Depression and what it's really like

Feel like I'm gradually falling back down The Hole again. I guess I'll go see my Dr but I just feel so hopeless about the difference more or different drugs will make.

Doctor's a good move.

coming home from a trip can be hard

i get around it by never leaving the house

last year at this time i was teaching college classes.

i lost that job after a semester when some dean wanted to save the few pennies they were going to pay me for spring.

then i spent six months unemployed, again.

all the while looking for jobs, and being rejected consistently for them, too qualified, not the right qualifications, the usual.

when unemployment ran out i was really in a hard spot and ended up getting by for a bit with some money from parents, and friends, some of whom gave totally out of the blue. some still do.

out of desperation i started applying to jobs i never would have bothered with before, and i was still rejected from most of them, dishwasher, cashier, stockboy, it didn't matter.

i finally cobbled together some income from a few different work-from-home jobs, the terrible kind that care about nothing but numbers, shift all the costs onto you, pay barely nothing. piecework rates, editing and typing and clicking boxes, so you can feel every little cent. daily deadlines, authoritarian management.

and i still haven't been able to support myself with that. i feel like i do nothing but work (on the same thing, hour after hour), and officially i am still only just about covering half-time hours (really it's a lot more than that, but at a rate that would make it less than minimum wage, if i calculated it). i worked down to the wire before my last paycheck just to make enough to cover rent, and it left me with almost literally nothing. i had to go deposit $5 cash in the bank to make sure the check cleared. just like student days. now i'm trying to hold out on nothing until the middle of the month.

at the same time i ran out of minutes on my phone. i don't use it for much except to make calls for one of those jobs, which they require. you can usually get by without it, but sometimes you need it. i rigged up a phone-over-internet service that worked, but that didn't matter - i let slip to management that i was having trouble receiving calls and they immediately cut off my daily workload. down to zero. no calls, no work.

i don't know what the people i know expect from me. how i'm supposed to make this better.

Sorry j., it's shit enough without dealing with job and finance issues.

Xp yeah the 2 big recent trips jarred something loose - spending time alone with all my favorite ppl forced me out of pretending that I'm not desperately lonely. I have acquaintances here but I miss the complete honesty and shared history of my real friends.

I'm feeling pretty empty, like I don't really have much to draw new friends with.

i was going to ask if it was tied to yr trip home...i know returning to my "life" after being with my family/friends back home def made everything here feel v hollow

i never really know how to get out of it tho, i havent gotten any better at making new friends :/

(hugs) for u

j. anybody wd be depressed going thru that horrible shit, i know it's feeble and no help but i hope things turn round for you toot sweet

I feel for you, sincerely do. Don't be hard on yourself, it's really hard to feel at all good when you have a situation like that. You are being pro-active which is really awesome. You are strong because situations like that usually keep a person in bed. So I do think you are doing all you can do. It will get better.

situations like that usually keep a person in bed

well actually... : /

I'm currently on somewhat of an upswing both inside and out, but it saddens me that I can't somehow distribute some of the buoyancy onto others who are groping through the depths I not long ago inhabited . I wish I could reach out a hand to my brothers and sisters in suffering...

Hugs j., hugs all.

Current situation:

http://38.media.tumblr.com/345e196d7cf391e9b8e574cff16226cf/tumblr_nbrtveJEKF1qz6f9yo1_r3_1280.jpg

although my main job still seems to be flirting with firing me without telling me i am fired - i have no idea - i am picking up a few hours elsewhere at another job that requires me to leave the house, typing in addresses from concerned-constituent postcards for a nonprofit. it's been a long time since i rode my bike, so that's kind of uh 'invigorating', but the ride is not far and it feels good to get out, see the same people in the office multiple days in a row, seem like i have a normal job with normal people, etc.

i feel you, elvis telecom

catching up and skimming this thread and it's incredible to me that (w/r/t crut) in a city the size of the one you live in that so few (or any psychiatrists or doctors) keep evening hours! IME evening hours are mental health providers' absolute bread and butter. Here a lot of doctors and therapists even have Saturday hours.

crut if you're reading, did you try this directory? http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms (Psychology Today is kind of a rag, but the directory seems to be the de facto authoritative resource). I'm sure you searched diligently, so I hope I'm not out of line w/ the unsolicited advice.

Oh weird - it never occurred to me to try the APA. http://locator.apa.org/

(I'm searching for a therapist myself, BTW, not just dispensing suggestions)

nothing i do is ever good enough. the positive feedback that i do get i only get because people aren't looking closely enough at what i'm doing. if people had the perspective on me that i did, they'd realize i'm worthless. on the other hand, the negative feedback i get is always 100% accurate.

yup!

I'd offset that against a suspicion that 95% of the rest of the population are either in the same boat or would be except they lack the introspection or possibly the basic expertise to thus diagnose their efforts

Why after 13 years of intermittent CBT is it still basically the furthest thing from second nature to me? Like whenever therapists set me CBT homework I'd come back going "uh I basically had no thoughts or feelings all week and the ones I did have I couldn't identify" and now I find myself in a stupid spiral of thinking about people I miss from the past and Where It All Went Wrong and only after several tearful minutes do I think "yeah I don't have to do this, let's rewind and see what set me off or at least who the first person/what the first Thing Which Went Wrong in the chain were" and it's too late, I've no idea which floor I got onto the crazy plummeting elevator at and why

tl;dr, I'm doing mostly OK so sorry to crash in here but my brain hates me sometimes and I am p. bad at not indulging it

CBT homework is always weird, i never got a handle on it myself

:/ hugs, aps

people you miss from the past exert tremendous power and ime the best thing to do is tell their presence in yr head to fuck off, v sincerely & forthrightly, while somehow also telling yourself that everything went, somehow, to plan. maybe religion was caused by depression

It's so fkin hard. Hard to remind your brain from within your brain that your brain is in fact very bad at extrapolating outcomes and equally bad at [what is the opposite of extrapolation, when one is looking/interpreting backward instead of forward?]. It tries to sell you these very mathly formulae for what people will do and why past people did what they did, and these formulae are so gdam unfounded and insufficient! Everything about people and life is so much more surprising than the system depression brain proposes! And yet I still think like this every day despite all evidence to the contrary.

people are predictable based on their past behavior though

people are moderately predictable based on past behavior, but only in a limited way, in that new situations always differ to some degree from past ones and so may elicit a different behavior than you predicted.

I took out The Noonday Demon on recommendation from some here. Very interesting book - vivid - wonderful insight surrounded by some inconsistent ideas and writing. Couldn't get past about 50 pages though; I'm realizing now as I have to return it to the library that it's triggered a lot of anxiety in me as I tried to work through it. Strange feeling, I don't think I've really had that real feeling of "triggering" from reading an account until now. I might take it out again and try to finish it one day.

Just wrote and sent a long, probably at least somewhat unwelcome (at least in it's length) apologia for my silence to a friend who's been one of the bigger casualties of my depressive/low self-esteem based social anxiety. It's odd, I'm a little bit afraid of social stuff with strangers, but it's friends who I find, by far, most terrifying. It was catalyzed by him needing a (small) favor that didn't require any actual human interaction (dogsitting). Felt good to be able to help someone in my own stunted way, hoping I can build on that, at least a bit.

I've heard a lot about The Noonday Demon, though at this point in my life, with a car instead of train/bus commute and 16 hours a day in front of one glowing screen or another, sitting down and reading a book proper feels daunting. (Hasn't been that long, only a couple months, not a total Voluntary Illiterate.)

Was it just too real/relatable, or was it that panic feeling a lot of self-destructive minds get when confronted with stuff that might actually help? (This is an honest question, not meant to be leading or accusatory.)

Definitely the first, mixed in with a lot of questionable greater analysis

I read that book this Summer; I found it very relatable and validating. Like it's ok to need to take pills and exercise and get hugs from your dad and steel yourself that a cloud may again pass over you someday. Also I learned that an ancient Greek doctor thought cauliflower could cure depression. I am a sucker for facts like that.

I also thought it was just a great read; both of Andrew Solomon's books I've read have been full of wonderful prose and great stories of humanity.

He's really impressive. I'm looking forward to the next book, but it takes him about ten years on each so I will have to be patient.

andrew solomon is great.

when i talk to people about having depression (rarely) i get a really strong sense that they don't believe me. i have always made a point of not being outwardly moody around people, so when i am in the throes of it i just stick to myself, so my friends have only seen me when i have enough energy to seem happy. this wouldn't be a problem except i'd like at least one friend to talk to about this stuff. the only person who really knows me at my worst is my ex-girlfriend, but i can't talk to her without feeling sad about the fact that she broke up with me and that i am not a part of her life anymore, which is a highly unproductive thing to feel a year and half after the relationship ended. so.... yeah. i don't know what the point of sharing this is. just that chronic, (relatively) manageable depression can be lonely.

i seem to have two sorts of friends in my circle of highly educated academics and activist/humanities/computer types, people who have never really been depressed and seem not to have ever understood why i don't just shake it off, and people who have been or are depressed. even the latter it seems i have only been able to commiserate or sympathize with occasionally, because we don't talk too much about depression, or are too withdrawn from the world in the worst of it. but the former irk me more and more, particularly in the last several years. i've been depressed so long that i've gotten to see the ways it has changed depending on circumstances, and recently i've had several very abrupt changes in clearly contrasted circumstances, in terms of living arrangements, work life, social life, financial situation. i have seen how i have a better time of it when things, in some respect, turn decisively in my favor. but overall things haven't, for a while; from my perspective it keeps seeming like i'm stuck, made to start over again and again, from nothing. when i look at those undepressed, successful friends, i see people whose lives keep rising, cruising along, developing, but also people who can't appreciate what a grounding, a boost, they get from that continuity of circumstance. it's like they have 'affective privilege'. i have generally felt like they don't believe me, don't believe my depression is real (i'm so capable, so high-functioning, i guess). it's hard to feel you share much, or can, with people like that.

they will never understand

i'll tell you what depression's really like: it really sucks. that's about it. thanks.

seem not to have ever understood why i don't just shake it off

good lord, there's far too much ignorance about depression out there that you shouldn't have to deal with. it sure doesn't help that the word often gets used to describe the temporary moods of sadness or hopelessness that everyone feels on occasion.

true, but it doesn't help that in a world with more information and discussion of mental health as an illness than ever before, some people still opt to be wilfully ignorant shitheads either

"as an" = "and"

people also don't understand the varying degrees of depression, either. like j. points out - if you're high-functioning, ppl don't believe you're depressed bc their idea of depression is lying in bed crying all day. which, yes, is the case for a certain type of severe depression. but robin williams is the perfect example of high-functioning depression - and it was still so bad, he killed himself.

yes. and i'm talking about educated, sophisticated people surrounded by depressives. i assume many such people have had their moments. it's hard not to when you're in these walks of life. so often i'm inclined to think this is more an aversiveness than ignorance or a failure of sympathy or imagination. anyone who's touched on the depressive frame of mind, of life, is loath to make contact with it again. it's just so inert. it saps your spirit when you have to face it, deal with not being able to change it, even in others.

yup

- spend $50 on a concert ticket
- don't go

^been there

sorry mookie :(

i'm not a big advance ticket buyer for precisely that reason but "spend a month thinking almost non-stop about how awesome a show is going to be and how exciting it is that the band is coming to my small uncool city; don't go" <- certainly been there approx a billion times

my worst moments of Other People Trying To Relate To Depression are when they say "oh yes, x had that. They're fine now though!" (subtext: why are you not fine now, why are you not being easygoing and fun and successful like this other friend or relative is. worst when they let you know that it only took their friend a few months and man you've been a drag for yeeeaaaars)

on the other hand I think I've been more dysthymic (no longer a recognised medical term: perhaps downgraded to "a bit of a sadsack") than full-on depressed for most of the past decade, so I feel like a fraud with the major-depresso crowd too. it's nice that this thread works for both categories cz sometimes other depression boards seem to be such a oneupmanship err onedownmanship contest. thanks guys! <3

People can change their understanding of depression, but until they do it's frustrating. I've known friends and family who said stuff like "in my family we didn't have time to be depressed" or called anti-depressants "happy pills" but came to a better understanding, mostly through living with a person with depression.

My brother was the "happy pills" guy w/r/t his wife's depression but he really changed his attitude when I told him my experience and about our dad's and other family members' depression. He just thought our father was a miserable old grump. (Our father always rejected anti-depressants as "suicide pills" but he benefited somewhat from therapy.)

heh, onedownsmanship

almost at the point where i have to make lists (ugh) of things about myself that i have positively changed or improved, because it feels like i have the same pathetic feelings and failings since I was a teenager, (social insecurity, romantic inadequacy, anger and resentment that leads to burning bridges and overall misery etc.) and as much as i try to convince myself that i am "making progress," i struggle to believe it.

:(

am in those boats a li'l bit myself. but like uh um uhhh uh well my writing is what gets me through. your music is gr8 and i hope you still believe in it heaps. also you rule <3

also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder

it's a thing

sarahell, someone at school is travelling to SF soon and it reminded me of our excellent bourbon fap. If you're social inadequate, I'll be socially inadequate with you any day.