Depression and what it's really like

i don't mean this to sound glib: would it help to sneak off somewhere private and actually burst into tears, as a pressure release?

that's not glib, but at the moment I'm mostly trying to keep flat so's I can pretend to be functional while I'm at work - I'm sure something will spark me up again later, maybe I shd take the opportunity to let it go then. I have no concrete idea why I feel like crying tho.

futility plus absence of something, maybe

actually nevermind, a bunch of specific stuff I haven't got drunk enough to share on ilx yet, plus trying v hard not to get drunk

q hard

the entirely justified obliviousness of other people

my own lack of competence

and dwelling on all the above

(sometimes it's impossible not to)

I know right

could maybe best be summed up by the words of Hal David - I just don't know what to do with myself

if I try to describe it, define it, explain it to myself - stuck. nothing. no use to people today, but not allowed to be no use.

maundering

the black dog feels virtually untameable when it insists on chasing its own tail

NV, had the exact experience last week: I actually kicked a few objects which is something I *never* do. Anger seems a bit higher on the emotion scheme than demobilizing hopelessness, but it felt pretty weird. Hope you get through buddy

thx Ross

for me depression is mostly like wheels spinning in mud while I wrestle with a broken gearstick

Things are really kind of terrible at the moment - worst for a long time. Trying to walk that tightrope between suicide and hospitalisation. But so overwhelmed and panicky. And I hurt myself, which is the first time for a while. On the whole I'm not having much fun.

My dog forces me to get out of bed for walks, so that's something. Otherwise it's just periods of despair punctuated with brief spells of panic. I should go back to hospital, I guess, but this flat I was given last summer was meant to be a new start, and I would have to admit that's impossible.

NV, that's an apt description o depression.

Dowd - feeling for ya and wish you the best

yeah dowd, that's horrible, look after yourself

dowd i don't know you but i love you and please be well

<3 dowd

Best to you dowd. I hope there's someone you can talk to about this.

Person who cares here saying go to hospital even if it seems awful; awful passes and more important is that you *disrupt* the darkness. IME. Hospital is a very legit place to save lives; yours matters!

dowd we don't know each other irl but for whatever it is worth I've always valued your posts on ilx and I hope the best for you

quincie otm, and talking to professionals about what's new/what's changed can get you closer to what's going on and ultimately coping/working with it.

also re this:

this flat I was given last summer was meant to be a new start, and I would have to admit that's impossible.

unmet self-expectation is the essence of depression ime. the thing that really did me in last year was making promises to myself that i couldn't keep, and because of that my whole life felt like a growing snowball of fail and i gave up on pretty much everything. i don't have a resolution to it apart from simply not setting expectations, which in itself feels like its own snowball of fail. sorry this shitty post is all i can offer.

^ OTM. I've been holding down a steady job for 6 years, but I'm still just as depressed and likely to spiral at times. But dowd, if you're feeling even worse, it doesn't mean you're regressing to get help.

it doesn't mean you're regressing to get help.

so much this, and repeatedly getting help means you get to narrow down what works and chuck out what doesn't. like anything, getting help is something you get better at the more you do it.

dowd, if it starts to feel like you're wasting your time or retreading old ground, see a different professional if you can. some professionals are just the wrong fit (this is not always obvious), and you can exhaust the usefulness of the good ones too. the right person at the right time can change everything.

Since I had my psychiatric evaluation mentioned above I've been going without medication, because I can't see another psychiatrist clinically, who will prescribe for me, until Apr. 18. Right now I am yo-yoing between depression and manic anger. This fucking sucks.

wish i had something more to offer than best wishes & internet hugs, dowd. but bw&ih.

Oh, don't worry about me - I'm going to get through it. I just had to express the stuff I wouldn't say to people in real life. I know people who care about me would want me to tell them, but that's one of the things about depression. Company hates misery. Things are still terrible, and I think about suicide all the damned time, and I'm panicking a lot. But I'm a lot better at dealing with it than I used to be.

that's good to hear. also kind of reassuring that I'm not the only one who uses this place for my worst thoughts.

the "better at dealing with it" is good to hear, excuse verbal clumsiness.

I know people who care about me would want me to tell them, but that's one of the things about depression. Company hates misery

i'm really glad you have a dog, dowd.

1) as you said, they force you out the door
2) they do not give a fuck about anything but what's important

are you saying other dog's anuses are important?

I mean, fair enough if so

you don't understand anus is the name of my dog

X-post to Alex. I mean that people don't like being around sad people.

Depression makes you a shitty person to be around, making you lonelier and shittier. Just one of life's inescapable vortexes

x-p thanks dowd, that is obviously true as well but in your example you write of people who want to be in your company so that you talk to them, that is what made me wonder. there seemed to be a logical fallacy there but probably it is just my limited command of the english language.

you know what really worked for me? walking. i walked the st james's way from st jean pied de port to santiago de compostella and till then i am addicted. i have to walk my 10,000 steps per day and my blues has no chance anymore.

Im fucking miserable. Ive hired someone to replace my girlfriend's retail part of our business so she could get more back end stuff done and not be going insane at work. The person i hired is good and our shop is looking great and yet... we have taken a massive dip in our takings. I can see that there hasnt been the footfall here buying and from every angle it is being blamed on me. I must have not train our new staff correctly (i did, she does everything right and then some), i must be putting people off, the new girl is getting annoyed cos she thinks its her (she had a couple good days and just before the footfall stopped) and mostly its just shit all round. Like even if my gf was back here there would still be no customers. And then when i get home shes also pissed at me because she wants to know everything going on and i say nothing, its like im witholding from her. None of this also factors into how i feel about it suddenly getting shit, or whether i need a day away or anything. Ive had 2 bad illnesses in 2 weeks and still worked 12 days in the past two weeks. Its fucking bullshit.

hugs buddy

even "normal" people have these reactions when their businesses have bad times -- the tendency to analyze and blame things or people that if you looked at it from more of a distance wouldn't be significantly responsible for the loss of income / decline in productivity. It's a way to try to gain or maintain control over a scary thing that controls you. I have been in this position so many times. Running a business with your romantic partner is extra challenging because of this, because you can't just leave work at work, it follows you home. I've been there too. Do you have things you do, for yourself, and also as a couple, that are good distractions from this?

Lol no our main hobby is drinking and chatting shit about business together.

Tbh i dont know if im even depressed, i just needed a rant. Ive got a gum infection that has me wanting to pull my whole face off my body and yet ive still got so many shitty responsibilities. I cant even drink to deal with it either, as that makes it hurt more!

<3 dowd

also request a pic of yr doggie

I've never checked into this thread before because I have never really been comfortable talking about my experiences with this, but here goes:

I was diagnosed with depression and given Prozac in my late 20s after years of erratic moods and behaviour, which finally escalated to including some risky sexual behaviour (thankfully, tests have confirmed that none of the physically harmful things that might have come from this have done so). In the decade since, I have stayed on the medication without really thinking about the effects that it may or may not have been having on me too much. Over the years, I have even come to believe that my twentysomething behaviour may not have even been depression, but rather the residual effects of an adolescence spent in the closet + general twentysomething shitheadedness. I wasn't so convinced of this--or maybe I just didn't care about it enough--to talk to a doctor about going off the Prozac, but on some level I think I didn't really consider myself to be someone who actually suffered from depression, if that makes sense. And I certainly did not discuss it with anyone except my husband, who is pretty much the only person (doctors/pharmacists aside, of course) that I am "out" to on this issue--and yes, I find it appropriate to employ the language of the closet here, as I have spent the last decade of my life disavowing my depression in much the same way that I once spent my teens and quite a bit of my twenties disavowing my queerness.

Recently, through a series of fuckups that involved seeing a new doctor, an improperly-written prescription (actually, two--or rather, the same one twice) and coverage issues, I ended up going without my pills for about a week-and-a-half. I didn't consider this an issue at first, but after a while, I did gradually start to notice some changes in my mood. Even then, I convinced myself that these changes were more likely psychosomatic than anything else--and besides, I don't know (and still don't know) exactly how long Prozac has to be in or out of your system in order for changes to occur. Also, I am in the middle of finishing up a reading course while at the same time preparing for a comprehensive exam for my PhD, so I am unusually stressed at the moment, to the point that I wouldn't necessarily take any of my current moods or emotions as representative of my normal ones. But, after a weekend that has included bouts of wall-staring, upsetting dreams (is this a symptom of depression? I don't usually have these, anyway), listless indifference to all of the work that I have to get done, I'm starting to finally to realize that, hey, this might actually be a real thing.

The breaking point occurred this morning when I noticed a ticket on our car from our condo board. We had gotten a flat tire a few days ago, but as I am busy doing all that I have to do (or should be doing, anyway) and my husband is busy in the final stages of his MA thesis, we haven't had time to take care of the tire yet. But, the ticket they left us was for "illegal parking" and included a note about having our car towed if we don't have it repaired (the parking spot is assigned to us, and our parking pass is clearly visible in the car window; what the fuck do they care if our tire is flat?). Annoying, yes--and part of an ongoing history of harassment from our condo board which is a separate issue--but I stormed into the house in an absolute rage over it (this is very unusual behaviour for me) and was about to call the condo board screaming and swearing at them, until my husband took the phone out of my hand, lest I give the board reason to further harass us. So yeah, my first angry meltdown since I dunno when all but confirms that something serious is going on here.

The good news is that, yesterday, after visiting the pharmacy for the fourth time in a week over this ongoing fuckup, the pharmacist gave me a weekend's supply of pills to get me back on them until the issue is sorted out. Again, I don't know how long you have to be (back) on these for them to regulate things again, but at least I'm back on them. But beyond that, I came out of this experience, I think, finally willing to acknowledge that I am, in fact, part of a community of people who live with depression. I'm willing to consider that a positive step.

quick thought, aside from offering good thoughts and love, is that if you cut off Prozac cold turkey without a long taper that alone can make you feel very, very ill and is highly not recommended, irrespective of the underlying reality of depression

Good point, thanks. Another reason I will never be so irresponsible as to neglect this again.

i've questioned my own diagnosis or self-diagnosis half my life, i think it might be part of the self-doubt and self-dislike that my own version of depression entails. in the end, it's a nebulous construct that you can't separate from your own life experiences - my bottom line i guess is that people qualified to diagnose it have told me i have it. how i feel about that is up to me, and my attitude changes with the seasons.

Also possible. For me, a possible other thing is hearing about other people's experiences, and measuring them against mine, which generally leaves me feeling like my issues were nbd, but of course I realize that this is not the way anything works.

yeah if you went cold turkey off the prozac, there's no way to tell if this is withdrawal from the meds or your naturally unmedicated state. it's totally shit when drs etc let something like that happen.

does anybody here listen to a podcast called The Hilarious World of Depression? John Moe hosts it and each episode he talks to a different comedian about their depression. I've only listened to a few so far, but i like it. the maria bamford one was particularly interesting, relatable and funny.

Is it worth going back into therapy if I know WHY I have gone into my recent emotional tailspin? Right this minute I can't see myself saying to my old therapist "I'm mad at my mother because X, and I keep saying I need to do Y, but I haven't, because REASONS."