Depression and what it's really like

oh yeah and class mgmt is a tricky one, it took me a long time to learn that one too, and like hs says sleep helps, also antidepressants helped me
like before them i would hear some dumb bs a kid says: 'you're boring' and i would think, 'it is true, i am boring, and also, i am a morally bad person...etc etc' depression talk
and after antidepressants it was like 'be respectful' and like 'eh whatever go suck an egg, kid' inside
class mgmt is learnable but it the irony is: it DOES take energy to do right...yet it SAPS you of EVEN MORE energy if you don't do it right

i like this guy's site, it helped me out a lot
http://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/category/classroom-management-strategies/difficult-students/

or if you just wanna QUIT, figure out WHEN is a good time to do it ~~ part of why i did not quit was my district fines you $2000 if you quit midyear, might wanna see if that's gonna be a problem
if that hadn't been the case i'd probably be working in a call center again

My kids figured out how to get my to cry every day, and they did.

Children that age should be killed. Well, not all of them. Just one or two, as an example to the others.

children are the worst

tbh I just needed to get a thicker skin

and pills pills pills

they fine you??!!!??

i'm thinkin YOU should be fining THEM if their job is not doable for a whole year

anyway if you are feeling shitty shitty shitty another option is to take fmla time until you've got the old mental health settled
you can't take care of others if you're not in good shape yourself

ah me, treesh! it sounds like the situation you are in was created by elements far beyond your control and it has knocked you sideways very hard and disoriented your sense of self and your relation to the world.

now that you have (I would hope) a brief winter break, maybe you can get a bit of distance on the situation and begin to reevaluate your position. the sooner you redefine success in your job down to an achievable goal based on what you can control, the sooner you will regain your footing.

one thing I would jettison immediately is any idea that you are failing to meet the standards of your employers, no matter what you are told those standards are or where you stand in relation to meeting them. if you just survive the year and are willing to walk into that classroom each day and make some effort to teach, that will be good enough.

sixth graders are just old enough to develop a sense that society's rules of behavior are a paper tiger and your power to enforce the rules is extremely limited. They are still immature enough to think that the ideal situation is being able to immediately do whatever their current impulse tells them to do. dealing with that requires cunning and a somewhat detached and strategic approach, which you've been too harried and pummeled to supply.

hammering them indiscriminately will only give them a common enemy and legitimize a classroom leader who is not you. you have to read your students, find natural allies, isolate resistance, and discover ways to bend their existing motives to your ends. it may be too late to recover this year's class, but you can experiment.

you may have thought of all this already and 'failed'. but dammit, treesh, don't make yourself out as a failure, just because you aren't able to keep that many plates spinning at once without any falling and breaking. plate spinning takes energy, dedication and practice and you weren't allowed the luxury of learning with just a few plates to start out. that mess at your feet was foreordained by circumstance. try to regain your focus and aim for more limited results. at the end of every day give yourself big points for being there and staying present.

you can do this, but only if you redefine "this" in achievable terms.

p.s. we love you.

Hi everyone—

I swallowed a bottle of trazodone tablets a while back. This got me into the emergency room and then the psych hospital for two weeks. Would not recommend this as a good way to spend the christmas holiday. I wish a lot of things had gone differently over the past year, but surviving this is not one of them. There's too much yet to do to just leave undone at this point.

Back at home and playing guitar a lot. Wish I had my old setup (or could afford a new amp), but I'm just happy to be able to play these days.

And besides, the day I got home from the hospital, I got a call back on my job application at Guitar Center. Hopefully that pans out.

Here's to a better 2016.

Wish you the best of luck and a positive focal point to concentrate on for the next year.

hope the job comes through; if it doesn't, something better will.

Glad to still have you around. Wishing you strength and peace.

man, that really sucks, austin :/ i'm sorry you had to go through that

There's too much yet to do to just leave undone at this point.

― Austin, Tuesday, January 5, 2016 2:56 AM (10 hours ago)

this is really well put

every good wish to you now and into the future

Thanks everyone =)

Ugggggggghhhhhhhhhh

i don't even care about being happy or anything, i just don't want to feel like this all the time. it's a cold ass world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Tmhfwz8w5o

big love to Austin, brimstead, and everyone here. I'm always humbled when I read this thread and see the support people give each other.

I'm just about four days into a valley, and it had been a while.

I think so often for me it begins with an emotion that not only hurts, but that I feel ashamed to harbor, like regret, or worse still, envy. And they just stick with me, triggering all sorts of other feelings, and before you know it I'm having trouble keeping my thoughts straight. I want to be left alone but then my mind won't let me be alone. It gnaws at me like a brutal, senseless rodent.

good night for now

so fucking tired of this. tired of "tips" and "tricks" and "wisdom" and other assorted garbage.

people ain't worth jack shit

totally sober here.

no need to respond, i just had to let something out

in the same place right now

i'm sick of being forced to ask for advice from well-adjusted assholes who've floated through life on a happy fucking extrovert bubble and to denounce myself and have them tell me my viewpoint is not valid.

^^^

Had a really bad spate about two weeks ago that frightened me. Have been nearly but not quite baseline since (good enough). But damn all of a sudden there is so much suicide. My friend's brother in law killed himself on Wednesday, one of my comix peers killed himself on Thursday, and then you guys probably saw the bump of the suicide thread on here today. The psychosphere is just so bad right now. What is happening?

seriously, fuck people, fuck america, i just want to be left alone until i die, which i hope comes sooner than later.

when the sheer absolute absurdity of life isn't liberating it's horrifying

maybe tomorrow i'll wake up and feel different. i was starting to feel better before i went to bed last night and then i wake up again covered in cobwebs of mind dirt.

or something

Crap about "fitting in" and "selling yourself." I haven't got the energy or the will to do either. I just want it out of the way.

feeling this hard

http://mnftiu.cc/blog/images/filing.001.gif

i find the current incarnation of david rees kind of depressing

didn't even know he had a tv show until just now

there's this sanctimonious windbag in my recovery group who pulls the fucking "we" card constantly, like "us addicts, we're all master manipulators". speak for yourself, fuckface, i am NOT a manipulative person!!

So glad to hear you reject that notion brimstead. It's one of my pet peeves.

After a couple of decades of working around and with long-term street drug users (mostly low-income), I've come to the conclusion they're no more manipulative than your average caffeinated middle manager (or myself for that matter). If anything the issue is that the latter disguises his manipulations, so you don't notice it as easily.

yeah, for awhile i was just kind of uncritically accepting all these things in the name of humility... and constantly wrestling with my identity and self-esteem... my attitude was sort of "well of course, since i'm terrible in general, i'm probably manipulative too". so my 'identity' gets all jumbled up, AND i end up constantly thinking "am i depressed or am i just a lazy sociopath who's 'manipulating people'". fuck that shit. ask anybody i've lived with/worked with/dated and not a single one would call me "manipulative", i KNOW that.

i don't manipulate anyone in any way other than a wish that maybe they will like me.

Good for you, brimstead, for rejecting that line of thinking. Guilt can be so toxic for people with depression, it's sort of unbelievable how substance recovery programs aren't more sensitive to that danger. iirc AA forces everyone to "make amends," even if you never did anything that bad

totally. i mean, i'm definitely NOT doing the steps lol, that is just not gonna happen ANYTIME soon.

the program i attend is very progressive (for the U.S.), from what I understand... the refrain i hear over and over (from people who have gone through other programs) is: "they actually care about you here". the DA hates them of course, lol.

anyway, that's for another thread

i have no advice for anyone in this thread, only love. i pray that you can find peace.

thanks, man.

hey jon not jon, i don't suppose you're referring to alvin b there?

m bison OTM

brimstead, clouds, Jon, emil.y, all excellent posters and clearly decent humans, love to u all

Xpost yeah

I live in the Bay Area and have published artists like frank santoro and kim deitch so I was acquainted with him as well . Very shocking news.

thanks mb & sleeve

people (well two people) keep telling me this is just a temporary setback.. but as bad as i feel now, i'm pretty sure i'm just going to feel worse more and more frequently the older i get. trust me when i say i'm a bigger fuckup than anybody on this thread. i'm only going to get more miserable, more stressed out. hate this planet. hate it.

best i can hope for:
- job that only makes me want to kill myself once or twice per week
- that's it