Depression and what it's really like

i dunno, man -- it's my understanding that you are singularly grebt

tallies with the records I have on my screen tbh

that may be - tho i doubt it - but it's just been such a slog lately, just going through the motions, no joy in anything

"The letter writer expressly says her friend has become "depressed over the past year", then goes on to describe her behavior. After reading how her friend is acting, I'd say the letter writer was using "depressed" very loosely to mean her friend is deeply unhappy. From what I read her unhappiness doesn't look like real depression at all, but rather like someone who is full of barely suppressed anger."

i take strong exception to your implication that someone who is angry about their situation doesn't have "real depression". when i don't have the strength to leave the apartment, when i have to spend a tremendous amount of energy fighting off intrusive thoughts, when i do everything "right" but feel terrible regardless, that makes me angry. i don't find "miserable" and "pissed-off" to be mutually exclusive states.

it strikes me that there's perhaps a parallel to how we treat poor people. shame and self-blame is ok, but if they start making trouble, if they start lashing out about their situation, we all stand in line to condemn them. personally i view depression as a sort of emotional poverty.

Hi 5, tlg. You are grate and you'll always have ilxors on your side.

yes, certainly

yep.

co-sign

rushomancy, let me offer my apologies. In no way did I intend to belittle your misery when I said that being deeply unhappy and angry with one's life are, to my mind, different types of misery than depression. If you identify with the friend who was described in that letter, then I can see how you would also take my opinion as applying to you personally. I am quite willing to retract my statement and allow that you are suffering from depression. You have my sympathy regardless.

ah, don't worry about me. i'm getting by, and i'm not personally insulted by what you said or anything- just didn't accord with my experience is all.

Went out with friends and had a slow motion breakdown.

sounds hype

Past the worst of it only this morning.

Afraid of what the wreckage looks like.

:( sorry to hear that leee

q:

has anyone read anything good on depression as a self-harm disorder? not as in cutting and such, but just as a generalized act/mode of action/living undertaken by the sufferer despite its being harmful to the sufferer? emotional/affective/social self-harm.

i was reading a bit of philosophical ethics focused on traditional notions of the irrationality of self-harm, which is why i thought to ask. i suppose some cbt-related stuff might fit in here, though that's not necessarily all i have in mind (i hope, never dug that stuff).

Having felt like stabbing myself, I would say that it would've been a way to distract me from the emotions that I couldn't control. It nearly felt like a physical itch, too.

self-sabotage definitely a recurring theme in depression
though i also have some... questionable marks

At work, feel like sobbing.

:(

i'm a crazypants. seriously.
i'm new, but i've already had a couple minor problems on ilx. i lurked for ten years actually, and began to feel creepy about it and decided i should just start posting. i haven't figured out my posting style yet, but i'd like to be sincere if possible.
i'm gonna blow off some steam for a while in this post, but i know i'm helpless -- so, no one should worry about me, and i will normally keep my madness to myself.

i know this is the depression thread, and i'm depressed now, but only for the last few months. . .
i don't like talking about this when i have to talk about this, and i wish there were another thread for it and other mental health issues:

i was diagnosed with ptsd, last july.
i've had two stays in mental hospitals this year. and also, another time a couple months ago, my academic advisor drove me to the psychiatric ward again too, but i talked them into letting me out that night.
the psychiatrists told my family i had schizophrenia at first, but after a month of observing me and interviewing me, they figured out what was going on -- i agree with the diagnosis, now.

you ever stay there, in the mental hospital. i kind of liked it. i just layed in bed and read all day, every day. i made sure i had a few new yorkers and my favorite books for my second stay, a couple months ago.
sometimes you wander around there, you know. the lingo: "so, what are you in for?" i'd just look away; "they told me i have ptsd".
"thank you for you service, sir!" ::handshake:: and, i'm confused about why we're shaking hands.
"i wasn't in service."
"oh"

whatever your politics, i think it's easy to admire the courageousness of people that actually put their lives on the line for a cause that they believe in, however misguided. pause. grant me that.
i have to say that, because i'm about to take something away from them:
i just wish ptsd wasn't completely synonymous with military service.

it isn't really like depression.
sadness and depression are not the same thing. sadness is a deep feeling. depression is a lack of a feeling.
1 day out of 10 is good for me.
it's a lot of sadness, and anger, and confusion -- but, it isn't confusion. or, it was confusion for about 20 months, but i began to understand what happened, after about 20 months.
i don't know. i used to pace around my kitchen in my single apartment, for many hours every day, and i've probably thought about it for over a thousand hours or many more hours at this point.
i understand it now, so i don't have to do that anymore.
about the confusion: it isn't confusion. it's more like 13 disparate facts i have to keep reassembling every day, because they don't add up, and i need to keep arranging them until they almost do.

i can't really talk about what happened.

i'm depressed now, but, whatever a ptsd episode is, they're becoming slightly less frequent.
cbt and effexor, paxil, neurontin, risperidone, all of which i take every day, don't do a damn thing.

i had to tell some of my professors and advisors what happened after i began to display "odd" behavior at school.
i'm harmless. i'm living with my mom, now.
i had to drop out of an elite university. . . one of the best in the world. i had it made. i had straight As until fall 2013

(by the way: i don't normally have the energy to post thoughtfully/intelligently, so i might leave ilx soon. i normally don't have the energy to brush my teeth anymore, which i haven't done in three or four days now.)

i'll live.
i have 0 interest in living, but i can probably never actually commit suicide, for i refuse to traumatize my widowed mother that way.

it's just an unfixable problem. it always comes back, and i wish i could do something.

it probably sounds like i should go to the hospital, but, honestly... i've had a couple psychiatric stays this year... they were really stupid. i mean, they were like vacations, and all i did was read in bed all day, which was kind of therapeutic, especially since i knew that within those walls, i was safe from what had happened since there was truly nothing i could do about it in there, but. . .
please forgive me. . . all of the other patients are just kind of "dumb", and the nurses treat me like i'm one of the others. i'm not special. my stays were nice. i just couldn't really achieve anything with nurses talking to me that way, though.

after what happened in fall 2013. . .
i don't know. my old neighbor called the police on me once because i was yelling late at night. . . but, when they showed up a few hours later, they just looked at me and said okay and walked away.

it's just lonely. i don't really have any support or any friends i can talk to. and, it scares people when you talk about mental illness and loneliness. people think of school shootings or 'taxi driver' or something. it isn't like that at all. i just space out and pace around a lot.

i made a girlfriend at my last hospital stay! we were like benny and joon! it was very romantic, like a movie. but, even though she was straight on her meds at the hospital, she has schizophrenia and religious delusions. i've hung out with her a couple of times since we were together at the hospital (we used to just hug all the time in the hospital), but she's worse now. she just makes me read the christian bible with her all night and she's too far gone. i'd go back to the hospital if i could just live there forever.

i just wish they'd give me benzos or lithium or something more. it makes me sick how they trust me -- i dress well and do well in public - no one takes this seriously, not even my family, even with my documentation. and i have nowhere to go now that i'm out of school, and i'm living in a small town now, and i'm very lonely.

fall 2013 was just bad. it was like the past kept changing, and there was nothing i could do.

I don't know you but I'm very sorry for your troubles and hope they ease. Have you ever reached out online on one of those psych forums? Maybe it would help to hear how other people deal.
Once again, truly sorry you are in so much pain. As someone has it big time in their family and has dealt with depression all my life, I empathize.

Same here. The loneliness is the worst. It's hard enough when you have a couple of people you CAN talk to. But please vent here as much as you need!!!

Same here as in i empathise, not that i claim to have your same experiences, i mean

One of my best friends has PTSD from stuff that happened when she was very young and it's horrible. I'm really sorry to hear that you're going through this.

i had to drop out of an elite university. . . one of the best in the world. i had it made. i had straight As until fall 2013

this happened to me too. after 10 years i went back, to an even better school. hang in there!

Posted by me elsewhere a couple days ago:

Maybe I shouldn't be relaying such personal info on a public forum while using my real name, but here goes. . .

I'm currently withdrawing from an anti-depressant. Mostly because of insurance hassles and things falling through, but now that it's been a couple days, I think I've decided that I'd like to stay off of it. It's a little like smoking pot, except music isn't as fun, because it mostly just makes me want to cry. Definitely has all the wooziness and munchiness of a strong couple of tokes (but without the more fun aspects). It was a long train of events that led me to get on the pills in the first place, which I'll spare you here, but I have been in institution three times over the last 18 or so months. It's been an interesting couple of years and I've found myself here, recently dumped by the (former) love of my life and now living in a new city, under my mother's roof again without a job. I'm 34. To say that I've recently been suicidal is like saying the day is bright and the night is dark.

I guess what I'm saying, Smashy and others, is that we all go through it. Sometimes it's our fault, sometimes we're just caught in the path of the storm.

I'm still here. Broken down and bruised. But here.

Nice to meet you, monster mash. I am currently withdrawing from Effexor. Cold turkey. I've felt more real feelings —actual happiness and sadness, if you can believe it; I'd honestly forgot what it felt like to want to cry or smile— in the last few days than I can remember feeling for at least a year. I am not too thrilled about my prospects, but at the same time, I feel better than I have in years.

The other day,I finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for like the ninth or tenth time. I cried at this: "You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance." It never stuck out to me previously, but that hit me right in the feels this time and I am glad it did, because it's true. So fucking true.

You should stay posting (and venting) here. It's a fun forum, even if you don't have your wits about you to realize it yet. And you have at least one kindred spirit here.

And sorry to ramble on here, but I was also on risperdal (risperidone). Withdrawing from that was really easy compared to the Effexor withdrawal. Like I said, it's very woozy and you just kind of feel like, "Am I gonna throw up? Maybe. . ." all the friggin' time. I can honestly say I feel better without it. I had become so numb to everything. It was getting to a point where I was sleeping all day and wasn't even able to enjoy music or literature anymore. It was like, "Yeah, this is good but I feel nothing about it" and that just sucks.

So yeah: medications. . . blech.

i somehow managed to post this in the zing thread instead of here:

i've turned into basically a big blank nothing since i started ADs. but tbh i'll take feeling not much of anything rather than go back to the absolute misery of before.

I am currently withdrawing from Effexor. Cold turkey.

o shit

good luck dude

Thank you. I was taking 225mg/day. Not a super high dose, but hey.

xpost just1n3:
I get that. I really do. But it was almost like the medication was working too well. It was like, "You feel TOO MUCH. Let's shut that switch off." And it went so far in the other direction, it's like I ended up back where I began. I was bummed out and felt suicidal, so I took medication, got so numb to feeling suicidal that I was bummed out that I couldn't be truly bummed out and suicidal. Who knows. I have a feeling my doc is gonna royally pissed at me for going off like I have. And it's not all rosy and nice. I once again feel really bad, like a burden to those around me and a waste of everyone's time. Those feelings are there and as strong as they were a couple years ago before I started on the meds, but I don't know, maybe I'm able to handle it now. I'm having a hard time adjusting, if you couldn't tell.

i guess i meant that i've taken the 'easy' way - i admire people who work to balance things, to take the good and bad, but i just don't have that in me. hence the preference for absence of feeling.

No no no. No "easy way." That's negative self-talk, and I will have none of it. Maybe you need to experience that to be able to live. I'm in a total haze right now, but I can see that I needed those pills when I needed them. I was not taking the easy way. I'm not stupid enough to be that cocky. I needed —and still need— help. There was no easy way to get where I am. I see no other path, honestly.

I'm still taking a mood stabilizer, but one thing at a time, y'know. It can literally be something you can't do anything about, except take pills to numb yourself.

xp--def not the easy way. you need what you need. take care of yourself. <3

effexor seems especially effective at numbing, in my experience? i wasn't depressed when i started it (was taking it off-label), but it just made my emotions totally flat. something extra-dramatic happened in my life while i was on it, that normally would have had me freaking out, sobbing, doubled over, devastated. and i just...blinked. and shed a tear. and felt really really weird about how i was not...feeling. which was probably for the best? because i can't imagine how i would have coped without that numbing. but still. i felt not quite human, because i'm used to being an emotional person!

but now i'm depressed and yeah, i can understand wanting to be numb.

brains are so ridiculously complicated, and tough to cope with.

and it's not about work. i went thru a phase where i was super-suicidal one day a month. i couldn't think straight, researched suicide methods on the internet, just obsessed over suicide. and then the next day, i'd get my period and realize the obvious--it was hormonal. it never occured to me when i was in the throes of it that it was a physical, temporary thing, even though it happened every. single. month. for about two years.

it was so dramatic, and really changed my view of depression--i knew logically that it was complicated, but feeling it that way, that was powerful. though unpleasant, obv. feeling suicidal sucks.

there's so much stuff influencing your brain--there's stuff influencing other stuff influencing who-knows-what and effecting your moods.

finding the stuff that helps you get through--that's work. give yourself credit for the doc visits and the meds and everything you do to try to feel better.

give yourself credit for the doc visits and the meds and everything you do to try to feel better.

This.

it's just lonely. i don't really have any support or any friends i can talk to. and, it scares people when you talk about mental illness and loneliness. people think of school shootings or 'taxi driver' or something. it isn't like that at all. i just space out and pace around a lot.

fucking mental illness, man. it's super frustrating that if you seem 'functional' at all you basically have to kick people in the ribs to get a support network, or therapy, or pills, or what you really need. and it's still all tenuous.

my advice would be:
- make whatever connections you can irl and online; basically anyone who doesn't make you feel like shit (or makes you feel less like shit than usual) and isn't harmful. who cares otherwise. letting down my judgement about other humans really helped for me -- someone's pop culture savvy or whatever i was judging people on doesn't matter if they'll bring you a casserole when you're low
- get any help you can, ask however and whenever you can, and anyone who makes you feel ashamed about it can fuck right off
- don't be afraid to try whatever seems legit to get better; there's a big amount of trial and error involved in finding what works
- anything that makes you feel better, even a little bit, try to put your energy toward doing it
- there are a lot of non-traditional paths to doing ok in life that no one talks about but are still a-ok...like it took me 10 years to get through college and i felt like shit about it, but no one cared after it was all over. literally no one.

it's just an unfixable problem. it always comes back, and i wish i could do something.

I have a friend who wisely told me 'there's no use in hoping for a better yesterday'. You can't fix your past and it probably feels as if you'll never 'fix' your ptsd, but with the proper external support and painstakingly acquired insight you should be able to slowly learn to recognize its nasty tricks and improve your ability to curb your reactions to it. We accept all kinds of never-ending tasks in life, without tossing them aside as hopeless just because they'll never quit requiring our frequent effort and attention.

Good luck. Accept help whenever and wherever you find it. Don't give up. Things can improve. Imagine if 4 or 5 or even 6 out of 10 days felt good. Woo-hoo!

a friend who wisely told me 'there's no use in hoping for a better yesterday'

It's so important to learn to let stuff go. Even good things have to pass. I found that I was holding myself up to unreachable standard by holding onto romanticized memories.

hey i need help

test

Well, your submit button works.

What's up?

Hey, ENBB. Not sure I can help, but unless you say more it's pretty sure none of us can figure out how to help you.

Yeah, not going to bed until this gets sorted.

what's up? i'm here & awake too.

Hrm.

ok hey i'm sorry am working it all out for myself in therapy. i didnt mean to scare anyone i'm sorry.

No apologies necessary, Benson. You reach out however you can. Important thing is that you are reaching out.

so i went to this thread to vent about how terribly my life is going lately, but everytime i see somebody else's posts my life seems better and better.

so i'm falling apart. it's my last semester of what is maybe my fourth or fifth go-round at college, and i'm a wreck. having nightmares left and right, sleeping 12 hours a day on top of it. every monday i get a new series of deliverables for my classes, and every sunday i complete them two hours before the deadline. they're easy deliverables, thankfully, but the sheer number of them leaves me overwhelmed. i keep stress eating and getting less and less healthy. a restaurant by my house opened which offers fabulous poutine and beer. the only thing that keeps me from going more often is that it being fabulous, they're usually packed, at which point my social anxiety sends me cocooning for a few hours.

work is also really stressful. i've worked at this job for seven years and went to school because of the healthcare situation, which means i need to find a new job as soon as i graduate. problem is that i really do love my job on top of being heavily averse to change, and right now they really, honestly need me, to the point where they keep asking if i can go full time. they're in the middle of a huge project which is going how projects typically go (which is to say, failing upwards), and it needs experienced help. it feels good to be valued and needed, and it's fabulous experience, but it feels terrible to be unable to meet those needs, it feels terrifying to know that i'm going to have to start seriously looking for work soon and not feeling like i have the time.

i'm completely neglecting my spouse. sex is difficult for me at the best of times, but completely out of the question now. so is any form of creativity. i have a book (not a good book, but a book) with 75,000 words in it and no confidence to go back to it for the past year, and the fear that i've changed too much for it to be finishable. i have trouble finishing things. in the meantime we have mandatory class participation forums in which i'm posting lengthy ruminations about the nature of human mortality.

but counterbalancing all this is, well, I'M GOING TO FUCKING GRADUATE, despite my apparently bottomless capacity for self-sabotage i'm going to actually complete something. my life is a goddamn nightmare, but there's an end point in sight, and while i'm greatly overreacting to what are for normal people everyday stresses and strains this stuff is happening for a reason, and having spent decades suffering and feeling miserable for no god-damn reason at all, this is heaven in comparison.

No apologies necessary, Benson. You reach out however you can. Important thing is that you are reaching out.

― Austin, Monday, November 9, 2015 12:40 PM (2 hours ago)

this was confusing until i saw ennb's displayname

i don't have anything insightful to say except i wish you all well

(including benson)