Depression and what it's really like

feeling pretty hopeless at the moment. Last time I was genuinely happy was 3 years ago, and that was for one day. Miss my ex partner who is still my friend, which is probably doing more harm than good. Family loves me, especially the nephews who are so loving. Friends love me, doesn't matter much when you're wracked with depression though. I don't love myself

we love you, Ross

that means a lot, right back at ya as well.

co-sign

you too veg :)

Family loves me, especially the nephews who are so loving. Friends love me, doesn't matter much when you're wracked with depression though. I don't love myself

otm

I have been dishonest with nearly everyone I know. And if people don't understand who I really am, it is mainly because I didn't present myself honestly. It's been that way since my first memory. I have been lying my entire life and mad at the world for not being able to see through it

God help us all. No one deserves it. It's so painful to read this thread. Why do these things happen to good people, not even good people, ehy do these things happen to anyone? Hardly anyone deserves it.

I have these real moments of clarity where i just want to throw it all up in the air, I'm already most of the way there already. But I think, oh it's 2 am and I'm very drunk. I shouldn't do that. Wait until morning and see if it's still a great idea. And of course it isn't in the morning. But then the whole day passes in one long big fat sack of nothing, absolutely nothing, and weeks and months and entire DECADES in the same way. God, you have to do something. It can't just keep happening this way all the way up to the end. Put aside the absurdity of contemporary life and the opposite of meaning, when you walk in the woods and you're totally alone, are you on with yourself? Because I used to be, and I remember tracing the paths of the electrical lines and wandering into someone else's property, and then hearing a gunshot and being too naive to realize it was intended to scare me off. But I headed back home like a frightened deer. Who the fuck fires a warning shot at a person in the woods?

You guys are fundamentally good and very real people. Lots of others feel similar but just crush it down into a dead spot at their core, which is basically wasting life. And Ross, even if you don't feel it, these people who love you are not wrong, and nobody is making them do it, so you just have to accept that you're worth that much, and grit it out until you begin to feel it for yourself again.
Ugh so trite, but you guys are pushing some heavy rocks here and it makes me wish I could help.

Xp: a special kind of someone

you're so right about that helpless sludgy drift of time, irrecoverably wasted, tho part of me is sure that it's just bad perspective, the dark glasses of depression showing us our world in the worst way. sometimes tho it's your only perspective, and even when I want to tell myself it's distorted I wonder how much of depression, especially as you get older, is justified regret, genuine failure and wrong paths taken.

But still - there's some tiny possibility in there I think, something in the woods and power lines and other people's property, some narrow existential wriggle room to go forward into. Nothing as grand as potential but I guess just enough reason to keep trying to find a connection to the cosmos, or my own space in it.

But that's just me, on a grey Tuesday morning, sad and slightly anxious but just about feeling like I could, maybe, keep going

Does anyone here know anything about coping with hypomania? I'm revved up in ways I haven't been in ages, and I don't know what to do about it.

Diana, I had some very similar symptoms some years ago after my issues first started to materialize. I was put on fluoxetine (prozac) and alprazolam (xanax) with pretty decent results, but that went by the wayside when I ended up in hospital a second time. It was good at calming me down without making me totally zonked out.

I've been on fluoxetine for ages. I was talking with my doctors about phasing off, but then I went through all sorts of stress with my mother. Plus my gynecologist said that Prozac seems to help women in perimenopause and menopause.

One element is that suddenly I've come back to life sexually, after being dead inside for ages. It might be frightening if it wasn't so annoying. Apart from everything else, there's no one in my life and I've forgotten how to meet people.

I've been going to work bc for assistance with getting back to work and unfortunately the case manager has made my mental health a hurdle. She told me that I could see a vocational counsellor if I wanted to but it wouldn't impede whether I met the job developers (who promote you to companies). Anyways, I asked her if the job developers reveal mental health information and she said I would have to meet them and ask. As money and time are tight I asked her to try to schedule a meeting with the job devs. She went and asked them about availability, came back and said my health was a barrier and I would need to see the vocational counsellor after all, which was scheduled over a week from now. I told her that this process has done more harm than good and left. I am ready to work, it's these clueless attitudes about mental health that suck

I'm doing my best to pull through, but I'm so hungry at this point that I don't think I have the energy to do this anymore. Food pantries have such utterly disgusting garbage that I can't eat that stuff. I can barely eat fast food without wanting to throw my guts up, let alone the processed canned Steve Brule atrocities they have there.

Being on a literal death spiral is kind of cool, though. It'll be nice to add my corpse to the pile for everyone else's comfort and luxury. I wish there was a way out of this, but in America, there just isn't. It's a shame all of my hard work was for nothing.

Ross, that's awful. It's ridiculous and stupid that employers still get to get away with non-specific discrimination based on behavioral health issues when there are clear grounds for suit if they try the same stunts with physically disabled people. Not comparing suffering, but it bears mention.

carpet_kaiser - hang on, man. We care about you

El - That's a good point you mention. The outcome of this scenario is I took a one hour cool down, came back and asked that my depression not prevent me from seeing a job developer. My case manager went and brought the job developer in and he said that he was sorry that it may have come across as discrimination and that it was up to me to see a vocational counsellor. Which is fucked up, because my case manager led me to believe it was a necessity by outright telling me you need to see a VC first?? I dunno what happened here, maybe a change of heart, but it was ultimately frustrating.

The best counter to depression I find is reminding yourself why it's worth it. Family, friends, this place, music/movies - bright lights in the worst of times.

yeah, that never works for me in deep depression because I usually get the anhedonia where no music or movies sound interesting and family and friends are the people I feel I've let down!

usually getting myself away from the normal routine does it, remembering to exercise, going for a long walk or even drive, going to a different place helps a little

It's a really bad day when I can't even pick up my guitar.

Today is one of those days.

mh - sometimes i tell myself things to believe things to improve the life situation but yeah a lot of the feeling i've left people down is somewhere in the background anyways.

austin - if that means so much to ya i'd wish you'd just pick it up even to tune it/play something, no matter what is.

Trying to figure out how to proceed ... right now I'm just trying to accept things and move on.

I have to read stuff like this to find people who "get" what it's like:At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities

What kind of therapy is out there for stuff like that? What therapist would be willing to put their own well-being on the line to help someone like me? I have no idea. This seems like a job only I can do that I have to personally come to terms with alone. It ain't easy!

I met a woman at work I want to ask out, but my life is such a mess that I've been pushing her away... but it feels like one of those opportunities I shouldn't let pass me by. I just don't have the money or health right now to do it, and she's about to give up on me. What a cruel joke.

Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world. The shame of destruction cannot be erased. Trust in the world, which already collapsed in part at the first blow, but in the end, under torture, fully, will not be regained. That one’s fellow man was experienced as the antiman remains in the tortured person as accumulated horror. It blocks the view into a world in which the principle of hope rules. One who was martyred is a defenseless prisoner of fear. It is fear that henceforth reigns over him. ―Jean Amery

Yup, that's pretty much it.

Have you read Viktor Frankl? Man's Search for Meaning. Go check it out I think you'd get a lot out of it.

Yeah, I've got that one on audio book. Maybe I'll listen to it again soon.

It's like there's this strange dual reality going on. I still feel love in my heart, and I still have a sense of humor and fun. I still have some hope for my life left. Yet I carry this burden of terrifying knowledge about humanity, society, and the world that's out of step with everyone else. My frame of experience is real, yet it's not "real" in the world as far as shared experience goes and the way society and relationships are structured.

I just have to accept that I'll never be "normal" and I'll always be out of step in the world. Which is permanent and I have no power to change. I grew up in enforced social isolation which nearly drove me insane, and I'll always be socially isolated because of my experiences. Not to mention being crippled in so many other ways to make living a "normal" life difficult.

What an act of incredible, mind-shattering cruelty, all for a bunch of laughs. For laughs! For a bunch of shits and giggles. Oh well, maybe through some miracle of self-will I can pull it together, ask out that woman, and everything will be hunky dory, skipping through fields of flowers and critters in the sunshine. I'm not sure how much I should laugh about that one.

Anyway, enough on my own dark-ass life.

carry that hope, carpet, it's very important

Thanks. My main hope now is getting food to eat, which probably won't happen for another two weeks, and I'm probably going to faint from hunger. But that's just something you have to accept about life in the US.

It's definitely putting a wrench in my plans to find a new job.

Try to locate a food bank in your area.

I looked a few up and they aren't open past working hours, so that's a no go, and none of them are near me. I don't qualify for any safety net benefits since I make too much money, am single with no kids, and yet not enough to ya know, eat! So that's pretty funny.

I just have to tough it out.

It's weird, the food pantries around here only serve people who are "referred" by agencies and churches, others require SNAP. We have a damn miserable safety net in this country.

Falling from the bourgie class has really opened my eyes to how fucking fucked this country is for a lot of people. God damn! I could very well die in this situation and there's nothing to stop me.

So yeah, food banks are clearly an option cut off to me. I'll figure something out.

yeah..i mean..i've been unemployed for 4 months, essentially have no money and bills left n right and don't know how I'll pay next months rent. Not sure what's keeping me going but the human spirit is a weird thing

Don't give up, let that survival instinct bring out a side of you that you may not know you have. It's a sad state of affairs in our country right now, though ... you're not alone seeing this side of things. It's ghastly.

thanks carpet!

as for therapists and their ability to work with a variety of clients...

I have a friend who has been seeing a local therapist, who I gather is semi-retired, that charges a sliding scale for services. After a few sessions, the therapist's background came up. She used to do analysis for the court system, determining competency, building profiles, that kind of thing. She worked in Utah, and one of her cases to profile was Ted Bundy

if someone who has dealt with Ted Bundy can work with a variety of clients, and do well with it, then no, there's no fear you're untreatable or overwhelming therapist. People have shitty lives and complex circumstances, and it's not on you to boil that down. That's their job.

Some of them are pretty goddamn good at it, you just have to stop thinking you're smarter and have a better handle on your life than all therapists. Most therapists go to another therapist to talk through their own feelings about the job and how it affects their lives.

Once I get my feet back on the ground, maybe I'll give it another shot. Seeing what the bottom floor in the US looks like, and how it's greased up to ease the slide into it... it's terrifying! I'm getting my shit together ASAP. I don't want another lifetime of misery after I worked so fucking hard to get out of my original circumstances.

Ross, do the same, man, you got a good heart, the world needs people like you, now more than ever!

Thank you all for listening to my weird, dark shit, and offering some good feedback.

thanks carpet, that's nice of you to say

i appreciate your posts and am glad to see you have some hope

I hope you have hope, too, your life is valuable. It is to me, at least.

:) back atcha

Man, I don't even have the money to get to work next week. My life is a joke. This is the end of the road for me, I guess. I put up a damn good fight, I think, made it way beyond anyone's expectations. So that's good at least.

Blechh, I'll figure out something. I don't know how the hell I'm going to do it, but what choice do I have, eh? Dead or solution.

It's just shocking how easy it is to die easily preventable deaths in this country, and nobody gives a fuck. We've become a nation of ghouls and monsters.

Hopefully history has a positive outcome and the United States will sit alongside Nazi Germany for the level of evil our philosophy and way of life represents. And I'm only saying this because I lost my life to this shit, and it was so easily prevented. So understand it from that angle.

Hey Carpet, so if you can't get to work, what are you going to do? quit, or tell your employer you can't?

No idea. Maybe I'll see if I can go freelance and work from home, maybe renegotiate my salary to a proper level. These guys are pretty scummy, so I don't see an overwhelmingly positive outcome here.

This pinch is only for the next two weeks, so I just have to make it til then. But it's two weeks where I can die or lose my job and become homeless. Life sure is interesting in the US.

It's my fault, though. My fault for being born to the life I was and struggling with it, and then getting illegal shit done to me at my last job, and having to quit before it killed me, with no safety net to catch me.

Man. I'm also a little loopy from not eating for two days straight, so bear with me here.

yeah not sure what else to say, depression hitting hard today. I'm tired of feeling like this

It's cool, I've been living under the shadow of death my whole life, and living in the US isn't much different from that. I'm adapted for it.

I hope I didn't bring you down ... I'll be OK, and you will be, too.

nah you didn't carpet

going to start seeing this nurse/counsellor i've seen in the past, she has a heart of gold and meets me outside of work, which is amazing.

i drink about 4-6 beers a day, going to probably sober up until i'm out of this mess. going to accept the fact that I need help, I don't want to feel like this and my mind often lies to me to keep me in similar scenarios. I would like to get better at repairing the glitches in my mind - the bad programming - the mixed signals.

Go for it. I never had anything like that, so you're lucky.

Sorry for bitching and moaning here, I should probably just get this over with with more honor.