Depression and what it's really like

Not that it's necessarily what you're feeling, but that reminds me of this insightful part of Hyperbole and a half's post on depression (all of which is excellent and would make a good pamphlet for friends who can't wrap their minds around depression)

.... I rediscovered crying just before I got sick of hating things. I call this emotion "crying" and not "sadness" because that's all it really was. Just crying for the sake of crying. My brain had partially learned how to be sad again, but it took the feeling out for a joy ride before it had learned how to use the brakes or steer.

pretty much just want to be asleep all the time

tbh i am really good at it

#viking

good to see your sense of humor has not totally disappeared under a blanket of despair

sometimes it's an unidentifiable fear so intense you think it's going to kill you

but it never does!

true. but still feel horrible

i know that fear very well, it is dreadful.

Sometimes wonder if sleep apnoea is my brain attempting to commit suicide while I'm asleep.

Sorry but lol

I wonder how much quality of sleep tends to affect mental health, w/r/t stuff like apnea and light sleeping b/c of aches. How does it affect people and I wonder how it affects me in particular, what w/ my snoring/almost-apnea.

I think this week I will finally schedule throat support implants. Quick and easy. That just leaves my deviated septum, which sounds as horrible as my tonsillectomy (truly awful). Maybe sleep will be the cure of oversleeping.

I wonder how much quality of sleep tends to affect mental health

very very much

hard to say which is the chicken and the egg

in terms of causation maybe but i think it's reasonably well-documented now that inadequate sleep fucks with your mood, even if your mood was already low

the first 6 or so weeks after i was officially diagnosed with depression/anxiety and started celexa, i was also taking klonopin to sleep and holy shit i was getting such a great sleep every night - 6-7 hours of extremely restful sleep - that i thought i was actually cured. i had more energy and motivation than i've had in my entire life. i wanted to DO things, and go places and clean my house. it was the best i've ever felt in my life, but it's gone now and i'm just back to regular old me, which really sucks now that i've had an actual taste of the good life.

"Psychiatrists have long thought that depression causes insomnia, but new research suggests that insomnia can actually precede and contribute to causing depression. The causal link works in both directions."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/opinion/sunday/curing-insomnia-to-treat-depression.html

get yr sleeps if/when you can, frenz

This article went into more detail:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/health/treating-insomnia-to-heal-depression.html?pagewanted=all

Have made docs appt about apnoea. I've only had it about 10 years but maybe I should actually do something about it rather than moaning.

I don't know if it's the primary cause of my woes but I was really messed up Monday and especially Tuesday when I wrote that and I was extremely foggy and tired then. Went to bed very early all week and I think I'm out of the worst of it now. My depression does seem quite sporadic, but fairly frequent still - I get massively suicidally depressed one day then the next I'm OK if a bit shaken (I likened it to a depression hangover yesterday) - maybe my medication isn't the right one I don't know, I've been on it for 12 years.

Ugh I had weird sleep issues during my most uh "major" depression, things I'd never had before or since, which I have probably already detailed at tedious length in this thread. I'd be in bed for 16 hours but not feel at all rested, have dreams that I was waking up and needed to get up and couldn't and then I'd finally get up and make it across my bedroom only to realise it was only a dream and I was still asleep and still needed to get up, etc. That two-way link definitely sets up a vicious cycle.

Take care everyone. Hope the doc is helpful to you, Col Poo.

I am basically not depressed atm but for various reasons it might be now or never time for me if I want to go back to university (I don't know if I do), which is where I first had a total depressive breakdown which lasted years and I am very scared of it ending up the same way, because I don't think I've resolved any of the issues that contributed to it. Like no matter how good or bad my mood is or those not-quite-definable things which more or less constitute "depression" to me e.g. does everything feel pointless and grey and exhausting, do I burst into tears to a perfectly quotidian not-even-a-real-question "how're you" - even if not I still feel drifty and brainfoggy and never able to concentrate or get anything done, but psychologists always say "oh that's just depression". Well OK, but then why doesn't it go away when I feel not so bad?

I've always had problems with insomnia, often caused by ruminating over things I feel guilty about from my past, which are usually totally insignificant faux-pas or sometimes actually shitty things I did, often from when I was a teenager, which at 38 is probably a bit silly. But after doing CBT earlier this year that has eased up slightly, I still do it but can sometimes fight it off. This week I've been so tired that even ruminating couldn't keep me awake but I think my quality of sleep must be so bad it doesn't matter. I wake up several times a night routinely. I'm not overweight so I don't think I have the obstructive type of apnoea, more likely the one where your brain just forgets to breathe, which is what made me think of it being my brain trying to die in my sleep, but IANAD.

aps, laborious dreams are terrible. I don't understand "oh that's just depression." If it's depression then it's not something to downplay.

Re sleep, I rarely have insomnia, but when I have, it has definitely thrown my mood for a loop. My problem is poor quality sleep, especially since I've been sleeping on my side for about 15 years and now my shoulders are hurting. Hoping a new mattress + throat support implants (to help me breathe better and allow me to sleep on my back) will make things better.

I've had two sleep studies done and they found my problem didn't quite meet the standard for apnea, so insurance wouldn't pay for implants or other procedures. Current insurance is HMO which basically pays for whatever my a PCP-referred special suggests, so hoping for the best.

Nono, depression is definitely not something to downplay and I'm sorry if my post read like that! By "just depression" I meant that they tell me it's a side-effect of depression and that I just need to do my anti-depression CBT and then I'll be fixed. Except that even when the depression goes away, as much as it ever will, my problems getting anything done (without my head feeling like a load of marbles spinning round and round and oh wait it's midnight and time to go to bed with this work still undone) don't go away.

I also sort of mean "wahh no healthcare official will even entertain the thought that I might have ADHD which could've made me depressed in the first place" (my GP doesn't even believe it exists) but I acknowledge that they know best, I probably don't have anything, I am not a special snowflake just a lazy bum, etc.

My ex used to stop breathing in the night. It would unnerve me and I tried to get him to go and see someone about it a few times but I guess it wasn't actually disturbing his sleep because he always seemed totally unconcerned.

...and since I'm only making things worse, "just need to do my anti-depression CBT and then I'll be fixed" I'm exaggerating here too as I never was much good at CBT. I know that it's hard work and not a miracle cure and that it does help lot of people

I should stop saying things

I am just kind of frazzled because I'd always had a little daydream at the back of my mind that maybe I'd get a degree one day when I was ~fixed~ and ~suddenly woke up one morning what I actually wanted to study~ (and also suddenly had a lot of spare money) and now it's like, oh yeah, I might need to do this thing now, or not ever do it at all*, and I don't really like reality that much

for a person who "doesn't have depression" I sure have babbled a lot on the depression thread, shitting it up for everyone. sorry folks, thanks for your patience, sorry for being a big rambling crazy jerk, I'm out

No not at all! I just thought that your therapist was saying "whatever, it's just depression," which seemed like a weird position to take. And anyway you're not babbling and certainly not a jerk. <3

and ADHD exists - pace huge philosophical arguments about the nature of neurodiversity - and GPs are not qualified to be dogmatic about this imo

I would really love to see a therapist but can't afford it. Depressed about a lot and feeling guilty because it doesn't seem right for moms to be depressed. During the day I can put it all away but if I miss that point in the evening where I am just so sleepy and don't fall asleep...I end up unable to fall asleep. My grandmother is dying and that only adds to all the other inner sadness I feel guilty about having. Today a friend saw aphorism of me from 2007 and said,"wow, you look so healthy and stress free. What happened to you, you are so skinny and look tired a lot." Yes, I know. Happiness is the best isn't it?

* a photo not aphorism
Using my phone because my computer is dying as well. Triste.

Many therapists in private practice work on a sliding scale and may have room in their practice to work with you for at a rate affordable for you. If there's a mental health resource or advocacy group in your town they may be able to help refer you. Depression can happen to anybody, mom or not, and getting help with depression will benefit your kiddo as well as you.

but yeah feeling guilty or undeserving about bad feelings is one of the hallmarks of depression and is perhaps the most pernicious and destructive part of it. Feeling like crap would be bad enough without also feeling like you somehow don't deserve help or sympathy for feeling like crap. Depression is terrible.

^^^^^ otm and also xp otm

sorry tera, it sounds like things are particularly rough right now :(

As proof of my lil black cloud. I mistakenly posted my shit on another thread. Not that it REALLY matters since I figure it might all get read anyway but how to erase from the threesome thread?

*tera you mentioned astrologizing on the other thread. What do you read about it? What does it tell you? Also: people say that about old photos all the time "wow you look so... young!!!!" and it was like two years ago ugh

the world needs a cheap - all online therapist

Astrologyzone, lots of typos with the dinky phone. It is by Susan Miller who wrote all these books my friend owns and really lived by for twenty years. Every now and then I'd read her online horoscopes and just didn't get them. Had nothing to do with my life. My friend said it was because I'm on a cusp? So I read two horoscopes and together they sort of could include me. Anyway, the last two months have been spot on under my sign, so I've just been re-reading this months every now and then...after a set back. Magical thinking takes over. Cheap online therapist would be so much better.

Far better than any therapist for me has been finding a couple people in my social circle (one with intense anxiety, another with bipolar) for whom we just kind of have a free pass at calling each other about it all. Don't know why but nothing gratifies me more than a 3am call from one of these crazy people. Sometimes just a sounding board and other times a good discussion, either way it ends up great.

Someone at my workplace killed herself recently. It's the third suicide in my life in as many years. It seem s so senseless and it makes me want to become a therapist to save them all. It's hard to know who and when it's going to happen but the warning signs are often there.

LG I am so sorry

That powerful desire to save others from pain, when you are powerless to do so, is a wretched feeling and ultimately a very sad one.

So sorry.

http://www.nature.com/news/depression-1.16305?WT.mc_id=EMI_NATURE_1411_NSDEPRESSION_PORTFOLIO

special issue, open access

Those who do study depression in animals often use physical stresses to prompt behaviours seen in people with depression. The most common assay is the 'forced swim test', in which mice are plunged into water and timed to see how long they struggle to get out. (Those that give up sooner are taken to have depression-like behaviour.)

Less than ideal as an animal model, probably, but an incredible metaphor.

In an attempt to mimic what happens in humans more closely, Nestler and his colleagues subject mice to chronic social — rather than physical — stress. In this 'social defeat' model, the researchers place a mouse in a cage with a “bigger, meaner mouse”, he says. The bigger mouse starts to beat up the smaller one, and the fighting continues until the researchers separate the mice using a screen. After ten days of fighting, the smaller mouse typically no longer shows interest in pleasurable activities such as sex or drinking sugar water, and avoids social contact, even with litter-mates3. This reflects some of the symptoms shown by people with depression.

: (

at least give them mouse netflix to watch

in an attempt to mimic what happens in humans more closely, the researchers place a mouse in a cage with nothing to do but read twitter and facebook

on a friday night when all their mouse friends are having family time or going on hot mouse dates

Depression is a headfuck even in recovery/remission, my whole life is devoted to maintaining equilibrium and I defend myself against negative emotions even when there are adequate reasons to feel crappy (e.g. current news events), then I feel guilty about not wanting to let myself feel crappy, which is just a different kind of crappy.

in my experience, alcohol basically takes out a payday loan on happiness/contentedness/lucidity. no free lunches. so many efforts of mine towards communicating depression has entailed recalibrating my mind to focus on extremely-short term goals and building from there. i have a hard time giving myself credit for anything, i'm trying to allow myself to "give myself props" "congratulate myself" when i nail a tough homework assignment or help strangers fix something..but i always feel like i'm just letting myself off the hook for not doing enough for others

alcohol basically takes out a payday loan on happiness/contentedness/lucidity.

that's a really good way of putting it, esp. with the way that alcohol interacts with some SSRIs

I have been having allot of mood swings lately - which is oddly comforting becuase when I am feeling depressed I think "oh well I willl be much happier later - perhaps even too much so!"

that's a positive way to look at it