Depression and what it's really like

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

i think i am going to cut seriously back on drinking too. a majority of my relatives of my parents and grandparents generations had issues with alcohol, and as someone who struggles with chronic low mood and has had at least one frightening, prolonged episode of severe depression i have no business drinking

me either but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, you get a job after a long period of unemployment. Then you lose the job. Pretty sure you're not supposed to blame other people - equally, pretty sure you're not supposed to blame yourself. What then do you do? What's the third way here?

sorry to hear that cardamon.

the third way is to invoke fate and tell yourself it "happened for a reason." thinking this way is not a luxury i have, but i often think it would be really helpful to believe in fate

are you sure you shouldn't be blaming other people

No

treeship's third way is otm, but yeah it's hard

fwiw according to my grandma it was bill clinton's fault i had/lost shitty jobs in the '90s, so anything's fair. especially ott

definitely don't blame yourself. so many people in a similar position. it is not a measure of your value at all.

blame ott

xp

By which I mean, the training provided by the employer was broken.

They used to have an intensive training programme, designed to give you what you needed to do the job.

They got rid of this about 6 months before I started, replacing it with 'Don't know something? Take a minute to ask a colleague! We're a social workplace!'

This way just didn't deliver enough information fast enough, and it relied on the idea that every member of staff (most had been there 2-3 years min) was happy to help out a newcomer.

The result was that a lot of customers were put on hold while I repeatedly asked my team-mates stupid questions, or alternatively rang higher departments with stupid questions. Repeated attempts to get my managers to give me some training were met with 'Just ask a colleague'; even when I managed to get 10 minutes with a colleague so I could be shown how to do invoices, someone came over halfway through to say we shouldn't be offline because calls were queuing.

So you see what I mean. I could really run and run with blame on this one. Them for their shit training, or me for not being smart enough to use what training was there. There's just enough evidence there, which part of me keeps trying to latch on to.

that kind of shit is incredibly difficult to deal with; just a bad situation

i hope you get a remotely reasonable option instead

not your fault x 1000.

we shouldn't be offline because calls were queuing

any workplace like this deserves blame for existing

Stupid holiday seasons. Bleurghhhhhfsdkdjs falksdjfs

hear ya.

email i just sent to all family, three sentences 1) happy holidays 2) i'm good 3) i'm continuing to choose not to engage w/ you over the holidays.

fin

xp thanks people, appreciate it. Rolling on.

matresslessness have you got people to see and things to do over xmas etc?

sorry to hear that cardamon.

the third way is to invoke fate and tell yourself it "happened for a reason." thinking this way is not a luxury i have, but i often think it would be really helpful to believe in fate

― Treeship, Thursday, November 27, 2014 2:15 AM (21 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd really like to make a case for the opposite: it happened for no reason. Because nearly everything happens for no reason. Believing in fate because it could be helpful, hey I'm all for it, if you can do that... But I don't believe in fate. And when I have been depressed (two severe. years long episodes) people telling me things must have happened "for a reason" enraged me and got me even more depressed. It's a cop out. I'd rather hear the truth: that many things happen for no sane reason at all, that bad things happening to people are irrational and incomprehensible 99% of the time. Because they are. It might not sound like this us helpful? But the lol meaninglessness of everything, of life, of bad things happening, actually made me accept it better. Things happening "for a reason" sounds profound and mystical, but when you are depressed and bad things happening must be happening because of a reason unbeknownst to you? I don't know. That doesn't sound helpful at all. Because if that is the case, why can't I be in on the reason why something happens? Am I supposed to guess or search for the reason why it happened? Fuck that.

Embracing the utter meaninglessness and uselessness of life has helped me way more.

totally agreed. i hate that "bad thing happened for a reason" bullshit.

Hmm think 'fate' could translate as either 'for a reason' or 'for no reason'?

could go either way IMO. fate is sort of agnostic, you, god or no one could be responsible for fate

To get all scholastic about it, everything happens with a cause, but unless you are a predestinarian who believes in a rational and all powerful god, then the only things we know of that happen for a reason are events that are motivated by a rational choice made by one or more humans. Even then, poor reasons so abound that imo "happens for a reason" is almost as value-neutral as "happens for a cause".

when people say "it's happens for a reason" they are not being value-neutral though, 99% of the time they clearly mean "well, it's for the greater good" or "God works in mysterious ways" bullshit

Scholasticism never really worked its way into the popular imagination.

want to backtrack a bit: i agree that the "it happens for a reason bullshit" is bullshit, but i do think being able to think that way helps the people who are able to do it. the problem is that actually believing this is morally repugnant because it means you implicitly excuse all sorts of atrocities as part of some larger plan which... ugh. but most just don't deal with these complications.

i actually think at some minimal level, most people secretly believe in something like fate. that is, they'll look over their life and synthesize all they've endured into a narrative, and the endpoint -- themselves currently -- then takes on an aura of inevitability, even if that isn't explicitly claimed. the exception to this might be depressed people, who tend to have regrets. to have regrets is to recognize, retrospectively, your freedom, which as kierkegaard tells us is actually not a very pleasant thing to live with

Everyone is right talking about Chris Rock's latest perceptive comments on race, but no one is mentioning his interesting take on Robin Williams:

I know that it’s Miller who first introduced you to Robin Williams. What did you make of his tragic end?

Comedians kill themselves. Talk to 100 comedians this week, everybody knows somebody who killed themselves. I mean, we always say ignorance is bliss. Well, if so, what’s the opposite? Some form of misery. Being a comedian, 80 percent of the job is just you notice shit, which is a trait of schizophrenics too. You notice things people don’t notice.

And it either makes you crazy or it doesn’t. How do you defend against it yourself?

You try to give yourself other things to focus on. I always say, my children saved me from my miserable self.

children are the worst
congrats on your selfish act of bringing tots into this world, your kids will die horribly when everything goes Waterworld
(i kid)

part of why i am afraid of being a parent is like 'what if i'm a fucked up mom who fucks my kids up with depression'

^^^ amongst other things

yep

yes. also not kidding what nhex said. but more just they will be fucked up and hate me. but "you notice things people don't notice" is like, the definition of being depressed, unfortunately? imo.

I dunno, what if you're a mom with no arms and can't hug your kids?

you can hug with your legs i guess, kind of weird

chris ware and chris rock agree:

Anyway, you yourself have become a father and it seems to me that it has affected your approach to your art.

CW: Yeah, it kind of fixed every mental problem that I had within an hour. So I highly recommend it if anybody out there is thinking of having children, you should really, I mean, it’s the only reason we’re here, and if you have any doubts in your mind about yourself or where your life is going, it’ll be answered easily and almost instantaneously. It’s a cliché to say, but it also immediately sets you aside from yourself and you’re no longer the star of your own mind, which is really not a very good state of mind to be in.

from comics journal interview:
http://classic.tcj.com/alternative/interview-with-chris-ware-part-2-of-2/2/

I think he's exaggerating, because just a little further down:

Recently, when I told my daughter that I was going to go up and work on one of my strips, she actually said: “Are you just gonna go upstairs and blame yourself?” [Audience laughs.]

Good 'Ol Chris Ware

yeah, that's potentially great for the parents, but imo facepalmingly suspect when it comes to the kids

i have never been super into having kids anyway, but in the past year i've been really struck by how little my parents have been able to have a positive influence on my now years of depression. at the moment they can't even really help financially, which has been quite bad, but apart from that, they raised me well, provided for me, loved me, i grew into a talented and high-achieving person (if you neglect the whole academic job market nightmare part of my life), and also i think like a ~good~ person, not in the socially-beneficial sense probably, but one with depths, things to offer others, etc., - and yet, i'm just unhappy, have been unhappy, so deeply so that it seems permanent. and some people don't ever get out of that shit. some people end up finding their whole lives were disappointments, something they could never really turn around, enjoy.

and that's what you're rolling the dice on when you have kids. of course you will love them (well not of COURSE, some parents fuck that up, or just can't), take care of them, give them the best you can. but they will be different people. they'll have their own lives, not yours. and there will be some point at which their happiness or unhappiness is only, at best, up to them (maybe not even that).

it's possible to wax philosophical (moralizingly/theologically so i think) and talk about the grand human adventure of trying to be your own person, live your own life, etc., what a great gift that is, etc., but the fact remains, some people's lives just don't work out for them, and if that's so with your kids, it will have been largely because of you and whatever narcissistic personal growth project you had in spawning that they will have been stuck with those lives.