Depression and what it's really like

it's to be expected i think that sometimes we'll struggle to form a working relationship with a therapist even if they're good at their job, and there's no reason to pursue a relationship with somebody if it's not working for you.

i did wonder tho, Treesh, have you clarified with yourself what you might want from therapy? to me it's never been a process i've entered into unless i felt something needed to radically change, but you say yourself that you're resistant to that. do you have an expectation about what you need? maybe that will guide you towards a particular kind of practice?

eh i think a good therapist should challenge you from time to time--if not, he/she's not doing their job

yeah i agree with that. i think that might be why i am not a great candidate for therapy -- i have too many defenses up.

what i wanted from therapy this time around was, like, cognitive behavioral techniques to help stop negative habits. these habits include both thought patterns and behaviors and i wanted to learn ways to push myself "back on track" when i felt myself doing things i don't want to be doing. this therapist seemed to want me to adjust my goals. he didn't want to address the behaviors right away but wanted to interrogate the underlying causes -- he thought that i needed a major paradigm shift in terms of what i expected from myself, where i found joy, etc. i just don't want to touch that stuff. it feels like a careful balance -- i got to a place, with medication, where i don't totally despise myself anymore. self-harming instincts have been replaced by an ability to set goals and look forward to things. i'm frustrated by negative habits, still, and sometimes i fall into a pit of old thought patterns, but overall i feel like i am on a stable ground at this point. part of me is afraid that if i started ripping out the floorboards and messing around with the foundations of my mental health the whole thing would fall apart again.

sounds like you're scared to go deeper. yr therapist wants to help the underlying causes, which will be a lot more work but may get you farther in the long run.

self-harming instincts have been replaced by an ability to set goals and look forward to things. i'm frustrated by negative habits, still, and sometimes i fall into a pit of old thought patterns, but overall i feel like i am on a stable ground at this point.

vs.

part of me is afraid that if i started ripping out the floorboards and messing around with the foundations of my mental health the whole thing would fall apart again

my two cents is, mental health doesn't work that way. but you're already being

still, even though my own resistance is definitely part of why i didn't respond well to the session, i think he could have bene more diplomatic in the way he communicated. "how is that working out for you?" is just so dismissive.

Well, the fact that you're unhappy suggests he misjudged you, at least. But that understandable.

"how is that working out for you?" is just so dismissive.

or, it was a challenge, to get you to consider how those decisions have affected you, which is basically the opposite of dismissive

at one point he insisted that i lower my expectations for myself or something -- part of being realistic and compassionate -- and i resisted, saying that i had done a lot of work since college trying to hold myself accountable. he said "how is that working out for you?" in a way that sounded sarcastic

it was the context of the whole thing. also it was really expensive so i wasn't really interested in being talked down to.

basically he saw my problems as being different than what i saw my problems as being and he didn't explain this in a patient way. he was like, "here is the deal with you" after talking to me for twenty minutes.

yeah, if you're having these types of concerns, you should probably find a new therapist. you're probably spending more time thinking about the problems with treatment instead of getting better because of it. total waste of time and money. could damage you more, too.

yesterday i called a therapist who was saying how she thought i wouldn't trust her, but maybe, just maybe with the right treatment. and trying to paste her interpretation of reality that superseded my own with barely anything to base it on. it's like she was creating the conditions to not trust her, and then calling my normal feelings of distrust a problem that i needed to work with her on. yeechhh.

i guess i don't understand why people would go to therapy and *not* expect a therapist to do that

there are different types of realities and perceptions a person can have. there are therapists out there, like the one i talked to yesterday, who try to take the substance of real experience and say that it was something completely different, like a manifestation of my distrust that i needed to get fixed. when it had absolutely nothing to do with that at all. i know my life a lot better than some random woman i found over the internet.

like with cbt this new perspective needs to be based on empirically-testable facts in life and the world. it's something that you can see, experience, and learn, and others can, too. it's part of the shared experience of our human and social realities.

there's a very fine line between that and between telling someone the substance of their experience is wrong, and that the therapist is the one with the answers, when the therapist has no basis of knowledge about any of that, so isn't even in the position to remark on it. it's something that they would have to take at face value due to that lack of knowledge.

it's a dicey area because what looks legitimate could be a therapist trying to take control of you... and that's an unfortunately common thing that happens. there are way worse stories out there than what i've experienced with therapists. just because someone goes into that line of work doesn't magically change the reality that there are a lot of fucked up people out there who will abuse power and do screwed up things for their benefit. therapy can be risky, especially when you're not in a great place in life, and you don't have a strong support network to make sure you don't run into one of these people.

My best outcomes with therapists have involved being frustrated and pissed off at times with their approach; and much later in the process, sometimes with a different therapist, I realize my problems and my solutions resolve around how I deal with frustrations and betrayals.

Other people can be wrong (including and especially therapists), but if I can safely address how I feel they are wrong and what I can or should do about it, I've gotten closer to handling the rest of life.

Trying to distill the idea that if you are up to it, emotionally and financially, dealing with the therapeutic relationship is ultimately part of the therapeutic relationship.

you still have to find a decent one first.

I'm going to stop posting now, because I'm not sure what my point is. Therapy for me is arguing with myself, and therapists are poor substitutes for different selves.

No I think those are good points. I should probably be more open and less defensive and probably, at some level, I am resistant to doing the work of getting really better now that I feel I have the tools to feel "good enough." (Not that i always succeed in feeling "good enough.") Maybe i'll try again at some point. Right now I am in survival mode, trying to find a job and ward off the worst demons. Definitely not the time to delve into my childhood and deep seated insecurities and shit imo.

really really bad day today. external circumstances, not going to share, but it's going to be a series of bad bad days for the foreseeable future. probably going to go on a bender soon.

xp I guess I'm coming from a different angle. I'll sell my soul to Satan at this point to feel better. I've probably invested a good 6 figures of hours into this shit, so I'm not fucking around. I've seen people have mini-meltdowns when I've talked about my own childhood, sort-of like in Bloodborne when your insight is too high and you run into one of those brain things, so I'm probably coming from a different angle.

I called a new batch of therapists and found a few who were better than the last ones, made a few appointments to check them out. One of them seemed to get it, so that's a good sign.

No matter what approach a therapist takes, I think it's weird to challenge the assumptions of the patient like what happened to Treeship BEFORE developing a rapport. It sounds like this happened pretty early in your sessions with them, right? My therapist spent the first 3-4 sessions just listening to me, trying to understand my feelings and asking me my goals for therapy and giving suggestions for things I could do. It was many sessions before he started to challenge some of my assumptions. If any person, therapist or no, is questioning what I believe to be true before I trust them, yeah I'm gonna be put off

Exactly

Right now I am in survival mode, trying to find a job and ward off the worst demons. Definitely not the time to delve into my childhood and deep seated insecurities and shit imo.

last thing i'll say about this, but this is probably the best time to do the work

after 30-some years of depression and 20-some years in therapy (on and off), i've found that delving into one's childhood and deep-seated insecurities, while fascinating and potentially useful in lots of ways, has little depression-reducing value. at the end of the day, you're still the same person, still prone to the same patterns and choices. cognitive behavioral therapy, rather than dwelling in the murk of "the work", promises to directly address patterns and choices, but i've yet to see any good come of it.

my sense is that - regardless of who we see, what we take, or which path we choose - we improve only when the desire to change utterly overwhelms the desire to stay in place. and if that doesn't happen, everything else adds up to nothing.

For me, the solution thus far seems to have been aggressively breaking and/or avoiding established routines. I'm not sure if this is really an accurate way to put it, but it's like if I notice myself slipping into familiarity or repetition, I get back into that circular negative mindset. So, I guess it's like I'm "distracting" myself, for lack of a better term. I don't let myself become idle, or else I slip back into negative self-talk and similarly damaging thought processes.

after 30-some years of depression and 20-some years in therapy (on and off), i've found that delving into one's childhood and deep-seated insecurities, while fascinating and potentially useful in lots of ways, has little depression-reducing value.

otm. ppl on here know me -- i could spend the rest of my life analyzing myself, making and unmaking narratives about why i have struggled and what-could-i-have-done-differently-here, etc. but i don't want to do that. i want to get on with living.

i agree with austin, breaking up habits is key. that's basically what i wanted help with when i sought out a therapist but he wanted to talk about deeper stuff, like how being a smart person with a learning disability affected my sense of identity, or what "success" really means to me, just all these interminable rabbit holes. i have friends and family to talk to about stuff like that.

it's possible i am being super ignorant and there isn't an approach to treating depression that is purely pragmatic.

i could spend the rest of my life analyzing myself

You're not supposed to administer this kind of therapy to yourself tho is key here I think. It's the therapist's trained observations about recurring themes and things you may be eliding that give you places to dig in.

after 30-some years of depression and 20-some years in therapy (on and off), i've found that delving into one's childhood and deep-seated insecurities, while fascinating and potentially useful in lots of ways, has little depression-reducing value.

otoh, therapy can be helpful in overcoming the sort of emotional numbness and the crippling sense of stasis and confusion triggered by present day events which have overwhelmed your ability to cope. It is not always easy for a lay person to sort out the sources of their feelings or identify the best way forward. It's damned hard for a therapist or physician, too. Minds are exceedingly complicated things.

So, as part of my post-hospitalization plan, I was put into an Orange County behavioral health program that basically ensures that I have access to a counselor to address concerns and a psychiatrist to provide prescriptions. I had an appointment with the psychiatrist today and he's been monitoring my weight and blood pressure since I got out of the hospital in January. Since he saw me last month (before I started working), I've lost eight pounds and my blood pressure was the lowest it's been since at least last July.

So, good news, just from a purely physical standpoint.

CBT has definitely taught me ways to minimize the impact of my depression, i have learned (mainly by myself tbf) coping strategies that stop me responding to myself in ways that are disastrous to my day to day living. on a surface level i've never been more emotionally together.

thing is, i don't think it's done a thing to address the underlying despair and emptiness. and i don't even know any more if it's meaningful to distinguish between me as a functioning social unit and me calmly reminding myself every week that it's not ok to kill myself because of the hurt it would cause other people.

i'm feeling especially bad about some stuff right now and decided to put off cleaning, which i really need to do, until tomorrow. then i remembered the electric company has an 8 hour planned outage tomorrow starting at 8 a.m. now i feel like i don't even deserve to live in a house. how am i going to be depressed and procrastinate without the internet.

There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
- Quentin Crisp

i don't even know any more if it's meaningful to distinguish between me as a functioning social unit and me calmly reminding myself every week that it's not ok to kill myself because of the hurt it would cause other people.

― Noodle Vague, Thursday, June 2, 2016 11:04 PM (2 days ago)

my condolences, as i know the (awful awful) feeling. for me, those urges have dimmed over time. even at my worst, i no longer fantasize about suicide. i'm painfully aware of my own worthlessness, but i'm also weirdly at peace with it. and quentin crisp otm.

i've always loved that Quentin Crisp quote, but external pressures still guilt me out all the time about the squalor i imagine i'm living in - why can't i piss my free time away cleaning instead of just doing sort of nothing?

i'm not even moaning here, i am at some kind of peace, or the difference between a great fjord of a rut of apathy and peace have come to look the same, i dunno. just calmly, detachedly sketching the walls of the cell.

Housework is one of those things where it is very easy to fall into the cumulative sense of 'badness' that depressives are very vulnerable too. You put it off, then it starts to seem insurmountable, and keeps getting worse etc. Just remember that, on the whole, cleaning takes a lot less time than you think it will.

that is very otm. i love when things are clean and i'm good at cleaning. but i have such brain fatigue. and no one ever comes over. and i never want to have anyone over because i'm tired and my house is a mess. so why clean. the power's back on already, maybe temporarily because they're still out there. but now i have no excuse!

i have to pull up weeds out front too. this place looks like grey gardens.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/13340199_1095574420484422_4212767675039046360_o.jpg
cries

i did some cleaning after my moan this morning, this thread works!

Huge <3 to yis all

i made some garden improvements and potted a mint plant

high fives all round

xp - wish i had a mint plant. congrats on your mint plant!

i cleaned the bathroom! seriously tho, my house is my biggest source of anxiety right now, it's so cluttered and messy. i read that marie kondo book and it's totally amazing... i just havent actually started the process of throwing everything away yet.

oh yeah so since i moved into my house, which is tiny but has two bedrooms, i had just kept the second bedroom as a do-not-enter/clutter room. couple weeks ago i was like i haven't touched this stuff in 2.5 years so i'm throwing it all out. it was like a weight was lifted off me. now i look in it and i don't feel anxious. i'm even going to paint it soon. i don't have hoarder tendencies at all it's just an accumulation of depressed laziness. so much better without all that crap. if only i could afford a bed to put in it.

'depressed laziness' is a good description of all the shit i need to get rid of

harbl :)

I'm in something of a dilemma now. Been offered a course of CBT treatment by the NHS and said yes. Problem is, I work a job with very irregular hours that it is going to clash with due to the sessions taking place at fixed fortnightly times. I am loathe to tell work about it, so I am contemplating cancelling it and going private instead. I would gladly quit my job anyway for unrelated reasons but I don't have another one lined up so that would probably be foolish. It would be a pity to have to go private and pay a lot of money for treatment instead but maybe that's what I'll have to do. Curious to hear what other people have done in similar situations.

Has anyone else had experience dealing with other peoples depression and anxiety?

I love my girlfriend but she breaks down at the idea of going to a doctor or looking into meds to deal and she bottles stuff up to the point of hitting crazy lows when it came out. I talked about some stuff when it came to our business about a month ago on this thread and since weve put in some stuff to make it better for her. But by eliminating one thing making her anxious, she seems to have spread that anxiety or anger out across her life, 5% feeling worse about her appearance 5% feeling worse about our home 5% more anxious about her mentality disabled brother and shitty mother etc. Etc. Etc.

Today i went to the shop and she stayed at home to sew some new clothes. A couple hours ago she text me she hit het head and it triggered an absolute mess of tears. Shes usually quite reserved but over the phone she sounded like the worst thing ever, and it was just a bump on the head.

I sympathise with her and want to help, I just dont really know how to. I cant really just go on patting her on the back and stiff upper lip telling her itll be ok (which is what she wants me to do, she likes pretending its not a big deal). Idk. I think tonight i might try and talk to her about seeing a doc again, it really helped me a couple years back.