Depression and what it's really like

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

xpsts

somebody I went to uni with is now a newsreader. It's not a job I want or a life I want to live but it was jarring to have the TV on in the background and see this guy, who in all honesty I thought was very nice but also very unintelligent in a basic-conversation-comprehension way, acheiving a level of success that I don't ever possible for myself. Some people live in nice villages in a nuclear family and go travelling round Asia and receive cars as gifts, and some people spend their twenties in a depressed rot accomplishing nothing dealing with the trauma of their teens. The language of job-hunting, "are you up to the challenge?" no, I'm not, I've used all my energy fighting everything else.

It's not one thing after another, it's one thing on top of another, and it set me over the edge into a sleepless night of pathetic envy and self-doubt followed by tears at work and an afternoon sent home. Jealousy is a normal human emotion but I don't feel like I can handle it at all. I look around and I see people with careers, homes, families, easy happiness, and I look at my own life and wonder, why not me. The fear is that I'm only ever one bad episode away from ruining what I have in my life.

i don't have any advice, i'm sorry. i've been in my own tail spin for a while now. but i definitely sympathize with a lot of what you wrote. also i like the way that you write, the little "are you up to the challenge?" snippet just jumps out and grabs my throat, brings me right back. i mean that in a good way! it's very evocative and emotional just to read.

hang in there.

Boxedjoy - <3

funnbun
1 month ago
Any tips on passing depression?

I can totally empathise with this boxedjoy. If there's anything I've learnt it's that smartness/cleverness/switched-on-ness does not necessarily = success and riches. In fact it often feels the other way around. I'm now doing a job I quite enjoy but I know that I'm on the lowest run of the ladder here, even in my mid-late thirties, and the higher earners here aren't exactly geniuses - they've either been in the right place at the right time or they're a lot better at bragging about the few things they are good at. It's so easy to be jealous, but then I think: 'Would I really want their life?', maybe parts of it, 'Do I really?' nah, you keep it and enjoy it

when the truth is found
to be lies
and all the joy
within you
dies

It's not one thing after another, it's one thing on top of another,

i feel this. also numerous things tangled with other things in Gordian knots

<3 everybody

yeah that was a good post boxedjoy, i can relate.

finding it helpful to employ a "knowing when to care/not care" attitude to the problems in my life. Like the bully at my work, it's their deal - and not mine, so I just go on and do my best and not let it get me down. For years I've been sensitive to the point of paralysis, just now trying to find ways to not give a shit about the things that really don't matter and (at the risk of sounding cliche') go out into a forest during a wind storm to be reminded what's real. but yeah "it's one thing on top of another" is OTM

best wishes to everyone

I've typed and deleted some variation on this post a half dozen times now, but: as indefensible as it feels for me to stick my head in the sand, I feel like I need to stop paying attention to what's happening in the world. Too many things are hitting some surreal, ott level of horrifying that I'm not sure I (or maybe even people in general) am equipped to handle. Like to the extent that I cannot reconcile what's happening in the world with any conception of the world that I have in my head, and it's making me feel not just that the world is meaningless but that any attempt at building a subjectively meaningful life is a pointless pursuit because the bad guys will just keep winning and everything will get gradually worse throughout whatever time I have left to experience consciousness and the best I can hope for is that one of these psychopaths with possession of a nuke will just bring the whole thing crashing down before I have a chance to realize what's happened. I've given up altogether on the idea of ever bringing kids into this world, I'm not planning for anything resembling the long term, and I just try to be thankful when I've gotten through another day because I feel like I'm going to live to see a time when getting through another day will be much more worthy of note than it is currently.

Fuck. Sorry.

That’s very defensible.

don't apologize. i'm biased because i've had a lot of the same thoughts recently. i used to put a lot of stock into "the future" and what i should be trying to do, but for the 6 months+ there's been this dissipation into thinking that the future isn't really a thing that can be counted on, at all.

it's definitely not a good feeling and i'm not saying that the fact it feels like a natural way to react necessarily means it shouldn't be actively resisted, at a personal level. but at any rate, definitely don't apologize.

In the midst of the Pacific War during WWII, US soldiers and sailors took heart in decrying the stupidity that complicated an otherwise bloody and terrifying war, by coining such useful terms as snafu (Situation Normal: All Fucked Up), fubar (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition), and illegitimi non carborundum. The key was sharing the same boat with a bunch of others who freely and openly acknowledged the stupidity, futility, blood and terror of the situation and the impossibility of fixing it, and bonding in kinship in the face of an overwhelming and heartless mess.

I think that you, Old Lunch, have exactly the right kind of heart to share this mess with. So please, don't lose heart. You'd be robbing the rest of us of your humor; however black and ugly it feels to you, it is worth plenty to me.

^

feel the sudden urge to re-read some catch 22

aimless OTM

i have been unable to move for about 4 days. not quite literally. i make it out of the house a couple times a day to walk my dog, and yesterday i managed to pick up ingredients to make chili (mainly so that i could make way too much and have leftovers for dinner the past few nights). i have things i could be working on! i have something fun that i'm supposed to be working on, in fact! but i just can't do anything at all right now. i seriously need to be dropped off by helicopter in the middle of the tundra, 40+ miles from the nearest road, and forced to either move around or die out there. either that or the floor could drop out from underneath my couch, dumping me and my dog and my laptop and the cat claw-shredded upholstery down into a huge tank of freezing water. i wouldn't even be mad! when my partner is around i manage to keep myself from entering perma-slouch mode on the couch and can feint the movements and actions of someone who is technically a human being. but left to my own devices for a few days, i quickly settle back into my natural state. waking up has been the worst the last few days. just waves of self-hatred, as soon as the eyes open up.

/oof

i feel it

the only thing that makes me feel better is accomplishing something at work and that is why i suffer workaholism so i had to talk myself out of going to the office today (i will go tomorrow) but how do i get myself as addicted to cleaning my house as i am to working. i drank 3 large cups of coffee and i am on my bed reading about taxes and finance which is really good for me. overdosing on thoughts.

my cat also shredded the couch a long time ago so i am ashamed of that too

on the bright side, i have managed to sink 25-30 hours into Skyrim in the last handful of days. i am doing really well in that world and some of the NPCs are beginning to greet me by reputation. i'm a pretty big deal there, even though (maybe because?) i am a giant cat man

xpost

i drank 3 large cups of coffee and i am on my bed reading about taxes and finance which is really good for me. overdosing on thoughts.

i love feeling like that! my new short-to-intermediate-term goal is to feel like that again