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On the nature of depression
Depression sucks.
I know a number of people who deal with depression on a regular basis. The most common symptom I see when it comes to depression is unhappiness about a perceived lack of self-worth. This can be anything from, "I'm not worth spending this money on" to "I'm such a horrible person and I don't know why anybody even wants to waste time on a worthless slug like me!" There's lots of points in between too.
Just about everybody gets depressed now and again. Self-worth is a very hard thing to pin down but it comes from the inside. Introspection goes to the inside and questions and what-ifs until you're blue in the face - then it gets serious.
Some friends of mine say Depression Lies. This is actually pretty accurate.
When depression talks it talks about the bad stuff. It takes any bit of bad stuff and blows it up into a crisis of epic proportions whether it's a crisis or not. It takes anything questionable and paints it as bad stuff, then does the same thing it does to real bad stuff. It discounts anything good as being either an aberration or unreal.
Discounting real stuff as freak chance is bad enough. Warping neutral into awful is worse.
Depression can breed hopelessness. For example, there have been times I haven't been able to do any work around the house because it looks like a giant solid mass to get done. In truth it's been lots of littler tasks, but I couldn't see that.
Depression is not easy to deal with. If the above points sound like you on a regular basis, discounting the good whilst being miserable in the bad, I suggest doing the following:
1) Concentrate on what is. Yes, there may be bad stuff. There is also good stuff and it matters at least as much as the bad stuff.
2) Remember that it's not all one giant wave of stuff coming at you. Each little task you finish gets a little bit done, and that little bit comes out of the big mass. It's not quite as big after that.
3) If it's hard getting anything at all done, look at a single tiny thing - anything from a single dish to a single piece of trash. Do that one single thing. Wash that dish. Put that piece of trash in the trash. It's just one little thing. Thing is, once you've started doing that one little thing don't let it stop you from doing something similar again.
4) If none of the above work at all, or they don't work very well most of the time, please look into professional help. Professionals can help by listening and by prescribing any medicines that may be appropriate to help balance your brain's chemistry, because make no mistake it is a bit off. It's still up to you to do the work - pick up that piece of paper, for example - but it can be easier if you have a competent professional helping you get your chemical and hormonal balance back in line.
Depression's a constant fight, and the very hopelessness it puts in a brain saps the will to fight it. Even so, fighting depression is fighting the good fight. Reach out for help if you need to - it's probably closer than you think.
I know a number of people who deal with depression on a regular basis. The most common symptom I see when it comes to depression is unhappiness about a perceived lack of self-worth. This can be anything from, "I'm not worth spending this money on" to "I'm such a horrible person and I don't know why anybody even wants to waste time on a worthless slug like me!" There's lots of points in between too.
Just about everybody gets depressed now and again. Self-worth is a very hard thing to pin down but it comes from the inside. Introspection goes to the inside and questions and what-ifs until you're blue in the face - then it gets serious.
Some friends of mine say Depression Lies. This is actually pretty accurate.
When depression talks it talks about the bad stuff. It takes any bit of bad stuff and blows it up into a crisis of epic proportions whether it's a crisis or not. It takes anything questionable and paints it as bad stuff, then does the same thing it does to real bad stuff. It discounts anything good as being either an aberration or unreal.
Discounting real stuff as freak chance is bad enough. Warping neutral into awful is worse.
Depression can breed hopelessness. For example, there have been times I haven't been able to do any work around the house because it looks like a giant solid mass to get done. In truth it's been lots of littler tasks, but I couldn't see that.
Depression is not easy to deal with. If the above points sound like you on a regular basis, discounting the good whilst being miserable in the bad, I suggest doing the following:
1) Concentrate on what is. Yes, there may be bad stuff. There is also good stuff and it matters at least as much as the bad stuff.
2) Remember that it's not all one giant wave of stuff coming at you. Each little task you finish gets a little bit done, and that little bit comes out of the big mass. It's not quite as big after that.
3) If it's hard getting anything at all done, look at a single tiny thing - anything from a single dish to a single piece of trash. Do that one single thing. Wash that dish. Put that piece of trash in the trash. It's just one little thing. Thing is, once you've started doing that one little thing don't let it stop you from doing something similar again.
4) If none of the above work at all, or they don't work very well most of the time, please look into professional help. Professionals can help by listening and by prescribing any medicines that may be appropriate to help balance your brain's chemistry, because make no mistake it is a bit off. It's still up to you to do the work - pick up that piece of paper, for example - but it can be easier if you have a competent professional helping you get your chemical and hormonal balance back in line.
Depression's a constant fight, and the very hopelessness it puts in a brain saps the will to fight it. Even so, fighting depression is fighting the good fight. Reach out for help if you need to - it's probably closer than you think.
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Depression -- at least the kind with a *big* biochemical problem behind it, rather than biochemistry adding to the emotional soup -- is a disease. A serious one. A deadly one, in one case out of five, and since that's only the known, diagnosed cases in which someone actually reached out to get treatment, it's probably way higher than that. It is also only referring to actual suicides, rather than accident or drug deaths caused indirectly by the disease.
All of this means that what Wolf said about getting help, and helping yourself, and struggling as much as you have to to look at the world, and yourself, and what you need to do, with as great a mixture of accuracy and optimism as you can manage, is completely true. But depression causes hopelessness through twp separate methods. It can make you feel hopeless when there is still lots of reason to hope, lots of good to be had.
And then again, it can make you feel hopeless because it *hurts*, and it will go on hurting, and if you are one of the people who need medical intervention to make it hurt less and there is no medical intervention known to humanity which will help... there is very little objective reason to hope anything will get better.
Depression makes you think things are worse than they are. It also makes things bad in very concrete, non-relativistic ways. "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." I am fucking *good* by now at making a lot of my depressive hopelessness go away by learning not to believe in it. That which remains, in the cold light of reason, is real.
Hope that has no basis is as much a lie as the depression ever tells.
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I wish I knew ways to help with that.
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Ok. No offense, but I have an issue with this because I have learned differently. I also have to add something very important to your point 4) - seek professional help.
Professional help, i.e. counselling/therapy in this case can _help you change your thinking patterns_!
A lot of depression is down to well trodden habitual paths of thinking patterns. The way you are used to thinking you have learned. It can be unlearned, it can be changed!
Yes, for some people it may all be down to actual problems with the brain chemistry, but for by far most of us who get depressed and/or have problems with depression, it's down to how we think. *Especially* how we think when depressed. And *that* you can learn to change.
No it's not easy or pleasant or fast. It's not like a pill you can take to dull pain, it takes a while of constant working before it really startes to have any effect, and it needs constant "practice". But it does work. It certainly has done me loads of good. I still get bouts of being depressed, but I recognize them and I can now deal with them, because I learnt about my thought patterns and I learnt better ones. I'm still practicing those better ones, I fall back into old "bad thought habits" every so often - but I come out of them fairly quickly and on my own.
So - yes, Depression tries to get me to think in those old bad thought habits - but it is *my* choice whether or not I let it.
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I'm doing much better on medication than I was for quite awhile on just therapy, even though therapy was far better than doing nothing and spinning out of control all the time.
The medication is not all of it; I still have a lot of work to do in therapy, retraining my thought patterns, as you said. But the medication is helping a lot.
This is not a CEPT
Depression sucks.
But fake compassion sucks even more. And virtual hugs are cheap. I should know I hand them out regularly. They don't mean anything. They don't change anything.
I know a number of people who deal with depression on a regular basis. The most common symptom I see when it comes to depression is unhappiness about a perceived lack of self-worth. This can be anything from, "I'm not worth spending this money on" to "I'm such a horrible person and I don't know why anybody even wants to waste time on a worthless slug like me!" There's lots of points in between too.
Just about everybody gets depressed now and again. Self-worth is a very hard thing to pin down but it comes from the inside. Introspection goes to the inside and questions and what-ifs until you're blue in the face - then it gets serious.
Ok I give you a what if: What if after all the introspection one comes to the objective realization that there is no worth there? That the little bits and pieces others claim to see as worth are their delusions.
Some friends of mine say Depression Lies. This is actually pretty accurate.
When depression talks it talks about the bad stuff. It takes any bit of bad stuff and blows it up into a crisis of epic proportions whether it's a crisis or not. It takes anything questionable and paints it as bad stuff, then does the same thing it does to real bad stuff. It discounts anything good as being either an aberration or unreal.
Discounting real stuff as freak chance is bad enough. Warping neutral into awful is worse.
I refuse to acknowledge there is good. This is hell. You only have not realized it.
Depression can breed hopelessness. For example, there have been times I haven't been able to do any work around the house because it looks like a giant solid mass to get done. In truth it's been lots of littler tasks, but I couldn't see that.
Once more: you have failed to read the insrciption above the portal: Abandon all hopeIf you are in here and still have hope you are deluding yourself.
Depression is not easy to deal with. If the above points sound like you on a regular basis, discounting the good whilst being miserable in the bad, I suggest doing the following:
1) Concentrate on what is. Yes, there may be bad stuff. There is also good stuff and it matters at least as much as the bad stuff.
No there ain't good or neutral stuff that is illusion. The bd stuff is illusion too. It is all illusion.
2) Remember that it's not all one giant wave of stuff coming at you. Each little task you finish gets a little bit done, and that little bit comes out of the big mass. It's not quite as big after that.
Still here? Dream on.
3) If it's hard getting anything at all done, look at a single tiny thing - anything from a single dish to a single piece of trash. Do that one single thing. Wash that dish. Put that piece of trash in the trash. It's just one little thing. Thing is, once you've started doing that one little thing don't let it stop you from doing something similar again.
Infinity minus any finite number is still infinity. and thet is true even for the smallest infinity: aleph(0)
Re: This is not a CEPT continued
(Anonymous) 2003-04-04 05:21 am (UTC)(link)Oh great! replace my perception of reality with a druginduced illusion!
Depression's a constant fight, and the very hopelessness it puts in a brain saps the will to fight it. Even so, fighting depression is fighting the good fight. Reach out for help if you need to - it's probably closer than you think.
Wrong. Last time I reached out for help I dragged a few good people down with me. If there is anything one can do, it is facing this abmissal reality of hell and give in to it. Fighting it only makes things worse. Even suicide makes things worse. Relax and let the demons rape you. If you can pretend that you enjoy it. ( you won't but they might loose interest in you for a time.)
I woke up this morning and knew that what I was going to was the just deserts for what I have done - or rather for what I had failed to do.
If I had any character I would have killed myself long ago. And there are a couple of people who might be happier now hd I done so before they ever met me.
This post is anonymous for good reasons. Do not try to find me.
Re: This is not a CEPT
You say:
> Last time I reached out for help I dragged a few good people down with me.
How did you drag people down with you when you asked for help? Certainly if you didn't need help so badly, you wouldn't have reached out at all. By willfully keeping yourself the way you are now, you're posing a danger to others, because you probably don't have the strength of character to suffer alone forever. You need to get professional help to keep from hurting the rest of us. Killing yourself won't help; you'll just cause more people to suffer, as you yourself say.
You also say:
> If there is anything one can do, it is facing this abmissal reality of hell and give in to it.
Treatment is part of this abyssmal reality of Hell. Not seeking treatment is just your way of ducking out of some of the misery. When you say, "Oh great! replace my perception of reality with a druginduced illusion!", you tell me all I need to know ... you're not willing to face the torture; you're still trying to save part of yourself. Your ego gets to think, "At least I know what's really going on!" ... meanwhile, you cause people to get hurt and you wreck your own life.
You also say:
> If I had any character I would have killed myself long ago.
Here's a compromise that shouldn't take as much character as suicide: go get professional help. Keep taking the meds for a couple of months. All you'll need to do that is to lose some of the pride you take in having "accurate" perception of reality. Open your mind a bit ... if not for yourself, for the people you'll probably hurt in the future if you keep going on like this.
Even if you don't think anything of yourself, you recognize that you have the ability to hurt other people. You can how likely you are to hurt other people by getting professional help immediately.
<sigh> ... I don't even know whether you're alive or dead. If you're alive, I hope you heed my advice.
Re: This is not a CEPT
(Anonymous) 2003-04-04 08:02 am (UTC)(link)treatment costs money. I am unemployed.
Therapy requires two things to work:
1. A basic willingness to admit that one can't handle ones life without help. Agreeing to be helped.
2. For me at least a therapist I trust and accept as my intellectual equal or better.
I have been in therapy and it has helped me then.
I cannot afford therapy right now.
I have long ago decided never to committ suicide.
(unless I could be 110% sure nobody would be harmed by it in any way and there was no chance of being dragged back. I can't be sure of the first. I won't do it. )
I am also a drama queen and feeling very low at the moment.
And last not least thank you for trying , but I'd rather have everyone concentrate on helping people who can be helped safely. I on the other hand do have to face my demons alone right now - this is something I have to get through on my own.
As for dragging down people: currently they are more stressed and unhappier than before they started to help me, as they have their own problems I regard this as unacceptable.
Re: This is not a CEPT
I sympathize with being unemployed. I'm unemployed. I get my psychiatric assistance from the local public health organization, If you're looking for that kind of assistance, some places have sliding fee scales, including assistance at no charge. (I'm cheaper out in the community than I am taking up space at the state hospital.)
If you want to talk, I'll listen. Everyone has their own problems, true, but I can at least lend an ear and (if it's useful at all) some advice. If you're so overwhelming that I feel swamped, I'll tell you. Your choice.
Take care ...
Thanks again was: This is not a CEPT
(Anonymous) 2003-04-05 01:45 am (UTC)(link)If I went on here explaining why getting therapy ain't easy I would probably give up my anonymity.
The net is a VERY place.
Also I am talking with friends and it turns out I did not drag them down as far as I thought. And I am now quite convinced that I have to do that on my own.
look at : was: This is not a CEPT
Re: This is not a CEPT
My husband found an article about how depressives aren't deluded, that really we are seeing the truth, and most people choose to not see the dark side. Our trouble is that we can't see the flip side of the darkness, while "normals" tend to not see the dark clearly. There IS good, but the darkness is blotting it out right now, and the darkness is not a delusion, just an obstacle. *big fake cyber hugs*
Re: This is not a CEPT
(Anonymous) 2003-04-08 02:03 pm (UTC)(link)(I leave aside the problem of finding a good therapist and that I dislike the very idea of taking drugs. )
I suspect underneath all that darkness I must be an optimist after all because I do manage to see the good often enough - it takes a really bad time to get me as dark as I was in my post.
I really really am mostly OK and am working on the rest.
Don't worry Was: This is not a CEPT
(Anonymous) 2003-04-09 06:50 am (UTC)(link)Apology was: This is not a CEPT
have a look at