Depression and what it's really like

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

:( <3

http://i.imgur.com/nwQPfOv.jpg

dope!

Not in a good place. Not like "don't leave the house" depression thankfully but 'I'm with my friends yet I'm here all alone and useless and constantly feel like crying in public".

Thankful for my therapist...

Come to find out I've had fairly fucking seriously depressed for about the past 3 months. I only realize now how deep it was b/c I've been feeling pretty normal the past week. That was terrible and it makes just-normal feel like euphoria.

What kind of bullshit is this? After 20-some years of getting to know depression, how can it sneak up and settle in unnoticed like that? I'm focused on enjoying being OK, but still I'm surprised.

idk, sometimes a side effect of being depressed is how it wrecks your ability to perceive things correctly. I similarly didn't recognize that's what I was going through until I went to NYC, had actual joyful feelings, and realized it was a sharp contrast to what I'd been feeling before and since. sometimes you have to have something to compare it to recently to know?

hoping your feelings of normalcy is a continuing trend and sign of blue skies ahead

seem to be over my last little wave, have had three good weeks in a row. lotsa negative feelings below the surface still, but I recognize my own symptoms as indicative of that I'm starting to heal and there's just a long way to go (mostly on the anxiety tip). being back in my old job has been a huge help thus far.

the self-loathing though is worse than it's ever been (I'm just learning to ignore it) - hoping my therapist can help me with that, as we haven't spent a lot of time talking about it recently.

also bought myself a portable breathalyzer and that was a smart decision. for the OCD guy who doesn't trust his own instincts :)

ran out of pills wowwww

For how long? You OK?

Ssri? Are you having "brain shivers"?

yeah I'll be fine, didn't mean to beg for attention, just newly medicated and the withdrawal hit much more suddenly than I imagined

the moral is not to be a shambles re: arranging yr appointments, altho shambles is v much my style

I can forget my pill in the morning and be a wreck by evening

I have missed two to three days multiple times before bc of being that kind of shambles

It's usually just brain shivers, takes a few days for actual decompensation to start happening

I feel lost, I feel broken, I feel stupid, I feel worthless and I definitively know I am at very least the third of those things

I'm a chronic letdown to myself and others mostly others because the myself part is I guess a fucking self fulfilling prophecy so you can't really get mad about that idk I don't know how to talk about this stuff I've been out of therapy for a few months and I never should have left but I thought i was on the right track and I could be ok, I'm not ok, I don't feel the need to do anything except go to work and do basic household shit and live vicariously through the fun absurdity of nba basketball and whatever other shit like music or whatever that intermittently staves off these feelings while a significant other who invested emotions and love and time in me is let down because I can't get my shit together

I don't know how this works or how this thread works I don't mean for this to be fishing for sympathy I just needed to vent and I'm drunk and at the moment I'm alone and I really didn't know how else to do so easily and with the comfort of relative anonymity.

Hi.

lay it on us man, s'what the thread is for. hope getting it out helps - have definitely been where you are and it can be hard to pull yrself.

best wishes for ya....sendin good vibes