Depression and what it's really like

cheers ailsa.

i just put her to bed. we actually got out a makeshift bag i could hold and used it as a punching bag at one point to try and get her anger out. its been fucking mental.

it fucking sucks because its been about a month since i posted here and we've actually made some huge strides: works got better, we got a personal trainer, weve been drinking less, we signed up to something very exciting on a whim to push us out of our comfort zone (ummm we are doing The Clothes Show in december to launch a brand and... i guess we have to make that brand and also a thousand or so items of stock from now until then to pretend we arent charlatans...). After some fucking hard conversations and some rational decisions, it was all going swimmingly. So naturally she now needs to decide whether to rat her brother out to the police or try and send him to rehab or ignore him AND sort her mums naive view of life where any scammer, especially her own son, could have her in an instant in a week. The mum is like the dictionary definition of a con artists dream, lonely, willing, dumb, a bit disabled, neglectful etc.

WE WERE JUST FUCKING GETTING SOMEWHERE. THIS IS ENTIRELY SELFISH SHOUTING BECAUSE ITS GOTTA HURT MORE FOR MY FUTURE MUM IN LAW WHOSE SON ROBBED HER BUT FFS WE WERE JUST FUCKING GETTING SOMEWHERE.

Families suck.

Yep. I've deliberately never mentioned my family on ILX, but I have all of the sympathy for this. The makeshift punchbag is a brilliant idea.

I'm also feeling this rn, some of my family have been atrocious in this respect and that's why there's 4000 miles between me and them.

Thoughts with you sam. Lots of positive stuff going on though. Keep hold of that too, other people dont and wont always impact you like this and given a fair run youre doing great.

Cheers guys. Its gonna be a long fucking week but after day one, I feel okish

am in a bit of a sad bleak place atm
my over-attachment to my mediocre friend has reached a breaking point & i have to accept that my expectations were too high

blaming myself mostly

but it's also boiled up all the horrible self loathing from my childhood & i feel like scratching holes in my arms

i know i wont, i'm so far from those days now, but ... i dunno ....i just wish i could make and keep one new friend in this stupid country who doesnt leave me feeling more lonely with them than on my own. i hate opening up but i wish i could just give them the can opener & let them see what i need because i can't articulate it

mr veg is good & supportive and all but i want a life outside that. but i just keep slipping back to the start

hugs to everyone
i got a refill of my cymbalta the other day and i feel goofy since starting that bottle 3 days ago - super tired, sluggish, numb/tingly face and fingers, body feels like i was in a mosh pit - same kind of feelings i feel when i forget to take them in the morning

called a pharmacist and she said talk to your doctor in a week if you still feel this way

also she said i might have to try a new kind which to me might as well be saying 'let's throw your life down the toilet'

I mean it sounds like it's a defective batch? That must happen once in a blue moon.

Asking my pharmacist to spot me a day of Paxil rn because I don't have $9 in my bank account for my copay

VG, feeling you on that post. Almost all my friends are my wife's friends right now. All my besties are so far away and it is super hard to make new ones take root in the kind of mid life doldrums I'm inhabiting

VG, I hear you lady. I don't have a single friend here who I'm as close to as my old nz friends. Wish we lived a bit closer, I'd totally be yr buddy ^_^

I def don't feel like I can talk to my American friends with the same openness I talk to even my nz acquaintances.

Some weird pharmacy fuckup means I'm out of Zoloft for at least a few days. Soooo excited to see what withdrawals are like :-/

do you guys mean to say i can blame america for not making friends? i've been blaming my job and my shitty demeanor

I'm in a new place too, and feeling the old loneliness issues too. I was talking to someone the other day, and I mentioned depression, and they said 'but you seem very happy!'. I tried to explain that that's because you get very good at faking it - no-one likes hanging around unhappy people.

I live I London with no friends but I like blaming America. Fuck you trump!

Sympathies all round, medication issues no joke.

I CANT FUCKING COPE WITH THIS

WE WERE JUST FUCKING GETTING SOMEWHERE. THIS IS ENTIRELY SELFISH SHOUTING BECAUSE ITS GOTTA HURT MORE FOR MY FUTURE MUM IN LAW WHOSE SON ROBBED HER BUT FFS WE WERE JUST FUCKING GETTING SOMEWHERE.

aw man that's the worst feeling. much love - really hoping you can both catch a break soon :(

Just wrote 6 paragraphs of anger and frustration but fuck it. Complaining on the internet gets you nowhere. I guess sometimes you go out with someone and sometimes you have to turn into frustrated and authoritative parental figure who sends their girlfriend/business partner home from work.

do complain if it helps, we are here for you.

good thoughts to all itt.

Cheers man. Had a bit of a chat, a bit better since. Plus an Australian just bought six cosby jumpers cos they don't understand appropriate dressing for weather and that's made me happy.

I'm kinda struggling right now because my grandma just died last week and I'm apartment hopping because of renovations in my place so don't feel like I have a secure place to grieve, which is rough but also triggering because these are eerily similar circumstances to five years ago when I totally fell apart for a year+. Holding it together but I need things to return to a state of semi-normalcy soon and I'm a little afraid of my ability to cope if another shoe drops before they do.

Minor league to what other people itt are going through. Much love to all.

That isn't minor league at all ... equally, from yr post, it's obvious you've got the tools to see off the shit situation

Yeah, death is horrible, please don't think you have to treat your grandmother as a minor issue. I hope you can find time to properly grieve and feel. We are all here to support.

Thanks, guys, seriously. It's also a thing where I know that the loss of grandparents has a variable impact depending on the person/situation/relationship (most of my own grandparents' deaths have basically been sad but nothing devastating) but this was someone I thought of as Mom #2 so...it's really fucking hard. But, yes, I have tools and I'm employing them like a motherfucker right now.

God, I feel terrible. My usual support network is (understandably and justifiably) preoccupied with their own stuff. I'm struggling against suicide ideation, and it's hard. But I've dealt with it often enough that these days I think I'll get through it.

do you guys mean to say i can blame america for not making friends? i've been blaming my job and my shitty demeanor

― assawoman bay (harbl), Thursday, July 28, 2016 5:57 PM (6 days ago)

I feel like I'm in another spate of having a bunch of friends move away, and sometimes I feel like the reason they are moving away is because I wasn't a good enough friend, but really it's the standard cost of living/career/need for change things make most people decide to move from here. I'm also a shitty long-distance friend.

xp to dowd I know how it can hurt dealing with suicide ideation even if you know you won't go through with it. At this point I'm sort of resigned to it being part of my life. Best to you and hope it passes.

I got my diazepam prescription yesterday, after six months (people are very careful about it these days) so if I get too worked up I have those.

hey can you hook me up bitter lol

I try to avoid using it, tbh. The first time I got sectioned the first guy I got to know was an 18yr old alcoholic who was also addicted to diazepam - he's been taking it since he was 15. He killed himself the second day I was there. I sometimes wonder if the fact I was on a fairly intense suicide watch made it easier for him. Either way, benzo addiction is no fun.

sorry for grim joke, i just picked a bad week to try and ease off the sauce

It's cool. Super hard to quit drinking. I've tried a couple of times, even using disulfiram. I managed 6 months before I had a manic episode and all that went out the window.

I need a fucking beer.

In the past week:

Found out the gf's brother was stealing thousands from their mum and the fallout from that hasn't been pretty.

My best friend, who moved to Leeds 18 months ago to get out of a failed relationship has had his current relationship go mental. The gf saw him when she went back to Leeds to sort out the above and they went for a pint. Somehow this lead to the bf punching him in the gut and bringing the police around the next morning to help him get his shit. Turns out the new bf has a history of crazy abuse and having found the first man to actually have a normal relationship with has been turning from victim to abuser. My best friend was signed off work and recommended therapy (almost implied more??? Idk he has always been good at keeping secrets, it took me 5 years of knowing him to know he had a brother in a mental institution for killing their childhood dog).

The gf's best friend is also not in a decent place, yesterday having had her dad declare he was leaving the family for a secret mistress he's had for years.

Oh and I'm having a shit day at work.

Fuck life. I just don't give a fuck anymore. I know in two weeks life will be more stable again and its absolutely coincidental all this shit is happening at once but I just want to cry an cry. Life is a fucking miserble experience sometimes.

(otoh my brothers bf proposed to him! Yay happiness! Nice people doing nice things! Eh)

Not doing too great atm, just very low, can't sleep etc. Wasn't helped by having a stomach bug and having to get help for a friend experiencing a schizophrenic episode. On the plus side, my dog is staying with me now, so walking him is getting me out of the house.

sorry to hear dowd. am in bits myself at the moment. struggle thru winter, apparently now i gotta struggle thru summer.

i just lost a friend to a heart attack. so of course the sane thing is to drink and smoke til i feel like i'm gonna die of a heart attack and then sweat around the house all alone and anxiety-wracked.

and kind of weigh up whether the heart attack would be better than returning to work next week.

sorry, off on one, selfish.

sometimes every little thing feels like it's sent to try us, right? i think that might be fucked-up thinking. i wish i could help somebody.

<3 man

<3 noodle <3

Hope you're doing okay, NV.

Just took Dillon for a walk at 3am, because I can't sleep and my thoughts were getting dark. Trying to resist the booze in the kitchen. One of the stranger things about being depressed is how alienated I feel from my 'well' self; kind of like looking back on your youth, and your actions and values seem odd to you.

I think about getting back into work, or volunteering, or painting etc., then I have a bad spell and it all seems impossible.

<3

A bit better this morning thanks dowd and thanks for everybody's thoughts. Still frightened of going back to work, might have to take a couple of days, but I'm very aware isolation makes things worse in the long term.

I guess all of us who suffer like this have to try to not get sucked into thinking that the worst is the only way we can feel. Just try and do simple self-care and give ourselves time and space and yeah avoid the drink sadly :/

Hope you feel better soon dowd, and everybody else who has to struggle with their own evil feelings on the regular. I know how exhausting it gets.

I wish I had magical things to say that would help everybody feel better :( I sincerely hope for brighter days ahead for everyone. You are not alone; at the very least this thread is a comfort in that.

You are not alone

5100 posts and counting...

Since starting my new job in May, I have been on a floating schedule. I didn't want to make any issues, so I discontinued seeing my therapist and scaled back going to the psychiatrist to once every four weeks (basically just enough to get my prescriptions written) in order to be totally available for any schedule at work. Fast forward my ninety days and I'm now eligible for full benefits, so I wanted to get established with a covered psychiatrist (I was previously covered under MediCal, but now that I have private insurance they no longer cover me). So, I went for my first appointment with my new psych on Friday.

I have been feeling pretty alright recently, despite some ongoing issues at work (nothing that serious; just minor annoyances really — certainly nothing I bring home with me). I don't know what it was, but ever since my appointment on Friday I've just been really down. Maybe it's been working so much that has distracted me and sitting in a room running down the history of my four hospitalizations to a stranger for nearly two hours has brought up some unpleasant thoughts, but it's been a pretty bad weekend. I left work early yesterday because I was feeling such unproductive despair. I had to go in this morning for a couple hours to attend a mandatory store meeting and I just felt almost unbearably self conscious as I was parking my car outside the store and I realized that I'd slept in my clothes (went to bed immediately after arriving home yesterday and slept for about thirteen hours) so I was wearing the same thing and had not showered or even brushed my teeth. Nobody really seemed to notice; or if they did, they played it off pretty well. But I was so nervous, trying to hide being absolutely mortified and ashamed.

Been playing records all afternoon, trying to distract myself from just sleeping all day (which is really really what I want to do).

Sometimes seeing a new shrink or counsellor makes things much worse, partly because stupid subconscious hopes develop thinking maybe this time they will have some great idea which will help, and of course they don't, and you feel even shittier than before

good vibes to you, Noodle and dowd and Austin

starting with a new psych and going through your history always unpleasant for dredging stuff up, hope future appointments go better

Starting to feel that the old chestnut about exercise lifting the mood really is true. The catch though obviously being that at my lowest points the motivation to go and exercise (or tbh do almost anything constructive) just isn't there.

Sticking my head into the 'and that's okay/and here's why' thread for the first time earlier did wonders for cheering me up too ('Watch these people bite into a madeleine for the first time' was where I properly creased up...).

exercise helps me regulate but it doesn't cure my sad/depressed moods, you know? i rely a lot on pre-workout drinks to get me going. i feel like they've come a long way from where they used to be, making you feel all jittery and cracked out. now there's one or two i use that are just a solid push of energy with a gentle come down and i can sleep or just chill no problem without any weird mood swings.

i'm really into fitness and proud of what i can do / that i do it almost every day. just being proud of constant work like that i think has helped me a lot. but i mean it's not a panacea, nothing is for my depression.

Well going Andy. I think there is even a lot to be said in even participating, before talking about what regular activity may occur. I don't know what your physical ability levels are, so if you aren't starting from the bottom it may not seem like such a difference but engaging in activity should hopefully help.

Its not mental health but I recently had a discussion about how the activities I do offset what I may consume. Now I work a very physical job but I also drink a lot and eat like shit, should I look buff? No. But it really fucking helps in not going too far.

Anyway, well fucking done, this shit is hard and we all want to understand.

i'm to the point where i don't talk about my depression anymore, because everybody wants to "help". yeah thanks but no thanks folks.