Depression and what it's really like

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

*pull yrself out

Your feelings are familiar. Before you invest tons of energy in convincing yourself you are stupid and worthless, remember that those are amongst the classik distortions imposed by depression. It sounds like you have some good stuff in your life right now to help keep bad feelings at bay. Even silly things like basketball are worth spending time on if you can muster the energy to enjoy them. It's hard to enjoy things when depressed.

If your SO has been with you during similar depressive episodes, if you've talked with them about depression, if they've experienced it themselves, they probably have some sense of what's happening with you and how it's affecting you. If not, and you feel like you might struggle to communicate why everything sucks and you feel like you're letting them down, the free web game Depression Quest and the Hyperbole and a Half "Depression" comics (would link but on phone) are both effective and moving pictures of depression, imo.

Remember that depression can be a serious and debilitating thing, is worthy of treatment and caring, and help is available. You can start therapy again any time you like, and tak to your doctor about medication even if you aren't sure how you feel about that.

The Internet is full of depressos who are working on recovery, some of us in this very thread. You're in good company. Be gentle with yourself whenever you can.

i <3 every one of your contributions to this thread, silby

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

i feel you on this

i think that's what those things are for. no shame in leaning on them when you need to escape yr head

thanks everyone for the kind words, I woke up unspeakably hung over and thinking id regret posting my word vomit but I feel a bit better for getting it out

I've never been on any usual depression meds; I take adderall for adult ADHD and I definitely need that (it adds to the chances of depression if my body is moving slowly while my mind skitters all over the place, so I never skip it anymore), I don't know how those would balance, but I definitely need to get back to my therapist so I guess I should make that leap and then go from there.

have def heard of the depression quest game, not the comics, will investigate further.

today I have at least a guaranteed distraction in the form of the celtics playoff game this afternoon (probably their last but maybe beat cleveland just once plz)

anyway. writers block has also been a major symptom of this; I managed to get some new pages done yesterday to finish a dangling chapter but they cut a little too close and sort of triggered another nose dive. ultimately I know creation is positive though.

summer is the worst

really? it completely turns me around honestly.

summer used to always be the worst for me, but later on I started to realize it coincided with being out of school and having to work longer hours.

I do get to be a real crank when the weather goes to shit tho, which in FL happens pretty quickly.

sorry you are hitting a shit point mookie
anything you can do besides shake your fist at helios/ra for lording over too muxh of the year??

season changes are really jarring emotionally imo