Depression and what it's really like

Does anyone else get the internal monologue that goes, "Hey, remember that thing you were really depressed about two weeks ago? That was silly to be depressed about. Here is something more devastating to be depressed about."

― Mistah FAAB (sarahell), Monday, December 22, 2014

yes. think this is a very natural reaction, but it can just constantly deepen the depression.

working out can raise a lot of dust in the mood dept for me. take care of yourself. xp

i actively cut off all communication with my family last x-mas and did the same this november. it feels kinda weird, like i'm not attached to anything, it's liberating but a little lonely i guess. i'm housesitting for a friend over the holiday too, so i'm going to be alone in not-my-place. with a cat though, and a full kitchen, a soft mattress and quiet. and it's clean and uncluttered, everything has a place and takes up a reasonable amount of space. i'm trying not to be critical of my boyfriend, who gets down over the holidays too and sort of falls apart. he buys books for himself at thrift stores as a coping mechanism. the 7-8 bookshelves he has are overstuffed and there are stacks of books and records and papers and etc etc all around the perimeter on the floor. he does not do regular househould chore stuff very well though he was critical of my sloppy/slobbiness when i was living there. he starts something and everything is in disarray and it all piles up and it can take months or years or never for it to be resolved. he is so dreamy about his space he ignores the finitude of it, he doesn't get rid of anything, everything just gets shuffled around, and he'll say "i should weed through" but he never does. i have to struggle not to be disappointed or feel it as a threat or a downward-dragging feeling or a disconnection from reality. it feels increasingly hopeless. but this is the depression thread not the relationship problems thread.

i'm going to be alone in not-my-place

beautiful imo

hi d! thanks :)

and i just talked to the boyfriend and he's up and at the grocery store, which is heartening.

not-my-place! srsly gonna have to fight hard not to shout that at not-my-places in future

wishes to all. family and centredness and group culture events and enforced chocolate is a minefield and at least at funerals you're encouraged to be a mess, Xmas is out on its own ito expecting hearty thanks for the ordeal.

the most masochistic of holidays

working out can raise a lot of dust in the mood dept for me. take care of yourself. xp

― languagelessness (mattresslessness), Monday, December 22, 2014 3:29 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks, yeah generally i feel like exercise (along with meditation) is the best antidote to depression but can also i guess become part of some compulsive drive for relief

otm

if there was an emoji for me making u cups of tea* it would be here ( )
*or coffee or bev of yr choice

be kind to yrselves

Xp

Exercise (esp in the form of activities I really really like (personally not a big fan of "machines")) is such a difference-maker for me that at one point my shrink flat-out said "consider it doctor's orders: you need to work out, minimum three times a week. If I could write a script for it I would".

I don't think this applies to everybody, btw. I have several close friends who do nothing more strenuous than walk to the train each day, and they feel fine. Then again they're not prone to the big bad D to begin with. But with me, if I go more than a week without working up a sweat, I start to feel like my body is wasting away and my mind becoming lethargic and weak.., And not much good comes of that...

Exercise is not an absolute antidote, by any stretch, but it's never a bad thing to do, and it's often enough one of the very best.

my gym membership has gone totally unutilized for…several months, and I'm just being avoidant about it now I guess

ditto

I've started writing again, but it took a long period of not-writing + reading a lot of Georges Perec & Robbe-Grillet, studying their writing, getting into descriptive prose as a sort of tricky puzzle... idk, I guess everything moves in cycles (introversion/extroversion, feeling up/feeling down, moving forward/moving back)

The way I've experienced depression is like one of those scenes out of science fiction that fasts forwards to the end of the lifespan of planet Earth when the sun has expanded, all life is extinguished, and the planet is a barren wasteland... there's no hope for survival because that's it, this planet is done for. All the hopes and dreams of humanity are stripped naked and shown for what they really are, pathetic, simple-minded lies we cling to for comfort; the grandeur, myths, heroes, loves, and tales of humanity marched out like a fraud before the knowing eyes of the universe. Which I guess is actually the truth in some sense.

Anyway, I'm feeling better now after working my ass off reading cognitive therapy books. This stuff is gold if you really spend time on it, and it's not easy at first whatsoever, but it's good stuff if you give it a serious shot. It takes you places you never thought were possible, but requires a lot out of you ... which is necessary if you actually want to overcome this bullshit. You use informal logic, empirical inquiry, probability, and cost/benefit analysis to reorient the way you think about things; for me at least, it's working, but it can be a pain in the ass. I like to think about it like one of the hardest classes I've taken in school mixed with one of the most humbling experiences of my life. Here's my favorite book on it right now:

Overcoming the Myth of Self-Worth

fix yr link, i'm curious

try this

Let's see if this works: Overcoming the Myth of Self-Worth

Argh am having one of those fits of painful self-consciousness where I'm at a party and just want to escape (I have, sort of, to a playroom built out of attic space).

I almost always do fine in small gatherings, get togethers with small groups of friends... In fact I've been referred to a few times as "the life of the party". But put me in a loud room with tons of people and Im likely to start freaking out.

Sometimes I'm also just plain fucking tired and want to be left alone.

I was hoping to catch up on the latest posts on this thread -- I see there's some longish ones-- but I don't have my glasses on me so can't read jack. For all I know I've typed out out this post in numerals.

Just blabbing. Bear with me.

It's okay. I feel you. I have finally trained myself to decline loud/drinking parties, b/c my shy attempts at enjoying them never really worked out. At best I made myself scarce and then left early, at worst I had panic attacks.

Then an old friend of mine calls me. She moved to another city years ago. I'm overwhelmed when she tells me that she's depressed and doesn't like the way her life turned out because I know that, objectively, her circumstances are much tougher than mine. .. She's up against traumatic childhood memories, racism, and raising a child by herself , among other things. She's one of the most beautiful, alive, funny, cool persons I've ever known, but it's as though only other people get to reap the benefits of that radiance... The energy just goes outward, leaving her cold, scared, and suicidal.

It breaks my heart.

Thx silby (i think I can make out that part of your sig).

It's hard. Sometimes forcing myself to go out when not in the mood has paid off. I've struck out twice in the past week, alas.

Ok well,,, once more into the breach.., this ...and a few deep breaths ... Has helped a bit... thx ILX

On the subject of self-help books I can strongly recommend Reinventing Your Life by Jeffrey Young and Janet Klosko - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinventing-Your-Life-Breakthrough-Behaviour/dp/0452272041/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420882333&sr=1-1&keywords=reinventing+your+life (try not to judge it by the awful cover)

It's about how your childhood affected who you are as an adult and what you can do to change it. People often get stuck into patterns of self-defeating behaviour and thinking and it can be so hard to break these. For example, when I feel depressed I often avoid other people, which isn't helpful at all because being isolated makes me depressed, and so the cycle continues.

This sort of behaviour and thinking doesn't just come from nowhere - it's picked up fairly early in life. If you look at how someone behaves as an adult when they're upset or stressed then chances are they were behaving in a similar way when they were ten years old.

It's fairly emotionally intense (dealing with bad childhood experiences always is) but it is a fantastic book for developing insight into how you came to be the way you are and what you can do to change

Does anyone have any books to recommend or threads of value on other boards or anything about how to have a romantic relationship when you are a generally depressive person despite having your shit together in some ways? I have no idea.

Paolo, yes, this is when we learn lessons of "how people are", and the message a lot of ten-year-olds get is, "you're being selfish" or "go in your room and cry" or "no one has time for your problem." You learn that you're a potential "burden", so you withdraw and try to tough it out.

sounds otm

I've started therapy with a practitioner of Acceptance Commitment Therapy, which is part of the "third wave" of cognitive therapies that are vying for CBT's spot at the top. (My therapist suggested this Invisibilia episode as an introduction to third-wave approaches.) One key feature of ACT is its focus on mindfulness to identify and live with painful thoughts and feelings. ACT's approach is to accept those thoughts and feelings - not to oppose them with logic or otherwise try to fight them (as CBT would have you do), but to transcend them. It sounds pretty Eastern sometimes.

I'm buying in and giving it a go, but as I start out, I'm having trouble with the idea of not challenging clearly erroneous automatic thoughts. It's pretty different from my normal way of thinking, not fighting bad feelings. One metaphor I've heard a couple times is treating a troubling thought like a visitor and saying, "Hello my old friend Nobody Likes Me. Please come sit with me." I'm definitely inadequately describing the whole approach, but the idea is that the thoughts are resistant to logic and reason, and engaging them keeps them active and gives them importance.

Another metaphor is of a person in a battle with bad thoughts or feelings. ACT is supposed to help the person not to win the battle, but to disengage from it. The "enemy" thought is still there being a shit, but the person's mental bandwidth is freed from fighting and they can learn to give their attention to things that are important to them.

(That all sounds pretty flaky the way I described it, but ACT is not a fringe model, and mindfulness ones like it seem like they could be a big part of the future of therapy.)

pretty tl;dr, sorry, but if you happened to at least skim it, I'd be interested to know if anyone else has experience with ACT and the like or any reactions

It sounds very much like what happens to me during meditation - the thoughts drift in, l acknowledge "hey there's a thought", then i return focus to my breath. The thoughts don't get to run off with my focus.

sounds like something i shd read up about - my sad thoughts feel hopelessly resistant to reason at the moment, or rather they seem totally reasonable maybe, idk. better to acknowledge them and look away.

Yeah mindfulness is a big deal in the CBT world these days. Often depressed/anxious people will spend a lot of time thinking about bad stuff that has happened in the past and also how much the future is going to suck. Being mindfully aware of what's going on right this minute and doing some deep breathing can really help with dealing with these thoughts

my sad thoughts feel hopelessly resistant to reason at the moment

Reasoning with unrealistic negative thoughts can be really bloody difficult but it gets easier with practice. It's like meditation or exercising a muscle - the more you do it, the easier it gets. Hope you feel better soon :)

i hear you paolo and thanks but part of my point is that sometimes yr negative thoughts might be realistic - and CBT sort of works counter to that assumption

Acceptance Commitment Therapy - hah, funny that you should mention this now. My nutritionist (who I work with on disorded eating and self-image issues) mentioned this a couple weeks ago and then I asked my therapist about it last week. It must be a hot thing right now. Therapist said that it's heavily rooted in mindfulness and that we could try it but that she thinks i sort of already do this without realizing it. I definitely want to learn more about it though.

sometimes yr negative thoughts might be realistic

feeling this tbh.

the meditative 'acknowledge and sit with' negative thoughts / feelings approach tends to work for me in the sense that it doesn't make those thoughts go away but it gives them a shape and solidity that i can fully inhabit for a while with the understanding that it isn't a totality.

also it gives me more permission to be a mess internally when i need to be, which i think is an important 'first step' towards being open to a relatively safe and stable state of mind when it comes (major empathy for people who people who rarely or never experience this). when i try and deny or cover up that i'm feeling bad, i'm asking for more difficulty.

people who people who

It occurs to me that "sitting with" troublesome thoughts is like times when I've made a joke or said something that got a negative reaction but I really don't take it to heart. Or like working with someone who dislikes me (even though I don't dislike them), but not being affected by it. The badness is still there but it doesn't get in my way. I'm hoping to learn to do that with my own thoughts and feelings.

word

Je55e:I should do that as well....

I can't figure out if My problem is depression, anxiety* or ??? Mostly I just feel off. I guess dysphoric would be the word. I definitely have periods where anxiety is a problem, but mostly it's an indistinct unpleasant feeling. Angst, I guess.

That vagueness is mostly a problem when trying to treat it medically b/c psychiatrists don't have time for sussing out this stuff, especially mine. I suppose therapy is how I have to ID and address those feelings.

Does anyone else have this kind of general hard to pin down off feeling? What is it? Existential dread? Not everything needs a label, sure, but names are sometimes necessary.

* Holy cow, iPhone suggested that word....

Existential angst. I have this a lot and it is super uncomfortable. Sometimes it is worse than other times. Combo of anxiety, depression, uncertainty of self and life and humanity and oh god I could go on. Makes me wish I had religion.

But instead I'm a social worker with sick and dying people, which both exacerbates and alleviates the angst.

loud and clear on that one
i know it's bad when i get intrusive thoughts about students between 3-5am and the bad thoughts disrupt my ability to have fun generally speaking
but this is the path i've chosen

separating work and home is essential for people in the caring professions -- it also takes some practice. i wish you the best of luck!

i get intrusive thoughts at that time too. i have all those problems. working at home, spacing out at work. feeling like fuuuuuuck this who cares. i don't want a caring profession anymore.

just when you think it can't get any worse ... it gets much much worse