Depression and what it's really like

Feel for ya Neanderthal!

I've kinda settled on the fact that I'll probably never have kids. My nephew was asking recently if I would have kids and I was just like "sorry bud".

Anyone else work on nights? I work on shift-work but am usually on nights as its my strongsuit region-wise and client wise. I often wonder if my usual schedule of working late (now til 11 PM) is a huge factor in my depression. No social life, sleeping in late, very little time on the weekends - and you're burned out af

I've struggled fruitlessly with ruinous, black hole incapacity since I was in grade school. But I don't chat about these things with co-workers or even friends.

On a few occasions, when pushed to the wall, I have tried to seriously talk about depression with people I love. But such discussions haven't often been too productive.

A guy I've known for years died a couple months ago, found dead in his room by a neighbor. He was a couple years older than me, also had serious depression. We were never super close, but we were friends. Another friend of mine dated him a while back and told me that he was a functional alcoholic. Reading through past facebook posts of his, I found out he had major back pain issues. Outside of just being notified of his death and that he died at home, we, his friends, weren't told anything else. When someone my age dies and there aren't details, it's usually either accidental OD or suicide.

Anyway, so after this happened I let my best friend know -- if it's me, I want people to know how I died -- let my friends know whether it was intentional or accidental. And she was a bit freaked out, but ultimately understanding and that it wasn't something I was going to do now or soon, but that it could happen, and that I trust her enough that I'm telling her this. The fact that a half dozen people we knew died in a fire recently, probably makes the attitude towards morbidity and such a bit different than, idk, a lot of people.

gl tomorrow ogmor

Ross, I have never worked nights but when I was at my worst depression-wise I became nocturnal and more or less didn't see the sun for an entire winter, and I'm p sure that did not help my mood at all, total vicious cycle

(as was the social isolation it imposed, but that was kind of the point - by being awake only when other peole weren't I felt like I was somehow sidestepping the world of obligations, the expectations other people have of you, the "I have to deal with this paperwork and deliver it somewhere between 9 and 5", all seemed kind of imaginary)

eh that's just my experience but take care of yourself

i worked nights for a while, a long time ago. leaving the house to go to work at a time when i'd normally be sleeping was really isolating and depressing to me. i was going through some fairly bad times generally back then, but i quit the job in the end, even though it paid very well, it was interfering with my mental health too much. it's definitely not easy.

a lot of posts itt making me feel for the people posting - it's hard not to sound trite but good thoughts to you all.

spacecadet - yeah, i totally WANT to sidestep the world of obligations but it also has its downsides. I don't really have to deal with too much office politics working late but you're also kind of in a vacuum. Catch 22

Garda - Thanks for sharing that, honestly i think this job has been interfering with my mental health, but the problem with depression is it can seem like there's just one big black cloud and you cannot always compartmentalize what's making you upset

I feel better when working late afternoon to nights, though my work is fairly social, so it's different. I think my natural biorhythms are just like that -- waking up before 10am is not something my body wants to do. For years I had jobs when I had to be at work at 6:30 am, 8am (normal hours), and I was miserable because I didn't get enough sleep.

But the routines/schedules of friends or people you want to be friends with are also a factor. If everyone is working normal office hours it can be super alienating. I felt the reverse when I worked early shifts or normal office hours because I'd be too exhausted to enjoy social activities that everyone else did who worked non-traditional hours (or had way more energy than me).

yeah I'm def not an early bird tho less of a night-owl than I used to be. it's best for my mental health if I stick to something of a normal routine but now I live close to a more flexible job so I can roll in at 9:30 having got up not that much before and I def feel a lot less drained and more even-keeled than I did when getting up at 6 to get the bus to be somewhere far away at 8. there's a balance to be found

(musing to self re avoiding expectations: my mood is not so bad now so I would not call myself "depressed" but I still hate obligations, expectations, even the ones I have of myself, feel totally unable to live up to them and wildly allergic to being reminded they exist

also v much relate to what justine said about sometimes you just can't, except I still just can't now I'm not even depressed, not a single thing that requires the tiniest bit of willpower. exercise daily? don't eat junk all day? do some housework, read a book, learn something? don't grind my teeth ffs I've already broken two? ehhh I just can't. crazy in a way that isn't even depression (or not obviously so, any more) and without much hope of finding out what it is to fix it. eh. shrug)

PS justine, good luck too, sounds like a v positive step! hope it went well. good vibes to all others itt too

PPS it's past my bedtime on a Sunday night and I'm typing this drivel in denial of the obligation to shut down and accept the whole new work week thing, blah

I still hate obligations, expectations, even the ones I have of myself, feel totally unable to live up to them and wildly allergic to being reminded they exist

yeah, totally! But then I feel worse when I do nothing. I've gotten better at reducing those to what I'm more realistically going to accomplish. Or at least set priorities. Like one day my necessary obligations were: get milk, take out garbage. There were another 6 - 10 other things that I felt I should do, but I decided I was better off not beating myself up for not doing them, and just accept that I have bad days where getting milk and taking out the garbage are totally fine to be the only things I'm obliged to do.

Resonating with a lot of what you're saying sarahell

Also I think my hatred of obligations is a major factor why I'm perennially late.

i guess talking about depression is important to me because as a chronic depressive, i can see and understand things through others' experiences that i can't see, or don't feel comfortable articulating, through my own. like, for instance, my friend who killed himself last year. one of the bullshit things people say is that people with depression are weak. i don't know. i'm not going to go out and say that i'm not weak, but i look at my friend and i see someone who fought harder to stay alive than anybody i have ever known.

rushomancy OTM - def. bullshit that people with depression are weak!

Most people try to fix me or to tell me that what I'm describing is perfectly normal.

I'm not sure why so many people are so incurious about what is foreign to their own lives or else so incapable of understanding experiences which are not like their own. I suppose it is our universal tendency to connect the unknown to whatever its nearest analog is within what is already familiar to us.

ftr, I don't suffer with depression. If anything, I am more disposed to be cheerful, if there is any possible way to carve out a place for it in a given situation. I can easily recognize from hundreds of posts here on ilx and from other reading I've done that ordinary sadness or unhappiness are totally unlike depression. Same goes for despair and grief (of which I've had my share in generous portions) they're very different animals than depression.

You all have not just my sympathy for your pain, but my admiration for your courage, which is not less heroic for its being so necessary as to be almost mandatory.

so she starts lecturing me on the types of foods i should be eating, and how i should be doing this and that and the other... so i tried explaining to her how depression works, and that i actually know a lot about nutrition, but most of the time i literally CAN NOT make myself do what's right for me. and so she's all 'yeah but you just have to DO IT'. so i fruitlessly continue to explain how that's the difference between someone with clinical depression and a 'normal' person - a normal person can be like 'ugh i don't want to do this thing but fine i'll do it ugh', whereas depression often means that you just... can't. and that it can't be explained beyond that. you just can't fucking do some things sometimes.

people like this think that there's a specific thing you can't do. making a plan or starting a different habit or 'just doing it' are ways to help with that. they don't really believe that 'not being able to do' could infect your very ability to do, not a specific thing, but anything. and when it does you can't just 'make a plan to do' or 'develop a habit of doing' or 'just do doing' - even though those are certainly the kinds of things that people do encourage depressives to come at, somehow, by taking walks, engaging in mundane self-care, doing the dishes, and everything on up, as if success at doing those will be therapeutic for your ability to do anything-and-everything.

I used to work with a guy who did not understand depression and he readily admitted it was because he's never had it. He said he would just wonder why people did not choose to be happy or do something about it, because that's what he did. There really is a disconnect that is hard to bridge. Friends and family and support of people with depression need to know we don't need fixed, we just sometimes need people to "be there". Of course our society is so results based that it's hard for people to de-program.

Anyway, so after this happened I let my best friend know -- if it's me, I want people to know how I died -- let my friends know whether it was intentional or accidental.

― sarahell, Sunday, March 5, 2017 2:57 PM (two hours ago)

I thought of you frequently over the past few months, btw. Have no words that seem appropriate, but I'm glad you're doing okay.

i mean not gonna lie sometimes "but thou must!" is the best thing someone can say to me, because people feel like they have to say and do _something_ and you can't logically argue with depression. yeah, i'd feel better if i exercised more. yeah, totally right, and honestly, guilting me into taking better case of myself stands as good a chance of working as anything else does.

today i went to visit a friend and just sat in the car crying for half an hour for no goddamn reason before going in, and that sucked, but the alternative was not leaving the house all day, and i've done that enough to know that there's zero point in taking that approach.

And many thanks to all present. This thread/discussion really helped me through today.

xp for sure, i think the problem is that those 'musts' don't function rationally or even like encouragements and guilt-trips normally do, so people can expect far more of them than they ought to.

so a few weeks ago I went out drinking with my best friend, and I drank too much. Way too much. Like alcohol poisoning too much. And I was sitting there, semi-conscious, on the sidewalk outside the bar, and I couldn't move, and I felt like I could die. What if I just died right there? And my brain made a list of all the immediate effects of me dying: this project wouldn't get finished, my clients wouldn't get their taxes done, my parents were expecting me to have lunch with them next weekend, I just got a bunch of delicious snacks from Trader Joe's the night before, and my best friend would be traumatized for years ... so I decided I would make an attempt not to die.

I honestly don't know if I was even remotely close to death, but it was the first time in a very long time that I physically felt that way, and it has helped keep the depression at bay for now.

would be good to keep stocking up on snacks too

I do stockpile frozen and canned comfort foods (not hoarder style) in case of bad days/weeks in case I feel so shitty I don't want to go to the store or cook.

I just got a bunch of delicious snacks from Trader Joe's the night before

yeah this a partic chilling thought

What depression has been like for me during the last several months: first asking myself what I want (either from life or for dinner that night) and not having a desire for anything. Then suddenly plunged into anxiety, with an energy rush that would enable me to do anything, if I could just figure out what it is I want to do.

who will eat my snap peas when i'm gone?

xxxp since i became poor enough that existing on regular pizza stopped being a viable option, i have done the opposite: using the need to go to the store as an excuse to get out that will move me even at bad times, and needing to have cookable staples on hand, as a hedge against not wanting to go out at the bad times

people like this think that there's a specific thing you can't do. making a plan or starting a different habit or 'just doing it' are ways to help with that. they don't really believe that 'not being able to do' could infect your very ability to do, not a specific thing, but anything. and when it does you can't just 'make a plan to do' or 'develop a habit of doing' or 'just do doing' - even though those are certainly the kinds of things that people do encourage depressives to come at, somehow, by taking walks, engaging in mundane self-care, doing the dishes, and everything on up, as if success at doing those will be therapeutic for your ability to do anything-and-everything.

― j., Sunday, March 5, 2017 5:33 PM (fifty-six minutes ago)

it's frustrating because even good cbt seems to boil down to, "well, what if you just try doing this one, little thing?" and when it works, that's great, baby steps. but when you're at the bottom of the pit, it's like a horrible kind of taunting. i want to ask the therapist i stopped seeing for the magic thing that makes me alive again, but i know it doesn't exist. i am alive, am myself. and i can barely manage to feed the cats.

I do stockpile frozen and canned comfort foods (not hoarder style) in case of bad days/weeks in case I feel so shitty I don't want to go to the store or cook.

haha i deliberately avoid doing this to force myself to go to the store, but it never works and then i end up eating peanut butter out of the jar or something

canned refried beans with grated cheese microwaved at the "dinner plate" setting, with several packets of taco bell hot sauce stockpiled in the packet drawer is one of my go-tos

crock pot is excellent for depressive food prep. also good to stock up on reasonably healthy non-junk. if not for that, i'd subsist on cracker sleeves & frozen pizza.

though tbh, it's really like waking up at three, going out at 9 for a drive-thru cheeseburger & a 40

Food and substances are pretty much the only reasons I leave the house some weekends...other than occasional band practices if I can be arsed

do you get fries with it?

o hell yeah

All yall posters who brighten my life on the other threads and deal with your burdens on this thread - maximum respect here.

Hi fellow depressed people. I want to die.

t's frustrating because even good cbt seems to boil down to, "well, what if you just try doing this one, little thing?" and when it works, that's great, baby steps. but when you're at the bottom of the pit, it's like a horrible kind of taunting. i want to ask the therapist i stopped seeing for the magic thing that makes me alive again, but i know it doesn't exist. i am alive, am myself. and i can barely manage to feed the cats.

yes! it's like: if today i'm able to wash the dishes and do laundry, it's only bc the depression isn't so severe at this moment. when i have really low days, those things don't get done. at my worst, i would (and do) stay in bed for 20 hours at a time, the thought of dirty laundry and mounting dishes and everything else that needs doing just bringing me to tears. i don't know how to explain that to someone who doesn't get it. and it's ok to not get it, bc i didn't understand panic attacks until i had my first one at 20. but i just don't want or need to hear things like "but why don't you just get up and go do the dishes?? it's not that big a deal". I KNOW IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL TO YOU.

i'm at least lucky in that my husband totally gets it and i never have to explain myself to him. i mean, i still feel a ton of guilt over the things i can't do, but it comes from within, not externally.

xps to rushomancy re depression=weakness: i don't think everyone with depression is weak either, but... i'm also ok with admitting that my depression makes ME weak, bc it's not like i have a choice. i'm not choosing to be weak, it's not a sin i'm committing. i don't think being strong is a choice either - you just are.

I want to die.

Tonight? Or just as a general thing? Could be important!

General A, shit, sorry.

Don't be sorry. I just thought some clarity was in order, in case.

I don't want to die but I would dearly like to disappear out of this life

just stop being an object to be measured and judged and made to run on time

I honestly don't know if I was even remotely close to death, but it was the first time in a very long time that I physically felt that way, and it has helped keep the depression at bay for now.

― sarahell

sometimes i run across this, like, man for all seasons thing where it seems like it's not enough to just stay alive, i have to stay alive for the RIGHT REASONS, and man if i had to do that i would be dead for certain. raw animal terror of dying (which, in my case at least, suicidal depression does nothing to abate) has kept me alive more times than i can count.

i've come to deplore this stubborn hope that keeps me from ending it. also i just can't seem to abandon life's sweetness even if it seems to hover around 15 parts per million

animal terror and false hope do a lot of sterling work in my life it's true