Depression and what it's really like

Wow man, my father was the exact same. Rarely violent but yelled a lot, and mellowed as he got older which he attributed to meditation. He passed away last year but in the last five years he's been as gentle a person as I have known. Unfortunately, my issues still linger, of course. I found that poring over the past with my therapist was helpful sometimes in a) pinpointing issues and b) helping to take the blame off myself, but otherwise can be a big rabbit hole where you're trying to find causes for current issues without actually doing anything to address those issues. I'm sure the benefit varies from person to person, but both my therapist and I have had to steer each other back on track when we get too much into my past.

I don't think I really had that dynamic per se but I remember thinking as a kid that I wished my family wasn't so completely normal and conflict-free and that I'd have a reason to feel anxious/depressed/sad if there was something wrong with my family. All families have communication and emotional problems. Mine certainly did, I just didn't get it because I was too close to see.

I always hope Im not that kind of dad

I think a big-ish thing for me about therapy this time round is acknowledging that my parents were kind and loving and definitely meant the best for me but it's still OK to say that I may have picked up some bad mental habits from our interactions without needing to blame or criticise anyone

(my parents were never shoutily angry, in fact they were kind of the opposite, displays of opinion were kind of frowned upon, and if someone asks "what do you think" you'll witness the whole family desperately trying not to express any opinion that can't be retracted immediately, for fear of appearing "pushy" and/or passive aggressive grumbling later. Despite this or maybe even kinda because of this I still have angry outbursts and still cry a lot more than "normal people", like maybe crying was my one way to get acquiescence without having to disagree with anyone, and maybe I never learnt how to express annoyance in a sensible way without bottling it up then snapping and slamming doors and at least getting a reaction)

Still not sure whether ~gazing into the past~ is particularly useful as a thing, but it's been nice to acknowledge the above bcz previously I was like, this doesn't make sense, why am I such a basketcase when everyone else who's had emotional problems for as long as I have appears to have had really fucked-up childhoods?

I'm really not sure that depression is really the primary source of my problems - it could be anxiety or ADHD or OCD or whatever and depression is just a secondary symptom.

I've felt like this a lot and diagnosed myself with a lot of things, esp since for the last several years my mood's been OKish on average but I've still had a lot of trouble getting things done, feeling like I'm going nowhere, etc - I go in real circles between "I am actually just ADD/aspie/paralytically socially phobic/[long list of personality disorders and learning disabilities here] and this explains everything" and "I am none of the above and just need to get my shit together and am making excuses to externalise the blame for my life so I can justify not making the effort"

I dunno, man? my therapist conspicuously did not agree with any of my hints at the long list and agreed emphatically when I suggested the latter but on the other hand I am still a big ol' socially unacceptable dork who dresses schlubbily and had to be regularly told that various things were Just Not Done right into my 20s and probably 30s that apparently everyone else just worked out on reaching puberty, so, let's not rule out the whole of the autism spectrum just yet, I guess I'm saying

(also I am in on a Friday night and typing verbose and overly personal messages in reply to myself on the public internet, so, yeah)

well, presumably if you had any of the problems on your list, you would have to do something about them -- though probably for everyone some "diagnoses" are more appealing than others, whether because of stigma or ease of treatment

silly question, but is there any connection between dehydration and depression? cuz of the nature of my job, I often go through an entire shift forgetting to drink any water and thus had been often dehydrated (just mildly) for the last month. this weekend I finally got off my ass and went grocery shopping and have been chugging water and PowerAde all weekend and have started feeling better, not just physically, but emotionally.

I'm sure it doesn't hurt, just curious....

dehydration is certainly bad for your mental state

it's one of many things that can stress your body, and when you're tired or stressed your muscles ache and your brain doesn't work optimally

yes

thx folx

woah, ok, I tried out a new therapist today and it was ... interesting. this guy is brilliant and top of his field, and within an hour he did an amazing takedown of my issues, like seriously good shit.

but then something else happened: we were getting along pretty well, and he shows me a blog he's working on because I was talking about being a writer. in the meantime he shows me some pictures of this sex book he's writing. he shows me pictures of a post-op female-male tranny naked, and some pictures of erect penises... and then he keeps them up on his computer screen and we keep talking la de da about blogs with these pictures of erect dicks right next to it. then a little while later he asks me if I liked girls.

wtf was that??? was *this* guy hitting on me? why do I keep meeting these weird ass therapists?

seriously I just ditched one bizarro therapist, and I find one that's even more bizarro! who's actually way better at the psychology part, but damn I did not expect to see a nude transexual person and a wide array of boners today. strange stories seem to find me for some reason, I really need to start writing about this shit.

you know what, I give up, I'm just going to go full bizarro myself. we're all lunatics, aren't we.

Wow, he should be reported and you should keep looking. I gotta think there's a good one out there who's not a wierdo.

the vibe i got from this guy is that he just doesn't give a fuck anymore. clearly. my life is one long string of things like this stuff. i was born into a Soft Cell song, and apparently that is my fate

please don't use the word "tranny"

yeah yeah yeah, you can see my addendum in my second post

seriously, is everyone like this? cuz this is seriously the only type of shit I've seen in my life! i have never not known a time in my life where freaky stuff like this doesn't happen. everyone's out of their minds.

1. Maybe go to a mental health professional who still gives a fuck?

2. Maybe when someone asks you not to use derogatory terms, respond more considerately than "yeah, yeah, yeah." In fact, a sincere apology to your readers would not be excessive. If you don't like it, try thinking of it as supporting the mental and emotional health of others like yourself who would like to not face aggression and wrongness in their daily lives.

thanks morality police, my head's spinning, cut me some slack. or in your own words, support the mental and emotional health of someone who's posting *right here* who just faced wrongness in his life. "officer, show me some mercy, I know I was wrong." "NO!" collapsible cop baton to the head.

that's exactly what I'm talking about here. I'm done trying to be a nice dude.

is everyone like this?

There's a latent potential for this sort of stuff in pretty much everyone. It stays latent in lots of people, and for those who both recognize its presence and its wrongness, there is a pretty strong wall of inhibition (in the better sense) between the potential and any possibility of acting on it.

spectrum, it sucks that your therapists have been so unprofessional.

more than sucks. i think that guy should lose his license. i think in orbit was wrong to zero in on your language at this particular instance. what you experienced would have traumatized me. i mean, therapy puts you in a very vulnerable position, it's the therapists job to make you feel safe and comfortable.

I hear that, Aimless. If I'm going to be perfectly honest, I've been there, too. I have my own freak-ass carnal side that I've let out before, though I sure as well wouldn't do something like what this guy did. and thanks treeship, this unprofessionalism is way...way...way more common than you might think. Maybe I keep seeing this shit because I'm tempting life to give me experience, and I'm sure as hell getting it!

For now I might ease up on my own moral crusade and experience the world as it really seems to be. I clearly have some good shit going on for me, and there is so much I can do to have fun and enjoy this screwed up life we're all living... I've just been keeping it at bay out of some utterly strict morality I've been keeping. I think it's time I start showing my real potential, I'm a clever, sharp motherfucker with above average intelligence and some sweet personality shit going on (and apparently looks, too, if these nutcases have any say in it), and it might be time to take something back from the world for myself. I just have to make sure not to go too far.

I imagine when I was a kid I made a deal with a demon. He asked me what I most wanted out of life. and I told him, "I want to experience everything there is to being human. I want to know what life is." And here I am.

though that might be a little dramatic, we all experience life whether we want to or not!!

I had a psychiatrist in charge of my case one time. His specialty was Power Dynamics. He'd regularly try to insult me about my eye contact or clothing, and I'd come back with complaints about the healthiness of the food in the cafeteria. Finally he asked if I'd ever heard of Small Penis Syndrome.

The next time I was meeting with his female Indian intern who was actually in charge of my case, I went into a long explanation of my recent impotence and physical damage to my penis and why this frustrated me.

She asked me why I was telling her all this, and all I could think of to say was "I don't know, I'm getting out soon and this has been bothering me."

dn't remember anyone mentioning the depression thread is a safe space to use slurs without criticism ?

mental health is never an excuse for that

yeah, says who? you?

so let me try and pin this down. it's not OK to thoughtlessly make a slur, then realize it and correct yourself, when you're under mental distress and said slur is currently only now being recognized as a slur...

and it IS ok to criticize and harangue someone in mental distress for thoughtlessly making a slur which is quickly self-corrected, adding additional stress and bad feelings to a person you're interacting with right now, in order to assert your own personal values and ideas which are totally unnecessary due to said self-correction, making the whole thing utterly pointless except to make someone's bad situation worse.

no offense, but that's fucking stupid, man. I need a vacation.

the complaint was that you were dismissive, not that you used the language to begin with, iirc

so sure, don't be dismissive of others' concerns on the thread, that's the message

maybe it was misinterpreted. I wrote "yeah yeah yeah" to mean "yeah, I already know, you don't need to tell me."

so my dismissiveness is either a) misinterpreted b) manufactured to make me into a target for moral judgment, or c) regardless of either a) or b) and is related to the fact that I didn't welcome being lashed by the community police for an honest mistake.

all the while I just got sexually harassed by a therapist in truly bizarre fashion, two in a row, during a period where I've been bullied at my job, on top of recovering from PTSD and all sorts of other lovely things that would make most of you throw up in convulsive horror, and now I have to take a community beatdown for a mispoken word that I corrected myself on while reaching out for help after a truly weird experience related to this thread.

i'm sympathetic to transgendered people because I've seen with my own eyes how deeply it affected one of my friends, but I trip over my toes, my own pain is thrown into the garbage, and I get to be villain of the moment among some of you. identity politics can be seriously stupid.

no beatdown, it was just a reminder, dude. I'm sorry you've had a weird, rough time with therapy

yeah, I know, guess I was a little testy before. this therapist was one of Albert Ellis's right hand men, so I figured he'd be ya know ... super cool or something for some reason. That whole philosophy is intelligent and helpful, but it's based on moral nihilism and I guess that's what it looks like face to face. I don't think I'm a very good moral nihilist.

weird that a moral nihilist would want to be a therapist

Lacan was a moral nihilist.

intellectually I don't believe in any inherent morality, value, worth, etc., but that doesn't mean I want to live like a creep. maybe I'll give Buddhism another shot, it's both smart and has a heart.

why not believe in inherent morality? even squirrels have morals!

my philosophy needs some serious brushing up, but I think it's just an illusion of the mind. wipe away all conscious life, and what morality is left? if we're merely "perceiving" some type of objective moral reality, where is it coming from? a floating orb in another dimension? etc. etc.

I don't think it's a matter of philosophy but more like optimal strategy, like the fact that you should always double down on 11 in blackjack. it's an inherent property of the game.

this thread took a weird turn

Remarkably, utterly depressed these past two weeks. I wake up feeling like I'm on the crest of a sleeping pill. Heavy limbs and eyelids. In good shape physically, at the gym every day, great eating habits, still ridiculously low.

- I've recognized that the happiest moments in my day are times that I spend with my nieces and/or godkids, either in person or via FaceTime; don't know if this is good or bad, feels like some kind of transference or sublimation of "the real problem"
- I started to realize that I really miss my brothers-- I have seven of them, three with whom I'm really close-- they live way far away and I think about moving closer to them always (one of them is getting married this summer to a woman I adore and thinking about that is enough to lift the cloud most days)
- work-related shit that I won't get into here but can be boiled down to "I hate my job"

seven brothers makes me jealous i've only three

absence of good quality familial closeness can def eat away at you. I only have 1 sis & 1 bro and their company is like getting a mega boost of vitamin d....it's hard when you crave that company

i don't suppose skyping or anything is feasible? can help in the interim sometimes

my sister's dead

markers :(

wow. sorry to read that. hope you're okay.