Depression and what it's really like

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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)

Having a rough day today. The shakes have settled in. Before it was just dizziness. But now I'm shakey and it's really fucking bothering me. I tripped while crossing the street in traffic this morning. Grrr.

Sorry to keep upping this, but I don't have anybody else to talk to about this stuff, so I'm using this as my vent space.

Feeling really low the last couple of days. I think I'm on the downside of the withdrawal because the wooziness and dizzy spells aren't nearly as strong as they were a couple days ago. I should be pleased about this, but all I can think about is how going off the Effexor is equal to throwing down my shield on the battlefield and trying to continue fighting without it. I've been continuing to take the 20mg tablets of Abilify (aripiprazole)‎ for two reasons: maybe taking them is having a placebo effect (or that's what I tell myself) and I don't know if I would experience double withdrawal if I stopped. I was on 30mg tablets, but my old doc wanted to try and taper me off of it because she was concerned that it was disrupting my sleep————

In any case, I have an entire bottle of the 30mg tablets and just got my 30 day 20mg tablet supply refilled yesterday. I've been googling what the effects of overdose would be all morning. I certainly have enough to overdose, I'm just not sure it would be lethal (can't find anything definitive). Kind of scared. I mean, why am I looking that up?

In to see the new therapist on Thursday.

sorry i don't have much constructive to offer other than sympathy and recognition.

i think coming off Effexor was a good thing for me - eventually - but that chemical rollercoaster that it sets in motion took much longer to clear than i thought it would. maybe keep reminding yourself that you'd rather have mood swings than no moods at all. i've had lots of psychophysical feelings the last few years that felt like i'd never get thru, and eventually they change into something else ime

venting usually helps? vent away i reckon, this thread/board has helped me crystallize some horrible stuff in the past that felt more manageable just for typing it out

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.

having taken five fuckin years to write a book due to long periods of feeling that it was a pointless endeavor and being waylaid by depression from countless other factors at various points (and this is even w/o thinking about the process of editing it/seeking out an agent), just wanted to say i totally feel this & wish you the best w/ it (and everything else). if you got that far into it (75,000 is a fuckin lotta words!), the work had to have been worth something.

feeling a lot better than the last time i posted here but shit still lurks, and i have yet to return to therapy, which i know is essential if i want any improvements to stick

love and best wishes to all y'all

*still

Thanks for allowing for this space. It does help to be able to type it out and just send some of this shit off.

But yeah, goin' down the road feelin' bad right now.

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.

online huh? i'm teaching online courses rn so if it's any consolation, it's the SAME WAY FROM THE OTHER END.

i instituted simple hey-what's-up check-in assignments where students email me just to help keep everyone on track and feeling connected and bizarrely enough it's working, they even thank me for being so interactive with them, like the poor kids are usually just out there all alone in learning-management-system land. : /

oh yeah, i have the profoundest sympathy for anybody trying to teach an online class; i feel like it's probably a lot easier to take a course like that than it is to teach it. it's the whole thing about trying to manage a billion different trivial questions at once, all of which seem to have the utmost urgency for the people asking them. and if you mess something up nobody bothers to report the issue until five minutes before the assignment is due.

When I was at uni I was consistently 2-4 weeks late with papers so I think two hours before deadline is impressive.

it does feel to me like a job / mode of work drowning in a sea of trivialities

just getting in a room for three hours a week to teach a real class puts that in remarkable focus

i just want to go back to the hospital. i just want to be left alone with my books in there. i can't do anything.
i'm crying and watching lockup raw. these are my people. they have no idea how much easier it is in there than it is out here.
i'm not fit to talk about this or be around people. i am waiting until my mom dies before i can kill myself. i keep making people mad at me on ilx.
they told my mom i have schizophrenia and ptsd. like, i'm crazy, but i don't think i'm crazy crazy, so i try to joke about it.
i had to drop out of one of the best universities in the world, when i only had 30 credits left to go. and, no, i can't really ever go back after my inappropriate behavior. all i remember was e-mailing my mental health advisor about something, and she took it well, but...

i would rather be in the hospital with my books.
i would rather just be in prison.

i can't take care of myself. i have serious problems with self-care at this point. i haven't brushed my teeth in days. i haven't showered in weeks. i just get drunk every day with the money (someone) gives me and sometimes i read.

there isn't much I can do about this until my mom dies. i'm just going to drink myself back to sleep. i just wish I had a place to go to where they would let me live and help me, like a hospital. but places like that don't last long anymore, and, times I've had short term stays, the psychiatrists won't take me seriously because i'm not constantly banging my head against a wall.
doesn't matter.

sorry fella.
i have no idea how to address any of those problems except to say there's no point where you can't come back from. i hope you can find something that brings you some peace of mind.

i'm not mad at you. anybody who is mad at you can fuck right off. i'm just sad because you're hurting and you need help and none of us can really help you. like half of these things you're convinced are totally true right now is just your brain, or the disease, or whatever, lying to you, but who the hell am i to say that? like i have any more authority than your own brain. you need somebody you can believe who can tell you those things, and instead all you have is somebody who gives you money for booze, which is killing you, and a bunch of words on a screen, which doesn't help, or at least doesn't help in any sort of empirical way.

I cosign what rushomancy said about your brain constructing the world you are finding so painful to live in. Reconstructing a better world to live in will take time and help, but it can be done.

the psychiatrists won't take me seriously

If you tell any psychiatrist what you wrote here on this thread and they failed to take you seriously, then they ought to have their license to practice medicine revoked. And be kicked up & down the street by all the patients they've failed to help.

i tried to see a therapist recently and she was terrible and minimized all of my problems. she also got mad at me for "going over" the allotted time even though she didn't tell me that time was up. i thought it was her job to watch the clock.

i mean, from the outside, things might not seem that bad for me, but i am in an overwhelming job and the stress is causing me to slip back into old depressive habits and symptoms. learning to give 100% at a job while still practicing self care seemed like a legitimate thing to seek advice about. idk.

those are just my own issues, but the point is, mm, that mental health workers are like anyone else, some are terrible. so you should keep seeking help and even if you don't find it right away keep seeking it and if you believe you can get better that's your best shot at actually getting better. unfortunately, in this life you have to be your own advocate. sorry if all of this sounds boilerplate.

piggybacking off treeship-

therapy isn't an empirical science. hell, even psychopharmacology isn't an empirical science, because at least my experience is that the way they prescribe drugs is that they just start throwing drugs at you essentially at random until one gets good results without intolerably bad side effects, and then they just keep you on that until it stops working. the good news is that there are way more therapists out there than there are approved anti-depressant drugs, and if you wind up with a therapist who doesn't work for you, you can just try another one. i've had therapists who were much worse than merely ineffective- although they were very nice, well-intentioned, completely compliant in every respect with therapeutic protocol, they just made my life a living hell.

co-sign on treeship: having a shitty experience in therapy is not a very good reason to rule out therapy as ineffective.

I'm scared.

I've actually thought about what it would feel like to die. And not in a way of like passing thought, like oh wonder what that's like.

Like, very deeply going over what it would actually be like and the ramifications it would have. I'm talking doing nothing but laying in bed for hours thinking about it.

I have the means to do myself in. I'm just not sure I want to hurt the others I live with in that way.

Don't do it man, please, these feelings will pass

^^^

maybe try to think as much as possible about the effect it might have on the people who care about you even if you can't see anything but positives for yourself - it's important to try to shift perspective on this if you can i think

xp Thinking about your own death is a pretty natural thing to do. Thinking about deliberately ending your life is a big red flag and you should tell the people who care about you that such thoughts are in your mind.

watch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_J0AMPPD34

omg that is one chill lil rabbit dude

So chill I was afraid it was dead at first o_O

Me too!

love his smile =:-)

austin--that sort of suicidal ideation is so fucking awful. hotlines can help at times. in the US, it's 1-800-suicide. it's anonymous. here's a post explaining what it's like:

http://captainawkward.com/2013/03/01/guest-post-what-to-expect-when-you-call-a-helplinehotline/

there's an im service for those who hate phones too. (c/p from comments of above link) crisischat.org is available in the US for limited periods of time. It works similarly to a crisis hotline, just with IM instead of the phone.

you say you have the means to do yrself in. if possible, give that stuff to a friend for safekeeping. you don't want that sort of stuff to be convenient when you're this depressed.

hey i went to a show, even though it wasn't easy to get to, and it was good and i hardly regretted leaving the house at all

:D

so i'm not a professional, but as best i can tell suicidal thoughts get classified in a number of ways. thinking about death and about killing oneself is known as "suicidal ideation". this is sort of like a storm watch- it's bad and you definitely want to keep an eye on the situation. this can escalate to "suicidal intent", which is sort of the equivalent of a storm warning, a very strong indication of danger where you need to take action to protect yourself. if you have means and a plan you need to take steps to prevent that plan from being carried out. concern for loved ones is one of the many defenses people have against suicide- a storm wall, to extend the metaphor- but the depression is battering against it constantly, and there's no real way to know how strong it is, how long it will hold out.

whenever people used to write to ann landers talking about being depressed, she always advised them to get professional help, which is really good advice. there's not really anything we can do about depression from way over here.

so i'm not a professional, but as best i can tell suicidal thoughts get classified in a number of ways. thinking about death and about killing oneself is known as "suicidal ideation". this is sort of like a storm watch- it's bad and you definitely want to keep an eye on the situation.

Not that I'm encouraging anyone to contemplate suicide, but personal experience leads me to think there's some truth to the research that indicates suicidal ideation is like a safety valve--by THINKING about it and then putting off doing it at least for now, you can get through another awful day

they played a really sick joke on me.
i'm having a hard time living with this, anymore.

Please don't do anything silly. I know it's a long way from you, but I have spent the weekend inviting lonely people to spend Christmas day at my mother's. And she was in Pub today and this was brought up, she just shrugged and said she was used to me bringing "waifs and strays" to her house to eat. Which I will hold my hands up, it is true, and especially at Christmas, no-one should be on their own. So I know you can't make it to mine, but just imagine that there are people and places who would welcome you in. I mean, it's mainly a drinking occasion in my family, but you don't need a drink, you need a hug. And if you are as good looking as you claim, my mother would no doubt cosy up to you. But please, don't be acting rash, there are plenty of people here to talk to. It's Christmas, I need everyone to stay safe, we had a Cancer Death last week but we're staying strong, the vodka lets us talk to each other, the creepy doctor says it doesn't help, but IT DOES. But that is not a reccomendation to you, please just talk to another human being, you are a prick but the world would not be better for lack of you. Hold on, tightly, with both hands.

my job is too much for me to deal with. i don't think i can actually deal with all that much. the past couple of weeks i've spent a lot of time fantasizing about doing low skill, lower stress jobs and cutting expenses/simplifying my life to make this work. no one i talk to supports me in this.

this is more confessional than i usually am. i am just so burned out and i think i have always been bad at managing my responsibilities.

i've done that - switched to a lower stress job. after a while i really started to hate the boredom of the lower stress job. anything you can do to make the current job more manageable?

i have really bad depressive tendencies, as documented somewhat on this thread. another bad part of switching was that i really started to question my self-worth, even though i was doing a good job at the low stress job, like a lot worse than when i was sucking at the higher-stress job. and the loss of social capital was a bummer too.

like i thought when i switched it would free up all of this mental energy that i could devote to other things. nope. instead my mental energy just went into stressing out about how i'd disappointed everybody, wondering how anybody would ever take me seriously again, wondering how much of a hit my career had taken, etc. the problem wasn't my job, the problem was / is my depression.

I quit a high stress job i got right after college, i quit after four days. I'm pretty sure I had a nervous breakdown, it had been a rough year.

I spent the next few years working supermarket shifts and just happy to not be stressed about work. Even after getting a regular hours office job on the same money I was still delighted not to have any responsibility or decisions or any of that grown-up shit that (I'd convinced myself by that stage) other people had somehow been groomed and prepared for and somehow, somewhere picked up the certainty and steeliness of resolve that the corporate world seems to require but that I never managed to find when I needed it.

After a few years of satisfying and totally indulging my fears in this way and thereby avoiding that churning panic, I worked my way slowly into competency in enough areas that I didn't feel fraudulent in a professional environment anymore. Somewhere after that I started to think I could maybe chance my arm at further study and promotion and did both, though both terrified me at times. External forces included yeah a desire for status/income that I wasn't going to get at the level I was comfortable at, and eh ms.mac likes me fine but I'm not sure she sees herself settling long, long term with a typist. Internal force was that I knew I was settling within myself for the sake of comfort and I'd eventually witnessed enough around me to realise that there is a lot of front and bluffing going on out there, and that I'd at least be smart enough among it all to do no more harm than the next fella, and with maybe a smidgen more good intent.

TLDR/moral: I think it's common, tlg sympathising above suggests as much. Struggling through it is an available path, I'd imagine lots do. Ducking out and finding your own platform over as long as is needed to do do might be another way, it was for me. Either way, or by any other way you find, needn't mean that you're dropping out forever, just until yknow it works for you. And even if it does, eh fuckit its only work and you're a good guy. With a very photogenic dog. Luck.