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28 April 2011

Depression Is A Bitch

I am a depressive.

My baseline mood tends to be subdued-but-stable, but mostly I'm kinda all over the place.

The only things I seem to be feeling right now? Profound apathy topped with anger and flavored with "fuck you". Which is okay, I guess, until someone inadvertently hits my rage button -- then I just unleash both barrels. And that's really not a good thing, because things get said -- things I don't mean -- and those things tend to be hurtful to others. Which makes me feel even worse, because I'm not a mean person at heart. So that adds a heaping helping of self-loathing to the mix, which is... really not good when you're already going into a depressive spiral.

Mostly, though, I just feel... blah. I want to cry, but the tears won't come. I would rage about that, but I just don't have the energy for it. Hell, I don't have the motivation for it, either. Right now you could poke me repeatedly and just get a "meh" in response.

I wonder if there's a reason depression and apathy travel in a pair?

Maybe it's because depression just saps all your energy and strength, so you just... don't have the energy to give a shit.

Maybe I'm even more fucked up than I thought I was.

Why do I feel like this?

What if "stable" is as good as it gets?

I just want to be happy. I mean, like, really, truly, happy.

Everyone else seems to be happy... what's their secret?

11 comments:

  1. Definitely sounds like a difficult place to be, Shawna, but the fact that you are able to hope for a "happy" resolution is encouraging. Sometimes all we can do is take baby steps when we work on emerging from depression. You had the motivation to start this blog, that's a step. Not only can this prove to be a help to you, but it's educational for those folks who never have experienced depression. Exposing the innermost you is not easy, even if you do profess to a "fuck you" attitude.

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  2. Shawna, your post greatly reminds me of what I used to go through. In my case, it took professional intervention by a psychiatrist and a therapist, to escape a life long war with major depression. The intervention was worth it.

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  3. Complete self-indulgent behavior! Take responsibility for your life and stop sitting there feeling sorry for yourself and pondering why you're apathetic. I've been clinically depressed and guess what? There is only one way out. Stop the pity party and actually make a move towards something positive.

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    1. No. No. I'm curious about this girl 'cause she frequents a blog I love and her comments are clever and really funny, and I just looked her up here. I don't like what you said here, frankly, this girl on her own blog expressed something and you totally invalidated it. So you can't relate, okay, save your platitudes. Every experience is different and every way out of trouble is different too. Give her credit for being brave enough to write so honestly about a terrible situation. If you've "been there" like you say, I'd hope you'd have a more compassionate understanding of the feelings tied up with the condition. Short-form: your "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" bullshit doesn't sound right. Sometimes depressed people can't find their "bootstraps."

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    2. WORD!!!!! Complete indulgence and self pity. She ahs a lot of time to spend on the internet. I wonder if she led a more productive liufe, she may lift herself out of her funk.

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  4. Yoga sun salutations are very good at lifting you out of depression. x

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  5. Awh buddy. Perhaps at the time of writing this it was still all wintery and dark. Here in Nor-Cal it was like that until a couple of weeks ago. Thanks for sharing your story, me, personally, I'm waiting for the call from county for some of those good ssri's that I totally need. Take care of yourself, good luck and awesomeness.

    Kriss

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  6. My experience in having bouts of depression is ongoing. I tend to shift into this frame of mind off and on.

    My particular problem was not figuring out a particular philosophy of life. Things went on perfectly for me till one day it didn't. I later realized that keeping myself busy and a good sense of denial had kept me afloat till then. But when it came to being an adult things got out of hand.

    So now I take things one step at a time. I am really bad at some things. I think about why. I think about why on bad days I cant bear to get out of my room and show my face to people but I have to. But figuring out such things in an agitated state is not possible. So I do things like yoga which do help get me back to center. While calm I think. I make sure I dont do anything stupid when Im agitated. Then I work. I follow the philosophy that mans goal in this world is not just 'happiness' and that happiness and sadness are just by products. I believe and this follows from some of the hindu texts that I read for strengt- that mans goal in life is knowledge about himself and about making himself a stronger person. To devote one self to a cause or line of work where he can develop himself and in turn maybe make a little difference in the world. And meanwhile be kind to people, be forgiving. Once you take the responsibility of being the stronger person even in the face of cruelty, criticism or plain rudeness, you will slowly gain something. Its not an overnight process. It takes years depending on the kind of influences that you have had in your life uptil now. But it is possible. People have done it for generations. And people will continue to do so. Accept the fact that you will fall. That it is human nature. Do not compare with others. You have your own path to follow. And maybe you already know a little about what you want to do. So have faith in yourself. And forgive yourself for falling. You might even find help in the most unlikely of places. Banzai... :) And if you want to know I am filling up my cracks slowly but surely. And its an uplifting experience...

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  7. In my personal experience, depression is a spiritual dis-ease. It's a way of making you search for answers. I've always found that soul searching is the best way to go. What do you like about your life? What do you hate about it? What things in your life make you want to jump out of bed in the morning? What things make you want to hide under the sheets? If you can get some clue on these things from contemplating, maybe then you can make changes in your life so you will have some enthusiasm for life and blah won't be the norm. It's hard to make changes, we get in a nice comfortable blah rut and its difficult to overcome the inertia needed to get out of it. Especially if you're depressed, it's even harder to overcome it. But maybe you're living a life that you think should make you happy, or that others say should make you happy, but its just not you. What do YOU want? Figure it out and then go get it girl.

    In the interim, did you know that exercise has been proven to reduce depression? Take up an exercise you enjoy and then DO IT - no matter what the emotional weather or how grey the cloud you're under.

    And most important to remember - most other people aren't actually that happy, we all put on our happy face when we go out and meet others. Inside, we have our blah moments as well.

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  8. Sounds like you need therapy. Good luck with that!

    Have you ever thought about exercise?

    Have you thought about doing nice things for other people - working in a soup kitchen, perhaps? Volunteering your time in some way? You seem to have a lot of time to blog. Maybe you can give back a little? That is always an uplifting experience.

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  9. Wow, love the Internet docs...

    1. Every single time you, as a person not suffering from whatever level of depression that person is suffering, give your pithy advice, you are validating what a depressed mind says over and over: It's your fault you're this way, just do something about it and it will all go away and life will be sunshine and roses and rainbows and unicorns!

    FACTS:

    *Exercise does help with depression- but if you're depressed, you don't care.
    *Sunshine helps with depression- but depressed people often don't even want to leave the house, let alone get a tan.
    *Volunteering *does not* help with depression. Helping others *does not* help with depression. Those acts may help with the feelings around depression, but they do nothing for depression itself. Volunteering at a homeless shelter doesn't cure depression "because at least I have a home." In fact, it may make depression worse, because then the depressed person feels like a jerk for being depressed when someone else obviously has it way worse.

    2. "You seem to have a lot of time to blog." REALLY? Some more facts:

    *Blogging, journaling, talking - these are tools that therapists recommend for helping a depressed person to not only face their depression, but to articulate it.
    *Talking about depression is, for many depressed people, a way to try and de-stigmatize depression.
    *When you criticize someone for talking about their depression by accusing them of having "a lot of time to blog," you're basically saying, "You could be devoting that time to puppies and unicorns and rainbows so you won't be depressed anymore! Stop talking about it and it goes away!"

    3. "Depression is a spiritual disease."

    PLEASE. Depression is an ACTUAL disease. It's wires crossed in the pathways of the brain. Sometimes medication works, sometimes therapy works, sometimes medication and therapy works, sometimes exercise works... but you are talking about people, not conditions. Claiming someone who has depression has a "spiritual disease" is akin to saying that depressed people are possessed.

    (BTW, did you know that Christian theologian Charles Spurgeon suffered from depression? He wrote about it, too - to encourage fellow Christians who suffer from depression, not to tell them to pray it away.)

    4. Anonymous above (#3, I think) gave the wisest piece of advice in this entire thread:

    "Accept the fact that you will fall. That it is human nature. Do not compare with others. You have your own path to follow. And maybe you already know a little about what you want to do. So have faith in yourself. And forgive yourself for falling. You might even find help in the most unlikely of places."

    Amen.

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