Depression and what it's really like

i made a new friend at work that has high anxiety and she thinks i'm super chill, so life can be weird...

people have told me before at moments where i felt like i was on fire that i appeared to be very relaxed. i have a not very expressive face though.

it's funny what tiny survival skills we all have. no one taught me these things.

you did :)

alan watts + meds + going to the doctor and being honest helped me... and twitter makes me feel exponentially worse, which is awful because i have a job where i sit around doing nothing for 5-6 hours a day and it's driving me insane. might tie into treeships post up there about capitalism... not especially heartening to read because i saw mark fisher and was like 'oh is that the guy who killed himself' and i looked him up and welp

it sounds corny but "getting in touch with the inner child" has been a big thing for me lately.. digging through the layers and finding/remembering that sense of peace and wonder.

also, again just personally, but learning to accept my body and uhh specifically the way i move... i have social anxiety issues, much of which stem i think from feeling that i don't present "masculine" enough.. just trying to accept myself rather than constantly kicking against the pricks being self-conscious/self-critical

but again, i know what it feels like to not even begin to know how to accept oneself! i'll probably get knocked down again somebody, nothing is forever

sorry for all the 'again's

Does anyone here have a success story of how they clawed their way out of that? I guess I don’t hate myself that much because I REALLY would like to stop having those negative thoughts, feeling guilty, apologizing all the time when I didn’t do anything wrong. But it’s all I know.

― Treeship

i wish i had an upbeat an healthy story for you, but i don't know. i'm paranoid, so i don't trust myself. i'm argumentative, so whenever i have a thought i argue with it. for a while religion helped, because it was an "external" voice that told me i was good, that told me i was worthwhile, that i couldn't argue with. if "god" loved me and told me i was good, even knowing there wasn't a "god" at least in the always-popular skyfather sense, who was i to argue? but i stopped trusting in religion, and as much as i can argue with the negative thought patterns, they're endlessly creative, in every sense my exact equal, and the bottom line is that i don't like or love myself very much (again), which limits things.

i rarely (ever?) post itt because i have a very cyclical (hormonal) relationship with depressive thoughts -- however, i do have some positive experience edging myself away from negative self-talk. i had to do some deep searching to recognize where the negativity was coming from, and i finally realized it actually was NOT my own voice. for a long time i thought it was, and in bad moments it still sounds like that. still, once i recognized that it was the voice of an oppressor, i could tell it to stfu more directly and not let it dictate my feelings. after searching, i can pinpoint when it started and how it grew too. that helps to control it. i have a picture of myself from before this voice grew and i am constantly trying to get back to the place where that little person was. i keep the picture where i can see it (near my practice space) and look at it if i feel low. i'm a very object-oriented person so it helps to kind of have a totem? is that the right word? idk. it works for me most of the time, which is all i can hope for.

As far as there is a voice (I'm not sure I can really count it as a voice necessarily) it is mine, but one thing I did sort of get from CBT is I sometimes if I can get into a more objective state is to (pretend it's the Beatles and) tell it to fuck off. It generally doesn't help a great deal but sometimes it works.

when it started and how it grew

oblivion

not for me
everyone's different

i have a pretty cyclical relationship with depressive thoughts too, for the record. i'm feeling a lot better this week than i was last week. don't want to give anybody (including myself) the idea that i'm feeling as bad as i was last week literally all the time, because i'm not.

xp sorry, i wasn't talking about you, just riffing off yr post

it would be nice to know where from, when etc

glad you're feeling better rushomancy

this thread is no shame/no judgement, it's all good in here

:)

i go up and down like a bride's nightie, to quote John Shuttleworth

had to take an emergency flight this evening. so i didn't have time to think about how much i didn't want to go, which was helpful. as we took off and flew over the city it was very pretty and i thought to myself that this was a good place, maybe even exciting, and that i should do more things there and see more people and such

but when i get back i'll no doubt just stay in my room because it's simply too difficult

mine are always other people's voices, like multiple people, sometimes in magazine feature style with a series of voices/people all taking turns revealing how horrible I am in a well-structured article with somewhat New Yorker-style prose.

that must be so compelling

and time consuming! Coming up with the best bon mots to succinctly destroy myself is not an instantaneous process

of course, the therapeutic tactic is to mentally write the opposite stories ... with people talking about how I'm a worthwhile person etc

i find it easier just to apply ppl's existing hatreds to myself

One of the things that helped me overcome – or rather: attenuate – my longstanding depression was to accept that my feelings of worthlessness are not entirely predicated on personal failures. Existence is to blame far more than any of us is, which sounds like a cop-out – and when taken too far, it certainly is that – but it's also an oddly liberating thought because it helps direct one's anger toward something other than one's own self, implying that said self is actually valuable, be it only to a minimal extent. Insofar as we experience a structurally unjust, seemingly arbitrary world, there is value in acknowledging its shortcomings rather than pinning them all on our agency, which is far more limited than we like to admit. In sum, Beckettian compassion for our brokenness and a stoic/irony-laden outlook before the innumerable Trumps/Pozzos that riddle our world and strive to make a hell of it all – that's what makes things bearable (just barely) for me.

and time consuming! Coming up with the best bon mots to succinctly destroy myself is not an instantaneous process

― sarahell

my go-to response to everything is "i'm tired". it's not just a euphemism. one of the worst long-term effects of depression is that it's using my own brain to undermine me, and all that hard work it's doing to tell me i'm worthless is using energy i then don't have available for other things, like cooking dinner and so forth.

Feels like there was a time when I wasn't depressed and then something switched and there's no going back to happiness. Such a terrible feeling, the idea of not being able to fully beat something but instead realize you're now working with injury

I know the feeling man, but trust me you can feel good again

Xp I think about that a lot - how this is it, till I finally die, and I look at other people having fun and happy and productive lives and it’s pretty upsetting to realize that won’t ever be me again.

i don't know, i feel that's one of the biggest lies depression tries to sell. the illusion of permanence. at this point there's always going to be that shadow to any joy i experience, knowing that it will be temporary, knowing that the depression will come back (but not when), but it's really no different from death, which hits everybody. so i don't feel i'm that different from someone who hasn't had essentially lifelong depression.

i have been avoiding this thread for various reasons, chief among them being that i haven't felt depressed for awhile. my moods are tied to weather and seasons, though, and today was the first fully cloudy day in awhile, and it was pretty cold for this time of year in these parts, and i've felt like i'm about to have a panic attack all day.

anyway i pop in to say brimstead otm. i sometimes fixate on the thought that i'll be depressed forever, but i also try to remind myself that fixating on that just makes it harder to enjoy what fleeting happiness there is in this life. also i try to remind myself that, like happiness, sadness too is, at worst, temporary.and it's not like pleasure has to be tied to huge life accomplishments, or amazingly great occurrences. i try to take pleasure as it comes, in little bits and in simple things. good coffee, clean sheets, my dog, taking care of my plants, etc.

i always think of these lines from the end of burroughs' "western lands" when i need cheering up

"all the filth and horror ... of human history flows between you and the western lands. let it flow! my cat fletch stretches behind me on the bed. a tree like black lace against a gray sky. a flash of joy ... you have to be in hell to see heaven. glimpses from the land of the dead, flashes of serene timeless joy, a joy as old as suffering and despair"

oh yeah, there's def moments of pleasure! life can be great - OTM

accepting a job i don't want, which is more boring and worse paid than various other jobs i don't want, just bc its an easy option i can't justify turning it down given my absolute job enervation, but i think it will be worse for me than being unemployed in most senses except the crucial financial

i resent myself for not being brave enough to turn it down. feel myself getting worse, can't believe I'll ever get unstuck. got so much negativity and idk where to pour it so it comes out in pointless semi anonymous formats like this for me to feel bad about later, or i binge read about suicide to take the edge off

i wish i cld delete that post along with all the others just pretend nothing happened

I don't post much itt because I find my own problems boring and meaningless so I often type a bunch of shit and press back on the browser. However, that's what the thread's for ogmor, you're fine don't worry about it.

It’s ok to say that stuff here, ogmor, no one’s judging, we’re all just as fucked.

"Though my problems are meaningless, that don't make them go away."
—a smarter man than myself

i resent myself for not being brave enough to turn it down.

I think hardly anyone has the courage to repudiate their own existence and function in our capitalist society. Taking a bad job to feed yourself is a necessary compromise.

I don't know about you ogmor or the rest of our thread readers but one of the constant pressures or anguishes in my life is a very real sense that I'm only ever one or two bad decisions or periods of knackeredness/despair away from homelessness and an inescapable downward drop

NV - know that feeling 100%

uh no sleep no wake days of it

to ogmor and uu-g, if this is the only place you feel like you can vent, and it feels safe to do so, by all means do it. it's de facto therapeutic, and maybe you'll get constructive crit or advice.

Oh really? Well “go fuck yourself” is a directive. https://t.co/7W9WOSdnsT

— Andy Richter (@AndyRichter) November 17, 2017

<3

I don't know about you ogmor or the rest of our thread readers but one of the constant pressures or anguishes in my life is a very real sense that I'm only ever one or two bad decisions or periods of knackeredness/despair away from homelessness and an inescapable downward drop

― Pope Urban the Legend (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, November 1, 2017 2:36 AM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes yes yes yes yes i know this feeling all too well.

it's relating to my.. dunning-kruger phobia maybe.. any feelings of competence i have are tempered by "i should not feel confident" + fear of "not knowing what i don't know" if that makes sense (probably not). it really sucks!

had a good session with my therapist yesterday, ended up thinking about how much of my inner self-critical voice is really my dad still working away in there. she pointed out that every time she said something positive about me i found a way of countering it with a list of failings.

then i went to the pub and drank myself into one of the worst hangovers i think i've ever had.

hmmmm.

every time she said something positive about me i found a way of countering it with a list of failings

I'm a fucking expert at this. Hey! There is something I'm good at!

I'm going to see a therapist on Wednesday. Good luck NV (and everyone)

she pointed out that every time she said something positive about me i found a way of countering it with a list of failings

this is exactly what i talked with my therapist about yesterday - i imagine we all on this thread are our own worst critics

Heh maybe that's how I can be sure I'm not depressed, dozens of other people are my own worst critics

Strength to all itt

I have the same problem... I think the root of it is that i don't believe that I deserve to be happy