone through periods in the past but not really like this. it's such a perfect mixture of morbid depression and death anxiety -- viewing death and being viewed in death in a way that is obviously death with no room for error (gore), the moment it's first seen, the confusion. it's really mostly anxiety, which is worse somehow.

Yeah, that's kind of it. I think the really short version of that guy's first steps out of the compulsive thoughts is something like, this doesn't mean you want to harm your children. In fact, it means that hurting your children is THE ABSOLUTE WORST thing you can imagine, and I can't remember what happened after that.

i've dealt with the intrusive thoughts thing, most recently when i was staying at my dad's 52nd floor apartment and couldn't sleep because i kept imagining what it would be like to fall from that height. it's the worst thing ever and i hope you are able to move past this zachlyon.

io: haha. i know! i wish i knew what happens after that. to clarify, the thoughts are never me doing things, it's always just things happening without explanation. or things having already happened without explanation. opening a door and finding a body in a certain way etc. or general car crash anxiety which i've never had before. it is essentially the worst things my mind can think of right now (they're never regarding people i don't give a shit about). i need a doctor and i need pills, as i've known for a long time, but i won't be able to see him for a couple weeks and my insurance is going to run dry in a few months anyway sooooo. but it probably won't be this bad tomorrow, and talking about it tends to help (instead of thinking about the horrible things, i think about talking about the horrible things, at least for a few days)

thanks treezy

brains are the fucking worst, but the pills make me slow at least

hey sunny, please check in so i know that you haven't butchered your family or anything. that would be a disappointing turn of events

That's a really fucking stupid thing to say.

I just restarted Zoloft after two years off. Last week when I was being treated for diverticulitis I seriously considered eating half a bottle of Oxycodone. I really need a therapist.

I think diverticulitis is enough of an excuse for bad feelings!

yeesh. obviously i'm speaking out of camaraderie here

It just seemed really insensitive and idk it just rubbed me the wrong way.

Ugh. Life just fucking sucks, right?

always

I don't know that I'd go with "always", but 98% of the time. Happiness, though, is a bullshit lie that people make up when things always go their way.

Ease is a mite bit easier than happiness, but it requires some stretches of time when you aren't stressed out or buried under expectations, and those can be hard to come by.

I suppose that makes sense, sort of. Stress, pressure, expectations have been my entire life for the past 14 months thanks to this ridiculous work project that is all-consuming. Add that in to having absolutely no social life and no friends, well, it's easy to believe that happiness is absolute bullshit.

I hope you're clocking crazy dollars, so someday you'll have your pile of fuck-you cash.

Riiight. I'm an architect, so, basically no. I mean, I have my wife and son and I'm ever thankful for them, but I'm tired of not having any other outlet. It would be nice to have a friend to hang out with when my wife and son are visiting relatives or have other plans, instead of sitting home along all the time. But, whatever, I'm apparently a huge fucking freak or asshole or something since no one ever wants to hang out with me.

you just gotta say 'i'm an architect' with a different attitude

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101107204132/himym/images/thumb/2/25/Ted_mosby_architect_-_ted_flirts.png/500px-Ted_mosby_architect_-_ted_flirts.png

Ted Moseby: role model for nobody

Riiight. I'm an architect, so, basically no. I mean, I have my wife and son and I'm ever thankful for them, but I'm tired of not having any other outlet. It would be nice to have a friend to hang out with when my wife and son are visiting relatives or have other plans, instead of sitting home along all the time. But, whatever, I'm apparently a huge fucking freak or asshole or something since no one ever wants to hang out with me.

― an enormous bolus of flatulence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, March 17, 2014

i think i understand this. really hope you feel better jon.

Eh, doubt it. It just comes and goes in waves that are stronger. Sometimes I'm able to ignore the crushing depression, but I'm in a slow week after three insanely hellish weeks so its really hitting me hard now. It's been this way for years, don't see how it'll every change.

jfc I cannot shake this at all.

I'm in a slow week after three insanely hellish weeks so its really hitting me hard now.

I have felt this a lot - I think of it like an emotional hangover, you have exerted so much energy and adrenaline into fulfilling your professional obligations with the premise that "it will be over soon and things will be better" and then when the period of frenetic exertion is over, of course, things aren't magically better -- you are just left with yourself without all that work to distract you so you contemplate what's wrong with your life even more because that energy has to go somewhere ... maybe that's not what you're feeling at all

No, actually I think that pretty much nails it, for the most part. I'm just surprised that I can't shake this at all.

Half of my income comes from income tax preparation, so I am in the "insanely hellish weeks" portion of this right now

idk if you've tried this and god knows this is advice that's been given before i'm sure but when i'm feeling blue i like to go out at the crack of dawn for a solid 90 minute hike or 45 minute run, for me at least it gets things moving again and the hellos and smiles i get from folks (bc everyone at that time is in a good mood for some reason) tend to brighten me up a bit.