f13.net

I was wondering if anyone here has battled depression successfully. If so could anyone recommend some resources that helped them with the process of moving through it?

Visit a counselor.

Seriously, it helps.

This. Even if you don't go on medication, just having someone who knows what they're talking about to talk to helps a great deal.

The only advice you should take seriously from this thread is to go see a counselor.  It helped me tremendously when I went through some rough times. 

Yeah, even if they can't "cure" someone, they're a valuable point of contact just because they know what services are available, how to get access to them, and so on.  If you don't have access to a counselor through your job/school/insurance/whatever, Google or the phonebook would probably be the place I'd turn to find one.

On a personal, maybe not very helpful or relevant tangent, one thing that helps me is doing volunteer work.  It keeps me busy (less brooding/drinking time) and gives me at least one box I can check in the "you're not a complete waste of carbon" column.  It does require some free time, but they tend to be really flexible with scheduling (since you are, after all, working for nothing).

A lot of companies have employee assistance programs that are good places to start.

Sorry to hear you need to deal with this in some way.

Definitely counselor first. For us, the counselor helped us realize the depression was rooted in a biological condition, with known paths to remediation. Just because someone uses the word "medication" doesn't mean it's automatically "crazy pills". Chemical imbalance is literally a thing and fuck anyone who tries to write it off thinking someone just needs to cowboy up and deal. They have no first, second nor probably even third hand experience with it.

Ditto.  Finding a good counselor is also important as one that can truly help you vs. one who is milking you for the insurance money makes a difference as well.

Me personally, I am on a weird chemical cocktail that has solved a good portion of my issues but will never make it truly go away (and I don't recommend anyone do it lightly).  Exercising ridiculous amounts helps keep mine at bay as well.

That.

Exercise (and going off the Pill) helped me a ton, but yeah, counselor is the biggest thing, because depression can vary pretty wildly between people.

And it's one of the few things one can actually active do in such situation. Personally found it massively more easy to deal with a (somewhat objective) professional than 'bothering' concerned friends and family.

Finding a good counselor is hard. I've met with two people to try and untangle what's going on with my head and heart and so far both have been absolutely fuck-all useless. The one guy wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise while he spouted off Hallmark card aphorisms. Only asked me one (leading, rhetorical) question, I probably spoke for ten minutes top in a forty minute appointment.

See your GP.  If it's physical, no amount of counselling will help.  Though I assume by the blanket 'me too' in here that counsellors mean something else over there and can prescribe drugs.  If it's Deanna in a catsuit, that'll help, but not long term.

Tell people.  Tell as many people as you can.  Let people know what's going on and how to help and to be aware of it.  Make THEM aware that doesn't mean 'trying to cheer you up', it just means that they should be aware of it and make allowances.

Get on good drugs.  Make sure you try different types to see what ones are best.  If you start to take one that makes you see frogs, get them changed.  Don't do what I did and get used to the frogs.  Frogs are bad.  Also, anyone thinking I'm joking here about the frogs, DON'T.

There were fucking frogs.

Then go get the proper counselling and psychiatric help you may require especially if, like me, it was brought on by trauma.  Get that shit out of your head as soon as you can so that you're not STILL having flashbacks 7 years later.

That's about it.

Read a lot.  There are even stupid comics on the web that help better than any human will.

Good Luck.

Don't kill yourself.  Father in Law did and, boy did it suck for EVERYONE ELSE.

Good Luck Again.

Also, exercise.  It really helps, but don't over do it

Good Luck AGAIN.

(also, sunlight.)

How did you manage that, you still live in Scotland don't you?

Don't try to tough it out.

Keep trying counselors until you find one you are comfortable with.

Drugs were needed in my case.  Anxiety was fueling my depression, which kept me from dealing with the stressors, causing me to get more anxious.  On the other hand, I don't think they would have been of benefit with my depression when I was younger.  If medication looks like an option, talk it out with your GP or therapist about whether they're really needed since some will just throw meds at you.  Understand what they think it will be addressing.

I didn't.  It's good advice and works tho.  Which is why this country is full of Miserable Fuckers.

It isn't true that if it's physical no counselor can help. The optimal approach is a combination of medication and therapy. Both are moderately effective on their own, but not nearly as effective as they are when used in conjunction. Finding the right counselor can be hard and it would be my advice to keep looking because finding someone that can really help you is invaluable and that person is out there somewhere.

Edit: The point above of being wary of doctors throwing meds at you is an important one as well.

 :uhrr:

I don't think I can overcome my wariness of medication. I know I don't want to see anyone who turns to that too quickly or easily. I don't even know if the way I'm feeling is anything more than a rational assessment of what it is to be older, trapped by circumstances beyond my control, and wanting things and people to be better than they are. Some kinds of bleakness and sadness are the way of things, I feel sometimes. I need someone to patiently help me untangle what is honest despair at the way of things and what is pathology. And what is me vs. what is the world.

My psychiatrist figured out pretty quickly that I didn't have any sort of chemical imbalance that would make ongoing medication necessary (the first thing she did was send me off to my GP to get tested for various deficiencies that could result in or exacerbate depression) -- she was often quick to suggest anxiety meds as an aid to cognitive behavioral therapy (to help put the stressors aside while I rebuilt), but not as a substitute, and I would say "neeeeh" and she would drop it.  I think she figured I wasn't in quite bad enough shape where medicating me was necessary to my continued survival.  Your mileage, however, may vary.

Medication isn't a lifetime commitment either (at least in many cases). I had awful anxiety for a few years, and was on meds for it. Eventually I started feeling better and less anxious even with triggers (on the meds, I could feel the anxiety, but it was quite muted...eventually I would hit a trigger and expect it, but nothing happened). I weaned myself off of the meds and don't take anything now. Very rarely I have spikes of anxiety or panic, but nothing debilitating or lasting.

Talk to your doc. He/she can help you narrow down your options and design some sort of plan (be it meds, exercise, counseling, or a combination of all of them).

This is where I will probably start.  I think they give us 8 sessions, although it might be tied to the insurance, and I'm on my wife's.  

I am very wary of counselors as my experience with my marriage counselor was pretty terrible.  It was a few sessions of getting dogpiled on, and I finally just had to walk away from it.  

For the record, I don't think I'm depressed, but I'll let someone else make the call on that.  I have some issues that could bear being talked through with a professional.  

Marriage and depression are wildly different.

It is possible to recover from a bout of depression.

I've suffered from Depression since I was 6 years old. There is no cure all thing as such when its medical but having a chat with a counciller does actually help. Or a Priest. Now finding a good priest is as much a crap shoot as a good Councillor but its really important to talk to someone and Priests cost less.

I tried different drugs till I found the one I'm on now and I had it for years. When I finally found something that "worked" it was such a relief, as the constant crashes were suddenly gone. But it does not make me happy, it's just a...  it takes the edges off the emotions which is a hell of a lot better than being in the pits of despair the whole time. But I was fairly stable, which does have its downsides. My GP recently tried me on a lesser dosage and put me on something else that's supposed to be a light dose for anxiety. I slept 18 fucking hours and literally my eyes saw hexagonal lines through everything and they were filled with stars. I refused to take anymore of the sodding things, but I tried myself on a lesser dosage for a month just to see how I got on. Lets just say that one of my best friends told me to go back to the doc and get it changed back. I'm snarling and snapping at people and basically not being calm.

The important thing for living long term with Depression is to know what sets you off. If something regularly makes you feel down afterwards, then avoid it even if you like it. When you are dealing with depression you can fall into a habit of deliberately going onto your triggers as its really all you know and you don't realize you are doing it, and if you are still alive after your teens than you are probably stubborn as a mule and "it WILL be better this time!" And changing your habits is hard work. Its also important to find something that lifts you out of the blackness for just a few minutes, so you can find your way back. For me its music. Look up epic music on youtube and you will probably listen to something I've listened to when I'm down. "Africa" by Toto is another song that can lift me. Basically I'm saying is move to the things that lift you and avoid the things that knock you back.

You are living with an illness and it really isn't your fault. If its just emotional and you can work through it then great. I had the misfortune of having both chemical depression and lots of reasons to be depressed on top of that. The doctor that worked with me for years said that the results of the tests he ran on me said that I should really be put into a group and forget about treating me as there was too much pain there to cure. Well he worked with me anyway, and I'm generally in a far better place now, but I just need the meds to keep me stable. That's a very hard thing for me to accept as I hate taking pills. If at some stage you feel that you don't need the pills anymore then you can just stop taking them, but ease yourself off them if you do.

Anyway, a bit rambling but that's my story/advice. But yeah I'll reiterate Hamish's advice. If you get a bad reaction from the pills then DON'T keep taking them. I'd rather stick my hand in a flame than go through a bad drug reaction. But you are taking a drug for an illness, its really no different than taking an asprin for a headache or taking something to get you through the flu. Think of it like that and you will be fine.

That's a good point, for me it was a brain imbalance but while I skipped the "talk to a counselor" part of my own advice and went straight to my GP about it, a counselor (not a therapist, those are two different things in my eyes) (but people do use them interchangeably, I probably could've elaborated more) is generally going to have a lot more experience in how to go about getting depression treated than, like, internet strangers or your own family or whatever. So it's pretty safe I-don't-know-your-situation advice. And in my experience, one is going to recommend also seeing the other anyway (my GP recommended I see a counselor or therapist if the drugs alone weren't helping, my brother's therapist recommended he also talk to his GP, etc).

Don't make yourself crazy trying to 'fix' a bout of depression.  It shows up when it wants to, it leaves when it wants to, beating yourself up over it will just make you miserable for no payoff.  If you feel like things are sliding out of control to a worse place, seek out some professionals to consult about it, and don't expect the first one you see to be the right fit.  There are several different types of therapy, and they aren't one size fits all.

Stop attacking me !!!   :why_so_serious:

I don't disagree.  All I know is that my Father in Law went to a great many counseling sessions and due to the fact that medication wasn't being properly dealt with straight away, he went up to the spare room with electrical wire and killed himself.  I really, really object when people get dismissive of drugs for little to no reason.  The brains a hugely complicated beast we don't yet fully understand.  As has already been done to death, get BOTH types of help, but get checked out FIRST because it's quick and easy and doesn't involve talking sessions that might get scheduled over a period of weeks.  That said, we have socialized medicine, so maybe the wait times are similar.

Also, watch out for frogs.  Fucking frogs everywhere.  It was like a Lovecraft episode.

Definition time.  In the U.S. there are psychologists which are usually Ph.D. level people who deal with mental issues but who are not medical doctors and therefore cannot prescribe meds, there are psychiatrists who are M.D.s specifically trained on mental issues who can prescribe meds, and there are "counselors" or "therapists" who also provide mental health related services but aren't up to the level of the prior two.   The type that you need depends on what is going on.  I've dealt with both at different points in time. When I was a teenage, angry lad I saw a psychiatrist who gave me meds (very early days of Prozac) that I rapidly ditched because I didn't think they were effective and they made me wired.  Much later in life as a result of some stuff going on I went to a psychologist that just talked me through things without doping me up. I found that much more effective. There are different schools of thought and defaults that the person you see will go to first. You need to luck out in a certain sense to get the right person for the right issue.  Every person's mileage may vary.  I think the most important thing is not to feel isolated or that there aren't resources available. Doing something is generally always better than doing nothing and suffering in silence.  Keep trying until it clicks and works for you.

Yeah, I would avoid medication if you can.  Go see a counselor and find, if you can, a decent support group to surround yourself with.  It's tough to do this stuff alone. 

It also might help to stop posting at f13.  You wan't to try and surround yourself with positive, happy people that aren't complete bastards.   :why_so_serious:

See a GP first. Get some tests on vitamin deficiencies and hormones. That can give you some initial clues to see if you're having issues that aren't mental, and are more physical.

Beyond that, yes to talking to a counsellor, yes to involving friends and family, and yes to considering medication.

Start an underground fighting ring....

Only downside to this is that HR can be a bit too chatty about who is using these sorts of things.

This is not wrong advice if given professionally. My wife was given it several times about talking to her shittastic family. (And always ignored it..)  It's also advice given to people trying to break addictions and bad habits. You have triggers for these things and you need to limit exposure while learning to control/ deal with them or else you'll fall into the cycle again.

But, as everyone's said before. We're not doctors, talk to professionals all we can do is give anecdotal and irresponsible advice.

To be clear (since I am a doctor) this advice is not given professionally.  It is advice given in the context of a message board to someone I don't know and should not be viewed as "treatment" or "diagnosis" of any sort. 

[insert customary disclaimer for taking advice from me.  note: I post this largely as a point of discussion rather then an actual mode of treatment]

Lot of good advice in here.  Most everyone has/had bouts of depression in their lives, including myself of late as my life has been fairly chaotic since trying to switch careers (and other personal reasons).  Sometimes this chaos even manifests itself in my postings on f13 (hence, teh crazy labels).    :why_so_serious:

Anyways, my opinion is it's important to catch yourself before you slip too far into a bout of full-on depression.  Realize you've got some negativity to address, and address it.  Give yourself some time to meditate and calmly think things through (you'll be surprised at the clear solutions you may come up with if you just think through a problem quietly), coupled with LOTS of time being active... either with work (depending on the environment), school, exercise, whatever.  It's very important to stay active and feel like you've accomplished something.  Even little things.  Make some short-term goals and knock em out one by one, etc.  The caveat being these things must be positive experiences.  Nothing's worse then sinking yourself into work, when that work is largely a source of discontent.   Realize though, this activity is really just designed to hold you over until the causal issues can be addressed.

9/10 times most depression can be linked to a source of anxiety (stressors: already said in this thread).  Finding the source and excising it or dealing with it (w/o being irresponsible or rash) is the most important thing.  Of course, if you've got an imbalance of some kind, even if things are great you may still get depressed.  This is where professional help will most be needed of course.  The advice to "not tough it out" is categorically wrong; there will be times you cant get to a doc or there's no one there to listen.  You must learn to "tough it out" during these times or suffer the consequences... dealing means not ignoring the signs and managing your stressors before they put you over the edge.  If you get pushed too far, learn how to back yourself off.  The human mind is a powerful learning machine that can usually rewire/repair itself when prompted; w/o meds.

Little things that help (some have been mentioned already):

• SUN.  Gives well-being obviously and you need the melatonin to help you sleep.
• Good music!  Sounds silly, but most people I know who fight depression also listen to the most disheartening music imaginable (angry thrash, tori amos, shitty hiphop, srysly?).  This does not help.  Music was not invented to help you "identify" with your issues; it's meant to evoke emotion, many times subconsciously.  Therefore listening to positive music (I do a lot of epic soundtracks, 90's era stuff, maybe some current hipster pop) definitely helps.
  
• Stop hanging out with negative influences.  Hang out with positive souls (without being a succubi).  Even if this means meeting new people.  Try a hobby-meetup or some such.  Take a class.
• Try dietary changes.  Less sugars, glutens, bad fats, and processed stuff.  Start making 'happy foods' and eat them (couple with cooking - which is a good hobby).  Start shopping at Whole Foods, Trader Joes, or Harris Teeter instead of sitting in the line at McDonald's or Jiffy Mart.  I'd say vast swaths of depressed people can trace their problems to food before a mental imbalance.  Realize, your brain gets inflamed just like your body.  Eat badly, inflame your gut, inflame your brain, etc. and it can effect your moods negatively.
• If you need monetary help.  Do not be afraid to ask for it; but try to ask with a definitive plan to make good use of the money (going to school, retraining, starting a biz, etc.).  Use all of the state/federal fin. aid you can find; again, you need a reason to get it though.

Whoops, I see how I put you in a bad place there. Poor wording on my part, I meant if given professionally by a Psycho(log/analy)ist not that you were giving it as an MD.  Derp, my apologies.

Oh man, no big deal.  It's a derp on my part because I really do have to watch what I say in regards to this stuff.  It's not like I'm all that anonymous really.  I actually would offer thanks for bringing that up. 

I only posted here because, it's mostly anonymous and professional help hasn't panned out. I was curious what type of things have helped people here since I recall posts scattered here and there about fighting depression.

I'm in kind of a rough spot. I have been having problems for a while now, and have seen a couple of therapists. Neither worked out very well. One of them was provided by my school, and ended up making things very uncomfortable there. Both of them insisted on bringing my wife into the fold, which was difficult because I was mainly trying to seek their help in order to figure out how to share with my wife what I am going through. In the last few years, I have lost two businesses. Most of my professional acquaintances have lost their businesses, property and some even their relationships. I have discovered family members living in horrible conditions, aging and reluctant to come to reality. I have to make some hard decisions. Fighting a constant war with having enough money. Trying to finish my degree, support my wife's business, and rekindle my own while providing as much love and attention as I can to my boy.  

It's been about a year, I just go through the motions for people so they don't get concerned, because when they do they take it personally. I just don't feel anything, except for frustration which seems to have an endless reserve. Each day I just kind of let routine carry me, like on autopilot. The worst part is that I know that I have no reason to really be affected in this way. My life is no harder than so many other people, and they are doing just fine. I'm not really looking for sympathy or pity or anything like that. It's just kind of nice to be able to blurt out what I'm thinking in a place where what people think of me doesn't have any real consequence.

Money is a tough deal, because there is no easy fix.  As has been rehashed a billion times here, there is no way to just jump up and "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" that is going to be easy.

My personal advice would be to focus on the boy as much as you can.  Take time and be outdoors with him.  Find something cheap and easy that you can do together, like hiking, to take your mind off of money stuff.  I mean, that is clearly an object of both your affections and your desire to better yourself and your money situation, so do everything you can to help him be better.  It's not all money.  Think of what you are giving him with your time.  That....is priceless.

That has been my primary tactic recently, although I need to figure out how to ease the stress of this on my wife. I can tell that she is confused and conflicted; she is running out of patience and understanding. I am not sure how much time I have left to fix everything before there is nothing left.

Well, you can't fix her.  You can only fix you.  That is a primary basis towards getting better.  It sounds selfish, but it's like being on an airplane when the cabin decompresses.  You're supposed to put your mask on first because you can't help others if you can't help yourself. 

Remember....you always have you.  You're a bright guy and clearly have some common sense.  Do what you gotta do to fix you and the rest will follow along.

One of the hardest things about depression is that it is a bit like an addiction.  You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.  You want everyone around you to be happy and perfect, and do so even at the expense of yourself.  This is a time when being a little selfish is okay.  It's okay to love yourself and want to be happy.  Keep in mind that when you are at your best that is when you can do your best good at helping your boy and your wife.  But there are some instances where the people you are around are more of a detriment to your condition than you'd like.  It's like an alcoholic hanging out at the bar.  The people you are around may demand more of your psyche than it can allow, so you have to put yourself in a position to succeed. 

I'd try and give yourself 15 minutes of relationship time with your wife a day, and NOT in the bedroom. Just time with the 2 of you together alone, even just over a cup of coffee. That will improve things, she will appreciate the effort AND make it easier to open up to her.

I well know the feeling of blaming yourself for everything and taking on all the responsibility for fixing everything yourself. But the problem is, you cant. if you want to take a parable to illustrate things, you are just one half of the bridge. If the other half does not come out to join you you cant stretch to the other side, eventually you will break. Its just making the leap of humility that you are NOT the cause of all the worlds problems.

I mean, I'm the last person to talk about this as my life has been a 100% disaster from day one, bu I know how you can feel in these moments.

You might want to try some prayer too. Even if you dont believe in it, prayer does make you feel better. That's one of the reasons why people do it, and theres lots of explanations on which parts of the brain it stimulates if you want to go that route to allow yourself to do it.

Do not assume this.  After all, people think the same of you, yes ?

Look around here.  Look how many of us have already, or are currently, going through this shit.

I blame the lack of good games.   :why_so_serious:

Ya, dollars to doughnuts those people are struggling mightily too.  One of the crueler aspects of depression (at least in my experience) is the anger you have with yourself for being depressed, which just makes you more depressed. It's a tough cycle to break.

Or meditation, if you don't like the idea of prayer. 

I'll echo the prayer part, but only as far as deep "creative visualization" (as a specific tool) goes; not in a religious sense.  Prayer comes in many forms.

As for businesses failing.  I've always thought first and foremost you must not fear failure at any point; this way it doesnt produce as much anxiety if failure comes.  You just shrug it off and move on to your next big adventure.  Personally I expect to fail.  Maybe even hit rock bottom.  But I also expect to bounce.   :grin:

Focusing on the boy?  Great as long as it's about the boy and not you.  Children are not emotional crutches.  Too often people hide behind their children and think everything's gonna be alright as long as they have their kids.  That's not the way it works.  My brother is going through this same exact thing... his depression runs deep (msg me and i'll give specifics to his situation).  But it paralyzes him and all he thinks about is his kids, rather then what it takes to be there for them.  It has the inverse effect.  Cant even talk to him or help him at this point; he essentially is and views himself as a useless human.  Wont go to school.  Wont really hustle.  Smokes habitually.  Wont fix or terminate his marriage.  He just "wants his kids."  He's a fool and his kids sense it.  Don't go down that path.


This.  :grin:  

addendum:  Penni, if you find all this jibber jabber (from myself or others) in this thread is doing more harm than good please say so and then maybe the thread should be closed.  No advice vs. bad advice and all that.

This.  10,000x this.

Yup.

No, this thread is good, been more effective than two different therapists. I've been able to vent some truth without having another human misinterpret me face to face. This is much better than having another body in front of me spewing platitudes that are mostly meaningless. Hell, I've been coming here for seven years, even if people are different on the internet than in real life, this is the closest thing to a group that I can identify with.

Hell, if a therapist can't listen they aren't worth a damn.   :oh_i_see:

I think it's good as long as no one goes zealot.

The thing that is obviously tough for me and anyone else who is on the edge of this is: will I still be me? Whatever I do or get or take? Even a me that is not working is a familiar thing, and often more to the point is sort of working for all the people who at work and life depend upon you. That's why the father-in-law who kills himself is the bad option--you are keeping more going that you could ever imagine, and maybe almost no one knows that the edifice is rotting away inside. But I know I don't want to start anything where I can't save or preserve what I think really does work, and my fear is always that what does work is totally caught up in what is not working. Like a support beam that has a ton of barnacles and worms in it. Don't tell me I can't keep supporting the pier! Heck, I even like some of the worms.

I obviously do not know anything about your wife, but ... when you say "ease the stress," does that mean she knows, or doesn't Officially Know? If she knows and it's stressing her, there's not much you can do, really, and focusing on getting yourself better will sort of naturally flow into making it better for her as well. But if she doesn't, if you're still walling that off from her, letting her in in the first place will ... well. Ease her stress. Because not only is she seeing you in distress, you're shutting her out of it. She's your partner, man. Let her partner with you on this.

It's tough, I know. I had a hard time finally verbalizing to Ingmar just how shitty I was feeling. You don't want to impose. You don't want them to worry more than they already do. You definitely don't want them to think it's something they did wrong. And so on. But it bothered Ingmar more that he could tell something was really, really wrong but I wouldn't share it with him than it did finally having it confirmed that yeah, I had the Sads. He didn't want to impose either, figuring that telling me he thought I had an issue might make me feel even crappier and push him even further off. So he waited.

And honestly? Telling him helped a ton on the "dealing with it" front.


For me, drugs were definitely the best thing for me. Really. I was still me, just ... not so damn depressed all the time. I could sleep! I didn't lie in bed until 4pm, mentally listing all the ways I am worthless! The thought of interacting with people no longer filled me with despair because I'd no longer have to pretend to be a functioning human being for hours! Because ... I actually was a functioning human being! Hooray! Basically all the parts about me I liked? Still around. The parts that weren't so great (you know, the endless, bleak despair)? Much more muted and manageable. It wasn't like being in a fake-happy haze or anything. I'd still get sad over things, but like ... reasonable sad. Not the sort of sad that sits on your chest and makes it impossible to sleep. Just "aw man, bummer :(" sad.

Once we figured out the Pill was what was making me so bad, I didn't need the drugs any more. So that was nice too. But I would absolutely take them again if I thought I needed them, because I felt like me. Just a normal me, instead of a barely-managing-to-trick-people-that-everything-is-fine me.

Er, I hope that didn't sound too preachy or anything.

That really doesn't matter. You're not living other people's lives and they're not living yours. You can *always* find people both better and worse off than yourself, it has no bearing on how the pressures of your life affect you.

We can't help our feelings and we can't help how we react to things generally. It's not like you choose to be depressed!

Something that's important in counselling is teaching patients tools to deal with their problems. If it's depression then understanding how your brain focusses and reinforces negative feelings and training yourself to stop it from doing that is far more useful than therapy that tries to get to the personal root of your depression.

I apologise for using some jargon here, but cognitive therapy is now regarded as far more useful than Freudian therapy. If your therapy is all about how your mother didn't love you or how a traumatic past event has caused your depression then it's not very likely to work in the long term. However if your therapy is more focussed on teaching you mental skills to combat depression then it's much more likely to be useful in the long term.

Medication and exercise are also being recognised as less effective than previously thought. The research around medication has been badly compromised by drug companies and omission of negative results. The picture surrounding exercise seems to indicate that it can be a bit useful in mild to moderate depression but that it isn't the panacea previously thought.

However, all that said, you have to find what works for YOU. We're all different, we all respond differently to different things. Exercise, sunshine, good diet, good counselling - all of these things are far more likely to help you than harm you. Medication is less clear, I have nothing good to say about it, I've known many people (myself, family members, friends) who've been medicated for depression and it hasn't helped any of them.

The simple fact that you're trying to do something about it is fantastic and is the biggest and most important step to reducing the effect depression has on your life. Keep working at it, be determined that you don't want it to destroy your life and nurture your relationships with friends and family. Good relationships are one of the most powerful defences from depression!

Talking about it.  Whether with us, or your wife, or some guy at the bar.  Venting relieves a bit of stress, but think about what you're saying, too.  Compartmentalize the problems into discreet things instead of being one giant over-arching feeling of "I'm being crushed".  (Talking is tough.  I didn't do it in college and suffered most of a decade for it.  I did do it later in adult life and fared so much better.)

(You sound like you're already on the right track.  Maybe you just need some reassurance that you are.)  It's not fun to do, but once you've gotten the problems narrowed down, try focusing on one.  Really consider what your best options are and work towards that.

What I would do was I would get overwhelmed, run from one problem, but smack up against the next.  Then I'd run from it.  Eventually it just turned into a giant ouroboros where one thing chased me to the next.  I just had to start tackling them one by one, making the loop smaller and more manageable.  It's even turned into how I deal with work problems since I have to juggle so many at once.

It's a known symptom of this shit that you cut yourself off socially.

It's one you have to fight and fight and fight.

It's worse on us IT fuckers, because we were probably introverted/arrogant dickholes already.

First you have my utmost sympathies...


Secondly QFT. Everything apocrypha just said, avoid medication if at all possible. Unless you're genuinely prone to psychotic episodes and wanting to self harm/harm others then stay away from the slippery path of drugs in my opinion.

You may need some marriage counselling too, cause if you feel like your wife will abandon you due to your inability to cope with mental health issues then one or both of you has trust issues.

Probably more important to stay away from telling depressed people who may likely need the drugs that if they end up having to take them, that's just another way they failed.

That may not be what you (and ghost earlier) really mean, but that's how it can come across. It isn't really a slippery slope to anything; if you need them you need them and treating them as some kind of desperate last resort just keeps the people who need them from getting relief they need sooner.

There are times you need to be careful, of course - if someone is suicidal then sometimes the drugs cheer them up just enough that they can get motivated to actually do it, which is a problem - but you know, let the doctors decide that.

It's a long, tough fight. And for a lot of us, it's one you will never "finish". You just learn to cope. Medication is awesome. The sad thing about counseling is that it's expensive, which has always been my hurdle.

But yeah, fuck negativity. I've cut out a tremendous amount of it, except for the F13 part, for whatever reason.

After watching someones life explode like the deathstar after being to convinced to quit their meds because drugs are bad, I am going with drugs are good if you need them and strangers on the internet can't help figure that out. I don't begrudge someone for taking insulin when their liver doesn't function correctly.  Same here.

The issue comes in finding the medication that works for you. I've gone through 5 or 6. The worst made my vision "bounce" all the time. But when you find medication that works, it's like the clouds parting. Seriously.

Not what I'm saying, I have two relatives who are both clinically depressed, both heavily dependent on masses of medication to the extent they will never lead a healthy self sufficient life. There is nobody telling them if they will ever have a life without being heavily medicated,  it's not the person that has failed, but the system has failed the person.

My mother has had chronic back pain for years. Her doctor refused to give her opiates "... because she would then have to take them for the rest of her life". That asshole made her suffer for years until she finaly switched doctors. Now she gets decent pain medication and actually feels like life might be worth living again.

If you are sick, take the fucking pills if they help, is what I am getting at. Don't try to tough it out when there is help avaible.

Whoever did that was retarded, takes many months to years to wean patients off anti-depressants, even then it might not work and they could have a psychotic break, relapse. Much less complicated to keep handing out prescription slips.

There are a vast range of anti-depressants and dosages; you're making it sound like this stuff is heroin which is just not true of a lot of it.

If you have been taking high enough dosages for long enough then the withdrawals are quite comparable to heroin.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSRI_discontinuation_syndrome)

My wife was prescribed xanax when she was post natal and I was happy that helped her cope when things got really bad, in that situation how could we argue but there was always concerns, huge history of depression in both our families. I'm not against the idea, just explore all options before taking that route.

Remember how I said this would be bad if people went zealot? Or even strong categorical opinions?

It is not a good thinking space if you have to start worrying about what other people think rather than feeling it's a good place to think out loud about what you feel or wonder.

So you're blaming the medication not the disease.  Idiotic.

Don't be a prick, I'm blaming the system for not providing clinically depressed people with the faculties to get back on track after 10-30 years of the same wash rinse repeat of being institutionalized while changing medication, because the one they've been on for the last X years has stopped working and caused a relapse. The only given solution is to higher the dose or switch medications.

So you're blaming the system for not having a cure to a complicated disease.  Still absurd.  The "system" didn't make your relatives clinically depressed, it doesn't have a cure, all it can do is help people cope.

All hail f13!

Seriously, please don't go to those fighty kinds of places. I was actually finding this useful and I could really use the usefulness. Don't Den or Politics this one.

I think I kinda sorta see where Amarr is coming from, in that the way the US healthcare system works medication is always first and foremost in any treatment plan, simply because the system cannot afford adequate mental healthcare in the first place.  It's a LOT cheaper to write a script for Xanax then for a licensed therapist to sit there and help a hurting person get through their problems over multiple sessions.  Whether you believe in meds or not, you can't disregard this as being an issue.  Actually, this goes for pretty much any form of therapy in the US healthcare system, whether physical or mental.  The support is just not there, and if so, it's minimal (say 5 visits if at all).  Pills and surgeries are the norm.

Moral of the story is, do not disregard either form of therapy.  And realize, meds are usually a doorway for positive suggestion.  Many times folk (like my brother for instance) are just unreachable with even the best advice, unless they're medicated.

To me that's the prescription point; if you're having trouble and you realize that no one can verbally get to you to help (because of reasons of convenience or your mind is just closed-off), then you need to realize that maybe it's time to let your doctor prescribe you something.

To change to a less political subject:
My "gf" (note the quotes) in college was manic-depressive.  Mentally gifted, athletic, smoking hawt and creative... but, she was a disaster unless I was nearby.  Needless to say college didn't go so well for me (couldnt juggle it all), but I can say I did help her through some rough patches.  [I switched my major to cog. psych because of her] However, one time I was not around it got bad enough she had to goto a clinic.  After that point, she was adequately diagnosed and prescribed Zoloft.  I should preface this story by saying the guy she was with before she met me, was certifiable.  I daresay it rubbed off on her some before they split up, and I was left to pick up the pieces.

Getting proper help early (combined with smart decisions) is very important, as above, if it goes on too long it'll begin to effect your support system... and they won't be able to give adequate support even if they wanted to.  They may join you in your spiral, maybe moreso if they're particularly empathetic (like my gf was).

Sorry for the sad story.  I figure a bit of Schadenfreude might help.  I have more if you need some!  :grin: 

God damn you're right, the situation is hopeless, the only solution is a high dosage of SSRIs for the foreseeable future. In fact why don't we just give everyone who feels a bit down a bit of electroshock therapy, that should give them a nice jolt in the morning before they go about their daily routine.

That's exactly what I'm saying, thanks Ghambit. We adopt the US model here in Ireland.

 :facepalm:

Lets stop shitting up this thread, sorry if I was taking part in that, it's a serious subject and one with many different views. I'm just gonna reiterate this, because this is exactly my stance on the whole drugs issue.


I've also suffered with depression and had suicidal tendencies since I was preteen, I've been lucky because I've managed to stay away from psychiatrists and ssris. I did have some good therapists along the way, some bad ones too. I self medicated during my twenties with alcohol, luckily I managed to quit years ago which was tough. I still get depressive episodes but not exacerbated by the alcohol I find I can tough it out. I've seen what the medication has done to people around me and unless I'm about to throw myself off a bridge or someone else, then it's a no go zone for me.

I don't need to rewrite what Ironwood said, so just go back and read that.

In my case, the meds made it possible for me to extract the full benefit from the therapy.  I wasn't in any state to take good advice, but the Lexapro put me in that mindset.  What you don't want to do is get on something and think pills are the answer, because even if they let you get by without "bothering" with addressing the actual issue via counseling or whatever, they will eventually stop working.

I got lucky and found a licensed therapist on my third try that fit me.  She was a huge benefit.  The previous guy was a moron.  The psychiatrist was OK, I guess, but being a guy of that level he wasn't terribly interested in treating me.  Mostly he had me toss away unnecessary meds that I got from my GP and advised me to get into counseling.

I'm actually surprised that a GP would prescribe brain meds in the first place.  That really seems like the sort of thing you'd need to see a specialist (i.e. a psychiatrist) for.

I know for the past 7 years, I have had my annual physical exam and she ALWAYS asks me a brief depression and anxiety battery. At first I thought nothing of it, but the last 3 years have been much more in depth... like she is trying to find something. I know there has been a push here at Pitt and at UPMC for mental health screenings to be as clockwork as taking your blood pressure and pulse.

I'm gonna downshift a bit here and recommend something simple (if I havent already); and that's dietary changes and good exercise (even better, join a league of some sort - softball, kung fu, whatever).  Sedentary folk are most prone to mental instability, especially if what they eat is relatively poisonous.  This approach really helped my gf and one of my "in-laws" (she was clinically depressed); only in the case of the latter it was diet and school (she got her GED at age 65)/writing (she was eventually published) combined initially with a light and temporary meds regimen.  Now she's got all the confidence in the world and is off the meds.

Btw, with school (if you were thinking about returning) many times you can get fairly good counseling for free, especially at 4-years with notable psych departments and the support of a hospital... like at UF.

You already said that.

I would point you to the senility thread, but I forget where we put it.

I would search for the senility thread, but fuck me if I could remember how to actually get the search feature to work properly.  I will chalk it up to reiteration then; which is frowned upon in forum circles I know, but hey, this is a depression thread.  Repetition is par for the course no?  Now let us revisit our feelings on the wormy-pier motif.  ehem! ....

nevermind.

This thread started well but has gone badly wrong. Ah well, all the most useful advice was on the first page anyway.

Well, this is f13 and the usual suspects are fucking it up. 

And really there isn't that much good advice to give in this situation other than "get a good therapist that you can work with". 

Check your vitamins and hormones as well.

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

And most importantly, don't get advice from the internet.

 :heart:

All I would add to this topic is my experience with my ex-wife.  She began taking meds for depression.  After she began the medication, she started making decisions that were significantly out of character for her (prior to the meds).  In my opinion, and from a legal sense, they were very, very, very bad decisions.  In my opinion, she was probably given the wrong medications, but I am not a doctor and my opinion doesn't mean anything. 

I am not saying that drugs are fllat out bad in this context.  I am saying that they can be very bad in some situations, and I think you need to be careful if you go that route.  You're reprogramming who you are, and that has a lot of ramifications you may not anticipate.  The person you are before the drugs may have a different belief about certain things than the person that you are on the drugs.

That change can -  from what I can tell - be a wonderful improvement.  However, I have seen it go the other way.  Before taking meds, I would talk about it with the people in your life to discuss potential plans of action.

Nope! Which actually worked to my benefit. I could deal with asking my GP about it, because then it's just. You know. Another sort of illness. If I had to go to a shrink first, oh no, now I'm crazy. NOW I don't care, but at the time? I wouldn't have gotten any help at all. I could barely deal with going to the doctor I'd been seeing for years, there was absolutely no way I was going to steel myself for meeting a brand new one.

Edit: everyone else has done far better than me in covering this, which is ok.

The general idea is that you are getting it treated. Every doctor I've ever had says every time i go in that I need to talk to a therapist in addition to the medicine. The drug is not the cure. It's a tool to fix bad brain chemistry. The underlying stuff still needs to be evaluated.

And again, to those that have said otherwise... mental illness is not a thing you cure like a cold. For most of us it's going to be a lifelong fight.

Despite the disagreements over medication, this thread was good for me. I wasn't really seeking advice. It was more about seeing that this problem I am going through is common and that many people have dealt with it and continued on with things.

More people have mental health issues than they might let on, especially if you have a desk job. I think it's connected.

I know many of my problems completely went away when I was working outdoors as a caddy after I had my first "fuck this place" breakdown.

This. We're all humans here*. Regardless of whatever gaming or political bitching we're doing, some of us have been here for long enough to go through some major ass life changes if not together per se, at least concurrent to our posting activity as gamers. And if you've got more than a 10 post count here, chances are you're not making life decisions BASED on feedback here )ref: internet) as much as you're gaining comfort in the fact that we are all human, that shit has happened to all of us, and these kind of threads can bring that kind of stuff out, and for no other reason than other people are fighting the same world you are.

* Well, I assume anyway. I suppose someone could be a bot, but if we couldn't have uncovered that by now, shit, take that shit and make some money from it!  :grin:

Who exactly said otherwise ?

Because all I see is people bashing pills because it didn't work for them and people saying that pills help other courses of action.*

It truly seems to me that almost everyone who's commented in here has actual, you know, life experience of this shit.  Which makes even the more mental comments into 'fair enough' territory.


*oh and some guy who's building a church.

You can't cure a cold either, just treat the symptoms.

Finding out you aren't alone and that there are millions of people having the same problems is a huge relief.  If there were such a thing as stages of dealing with depression it would be one of the first.  You should always remember that but in the end it doesn't help deal with the problem.  Seeing a psychologist/psychiatrist still has a stigma and there is usually a strong resistance to the idea at first.  Since depression comes with a lot of 'why bother' and thoughts of hopelessness it is extra difficult to get the energy/motivation to do it but it is worth getting over that barrier.  If you like your family doctor and are comfortable with them then you should at least talk to them, and they should have a referral idea that you might trust more.

I think I linked it in a past thread but this book (http://www.amazon.ca/Mind-Over-Mood-Change-Changing/dp/0898621283) is used by many therapists with their patients.  If you don't want to talk to someone then I would at least suggest reading and working with it.  Unlike most books it has actual exercises that you print out and work on.  It is done in stages and builds on earlier chapters, it is more like a workbook than just something you read.  It uses cognitive behavioral therapy, essentially trying to retrain the way you think, react and feel into something more under your control and healthy.

See a counselor. It's the most effective way and probably also the only one that really works. I postponed going to counselling for as long as I could because I thought I could get through this on my own and also because I didn't want to confess that I was depressed because of the (supposed) stigma. In hindsight though I felt so much better after even just a few sessions and also better than I ever felt while I tried to deal with it on my own. The whole process of getting better took a while but I noticed the positive effects of counseling right at the beginning.

The only other advice I'd like to give is, don't stick with the first counselor/doctor you go to. Be wary if the person you go to isn't open to all treatment options. Depending on you and your illness certain reatments might work better than others and unfortunately there are a lot of professionals that prefer or dismiss certain treatments because of prejudices or personal preference. Counselling also requires a certain personal connection between doctor and patient.

So if you feel after a few sessions that you don't like the person you're talking to or you have other issues it is OK to switch to someone else. Some healthcare plans even allow for this.

Touching on my last post, Penn.

The discussion over the last few pages ties in neatly into my advice. The discussion you saw there is not only relegated to armchair psychologists and discussions on the net. Chances are that you will encounter certified professionals with medical degrees that will basically hold similar opinions probably similarly ill-informed just with more fancy explanations. Stay clear of those people!

Depression or other mental illnesses still carry a stigma and this goes doubly so for the treatment options. You also have a bifurcated field with both psychologists and psychiatrists - different fields with a completely different syllabus and different stance on treatments. You also - depending on where you live - face a healthccare system that is either set up to help you or screw you over.

Don't listen to people that are flat out biased for or against any form of treatment! They usually don't have the slightest clue what they are talking about or they conflate systemic issues or prejudices with how you should personally be treated. I wonder if any of the people in this thread would be as against medication if the topic was diabetes or hypertension or any sort of "normal disease" but since it's a mental issue everyone is freaking the fuck out and talking as if anti-depressants are the devil and infinitely worse than heroin or meth - I haven't read the term big-pharma yet but it's simply a matter of time before we're completely in conspiracy-land.

A good professional will find the best treatment options for you depending on your needs, be it conversational therapy, cognitive therapy, medication, some or all of the above or something else. You shouldn't dismiss any one of those options a priori just because of things you may have heard or read on the internet

A piece of advice for all the other armchair MDs in this thread:

Depression or any other form of mental illness still carries a stigma. This means that a lot of people refuse to seek help because they don't want that stain of 'mental illness' on their personal record. The kind of debate you have here is exactly the sort of thing that will drive even more people away from geting the help they need or they might refuse certain treatment options because of what they've heard by friends and acquaintances.´

It might be that the health care system in your country is so fucked up that it has an effect on treatment options or treatment quality, this is a systemic issue however that should have no place in a thread where a person seeks help or advice.

Yes people in your country might be overmedicated and yes you might think that all medication for mental illnesses are basically 'happy-pills' or any other firm held belief about treatment options for a type of illness I seriously hope you'll never have to face yourself. It doesn't matter though. It might still be the best option for that particular person. If that person now dismisses that treatment because of your superstitions or biases or foregoes treatment entirely than this is on you.

Don't sit on the fence Jeff, tell us how you really feel ?

When I think about issues I have with physical or mental health that are not at a point where I must deal with them because I have collapsed or can't get out of bed or am in pain so unbearable that I can't fake it or tough it out, the greatest disincentive I have to the next step is talking to someone who is evangelizing about what I must do, about what always works, about what is true and not true. I very much find it helpful to hear personal testimonies and descriptions. I run away instantly when I feel like I'm being sold something.

One of the problems with people who lose weight, stop smoking, improve the quality and duration of their erections, succeed in therapy, finally have an orgasm, overcome chronic back pain, get rid of writer's block, fix their marriage, stop abusing alcohol, find spiritual satisfaction, get in a good relationship, find a way to get rid of planar fascitis, raise their kid right, stop sleep apnea, stop being bullied and so on is that they are so relieved, so happy, to have repaired something that was making their lives miserable and to discover a different quality of life that they want everyone to have the same emancipation. They want to share the good news. This is ok for a while, in the emotional rush of that change. But eventually it can either curdle into a kind of narcissism: what fixed me must fix everyone, because I'm the standard! or it becomes the therapy: unless I can convince everyone to get off the booze, take the pill, do the exercise, follow the procedure, see the specialist, repeat the mantra, then my therapy will stop working, because convincing other people is part of how I convince myself. Which is just second-order narcissism.

The generous thing to do--and not everyone can or should--is to share a story. Don't worry about what your story unlocks for other people, because other people are the best and worst mystery in the life of humanity.

Good points Khaldun.

My clinically depressed relation just rang me because some asshole just stole her lunch while she was in the toilet. I couldn't help but chuckle at the temerity of the lunch-thief and she, despite her rage, commenced to laugh too. Helps to have a sense of humour, albeit a twisted one.

Sure, but in context, semantics. Short term illness vs long term illness.


There's been enough chatter in this thread that seems to fail to understand how hard the fight can be. Jeff Kelly actually spoke on some of this very well, and Khaldun hammered it home.

I speak as someone who has had to fight against depression/OCD my entire life, so I feel passionate when I see shit like this.

The bottom line and the only advice is to talk to your MD. There are far too many variables for anyone here to say there is The Right Way. But as Khaldun said, share your story. The stigma has to end. That is one thing I very much love about the area I live in. They've made mental illness awareness a major thing. Probably helps that a state hospital is in the area.

For anyone who hasn't already, these are a good read on the subject:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

That is pretty freaking great.

Stories?  Probably.  Mine is a bit mysterious because I really can't tell you what it was that my therapist did.  She was so great.  We just had conversations, for the most part.

Well, OK, she did suggest some things for me to try.  I was having anxiety issues.  I suppose these came from feelings of STUFF that I apparently have dealt with now.  This was leading me to act out in destructive ways, which I don't do now.  Anything I do that is destructive now is due to negligence or some purpose.  Anyway, learning to handle the stress that I could not eliminate was key to being able to get my shit in order.

Probably the biggest thing that she did was to teach me some meditation techniques.  These things are hard to do from reading a book or just trying very hard.

She started off with outright hypnotizing me, the first time of which was by far the most enormous removal of emotional weight that I have ever experienced.

Later sessions were also great because I went to a place where no one could fucking bother me.  A "special place"?  Yep.  I got to invent mine and it was great.  It was difficult to reach.  Started off on a beach in the tropics.  From there fly out to a cruise ship, walk down the grand stairs and then freefall for a nice while.  Land on a snowy mountain peak.  There was a stone tower that I could sit on top of, and also a cave in which I could hide.  It was great.

I'm super-awesome because when I met my spirit animal, it was actually me with a bushy beard.

I'd like to see I am glad so many of you have had issues!  :grin:

I have considered before starting a similar topic, mainly to just talk some steam off, but decided it wasn't the right place. It doesn't help not feeling like a failure when everyone in a discussion seems to be either state department, university prof, economist or at least a game dev. In addition to being in happy relationships and a successful parent.

So it's sort of a relief to see not everyone is 'perfect'.

I hope everything gets better Pennilenko, stay strong.

I went to a buddy's housewarming party last year, and basically everyone there but me was an ivy league grad.  I felt like the barbarian at the gates.

This really is a reality check. I stay away from my rich friends as much as possible which is fairly isolating since they all seem to be VP of whatever company they are in, or damn near VP. I equate it to that scene in Breaking Bad's first season when Walt went to that party for his friend and X, even though I really want to be like Harry and Lloyd at the owl fundraiser. Gotta keep perspective I suppose.

I'm really, really not sure you've listened to anything we've said.  Like, ever.

 :why_so_serious:

I'd tell a story too, but I don't want to kill anyone's uncle.  And half of you already think I'm weird.  Anyway, depression was only the small bit.  All I'll give you, Penny, is a combo of non-medical degree shrinks, non-addictive substance rehab, cutting down on the super fucked up meds I got from the medical degree shrinks and my own special blend of... err... "herbal" supplements works for me.  So, okay, I might still be a little nuts but I'm nowhere near as demented as I was a few years ago and very much less depressed.  Although I was probably more demented than depressed, I'd take the demented any day, especially since you usually don't realise you're being freaky.  Depression, however, is horrible, horrible, horrible.  I absolutely hate the feeling that nothing can ever get better.  I have noticed that when I use the treadmill a lot, it helps too and gives me more motivation to do other stuff. 

Well, maybe it's selective reading on my part. But this is generally a posh crowd around here. ;)

On more general terms, I do think people keep such stuff hidden and one always only sees the own doubts. Like when Pennilenko described it euphemistically as "rough spot" 'two business failing, degree, other family members, money' and then topped that of with "My life is no harder than so many other people and they are doing just fine".

I'd rather say the reverse is true, a lot of people would have reacted far worse.

I despise this too, see it quite a bit in a lot of different walks of life.  I will say that my treatment is quite unconventional and would likely NOT work for the majority of the population and stems from a strange mixture of things.  As a result I don't shout anything out loud and rarely will even tell anyone what works best or even just for me.  I just suggest "get thee a therapist\doctor you can work with" as ultimately that is what matters and tends to yield the best results overall.

No story here, already weird enough! ;-)

On the Ivy League grads, I can only say that some of the most important rigorous studies of mental health in the real world that have been done have been very extensive longitudinal studies of men graduating from Ivy League institutions over a period of 50+ years. And the thing that they found is that most of them have had very unhappy lives, and that their unhappy lives are significantly correlated with, if not caused by, their degree of objective "success". E.g., the men picked by their peers at graduation or thereabouts to kick the ass of the world were the people proportionately more likely to have had the world kick their ass. We're not talking "worried well" or people who are CEOs who complain about the poors hating them, we're talking nervous breakdowns, suicides, institutionalizations, and profound, heart-shattering depression in many cases. The basic thing they found was that the guys in those classes who have had the best mental health are the people with more emotional intelligence, less aggression, less of a sense of a need to win or dominate, more able to be happy with whatever they have, and very notably less dependence on alcohol, though that's also complicated in terms of whether that's a cause or a symptom of something.

No life is prefect, some people are just better at hiding it.

It's also important to guide yourself as best you can to doing things that give you enjoyment rather than being a 'success'.  I can say for certain if I didn't define success on my own terms, I wouldn't have made it this far.

You make an excellent point, Khaldun.  The one person I know from high school who committed suicide was a success-driven ivy leaguer with a 4.0 GPA in med school.  It shocked everybody, but in hindsight, and in light of what you said, it does make sense.

Physicians and dentists have very high suicide rates. 

:oh_i_see:

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-E4VuaJ4EMDQ/UIxNQPlT5kI/AAAAAAAAISU/54QEJam-bv4/s1600/The+Breakfast+Club+4.jpg)

I've suffered severe chronic depression combined with shitty social anxiety and no self esteem since I was a child.  There is a lot of good info in the thread already, so I don't have much to add.  I was pretty much a wreck until I found a good psychiatrist.  I often wonder how different my life would have been if I had found this man when I was 16 instead of 31. 

Anyways, I'm not comfortable speaking about most of my past on a public forum, but if anyone thinks it'd help chatting with someone who's been through it, send me a PM.

I think the stresses and pressures of those professions are also complicated by the easy access to relatively simple methods of committing suicide. Farmers in the UK also have a high suicide rate, partly because they often own shotguns.

It was actually one (of many) reasons contributing to me abandoning my science career. As someone who has had, for large parts of my life, thoughts of suicide in my head, constantly working with things like insulin, anesthetics, various highly toxic chemicals, etc, wasn't a particularly good idea. Removing that opportunity seemed sensible.

Suicidal thoughts can flare up suddenly and intensely for people in moments of crisis. Often the peak crisis doesn't last very long, but if in that brief time there is easy access to lethal situations then suicide rates increase. This has been very clearly demonstrated with the simple change to supermarket painkiller sales. In the UK all supermarkets will now only sell you 2 packets of painkillers at a time. There's nothing to stop someone suicidal buying 2 packets of paracetamol, coming back 5 minutes later and buying 2 more and repeating until they have a lethal dose. But that simple change reduced suicides from paracetamol overdoses significantly.

I'm currently dabbling in acupuncture and chinese herbal remedies for chronic anxiety. I can't tell yet if its helping, but its definitely not hurting.  The most palpably helpful stuff for me in this treatment seems to be the herbs. They seem to 'even out' the emotional swing, and take the bite out of self-punishing anxiety. Its not that I'm less anxious about stuff, I'm still a freakin' mess about any number of things in my life, but I seem to not 'hurt' so much about them, if that makes any sense. The emotional sting is dulled so I can -think straight- about the object of my anxiety. Only a bit tho. However, its just been a couple of weeks, and I'm told its way too soon to tell.

Also, the place I do it at has recliners so I get killer naps while the needles do their stuff.

Well, overall a good thread. For the first time in my life (I am in my mid-thirties), I have reached a point of actual depression and fighting feelings of dread. Life has thrown me some massive hurdles. My fiancee' is still mostly in a wheelchair after over 2 years since her attack. I have 3 1/2 year old twins, as well as 9 - 10 - 12 year olds (half the time). The twins have just sucked the life out of me. I am in the process of quitting alcohol, even though I have been a drinker since about 13. I started smoking again. Angie's Long term disability was ripped out from under her right before Xmas, and our money struggles are still near insurmountable. I went to my doc, and my GP put me on Wellbutrin (Zyban) and it didn't really do much, and I had a hard time taking it twice a day. I decided to go off that, and self medicated some Prozac for maybe a month now. The wife says it helps, I don't really notice it (low dose) but whatever. I also smoke a little mary jane when the twins push me over the edge, and I come back in refreshed and not so mad at life. Not saying it's the answer to all probs, but my use is about 3 times a week and I find it can help.

The last 5 years have been pretty brutal. One thing that I used to listen to on Audio book was called Spontaneous Happiness http://www.amazon.com/Spontaneous-Happiness-Andrew-Weil/dp/1619693011

We really enjoyed it, and it didn't magically fix me but it helped. He's a smart guy, and I like his more primal theories about stuff.

I wish everyone luck, the mind can be a brutal place when you hate yourself or your life. Stay strong Penniman

Slayerik, your life has really fucking sucked in the last few years and in your shoes I would have crumpled ages ago. You still are one of my internet heroes.

Thanks Engels, f13 in general has been awesome to our fam and I really do appreciate when people go out of their way to check in on me (and here is a blanket apology if I have missed a thanks or a response back!). Strange sometimes how uplifting a single comment can be sometimes. I bumped into a lady at my work who knew my story, and at the end of our conversation she told me I was a good man. That was pretty nice to hear, sometimes you feel like all the stuff you do is just unnoticed. It can really be a challenge to be a good man. My grandfather wasn't, he (like myself) had 5 kids. He left my grandma, moved to Houston and that was that. Never paid her child support, nothing. Had it not been for him being such a prick, who knows...I mighta went that route. I just could never be him.

Anyway, Take Vitamin D and Omega 3 or fish oil. I think no matter what this can be good, and in no way harmful - if you are looking for suppliments. This time of year, the lack of sunlight can make depression worse and the Vit D can help combat that.

I don't normally agree with Engels, but here we are.  I don't know of anyone that would not crack in similar circumstances.

You mean apart from the needles you mean?  :grin: And yes, I know, they don't hurt. They just look scary as hell.

The evening out of the swings is what I felt when I was taking Wellbutrin for anxiety. The triggers still triggered anxiety, but it was muted and surrounded by puffy clouds and soft cotton, and maybe some kittens. Like I said before, eventually my brain chemistry evened out and the triggers stopped affecting me.

My new trouble is getting to sleep. I have huge problems winding down enough to go to sleep. I read, I watch TV, I lay there in the dark...nothing makes me fall asleep. Any sleep aids I have tried have always resulted in my being groggy as fuck in the morning. Well, even groggier...

 I really need to get my fat ass exercising. I KNOW that would help. If only there was a form of exercise that worked my body as well as my brain. I just get so fucking bored when I exercise- all I can think of is how long I have been doing it, and how long I have to keep doing it until I can stop and do something fun.

It's a tough process, good luck with it. Well worth it though.

Anyone tried St. Johns Wort for depression? Can't be bought over here but you can get it in UK and I may be moving there soon.

Where is here? It's pretty readily available in the states.

I've never seen anything out than correlation data for that stuff.

Ireland, it was taken off the shelves over ten years ago.

I tried St John's Wort in my early 20s and noticed no difference. 

I have a weird situation; most drugs act paradoxically in my system. 

Xanax, even the little pink ones, knocks me completely out, asleep (even at work) within 30 minutes.  I tried Sertraline with my doc and by day six my heart was pumping so hard in my chest and I couldn't catch my breath.  On Ativan I was completely jittery and my vision bounced. 

For as much as I treated my body as a chemistry set from age 16-22, I don't like drugs now.  Even prescripts are so hard to work through to get to 'normal'.  I'm not down on drugs, they're a great tool for those who need it.  They're just hard for me to work with.

So I live day to day with weird depression.  I don't get 'down', I just don't care some days.  Could not give a fuck about anything except making sure my kid is okay.  Apathy is hell.  But I just keep spinning plates and stop worrying about the ones that fall. 

All this depression-talk has re-invigorated my love of martial arts and I've been considering getting into Taiji chuan, which statistically is the #1 exercise regimen for stress relief.  In doing so I found out what Jet Li has been up to the past few years (if you recall, he kinda sorta retired).  Evidently he's been working with Alibaba founder Ma (yah, that guy) to re-invent Tai Chi.  They screwed up and devved it in Flash but here it is:

http://www.taijizen.com/en

It's a very commercial, systematic, and techno (I swear the narrator sounds like the portal computer) approach but is good for folk like us who cant be arsed into joining some class with *gasp people or are tired of yoga.  It's mostly slow form (24 forms I think) mixed with some bagua for semi-practical defense and quicker exercise.  There's a duan (belt) system and they'll evaluate you via webcam after completion of each level.

There's a free daily webcam Qi session by the lead taijizen instructor here:
http://daviddorianross.com/  
http://taijifit.net/

Ross basically combined his system with Li and Ma to make Taijizen.  It's kinda cool, but not being able to view on a TV is a big gimp (due to flash).  The usual Youtubes may serve one better.

The only caveat I would add to that is that without a structure and schedule - like what a class for whatever exercise you pick provides - it can be very hard to get motivated to actually do the work. I find that paying that monthly fee and especially having the specific schedule helps a lot with actually keeping up with exercise. Also doing it with someone else so you each have someone else pushing to go on the nights when you feel like you can't is huge. Motivation is a tricky thing, and I think for most depressed people it can be very difficult to self-start with just tapes or whatever.

Yah, I forgot to mention there is a monthly fee, a structured schedule, achievements/badge/cert system, as well as mandatory dual training (push hands usually) at certain points.  But yah, motivation for many is still easier with a physical class.  Others? notsomuch.

Can I just say that despite my pathological aversion to physical contact with anyone except my immediate family that I want to give everyone in this thread a big hug?

Hugs all around, yup. And really don't forget that an unasked, unprompted "So how ya doing, everything going ok?" or "hey, man, you're great" makes a huge difference. I've been pointing out for a long time where I work that while there are people who are mostly motivated by more money, or by being given a lighter workload later in return for a heavier one now, at least some significant plurality of my colleagues will put their heart and soul into something as long as someone notices and says so. At least some of depression and its siblings gets way worse if you can't feel your sense of connectedness and some sense of being appreciated (without that tipping into a sense that everyone depends on you and no one is holding you up, which is devastating).

I was given a poison named Seraquil when I was really messed up.  I knew it was making me weird and even doing weird things to me physically but the doctor who prescribed it insisted that I needed an enhancement to my anti-depressants.  I took it for two months, gained nearly 60 pounds and became so lethargic and unfocused that my family freaked out.  He wouldn't take me off of it so I just stopped and, after a brief withdrawal period, I was much better.  So when your gut tells you (or you spouse/family) that something is wrong with a med, listen and check it out.  Some of them you have to decrease with time, though.  It's probably not wise to just stop cold turkey if you've been taking it for a while because it can hurt a bit.  I swear, though, I'd be dead if I had continued taking that stuff.

Slayerik is right about the Vitamin D.  I don't take fish oil (although my cat does) so I don't know about that one.  The research on Vitamin D deficiency and sunlight is kind of interesting, too.   I take it every day.

It snowballs.  This was and remains a major issue for me.  I'm in a place where I don't connect with my friends any longer, I work a thankless job in which I'm pretty much the bottom rung of the ladder, and I'm in no way proud or even mildly happy about much of anything I've accomplished with my life.  I use these facts to beat the shit out of myself, and for most of my life I didn't think that would change.  However, 5 years ago I found a new psychiatrist who prescribed a completely new drug combo.  Within a few months, I was a new person.  I had interests other than escapist fantasies and I finally realized that I really hated my job.  

I still struggle every day.  Shit still sucks.  I often feel like as if my depression merely transformed into apathy.  However, I do feel better.  I'm working on a new degree, catching up on debt, and I actually interact with people upon occasion.  Better living through chemistry.  Jesus christ, I can't believe I'm sharing this.

Hugs all around.

Seroquel is a mean mean drug for an atypical. They were giving it to patients in the bipolar study I was managing when the person was not responding to an antidepressant. The side effects I read about these people having were creepy and unnerving. I'd pop just about any pill back in the hay day of my pharmaceutical taking days, but no way in hell would I touch atypicals. 

I'm glad you are.  It means you're doing better.  :-)

Having severe case of self-negligence in the office.
Some errors I've committed are baffling. Was it really carelessness - maybe I didn't care enough?
Not sure if this is medical condition or what but I'm getting a severe talking down by my boss.
I'm starting to have serious case of self doubts and they were sometimes wrong, sometimes right.
Hell, I even rushed home after walking a block away from my apartment when the clouds grew dark.
I really thought I didn't close the window.
Ran home and stood there staring at the window -

Yeah, I did close it. I even made sure I did before locking up.

(http://media.animevice.com/uploads/2/22478/398559-psyduck2.jpg)

But I didn't believe myself.

I don't really have much to contribute with, but... I find it's a pretty strange feeling to read about other people's problems and realize that the things you are struggling with yourself aren't necessarily that unique. Or significant in the grand scheme of things. You might think this would make it harder to feel sorry for yourself, but... heh ^^

Anyhow, carry on.

Personally, I think with what's happened over the last 10-15 years, we'd all be mad NOT to have some form of depression.

It's been a bit of a shit-show lately...

My life over the last decade has steadily gotten better and better, year after year.  I don't know what whats wrong with all of you.   :why_so_serious:

Are you really trolling a thread about depression?

My comment was a response to Ironwood.  Joking obviously, but I guess I can see how it looks bad now.  Sorry.

Let's get drunk first!

So, a perfect example of the shit I deal with.

Today, I wake up feeling good, get up early, drink coffee and have breakfast, and sit down and get ready to work on some freelance stuff.....

... and then I read about Harold Ramis and now my brain has bogs down obsessing with the sadness of the moment. Sure, we all do because of a shared cultural heritage, but my brain just bogs down with this sort of stuff.

Do you work from home?  If you do, could that be part of the problem?  You know, being in the same place so much of the time with so little socialisation?   I rarely socialise but when I do, I feel good.  I used to have to be around a LOT of people in some of my old jobs.  I had to go to events and clubs and all sorts of crazy places.  Sometime I miss that but most of the time I'm glad not be forced to be friendly and enthusiastic.  Having said that, I bet that if I was still doing that sort of work I'd be a happier person.  Not that I'm totally unhappy because I'm really sort of in between.  Which is good for me since going from ecstatic to utter despair is really exhausting in every sense of the word (the word there being "exhausting"). 

As a brief note, I wasn't looking for suggestions. I've been medicated and I've done therapy. I got laid off in September, which hasn't helped. Haven't had many bites for a full time job, so I'm doing some freelance stuff for now.

I've battled depression my entire life. Emotional stuff hits me very, very hard. I'm an easy crier at movies, weddings, funerals, etc. Just really wanted to share an example of what people can go through, and that they're not alone.

Whenever I feel like I don't want to socialize, I force myself to socialize. That much I have a grip on. And being in the craft beer scene has actually helped me a tremendous amount, because with all the events, you get out quite a bit.

Edit: My response sounded terse. I understand how my post could have been taken that way. I try to be a lot more open about my mental issues, and this seemed like a good moment to share.

A lot of depressed people also have a high degree of empathy so we're much more upset when bad things happen to other people.

I got almost nothing done last week because I was obsessing over the events in Ukraine.  Had to take time off work because Syria upset me so much a few months ago.

Since there's just so much news and the internet can fling it at you so fast it's very hard to ignore.  You would think a thicker skin would be developed but that's not happening for me.  I'm getting more easily upset instead of less.  I've had to withdraw further and try to avoid more things, and it's not like I had many interests to begin with.

I've tried to wean myself off the news.  Even a skim through Google News is a recipe for disappointment.  I hate to be oblivious to the workings of the world.  However, I'm not going to change much of it in my day to day routine, so I tend to just let it pass by. 

Probably not the best course of action but it helps me.

Oh my God! Reading this is crazy, I so want to come and get you all and take you out drinking or give you a big hug or fuck...I don't know...

My best friend and my son both have depression, but both are doing better. I see way to much of it in my line of work (more of a combination of burn out, PTSD, and depression/anxiety, maybe OCD/bi-polar too), and try and keep up on acute and long term treatment. All I can say is it is a case by case treatment. Some people may need a little, some may need a lot.

It's comforting to know that this thread races the tits thread.

Maybe not being a virgin would give me superpowers.

You seem really nice and everything but I think I'd be happy with just the hug for now.  :awesome_for_real:


Frivolities aside, one of the problems I have is that I often don't notice/realise when my little personal storm cloud has arrived. One of the signs that clues me in is sleep loss. When I'm not using the tools I've learned and when the depression is winning, I barely sleep, I have endless nights that feel like it's 3am forever. I disturb my wife, the cat gets annoyed, I get up and freeze half to death because I don't want to put the heating on in the middle of the night, and I spend the following days in a haze like a zombie underwater.

It's one of the things that exercise helps me with - I start to sleep better if I manage to physically wear myself out.

I wish exercise helped with my sleeping problems; if anything I have a harder time getting to sleep after practice than I do on days when I don't have it. :/

It's because you're SO PUMPED!

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!

I do really boring exercise!

My gf has had some episodes of depression. Although she is kind of refusing professional help, she kind of gets a substitute for what I guess would be group therapy by listening to the
Mental Illness Happy Hour (http://mentalpod.com/) podcast. I think it helped but she got most of her "swagger back" by starting to work out at a women's kickboxing gym. I guess seeing how you can transform and train your body to do certain things you couldn't do before kind of promotes a sense of being in control of one self and thus helps with controlling unwanted thought patterns that may lead to more serious episodes of mental distress.

Anyway, godspeed to everybody here dealing with that kind of stuff...

We do kendo! Our first tournament is in March! Aiee!


I don't know if kickboxing is the same, but the biggest thing I've noticed with Actually Doing Something Physical, once I actually start at practice, I don't ... I don't have brain space to Dwell, which is the main feature of my depression. Plus just ... learning something new and starting to get a handle on it is pretty dang satisfying. It gives me something to point to as something I'm actually ... I dunno. Doing. Doing is a big deal!

Yeah, she also tries to keep busy with knitting, drawing and the likes. Keeping the mind from wandering to dangerous areas is I guess one of the biggest control factors. Also, what you pointed to with being able to pick something up and progress in it and get some kind of recognition for it is something that draws many people with depressive tendencies towards games. If only to get that quick fix of beating something and occupying the mind for a few hours.

I am training for a couple of races right now, and I often end up training late due to work, etc. Chelated magnesium (250 mg) in the evening has helped me calm through the post-workout amped period and get sleep.

Yeah, it is further enhanced if you could beat SOMEONE at it.
'Now I'm not a loser!'
Happens to me a couple of times, though if I lose... it could affect me IRL.
Where did I go wrong - why did I pick up that ball. Shit. I wish I could've load game. Dammit.

So I hope you did get all of their lunch money at least?

I may have gone a little overboard with my last posts but the outpouring of stories and personal anecdotes after Khaldun's post shows me that it contained at least a kernel of truth.
People generally don't talk about mental health issues because of how we treat the topic and how much baggage the topic carries with it and therefore everybody with a mental health issue thinks that he/she is alone and 'everybody else is normal', massively compounding the problem of seeking and getting help.

I also urge anyone that has to deal with mental health issues to at least somewhat trust their feelings and to switch professionals or seek other kinds of help when you strongly feel that a therapy doesn't work or you're really not 'clicking' with your therapist. If you seek help for a mental health issue at some point all of your behaviour will be seen as a pathology of your disease. I've had a therapist flat out tell me that my wish to discontinue the treatment with him was 'just a symptom of my depression and a way for my depressed self to not have to work on it' - and I believed him.

The fact is that a significant number of mental health issues are sadly misdiagnosed as something else. Depression for example might not be the cause of someone's problems but maybe just a reaction of your mind to another mental - or physical issue - that troubles you.

Depression is often a co-morbidity issue - a symptom that presents itself because another mental or physical health issue is severe enough that you are getting clinically depressed about it. There are also a number of issues that can - depending on the severity - be interpreted as something else.

This brings me to my story.

I have AD(H)D but I didn't know that until I was 33.

I'm quite intelligent (I don't say this to boast, just to make the issues I had clearer) so I managed to get by in school and in life even though I had a hard time concentrating on anything. Basically the amount of work I could muster up even though I was not treated always seemed to be enough to get by. With below average grades, certainly,  but I never faced being expelled or being at risk of not graduating. I was just a shit student or at least that was what I thought.

This might sound pretty mild but I never understood just what was wrong with me. Sitting down and studying was an almost impossible task for me. I basically had to lock myself into a room, keep my self isolated from any sort of loud noise or other type of ovewhelming sensory input, keep any distractions locked away and even then I'd usually have to work ten hours to get four hours of work done. I managed to study 2 1/2 days for my K13 Physics final (which would get me university access) and it seemed like a huge accomplishment at the time. Once you've read the same page of text ten times in a row just to realize that you still can't remember anything that was written on there you begin to doubt your own mind.

At other times I was so immersed in an activity that I literally couldn't force myself to stop. I had phases where I was working on a project for three days straight, getting huge amounts of work done, without any sleep, without eating and forgoing basically anything that could have distracted me. I knew I should go to sleep or take a break to eat something but I was so hyper focused and so high on the excitement of the project that stopping for anything than complete physical exhaustion wasn't possible. My mind didn't have room for anything except the project at hand.

I never could direct that focus to anything I needed to do though. I just switched between phases where everything I needed to do was a chore and I needed exorbitant amounts of willpower to just do things in a shitty way while procrastinating or doing things in an adrenaline fueled rush of excitement until I passed out from physical exhaustion. When I went to uni all of those issues had snowballed to such an extend that I hit a brick wall. I could no longer get by with how things worked in school and I flunked a few exams.

I sought help and I was in therapy for nearly ten years  being treated for anything from depression to manic-depression to bi-polar disease by different professionals until I found my curent doc and he realized that I was simply suffering from AD(H)D. Now I take ritalin and most of my issues have gone away or are mild enough so that I can deal with them on my own.

What I've learned is that once you have a mental health issue a lot of other issues crop up as well simply because that issue takes such a toll on you. Sometimes those additional issues, or comorbidities, can even mask the original health issue to such an extent that the comorbid diseases get mistaken for the real issues and get treated instead. Several trained professionals failed to recognize my real issues and so have wasted a decade of my life treating totally different kinds of 'imagined' diseases instead.

So if you feel - after a certain amount of time - that a professional or treatment doesn't seem to be able to help you, it might be the disease talking or it might be because it actually isn't able to help you and you should try something else instead.

I have to agree with changing shrinks or counselors if you don't feel comfortable.  The shrink I had in rehab (NOT for drugs!) was the one who put me on Seroquel (which I just possibly spelled correctly this time) and wouldn't take me off even though I was having horrible side effects.  He was very intimidating and made me feel as if I wouldn't survive if he wasn't there to feed me drugs and ask me stupid questions.  He even wanted me to see him individually as my regular shrink after I left the center.  I went through a fair amount of shrinks after I finally ditched him (sister helped) but it was hard to find one whom I felt comfy with.  Some were just prescription machines.  They'd ask you questions for ten minutes and write a script.  A lot of places now have one or two shrinks and more therapists.  The therapists see you for 50 minutes and once every month or so you see the shrink for scripts.  It's like production line therapy.  At least that's what he feels like to me.  I finally found a counselor who was good for me and stuck with her.  Male shrinks and even doctors make me uncomfortable.  My therapist actually gave me things to work on that helped.  Of course, when I went back to England I lost her and really missed her for a bit.  Since I've come back I haven't seen anyone and just get my meds from my regular GP.  Eventually I have to sort a new therapist out because my old one moved really far away.   :heartbreak:  That one shrink, though, caused me more damage than healing.

Tai Chi derail update   :why_so_serious:    So I brainstormed all night trying to figure out the best way to get an interactive flash site onto my TV and I came up with Chromecast (just bought one) + special cursor extension (so it doesnt disappear).  I can now tabcast (rather then simply screensharing) any website (included my beloved new Tai Chi toy) to my TV remotely and control it via wifi remote app.  It.  Is.  Awesome.  (yah, webgames work too)

My techno anti-depression dojo is almost complete.  But shit, Tai Chi is hard.  (you need serious leg conditioning)  Learning how to "go slow" is the hardest part though.   :oh_i_see:

I'm alone.

When I was growing up everyone called me stupid. When I was a teenager my family wouldn't even talk to me when I was living in the same house and basically ignored me except to insult me.

I've pretty much failed at everything I've done. I've only had 2 successful jobs, both part time. One was doing computer tech support for 45 charities in a kind of a co-op arrangement where they clubbed together for services, and I was part of the service. Even then I was shaky and some days all I could see was my failures leaping out at me. The second was working for a community radio station where I learned I enjoyed presenting shows and sound editing.

But looking back all I can see are the failures, like someone getting me knocked off producing the early morning news show because I made a few mistakes.

I have been pretty god awful in personal relationships. I've never had a girlfriend that lasted more than 2 weeks.

And now I'm lying here in bed, my family not talking to me, no friends, and no-one I can simply pick up the phone to for a chat. At my age people are in successful careers and have raised families. I've never managed to get on first base on a career.

So yeah I'm in a depressive mood. Every time I've tried something the voices leap out at me and paralyze me with the sheer effort of fighting them. People represent pain to me so I avoid them. I feel like I screw up every interview. I feel like I mess up every relationship. I've pretty much stopped trying yet I need to be around people, but interacting with them terrifies me. All in all I'm pretty pathetic and I'm in a very low place right now and I don't see any way out.

And yeah, I'm writing this knowing that some people are going to be laughing their heads off at me.

Those people are stupid and should feel stupid.

It still frightens me to this day, that my own mind can be my enemy. That a mindset or a thought my own brain is thinking back at me can have that much power over me and my life. Like the 'you are a failure', 'everything you do is shit' and 'don't even try, it will only fail anyway' train of thought. Even though you know that those thoughts are harmful and untrue and should be ignored they seem to be all powerful at times.

I feel for you, even if that is might not really be a consolation.

For what it's worth Sir T, I had a good time hanging out with you when you visited Austin a few years back.

No, I can't think of anyone here who would laugh at you.  A lot of people have argued with you, including myself, but personally I've always been worried about you.  I've said harsh things but I've probably deleted more replies after writing them than I've actually posted because I was genuinely concerned about your mental state.  Some of the things you have said or fiercely believe in go beyond depression into something like a mild schizophrenia.  If you aren't seeing a therapist of some kind at the moment I really hope you consider doing so.

I hope you feel better and I'm sorry for yelling at you in the politics forum.

Ghost can go fuck himself though :awesome_for_real:.  I'm kidding.

That's the nicest "I think you're completely nuts" I've ever heard. :)


Yeah but you never replied to me again and I thought that meant I had pissed you off. See the way fragile people can draw conclusions from the simplest things. Its one of the things I've had to tell myself "Feelings are not facts" Which of course is easier said than believed :D

What did I do?   :why_so_serious:

Edit-  on a more serious note, if you are depressed or feeling blue the politics section here at f13 is the last place you should be posting......

Which is one of the reasons I don't read there anymore. You should always be aware of and try and avoid your triggers.

Oh, for sure.  I do have to commend everyone here for being such decent folk outside of that part of the forum, however.  It's rather odd to see how decent the people here can be yet what utter cunts they can be to folks in Politics.  I guess that's where we are in the world now though. 

Not that I don't enjoy the politics board.  I just know to avoid it when I'm feeling blue myself.  And I always try to post and react like Nebu, who seems to have his head screwed on straight and gets along with almost everyone. 

It's shocking how what your wrote sounds familiar to me. At least perfunctory details. I came into contact with psychiatric care several times since 18 and only last year (at age 32) my shrink suggested a case of ADD, inattentive type (thus without the typical hyperactivity). From everything I know it quite possible, but I feel wary of latching onto that and using it as an excuse to shift the blame of personal failures (and responsibility) onto something extern.

For about a week now I have been prescribed Ritalin as well, and it certainly does something. On the other hand it has a reputation to be abused as 'student drug', so how can I tell the effect I feel is medical or just what everyone would experience? I certainly find it easier to decide and just do something instead of endlessly arguing with myself.

Hrmm. You basically just described my entire experience at school, university and afterwards. Quite... um.. amazingly accurately. I've always thought, and been told, that I was lazy and didn't "apply myself".

I don't know what to think now.

My personal opinion on the matter is that I've decided I hate the term ADD. Naming the disorder that way is one of the worst things the researchers could have done. Naming it 'Egon' or basically anything else would have been better. Firstly because it doesn't even describe any symptoms just the reactions of your brain to the symptoms. Secondly it doesn't even describe all of the potential reactions of your body just some of them and it does a bad job even doing that. The DSM V and ISM manual entries for AD(H)D (and yes it's spelled exactly that way) is a mess as a result.

It's like calling cancer the 'can cause unbelievable pain and/or dead-ness' disease or hypertension the 'will make your face red and cause your heart to explode eventually' disease. It's a diffuse description of symptons and comordbidities  that AD(H)D shares with many other mental 'diseases'

The best theory on what causes AD(H)D is that it's a sort of dopamine deficiency in your brain. In the brain, dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter—a chemical released by nerve cells to send signals to other nerve cells (from wikipedia). A stimulus causes a neuron to release neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine and others into the 'gap' between neurons which in turn causes other neurons to react to that stimulus. After a certain time the neuro transmitter molecules get re-absorbed by the neuron that has released them. The amount of neuro-transmitters released and the time they stay in the neuron 'gap' determines how other neurons react to that stimulus.

In AD(H)D it seems to be that dopamanie gets re-absorbed too quickly by the emitting neuron, the transmitter doesn't stay long enough in the gap and so the receptor neuron gets a lower stimulus than it should. It's the most likely theory because otherwise ritaling wouldn't work and  MRI studies have confirmed it to an extent.

Dopamine plays important roles in motor control, motivation, arousal, cognition, and reward. Dopamine is important for the fiunction of the prefrontal cortex and regulates among other things the parts of your brain responsible for:

- concentration and focus
- stimulus filtering: the filtering mechanisms responsible for regulating external stimuli like sound, sight, touch, sense of smell, etc. You know the thing that keeps you from going completely mad and that gives people a great time when it's missing completely like in Autism.
- impulse control
- the 'reward' system of your brain.
- working memory

So no big deal at all. :why_so_serious:
Also pretty good for a neuro-transmitter that only affects about 400,000 neurons.

It also seems to be hereditary because in families with AD(H)D children you usually find one parent or grandparent to be AD(H)D as well.

The brain reacts to the lower than necessary levels of dopamine by finding ways to increase dopamine levels and by motivating you to behave in ways that tend to increase dopamine levels. Which is fucked up when you really think about it, your brain is encouraging you to do stuff that increases dopamine and discourages you from doing stuff that doesn't.

How it does that is learned however and depends on your upbringing and character as much as on your environment. It also depends on sex and gender roles, males tend to exhibit other behaviour and symptoms than females. Which brings me back to its name. Symptoms are first exhibited in children above the age of five. This is because children below the age of five basically exhibit all of the symptons of AD(H)D as default behaviour and so 'normal' behaviour would be indistinguishable from the disease. It's also why children are so overly diagnosed with AD(H)D,when does 'normal' behaviour end and the disease begin? Especiall in classes with > 30 children and teachers that need children to 'function' to have any chance to het through the curriculum.

Some persons tend to get hyperactive because physical exercise increases dopamine or show other types of disruptive behaviour like being the 'class clown' or otherwise being disruptive in social situations (the H part in AD(H)D) and those are usually the only ones who get treated, because they tend to get noticed.

There are other types of AD(H)D labelled 'inattentive' and those usually don't get treated because nobody notices those cases. The child who doesn't pay attention in class, who constantly daydreams, seems to be in his/her own head all the time and generally acts 'ditzy' or scatterbrained or is otherwise absent-minded. They don't disrupt class and don't get 'in the way' and so they usually get ignored until their symptoms causes their performance in school to suffer and then they are usually seen as lazy or just stupid.

*laughs* Jeff Kelly - Every post an info dump!  ^[1]  :heart:

I am actually familiar with everything you said in your post, but it's pretty hard to translate down to a personal level. Who is ever going to say "Hmm, yes. I always felt my there is something wrong my dopamine!". So one is stuck with the descriptive indications. Which ties in to the diagnostic problems in children you refer about.

I do agree with you about the name. It doesn't help that ADD has sort of a reputation as 'fashion diagnosis' (Although I don't know if thats actually true or just a media narrative). If it bothers you a lot there is also the ICD-10 designation 'Hyperkinetic Disorder' (sounds crap too, imho).



^[1] Just teasing. Don't change!

So you'll probably won't mind the next wall of text then  :heart:

AD(H)D is a syndrome. As I see it it means: 'a set of effects, symptoms or behaviours that every person has at times but at a level or intensity that they cause you suffering or negatively impact your life or your qualioty of life'. For example: Most people get bored or have at times difficulties to motivate themselves when it's a difficult or not very rewarding task but if every thing in your day to day life is like that then it will cause you real problems.

It's also why many people don't see it as a 'real' disease because all of the symptons from AD(H)D or in fact other types of syndromes are also exhibited as part of normal behaviour- just not for as long or with that intensity

The effects on the working memory mean that you tend to be overly forgetful, that you have a hard time remembering stuff. You're constantly looking for things because you can't remember where you put them. You find things in odd places, like your remote in the fridge because you got up during the game and got yourself a beer and somehow put the remote where your beer was. You go to places only to realize you have completely forgotten what you wanted to do there. I once went to my mailbox to get my mail and I had kept my front door open because I wanted to get back inside. By the time I was at my mailbox I had completely forgotten that fact and decided that while I'm already dressed and out I could as well go to work right away. So I left my front door open, for twelve hours, in a major metropolitain area. Luckily nobody stole anything from me.

To compensate for the bad memory people often develop OCD-like symptoms, double, triple and quadruple check everything, keep notes on everything etc.

The effects on the stimulus filter mean that you have a hard time functioning in 'distracting' or 'noisy' environments. Loud and crowded bars, cubicle or big office spaces, all kinds of situations where it's loud, or where there are many and intensive external stimuli. You tend to 'lock in' on sensory inputs and can have a hard time concentrating on anything else instead. The distracting sensory input overwhelms and overrides any other function. You sometimes literally can't even think when someone else is talking. You are generally more sensitive to sensory inputs everything is louder, brighter, smellier and more confusing than for normal people. After being in such environments for long you can feel exhausted and overwhelmed and usually need a quiet place and 'alone-time' to recharge. Those overwhelming stimuli can even generate a flight reflex or anger against the person responsible. Ever heard someone whisper at a library and everything you could do was listen and couldn't concentrate on anything else like thinking or reading?

Some people develop social anxiety and even if they are not those symptoms are generally confused with social anxiety disorders.

The effects on the reward system boil down to your brain constantly craving activities or stimuli that ensure a high output of dopamine. So everything that is 'interesting' is good 'everything that is 'boring' is bad. Everything that offers a constant and quick 'reqard' is good, everything that seems to be 'hard' or offers a payoff sometime in the future is 'bad' If what you want or need to do anyway coincides with the goals of your brain you will get extensive amounts of shit done in short amounts of time but your brain won't let you stop doing that activity. Suddenly your memory is working on overdrive, you devour whole books and can remember basically every word. You get crazy creative and your mind seems to 'connect the dots' on its own. You do shit and you're not really sure how. You also literally can't stop.

This is called hyper focus and is basically the manic side of AD(H)D.

At other times you can't deal with any activities even if they would only take a small amount of time or effort just because your brain refuses to let you do 'boring' stuff. You start procrastinating intensely, you spend hours avoiding an activity that might have only taken ten minutes to do. Projects are always late and get postponed to the last minute, everything you don't really care about or won't get reprecussions for end up being done shitty or with minimal effort. You constantly hate yourself for not being able to get things done, or for things turning out worse than you wanted them to.

Once the adrenaline rush of a deadline kicks in your brain switches to hyper focus mode and you tend to get at least something done at the last minute by working weekends, or late into the night.

This is the depressive side of AD(H)D combined with the hyperfocus and manic 'no eat and sleep' phases it often gets confused with manic depression or bipolar disorder.

You just described my life. Except I left the front door open for a whole three days, not only was it unlocked when I arrived home, but it was ajar.

The most interesting fact though and the one that doesn't get touched nearly as much is that AD(H)D doesn't really make you be worse at everything. It has upsides.

Yes, you tend to have a very active inner monologue that can drown out all external influences and makes it hard to sleep (inatentiveness is mainly being so involved with your own thoughts that you forget that there is even a world outside your own mind) but your mind is also always racing and going at 10,000 miles an hour and you are hugely creative. It may feel as if the world is running at half speed but you can get a lot of thinking done and you are often very quick to grasp things when you muster the concentration.

Due to the fact that your mind is constantly changing track and that you tend to jump around alot also means that your brain can make connections other people would not.

So the downside of AD(H)D are numerous. People are also more likely to develop any kind of addiction (also changes dopamine levels) in fact there is a very large correlation between alcoholism and drug abuse and ADD. They can also be more creative and if they are in a field they really love their tendency to hyperfocus can actually be used to their advantage. Lack of impulse control can also mean being less risk averse which can have huge payoffs if used in the right way.

You'll find a significant number of ADD people in creative fields and art and also in technolgical fields. In music you usually have both aspects turned up to eleven. Hugely creative and prolific people, huge amounts of self doubt, huge drug problems. Famous example Ozzy Osbourne has ADD but didn't know until he was 50-ish.

In fact the stereotype of the nutty and scatterbrained professor escribes those aspects pretty well.

T, have you looked for therapists?  I know it's super hard when you're at a place like that, but it's important you try if you're ready to make a change.  I could work myself into an anxious mess just trying to make the call (and worse when the first one or two didn't answer), but having that appointment in hand was a big relief, too.


Don't think of it as an excuse but a possible explanation for past behavior.  If you identify you consider your own failings then you can work on better habits and ways to counter them.  It's a very fine line, but while self-criticism can be defeating, self-awareness can be empowering.  (I know that sounds like clap-trap.  It's two sides of the same coin and what you focus on though.)

The way you can tell if it's working is if it enables you to alter your behavior to your liking.  Moreso if friends or family say you seem to be more "with it".  In a teen it can be very tough to tell if Ritalin is really a solution since they have so many hormonal, emotional, and life changes going on.  You're old enough to have an established history and routine though.

It took a few weeks or a month, but that's where I was when I started Prozac.  I could very much feel the lessening of the emotional distress by then, which let me be with it enough to start confronting my stressors.  Just remember it's a tool and not the solution.  You still have to do hard work of sorting stuff out. :-)

Well, reading all of that, combined with some research today has convinced me I don't have ADD or anything more than superficial similarities to some of the aspects of that spectrum.

I'm probably just lazy and unmotivated!  :awesome_for_real:

However, the degree to which my depression has been overwhelming my coping mechanisms over the last 6 months or so makes me think I should visit a GP again and discuss options.

Arise!

So, I did indeed go and speak with my GP. We discussed options, my history, etc, and I agreed to give medication a go. I've now been on citalopram (an SSRI) for just over a week. The side effects have been, as expected, quite marked and not pleasant, but they're starting to ease off I think. I know it'll take at least a month before there's any possible effect on my mental state of course.

She also recommended I read a book called 'Rescuing the "Inner Child": Therapy for Adults Sexually Abused as Children' by Penny Parks, not because I've been abused (I haven't) but because she says it can also be very helpful for long term depression sufferers. I've ordered it, despite it making me feel quite uncomfortable to do so for reasons I don't really understand, so I'll see if it helps at all.

That's the one I was on.  Keep on through it, it helps.  However, be aware that it CAN help too much.  I went for an interview after quite a few months on it and the guys thought I was the most monosyllabic bore they've ever met.  Bit of a shame that one.  (also, frogs.  Have you seen the frogs yet ?)


Make sure someone external is monitoring how you are and can advise and make sure also you have an appointment booked to go see the GP after a period of time to continue the chat.  This is NOT just a 'keep medicating even after you feel better thing'. 

Good luck.

Thank you mate, good to hear.

No frogs, thankfully, lots of jaw clenching, jitteryness and nausea though. Also my eyes keep going bonkers and wibbling about all over the place! It's like being on cheap E without the dancey fun!

My wife is a constant source of support and balance, she's been great tbh. And yeah, GP appointment already booked for 1 week before I run out of the first month of pills :)

One important thing for me was to find something at the end of the day to help me unwind. Something simple and cathartic that helps me turn the "monkey-mind" off from going all over the place with bad thoughts.

That thing was minecraft. For some reason digging around is very soothing. Not even building, just the act of mining stuff. Simple, repetitive, and easy. Things like can sometimes help you relax.

Pot.

I kept yawning for no reason (zoloft).  It should actually start helping well before the one month mark, that is just something they say in case it doesn't have an effect on you and they need to change it.

Hope it works out, good luck.

This is known as whiskey.

See, I have a family history of alcoholism, so I have never let drinking become part of my routine.  I need a special occasion to justify getting drunk.

--Dave (admittedly, sometimes the 'special occasion' was 'Tuesday')

Ok, I"ll qualify:

For ME, this is known as whiskey.

I gave up weed some years ago because firstly I really don't need anything else that impedes my motivation these days and secondly it wasn't helping with not smoking. I honestly don't miss it at all.

And I'll freely admit alcohol is already a problem for me. I drink too much, I'm trying to cut down. The citalopram is actually helping because it's making me nauseous which makes me not want a drink!  :awesome_for_real:

Obviously I meant something that wasn't a drug. Those can be crutches instead of just ways to unwind.

I know Paelos, I was replying to everyone else :)

While your suggestion is appreciated I can assure you that, having had depression for almost 30 years now, the solutions are more complex than learning to relax. I have worked with a number of different medial professionals - doctors, psychiatrists & counselors - over the decades and used a range of different approaches and therapies. This is the first time I've been prepared to try medication, and that's really because everything else has got as far as it can for me.

I'm actually quite good at relaxing, sometimes too good in many ways!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWRsgZuwf_8

I think that triggered and acute stress reaction in me...

I had heard it on the radio and came home Friday after working a day shift (I work nights so I had tried to flip my body), didn't get a work out in, didn't get to talk to any of the girls or guys I hang with, and decided to look up the video. I love/hate it. Made me cry. Then when I went to bed I had a dream that turned into a nightmare and then I couldn't sleep. Worse yet I had to go work day shift again Saturday. I was able to work but was really tired and flaky. We weren't busy so they sent me home early (thank God) and I went and changed and had a great work out and got to see my girlfriend. It made me sleep and dream again wonderfully. Fuck I think the past 25 years hit me the other night like a ton of bricks. I'm doing better. Not sure how it happened, but if it continues I'll have to go see the shrink...yes we are bastards that know we need it but don't want to go...probably why my community has a high PTSD and suicide rate...we know what we need to do, but don't want to do it.

The crazy part is that it isn't the patients, civilians, or combatants that died or couldn't be saved by my hands, but the loss of my friends, how they were hurt, injured, killed, or slipped into abuse or self destruction. I know I should feel remorse for hurting or not being able to help my enemies...maybe my demons have that part of me...but then I put on my boots and try every day to make someone's life better.

Jimbo, I don't know you real well, but of all the F13ers I know a little, I imagine that yer the last one that should be feeling guilty about anything. But it is curious that you say that people in your line of work want to tough out PTSD, as if that's something that happens to other people, but not you guys, since you're meant to be tough as nails at all times. Buddy, if a soldier can get PTSD, you sure as shit can too, since you probably see more violence-inflicted gore than most soldiers do.

Interesting TEDx on depression:
http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_depression_the_secret_we_share

It's proetic (via a writer) instead of empirical (from a researcher).

This. And whiskey. Mostly rye.

Wow, didn't know this was here.  I'll add in my .02

I don't like SSRI's, my ex was on them for over a decade and they had a big hand in destroying my marriage.  They are only a good option once you are at the point where you can't cope anymore without them, and even then should be temporary IMO.

I don't like long term Benzo fixes for anxiety, I was on Klonopin for 4 years for mine and getting off it when it wasn't working so well anymore was a year of hell.  I'll never go back I don't care how bad the attacks are. 

A lot of stuff that makes up "you" is stuff that's beyond your control.  Accepting this and accepting who you are is a big key to finding your way out of a shitty place.  Do what works for you, you're the best person to know that and after all it's your life, take control of it.  Doctors are great and all but they have lots of patients and you're you all the time.

Hrm, I avoided reading this thread for months specifically to avoid triggers. I'm cool at the moment, read the whole thing, only got mildly triggered on the few one-size-fits-all absolutist ignorant preachy types.

All the good advice has been said: get help, keep trying new helpers till you find GOOD help, exercise, sunshine (vitamin D), eat healthy, let your loved ones help you, love and care for others.

The one thing I'd add is, with the lifestyle stuff like exercise and eating habits, consider trying for incremental improvements rather than wholesale changes.  Again, everyone is different, and for some it may be easier to discard chips and sodas cold-turkey or join a gym and start 3 times a week 2 hour workouts.  But for me, especially when depressed, every failure is another decision point to give up or have to start all over and try again, even if the "failure" was only having one soda last week vs the 8 a day I used to drink.  By aiming simply to improve without specifying a fixed goal, as long as I do actually improve even the littlest bit then I can count that as a "success" instead of a "fail".  And I get all the psychological boost of feeling good about the success which makes it even easier to keep going and improve a little more the next time, PLUS any of the benefits from actually having, you know, improved something!

So, story time.  I'll just share a couple items instead of a complete history.

Context: I'm in the US, dealing with its shitty healthcare system first as a near indigent (unemployed and almost broke), now with decent health insurance. I was clinically depressed, have PTSD, either AD(H)D or mild bipolar, and anxiety attacks.  I also have hereditary high blood pressure issues and a mild heart condition (A-fib) along with many allergies and celiac disease, so I have to medicate like crazy yet be super careful with what meds I take.

I fired my pill-pushing shrink just before he'd checked off enough different boxes on the diagnosis chart for me to draw a diagonal line through them and yell bingo, after I discovered through a government/press transparency report that he made more money from the maker of Cymbalta for presentations at seminars than he did from his practice, and had been censured by the state medical board. He also already had me on one med to counteract the side effects of Cymbalta and was pushing me to add TWO more!  But the man may well have saved my life, or at the very least rescued me before I completely ruined it. I definitely needed meds to break out of the cycle and get going again.  So, the Dr and advice you need at one stage of your journey may well not be the best for the next stage!

Zoloft worked great for me.  Cymbalta is the devil incarnate.  Prozac made getting off the Cymbalta survivable.  Wellbutrin might as well have been placebo. Ritalin made my heart race too much to see if it helped.  Xanax works so very well for the anxiety that I'm scared to death of it and probably don't take it as often as I should.  My current bottle expired a couple years ago, so no, I'm not abusing it!  It's the only brain med I've taken for 3 or 4 years now, as needed (sometimes), but if I relapse I will consent to Zoloft or Prozac again, but not Cymbalta.   Some people need the meds for life, some just need them once to get out of a bad life slump, and some go back and forth, on and off.  Every single person is different, and will react to each of these differently.  Competent, caring professional help that is constantly monitoring is crucial. So is loving personal support, and I ache for those who lack that, and for those who have it but are too depressed to recognize or respond to it.  But Cymbalta is still evil and any Dr. who prescribes it before first trying EVERY SINGLE OTHER OPTION just hasn't done his/her homework.  My one nod to conspiracy theories is don't trust ANYTHING approved by the Bush administration FDA - they were completely bought tools of the pharmaceutical industry.  Always follow the money.

I went through, um, 8? therapists in 5 years. Most of them had one-size-fits-all assembly-line "solutions", usually that CBT stuff which didn't work for me but I see the value of it for many situations. Just not mine.  One wonderful gentleman though was wise enough and flexible enough and brave enough to explore and poke until we found the real source of the pain.  He retired before we actually resolved anything, but my trajectory has been going the right direction ever since and stuff he told me still pops into my head and helps now several years later.  Oddly, possibly matching my own oddness, most of the stuff he said that helped was questions, not answers/solutions/instructions/etc.

The single most effective treatment I received may well have been group therapy in a group of mostly seriously messed up people, many of whom were the collateral damage discards of our society.  Truly wonderful folks except for a couple who were truly horrible people. I was a mess myself and spiraling down and thought I could see the bottom and it was ugly.  I was wrong.  I saw what they were going through, saw what some of the real deeps looked like and pretty much like the time I walked on water to get out of the surf when a shark bellied up to me I decided then and there I was getting out of there.  It still took years, and meds, and therapy, and lifestyle changes, and counseling, and lots and lots of love and support, but at least from that point on I was actively trying to hold on and later help swim up and not just a dead weight too helpless to even grab for the life preserver.

If you do go meds, don't get off them too soon, and don't stay on them too long.  Get a second professional opinion, just like you would before you had an amputation.  Your brain is more important than your arm!

Yes, meds are a crutch.  So is insulin for a diabetic and so are crutches to someone with a broken leg!  Duh!

oops, I forgot that talking about depression and anxiety is one of my triggers for anxiety!  :awesome_for_real:  Oh well, guess I'll stop now before the wall-o-text falls over in a heap.

If it isn't a burden to ask, I'd be curious to know a bit more about your views on Cymbalta. My experience with it was mostly positive, though far from extensive.

I had a friend who used Cymbalta and it worked great for him except he experienced a fair bit of hair loss.  When given the choice between anxiety and hair, he chose hair.  I don't remember if it was replaced or not.  The med, not the hair.  Geez.  I use Prozac and Xanax.  I used to use a lot more stuff.  Like Nerf, I don't abuse the Xanax even though it's tempting.  My script is for three times a day and there are days I purposely don't take any at all.  A month's supply sometimes lasts me two or three months.  I was also diagnosed with PTSD about four years ago after a pretty nasty breakdown which is why I was given the Seroquel, an anti-psychotic which made everything a million times worse.  Group therapy was my saviour and I totally miss it but I've never found another group like that first one, even though it was filled mostly with people who were way worse off than I think I was.  I'd love to find another group like that.  There's nothing like spending an hour (although my group sessions back then were six hours a day, every day) with very smart fucked up people peppered with a few not so smart criminals and drug addicts.  It was just awesome.

First off, everyone is different. Biology is messy business, and everyone reacts to any chemical differently from each other, and even differently from themselves at different times.

As far as I've been able to uncover, the majority of people who take Cymbalta handle it well with no problems. But only a simple majority, NOT the vast 99.9% majority that the published clinical trials claim. These trials were held at a time when there was rampant gaming of the system and anything which started to trend poorly was shut down and the results discarded, NOT reportrd nor rolled in to the next study nor included in any overall statistical analysis. And the government willingly and deliberately turned a blind eye to this practice.

My problems while taking Cymbalta were multitude. I took it for a couple years, switching from Zoloft when it seemed to be becoming less effective, and the problems both increased in number and in severity as time passed. They included dramatically increased rate and severity of anxiety attacks, wild bi-polar-like extreme mood swings especially on the down side (some of the conditions it was supposed to be curing!), poor sleep with horrible nightmares and night sweats every night, to the extremes of waking up screaming a couple times and waking up two or three times every night with my bed literally soaking wet from sweat (with nothing but a sheet and sometimes light blanket over me in a cool room) and all our sheets and pillowcases are stained, I spent about 10-11 hours per day in bed and still got up groggy, sleepy all day, sometimes too listless to even get out of bed, I had vision problems with rainbow halos around lights at night, and I think maybe a couple other things that I don't recall at the moment.

All of these things went away or went back to "normal" pre/un-medicated levels within a month of tapering off of Cymbalta, except for the anxiety attacks which are still far worse than before I started on Cymbalta. I don't really know if that means the Cymbalta broke some coping mechanism I used to have or if the change was completely independent of the Cymbalta and would have happened anyway or what.

My hair was falling out anyway, as did my Dad's, so at least I don't blame Cymbalta for that! :)

Interesting. I remember doing a little bit of research on the drug when my doctor first suggested it, but I guess not enough - I think I assumed that for the most part an SSRI was an SSRI. Thank you for sharing.

Thread is inspiring and helpful. I have been seeing a therapist for the last year and a half through UCLA's Psychology Clinic. Post-graduate student therapists instead of experienced professionals, but the money I save on sessions and the added thought that I'm helping train the next generation were encouraging factors. I also have my first real psychiatric appointment next week based on the advice of my therapist (I initially rejected the idea of being put on medication, but after another mood crash, I'm open to it.)

I don't know myself that well (at least, I used to?). I try to cover up my deficiencies. Thinking I'm depressed, compulsive, obsessive, unskilled, incompetent -- human -- the more attention drawn to my negative qualities, things that imply I'm not good enough, defective, etc., the more unstable I become. Criticism is the quickest way to a defensive emotional response. However, I'm learning to be compassionate when I detect nervousness and anxiety in others. But Aggro Bros and direct engagement send me quickly over the edge.

Additionally, I grew up with a severe stigma towards reaching out for help and a deep-seated pride in being self-sufficient, especially psychological. Middle-class, but emotionally dysfunctional, low-education Midwestern family environment, lots of school bullying, etc. Parents divorced right before I left for college. The home environment left deep scars, I shied away from the idea of marriage and family for a long time. I have lived a mostly isolated life, which has not helped my maturity or people skills. Therapy would be recommended to me at certain points, but I would deflect with excuses because of ignorance, pride and fear.

I lucked into a job at Blizzard and subsisted on my passion for video games without continuing to develop a more sophisticated and attractive skill set and relationship network. I wasted a lot of money on unimportant things. Limited perspective, limited emotional support and sources of trusted advice, arrogant and prideful attitude were all obstacles to my success. After my career stalled, I tried EAP, but had a negative response to the process and quit. After seven years I burned out. I left the company and after two years bouncing around ended up as one of the few Caucasian poker dealers working in Los Angeles, completely out of my element, but taking it as an opportunity to learn how people who aren't techies live and see the world.

To this day I've never had a stable intimate relationship. I've been lost several times in my life and have burned bridges with just about every connection I've acquired, including leaving this forum for a time. I won't go into the lack of sexual conquests, but that doesn't bother me as it used to.

My current program started during the middle of my two year period of unstable employment and income.  I'd say I'm currently in the thick of mild / moderate depression with a positive upward trend (with the occasional severe episode that spurned investigating psychiatric treatment). I presume my therapist's goal is to assist me in moving away from and reframing self-defeating thoughts, such as "success / failure", look at it more as "unskilled / skilled". Additionally, to understand and communicate my own feelings (and assign meaning (?) ). I had what might have been a panic attack in a session, and I honestly couldn't tell, because I had no words to associate with the experience of the feeling. I believe it's called having low emotional clarity.

Oh, and social skills. I'm not the best communicator outside utilitarian purposes.

Studying philosophy and developing my critical thinking skills independent of my work has been helpful. These were not a part of my education growing up.

Sorry for the wall. I wrote it as much for myself as I did to share a story of my experience. I've spent far too much time trying to find labels to describe me to others because I want them to understand me (and seeking out connection through this method), but nothing ever seems good enough without a long explanation most people would get exhausted reading.

Things like Myers-Brigg INTP.

Hm. Trying to emotionally connect by using intellect. That sounds like a failing strategy. :)

If the typing helps, go for it.  It helps me at times.

My wife and I separated about five years ago for a short time.  My journal was the only thing that kept me alive during that time, there's no question about it.  Speaking of which, I really need to burn that thing the next time I find it.

Psychiatric appointment received a Bipolar Type II diagnosis with a Lamictal prescription. We're concerned about the rash, but the rate of occurrence appears to be ~1 in 1000.

All the trouble I've been having, taken through this lens, seems to make sense. I had trouble seeing past my own self-conception and stigma with what the illness meant, but the arguments for seeking diagnosis and treatment are too strong to ignore. My feelings changed on the subject to allow investigation.

1. Paraphrasing a quote I read online, we seem, as a society, to be OK with illness in any other part of the body except the brain.
2. I'm not the best judge of what's best for me compared to an expert that has devoted their life to a specific discipline.
3. Living in ignorance of a problem, complaining that there isn't one, can perpetuate a problem that *does* exist. (This was the culture I grew up in)
4. If this was cancer or some other condition requiring treatment, I wouldn't be "toughing it out."

Be wary of this line of thinking.  Some "experts" like to make every square peg fit into their round hole to the exclusion of anything else and will actively try and discourage you or others from seeking a second opinion (especially if you know what your problem really is and it differs from their line of thinking).

I like having a sanity check on my Doctors, so I play them off each other (GP and shrink). Which is absolutely mandatory to some extent anyway, as both MUST know what the other is prescribing for you!  Don't hide that shit, it could get you killed!

Almost a year without a post here.

Can I assume everyone is happy and busy smiling all the time?  :grin:

I'm on drugs now (anxiety, not depression to clarify).  It's better.

2014 was a bitch. I don't think I'm in the technically clinically depressed, but I've seen the abyss stare at me. I gave it the finger and told it to fuck off but it hovers around like a monster under the bed. I'm happy to report that F13 is part of the solution. Good times playing with fellow F13ers this year, in a couple of games.

I am generally an unhappy person so I can't really comment other than to say, I am still an unhappy person (in general).

Glad to hear.  :heart:

I am feeling quite well adjusted as well, as far as that's applicable for someone who is in a psychiatric (day-) clinic.

(More seriously, it's because I am there of course, it's helping.)

And this is the view to the outside from there. Nicely depressing:  :wink:

Literally drinking 500+ grams of caffeine to stave of the depressive feelings and keep myself up. Social isolation and negative self-concept are nasty.

Medication has helped. Interesting college courses have helped. But when you tell yourself "I can't be loved nor can I love" most of the time, and you have little evidence to question that, well, then you end up in Accounting.

Mild jest.

I tried a therapist. It was a fucking awful experience. Guy didn't actually let me talk, and what he talked about to me was a bunch of Hallmark-card truisms plus one startling bit of direct commandment (ten minutes after we began a first session) that was totally inappropriate. That pretty much put me off the idea of trying that again for a while. I'm not really into the idea of having to hunt around for what I can fairly specifically imagine would be useful for me if it involves even one more experience like that. I'd almost rather be stuck in a near-depressive rut until I die.

I'd recommend an actual PhD Pyschologist, not just a therapist. It can make a difference. Also, try a couple. It's like finding any good doctor, some suck at it, some are fantastic.

2014 was a better year, though not where it should be.  2015 is shaping up to be another shithole, so maybe I ain't there yet.

I've also been on the drugs for about a year now (longer? Don't know). They've helped a lot, but not been a total panacea. They've also ruined my sex life, such as it was, but you can't make an omelette without killing a few people.

2014 sucked. I've debated having another go at therapy but my first experience wasn't great (and was also years ago) and mental health issues are rather taboo at my job. "Man up" is the answer to almost any problem here. :uhrr:

Don't remember if I participated in this thread last year or not, but I met all of the criteria for clinical depression for most of the prior 3 years. What I felt, and seems to have turned out to be the case, was that I was depressed because my life *sucked*, and I didn't have any realistic hopes for it to get better. Being homeless, alone, and underemployed was actually grounds for hope, at least all the obligations and commitments that had been trapping me into a whirlpool of shit had either been fulfilled or relieved from my responsibility. "There is a certain essential freedom in being *completely* screwed, at least nothing you do can possibly make things any worse."

I'm not saying this to trivialize depression, or to discount or stigmatize people who need pharmacological help dealing with their brain chemistry. Although I do need to say that if life actually does suck, and not just my attitude, then drugs that relieved my perception of suffering might not have done me any favors. But maybe I never got the full blast of fucked-up neurochemistry (I never considered suicide, for example). I'll never get those years back, and my career may never recover, but I will also have the memories of having been a father for my youngest daughter's early years (an opportunity I was denied for my oldest) and the awareness that when forced to choose between my ambitions and my obligations, I rode the ship all the way down.

If you have reactionary rather than organic depression (rational feelings about your fucked-up situation rather than irrational defeatism) then maybe what you need is to change your situation (but even then, drugs may give you the rationality to assess that properly). No matter how bad it looks, don't think of it as living in Hell. Tempering requires spending some time in the flames.

Oh, and nobody is allowed to bad-mouth Smed in my presence; When I was circling the drain, he's the one who threw me a lifeline. He didn't have to do it, he didn't owe me anything, and there was no definable benefit for him, except that apparently he's really a decent human being.

--Dave

It's nice to see what a bunch of dysfunctional losers (:wink: :wink:) the regulars here are.

Felt anxious (like the wall of the rooms closing in - if that makes sense? - to express it in a visual way) over a minor thing (payment order from court). Seeing other people struggle puts own worries into perspective and puts the edge of. (That and a beer or two...)

It's really appreciated, thank you.

I've been dealing with medical issues myself, mostly due to a really difficult to diagnose condition that really ramps up my anxiety. I feel like we're getting closer, but the result is likely going to be related to the pituitary tumor if I had to guess.

Since I started the thread, I should update. I found a therapist, after trying many, that was willing to listen to me before throwing a bunch of pills at me. He (my therapist) has been amazing and has helped me a great deal even without prescriptions even though he has not pressured me one way or the other, and if he recommended a prescription I would trust him on his call. It took a really long time to find a therapist that was willing to listen to everything I had to say, while still being able to call me out on problems I was responsible for.

I have recently added my wife to my sessions, after very careful considerations, which some how has managed to make our relationship pretty amazing in the last couple of months. My wife also started seeing a therapist that my therapist recommended so that my wife had somebody to help work through her issues. For a long time I was so absorbed in my own issues, I never took the time to realize that my wife also needed help. I guess we just got lost in all of the financial problems, and legal pressures, and our respective histories that we both just needed somebody that was skilled and compassionate to help lead us back onto the path to healthier emotions and communication.

Even though I participated very little, this thread was a life changer for me in the advice and support that was offered without judgement. So thank you to you all.

That's awesome man. I'm so glad to hear that!

Hi everybody.  That's all I got for now. 

My partner has been seeing a really great person the past few months. Its still a very long way to go, but it has really helped, medication will be the next step.

Its amazing to consider just how hard it has been to get to this point, and how much more there is to go. But really positive to know that things can improve in some way, even if they are still really shit.

I'm managing it better myself too, which is great. Finding a good support person, whatever they might be, is great not only for the person, but also for those supporting them. Its a lot of pressure to take on and there's a lot of guilt and doubt and a whole lot of other crap that goes along with it, and knowing there are others on your side is an incredible support and relief.

Just want to say I hope everything goes well for you folks, and whatever you try works out for you.

Changing jobs has helped a bit. More free income and less high stress seasonal disorder is a good thing in my mind. So was increasing my vitamin intake and seeing a holistic doctor who does nutrition and traditional medicine. There's a lot of things with people that suffer from anxiety/depression that aren't necessarily driven by diet, but that a bad diet can make a whole lot worse. Removing/recognizing triggers was a good thing for my health.

I'm enrolled in a Health Education and Nutrition class this semester for that reason. I hope to dispel a lot of internet anecdotal suggestions with education by a registered dietician.

I'm bieng officially assesed for Autistic disorder. The psychologist, who was lovely, basicly said flat out that by her reconing I'm almost certain to be found to be on the spectrum. Not sure what difference it will make at this point as I'm full of coping mechanisms and am almost a social hermit, but it will me nice to have a label I guess, even though "on the spectrum" gives you zero browny points as opposed to full blown Autistic.

Yey. 2015.

"Do you post on f13?"

"Yes."

"You're probably on the Spectrum."

:oh_i_see:

I'm absolutely shocked I haven't driven most of you people absolutely mad.

If Ironwood comes to kill me, tell my mom I love her and erase my history. Though, he may be kind enough to do that.

I can manage myself when there are clear rules and procedures. Things go to shit for me when situations travel into meaning and interpretation land.

My therapist tries to help me understand the social consequences, but like my health I fail to appreciate that how I pursue my wants and needs has a negative impact on my social images and connections.

Last week has been hard and I have been overcaffeinated. Attempting to detox.

I wouldn't know how to act without some outside strategy guide or norm network to adhere to. Culture clashes inevitable. Clashes with other dominant competitive people inevitable. Running afoul of environments that punish clashes inevitable.

Working at a casino changes you. I feel like I'm becoming more of a hawk as I get older. Show of strength and readiness to use force as a means of making someone think twice with messing with you. It has been used against me frequently that I think I have picked it up.

I take lamotrigine to cut out my lows. It works quite well for my flavor of bipolar. My manic episodes are when I am super organized. It is the lows that get me. I have a benzo as an as-needed backstop. I spent 20 years diagnosed and unmedicated (excluding self-medication). Things are better now. Hard still, but better.

In the other thread, it was mentioned that most readers had dealt with those issues in middle school.

Can you end up emotionally stunted from trauma in your preteen years? My middle school experience was bullying, social isolation, the use of intimidation and force to keep children in line by figures of authority, one instance of mild sexual abuse by a friend's older sister, and an entire year of emotional abuse by my science teacher, Mrs. Semenick, who bragged she could make a football player cry. It got so bad I would journal about killing her, which landed me in the care of a psychiatrist before my parents pulled me away because a psychiatrist had once tried to take my brother and I away from them when we were three.

I don't think I ever processed just how fucked things were during school.

It's possible for any period of your life to leave marks on you that change you. The reason you have to get help to get past those marks is because you can't have one part of your past create a complete stumbling block on any advancement in your future. That's part of what a good mental health professional will help.

Some of it is about uncovering the hidden issues. Other times it's to get people to stop blaming their current issues on past failings. Most importantly it's about realizing that the past mistakes don't have to define your future decisions. You can break any negative cycle with proper coaching and work.

It would be entirely ungentlemanly to kill someone and NOT erase the history.  I also carry a USB drive about just in case the victim found anything good.

Paelos is quite right about marks that change you, but sometimes it's a huge cut into your psyche that you just weren't expecting.  They're the worst, 'cause you tell yourself that you're ok.

And you're not.

Kinda messed up to know you've become a bully to deal with the bullies in your life. Switching it off for everyone else seems OK (we're talking conflict scenarios, not day-to-days). But there's a potential for false positives, and then things get real bad if/when I do encounter another dominant, aggressive personality like it did at school or I guess every person running on testosterone between the ages of 18-21.

I'm taking lamotrigine as well, 200mg daily, but when the stress builds up to over what I can process (like "I can't cry" process), then I guess I need something stronger. Or get into BDSM, I hear that helps with emotional purging.

People pick their battles. Most of the time people realize that who is "in charge" is completely useless because the people that demand to be "in charge" aren't the ones in charge. The people others follow do so without having to strongarm people.

I can relate, I spent a sizable chunk of my teens and 20's looking for an excuse to let the rage monster out to play. I am ashamed of some of the things I did, they were assholes who were picking on people because they could, but what I did to some of them was just *mean*, probably scarred a few of them for life (psychologically and/or physically). What's worse, at the time I thought that would be a good thing.

I blame testosterone and childhood trauma. It's not like I could actually have been an asshole, is it?

--Dave

This is a tough situation. Mostly because you don't strike me as dominant or aggressive. Just world-record-holding-shitty at personal interaction. Mahrin, on the other hand, is just an asshole - as he noted.

Go with the BDSM thing.

I'm not kidding. Get waivers signed.

Some of my best friends are fetishists!  :oh_i_see:

I have a consult with a friend of a friend who is a pro-Dom soon. We'll see what happens.

Chances are being someone's bitch on a leash with a ball gag will help you. So yea, do that.

I beg your pardon?  "Reformed" asshole, I haven't made anyone cry in *weeks*.

Seriously, sometimes you need to be an asshole, you just have to be sure you're really in control of turning it on and off.

--Dave

Everybody loses it eventually. I lost it over something really stupid at work with one of my colleagues recently. But the thing is I deescalated because I wasn't mad at him, I was mad at having to constantly explain how a situation wasn't working because it wasn't working.

I am coming out of the funk from last week. Proper self-care, better diet. Regarding the incident in Useless, it wasn't until I went in and looked at what codes and statutes were on the books at my college, how the judicial process works, and the general attitude of the staff that I started to feel more in control and my fears assuaged.

While the matter does need to be settled with the student judicial office and has no effect on my academics assuming I get a written warning, it has been a learning experience. Everything was exaggerated in my head from my fears. The encounter was reflective of high school immaturity, and pride was perhaps the largest influence. Knowing now my rights (and his) will help better manage future situations.

I also learned that some things I should not share outside therapy, but when I'm in that dramatic state it is difficult to remember; not able to release the pressure.

Serious question: So when will you consider yourself "cured" enough to stop seeing a therapist?

I'm not sure I could ever be at that stage. I've talked at length with my therapist about that exact topic, the consensus is that as my problems smooth out the sessions will likely evolve into an as needed scheduling. I have been invited to a private support group organized by my therapist that is free, which should help quite a bit as the length between my sessions grows.

The answer is you know when you know. There's no timetable on it.

There are real medical reasons behind depression, and often real nutritional or hormone related triggers that can cause it. Eliminating those triggers can help, in combination with a healthier lifestyle and therapy. Often going on medications for short or long term can help, but they are tough for some. But the thing most people who have anxiety or depression have it common is that they've developed some unhealthy life habits they have to change before they can really heal.

Like stabbing people.

I was thinking more like drinking or eating to cope, but sure. Or shredding people.

I haven't shredded anyone.  You guys just can't read properly.

I have to go return some video tapes.

not depression per se, but just got on celesta, xanax, and Nortriptyline for anxiety/sleeplessness. Yay law school!

*nods*. My brother has a fairly mild form of OCD. It popped up, noticeably, in his teens -- and showed up in his grades and other issues in junior high and high school. (Teachers are not prone to putting their class on hold for you,, especially not 25 years ago). He spent maybe two or three years on medication for it, and all the meds were really for was to take the edge off so he could develop methods of dealing with it.

He built his early teens *around* these quirks, without really even noticing, and he had to sort of break those patterns first. All sorts of unhealthy habits that kinda formed a cycle, reinforcing the problem.

I tend to think if your problem requires meds, odds are it really needs ongoing therapy -- the problem has done damage, created cycles and patterns in your thoughts and life that might have helped short-term but probably hurt you long-term. If nothing else, years of depression itself is just gonna color your life.

Some stuff you can't talk out. Some stuff you can't medicate away. I think talking first it probably the best bet, but I just can't understand throwing meds at it and not at least getting a head-check once you're stable. Heck, take ADHD -- if you're just gonna toss pills at it, screw you. You at least got to monitor the kid and teach him methods of coping when he's not on his meds. (Seriously, making ADHD folks remember to refill prescriptions is just a cruel, cruel thing).

Jesus grandpa, you got a pill box with the days of the week on it?

almost, but lemme tell you what, having no internal monologue rules.

That would be nice.

My internal monologue has said "don't trust the skull" since 1999.

Psychiatrist has started me on a small dose of Risperidone for sleep. I have yet to research it but five minutes after taking it my entire body slackened and I felt like I could relax into sleep.

I had only gotten 4 hours the night before so there might have been that. Sleep deprivation and inconsistent cycles have exacerbated my issues.

I have not got a good night's sleep since my 1st year in grad school in 1999. Unfortunately, that has no impact on my being an angry bastard.

Not getting enough sleep fucks you up.

My wife got a CPAP machine and the difference wasn't "Oh, she stopped being so damn grumpy all the time" and "She stopped falling asleep while standing and reading aloud to her class" (seriously!). It was "Her blood pressure dropped back into normal range" and "She stopped having migraines" and "She lost 15 pounds" -- stuff up and down, most seemingly unrelated to sleep.

If you're not getting enough sleep, it's really important you get that looked at. Because it's fucking up your body and your mind.

Undiagnosed sleep apnea ruins you. It messes up hormones, blood pressure, fatigue, weight, nutrition, etc.

I know this from experience. I thought I had ALS because I was getting horrible muscle twitching and fatigue. 50% of my problem was my sleep apnea waking me up without me even realizing it.

I should get off of third shift.

The graveyard at the casino was one of the worst jobs for my health that I accepted. Stress plus off hours sleep -- the jump to a day school schedule was great, felt I veered away from a future breakdown. Well, or put it off later.

Today has been remarkably mellow. It is... odd.

I don't sleep and it hasn't made me crazy.

That's because you were crazy before you stopped sleeping. :heart:

Lanty, crazy is not the preferred nomenclature here. 'Lovably eccentric', please.

---

I keep wanting to write something about my inner state. Mostly due to an urge of talkativeness, not because it would be interesting. But I am either home from a day of clinic and too knackered too write something coherent. Or like now on the weekend too drunk (trying to de-stress) to write something coherent.

Lucky you.  :grin:

Since it is often beneficial to others to know that they're not the only ones who are all fucked in the head:

I realized a few days ago that I literally can't remember the last time I woke up and felt happy to be alive.  Mostly I wake up feeling like absolute shit and if I'm lucky the endorphins from my morning workout get me to an emotionally functional state that persists for the rest of the day.  If I'm not lucky I just trudge through the next 16 hours out of a grim sense of duty until I can blessedly lose consciousness and do it all again the next morning.  People always seem impressed when I tell them I go to the gym each and every morning; I don't know how to explain that it's a matter of survival at this point.

I'd go back to seeing a shrink if my health plan still covered that, but I feel like the stress of going broke might outweigh the benefits of therapy.  So...   :why_so_serious:

You should check your health plan. To be ACA compliant, I believe it HAS to cover mental health. I don't know where you work or how your health plan is handled (if it's a small enough business then they don't have to offer health plans, and if they do they don't have to be ACA compliant). And of course if it's a high-deductible plan, you'll be paying out of pocket anyways...

Those requirements went into effect in 2014, though. It's worth checking out.

I think theoretically my plan covers mental health, but the last time I checked (which was in 2011, after we switched plans from Healthnet to the Anthem shitweasels) it was not possible to actually get a list of covered providers from them.  After a month of alternately trying their website (which had perpetual technical difficulties), calling them up, and asking our HR department for help, I gave up and just paid my shrink out of pocket until I had gotten past the immediate trauma I was dealing with at the time well enough to be functional on my own.  Might be worth giving it another shot now that it's four years later and I'm still going through long spells of feeling nonspecifically shitty. 

I also kind of hate the idea of shopping for and breaking in a new shrink; I really liked my old one.  Le sigh.

Oh, is this the thread we share feelings in?

So, pretty sure I'm headed to a break-up with the girl I've been seeing...maybe not the next time I fly out to see her (been doing distance), but likely some point later this year?

The shitty part? It's not like we don't get along or don't care about each other a lot. Nope - it's my job, and now she's having serious doubts about the possibility of moving up to DC with me Summer 2016 and whatever would come after that. We've known each other for a while so she already had a very general idea of how my job works, with moving and everything. And we'd already talked a bit about me taking an assignment back in DC if we're looking good this summer, because I basically have to start the process of securing my next assignment about 10 months in advance. Everything would probably be fine if I had a normal job.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it'll work out, and she's just on her period or stressed from work or something, but...efffff.  :|

Samwise,

I'd check it again. Part of the ACA was some real teeth about mental health care (including substance abuse). I double checked -- those regs went into effect in 2014. So if your company falls under the ACA's rule (I think more than 50 employees?) or it's a plan off the Exchange, it's got to include real, actual, mental health coverage.

If it's there, you might as well take advantage of it.

To break the downer mood: I'm actually in a better place emotionally/psychologically right now than I had been in at least 5 years before I got accepted at school. I don't know if it's lots of little things finally going right, no additional big things going wrong, or what, but I'm even getting along better with my ex-wife than I did for the last 4 years we were married (not that she doesn't do things that bug me, just that they no longer drive me crazy).

It's not like everything is coming up roses, or that I don't have some very daunting challenges facing me. Just that it no longer feels like I am fighting a hopeless defense against a hostile universe, never mind having given up and rolled into a ball to wait for it to get tired of kicking me.

--Dave

That sucks. It sounds like you need to have a person who doesn't like being tied down to one place and then get married. It's tough to get people to move around with you without a commitment.

Pretty much. And the way the regs work, marriage is pretty much required...which has the side-effect of meaning that the foreign service has an elevated divorce rate.

To expand a bit, we also talked about a few other things - she wants to get her PhD at some point, for which I could stay in domestic assignments for a few years to allow her to get (in education). But after that? There's no way I can guarantee her that she'll be able to use it or otherwise have a rewarding job wherever we go (probably a huge factor in that divorce rate).

My past roommate and I spoke about the difficulties in dating with this job - his ex left him after they had jointly decided on his onward assignment, and she later got cold feet and broke up with him (luckily, he's happily married now). A lot of people solve this issue in one of 2 or 3 ways:

 - Marry a young chick who is more concerned about popping out kids and starting a family than having their own professional career
 - Marry another foreign service officer, and deal with the nonsense involved in trying to get posted to the same place
 - Marry a foreign chick who doesn't mind following you around?

I don't know anyone who falls into the first category, and I'm not really looking for a family right now anyway. I don't have any options along the lines of #2 here, as I directly, indirectly, or tangentially supervise something like 95% of the female Americans at post. And honestly I'm not sure how the third one works - I think you see a lot more of this for guys coming out of developing Asian or eastern European countries; however, I'm not looking to be someone's Golden Ticket.

 :uhrr:

Though honestly, however this shakes out, I'll probably handle it better than I would have when I was younger, and I will have enjoyed the time regardless, so that's a plus I guess.

PhD in what if you don't mind me asking?

Reason I ask is that for many of my past clients, they typically voiced one major regret to me that they probably wouldn't say to anybody else or even to their wives. That regret was funding their wife's education when she later decided to work part-time, or stop working entirely when they had kids. A lot of them had major resentment that their spouse wanted to get a degree that was in a field that made nothing, and then gave it up or worse will never make up the cost even working in the field.

It's one thing to marry a woman who wants a career and you're both on the same page. It's entirely another when you marry a woman whose career won't even cover the costs of child support it takes to fund that career. And I'm making this gender specific since your'e a guy, but this can work with either the husband or wife. There's plenty of times I had to sit people down and tell them they were paying somebody to raise their child and losing money in the process over just staying at home.

If you never have kids or the career is mobile, this is entirely different.

Can't you just get her on your orders, so she can come down to live with you in Mexico?  I've never looked at the process, but thats what I'm always told to do with girlfriends.  I was actually told be several people when it looked like I was being sent to isolated Freetown, to just get some girlfriend on my orders to come with me.  Bang her until she gets tired of the place and leaves, then convince another to come down.   :awesome_for_real:

Number three is frankly the best bet in this job if you joined before getting married.  I'm not terribly interested in marriage, but if I do, it pretty much has to be to a foreign girl.  I'm not going to be back dating in the US any time soon (and most Americans are afraid at the thought of not living in one place for a long time, or even *gasp*, living in a developing country), and foreign chicks seem more chill about the lifestyle.  You do have to watch your ass for people just looking for a golden ticket out (had to fight off some of that even here in Poland), but there are plenty of normal/awesome girls you can find in your travels.

Best bet my friends and I have found is to stick to educated girls from the high society/wealthy families of the country (or at the very least, college educated or going to college).  They really have no reason to use you as a golden ticket, but your wealth (in relation to most of the country) , status (diplomat still carries a LOT of weight in many places), and quite frankly your whiteness (depending on the country),  gets you in the door of acceptable dating material to that realm of society.  Most of the girls you find there tend to be legitimately interested in you if you start dating. 

TL;DR:  Just try not to be the dude who's 60 with a 18 (if that) Thai wife, who thinks that happened because of how awesome he is.

Of course, I'm heading to mother Russia next, so I'm just going to immediately distrust and write off every single girl I meet (still date them though).

Really shitty situation though dude, I'm sorry to hear it.  I've known several other people who have gone through the same thing.  But the frank situation is, unless she's willing to follow you around the world and in many cases never get to use that PhD (unless you decide to do nothing but EUR tours the rest of your career), or you’re willing to quite the FS, there’s not a lot of easy ways to make it work.

Education.


Possibly? I don't know really - I thought the regs were re-written a few years ago to help out the same-sex couples, basically to say that you must be married if you can be in your state of residence? My old roommate looked into, and I trust him to do a decent job of the research. As for the rest - that's awfully cynical, even for me. I don't think I really know any women who would fit that profile, anyway - they're all in grad school or have their own jobs.


Yeah, I know - and a lot of folks do it, especially in Mexico if the reputation is to be believed. And yeah, most Americans are afraid to move out of the town they grew up in, much less move to other countries every 2-3 years or so (gross generalization).

The part that sucks is that Monterrey is just...weird. Most Mexicans don't even particularly like the folks here because they're stuck-up, ESPECIALLY the folks from San Pedro...which, incidentally, is where I have a 1am-6am curfew due to narcononsense. A lot of what you say makes perfect sense, and I've even seen it in action, but society here is surprisingly closed and insular from a dating standpoint - many folks have a hell of a time breaking into folks' established social circles, including a close friend/colleague of mine who is actually Mexican herself.

In the end, I think we're both coming to the same conclusion that, in the end, this isn't going to work - she would be miserable if we're posted somewhere and she doesn't have any sort of rewarding work to do, and I can't really guarantee it could always be avoided nor would I ask her to do that. And she's moved around a bit more than she'd like over the last few years and is coming to the realization that it's perhaps not a good idea to move far away for a guy...again.

And clearly, I'm not going to toss my commission in the trash and walk away, just to move to Atlanta and do...who the fuck knows what? Even if I could somehow get a position there for 2-3 years, I think it'd be delaying the inevitable.

Which is really sad, because we otherwise work out well together, and it'd be awesome to travel around to all sorts of crazy places with her...pero, esto es la vida.  :oh_i_see:

Yeah, I (probably) never would do something like that.  Just thought it was funny people kept telling me to (there are a lot of shady people in the FS, heh).

I just checked the regs for Member of Household.  From what I just read, they can stay with you at your residence.  They don't get very many perks (all travel is on their own dime, no medical privileges at the embassy, ect.), but they can stay with you.  But I know some other people who had problems getting their girlfriends in as well, so maybe it’s not as straight forward as I'm seeing in the regs.
Yeah, it can be hard depending on where you’re at.  Though we have a second tour officer here who came from Monterrey.  Accompanied by his new very beautiful, classy, and charming Mexican wife.  I’ll ask if he has any tips.

But best of luck man, it’s a shitty situation.  Hope something can work out.  Just one of the drawbacks to the job (but what an awesome job it is otherwise).

At least with education you can somewhat translate that maybe? Either way this doesn't sound great for the long term, as you've judged. I like the foreign chick idea. You're in the foreign service! It works!

Eh, most jobs you'd think would transferable are much less so in this profession - in most countries, spouses have no authorization to work on the local economy, and even when they do...well, you'd have to know the local language, and often the compensation is low. There are also jobs at the Embassy/Consulate, but honestly many of those can tend to be less than fully-satisfying from a professional standpoint.

Telework is possible for some folks, but it really depends.

As for the foreign chick thing, it's really a mixed bag, again depending on where you are.

Follow up question, do you enjoy your work?

By and large, yes.

Well then, it sounds like you have a good handle on the drawbacks of a job you love. Other than the inevitable fallout of the relationships that don't conform to that lifestyle, I think you are very well-adjusted to the consequences, and that's a good thing. Because with relationships it really only takes one good one.

Which means there are certain other aspects than just career advancement you should be looking into when you're bidding as a single man.  I know I certainly do!   :awesome_for_real:

The term "Married to your job keeps coming to mind....

To be fair, this is usually thought of as a career - much more than a "normal" job, and requiring a fair bit more commitment than most.

It does, however, have some very significant drawbacks. It's definitely not for everyone.

Yeah, there are certain parts of the government that are still set up as lifetime gigs, the sacrifices necessary to do them for more than a few years are so great, once you've made that investment it doesn't make any sense *not* to go the distance. Military, Intelligence, Foreign Service, all on that list, you can't 'revolving door' in and out of them.

--Dave

Friend of mine joined the FBI over a decade ago -- he just moved back to town after more than a decade away. He wanted to come back to Houston from the beginning. I don't remember what he said the deal was, but he was pretty firm that the FBI wasn't going to station him in his home town until he'd been in for several years. (And even then, he'd have to wait for an opening).

It wasn't just "you'll go where your job is" -- it was "We explicitly want you to be in other places before settling down to a given branch or region".

I thought you had been confirmed as Aspie years ago or was that a self diagnosis?

I was diagnosed with an ASC (Autistic Spectrum Condition - apparently they don't describe it as a Disorder anymore) last year. Despite having a plethora of coping mechanisms in place, the diagnosis has been more useful than not and has salvaged my marriage (after a fashion), made my working life a little easier and given me answers to questions about my previous relationships and younger life that have bothered me for years. I still don't get any brownie points though, just more grief from my nearest and dearest. Even my 6yo daughter looks at me patronizingly and says "Is this because you have Asperger's, daddy?"  :why_so_serious:

Good on you for going for an assessment though - I hope it does make some difference for you.

Self diagnoses, mainly. It has slowly become obvious that I have had problems that simple depression don't cover.

I have no idea if it will make a difference or not. To be honest I am really uncertain about it, but hey

I skipped two days of day-clinic. First day I called in the morning, trying to explain ("I feel stressed. I don't want to see anyone"). Their response was "come anyway", I said "ok, I will do that." Not that I had any intention do it at that moment, but I didn't dare to say that, so just "yes, yes, sure" and then hangup.

Friday I felt better, but the thought of going in there after what happened last days, having to face the doctor, explain myself... So I just turned of my phone and stayed in.

Now I am going Monday and dreading the day already. Consequence of this is probably being kicked out (2 days missed without excuse). I would have finished next week anyway, so it's basically just a fews days more or less.  But instead of going out with my head held up I failed again.

There is nothing else which is so self-defeating and just washes away any sense of self-worth like pulling this kind of shit. Acting like a 14 year old would do.

I used to like to go there, but now I don't want to see anyone there any more. I want to be be respected/taken seriously (who doesnt?) but how can when acting this way. I can't even look myself in the eye.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. The way out for me was asking myself, 'how would I react if it wasn't me, but a good friend of mine that had behaved like that? What would I think of them?'. If you look at your actions as if they were done by someone you care about, you'd probably cut them a break :) It did take therapy for me to get there...

This isn't a homework assignment, its how you feel. Go to feel better or not at all. Maybe I don't know the situation well, but the last thing you should be doing is beating yourself up.

What is day clinic?

Knowing something and doing and feeling it aren't always easy, unfortunately. Especially if you have a mental illness.

Last few weeks have been quite bad over here. A lot of progress had been made but its gone backward pretty quickly. I'm struggling to handle it, but all I can do it try to stay healthy myself (which has been hard) and give the best support. Hard to know exactly what that is though...

What's best about depression, ptsd and the like is that you can be tootling along for about a year and a half with no problems then all of a sudden a panic attack will hit you and cripple you for about 24 hours for absolutely no fucking reason.

Then again, 18 months between episodes is probably not too bad on the grand scale of things.

Yeah they are sneaky like that.

I finished Daniel Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence. It was a good read on how critical emotional education is to healthy development, what happens when it isn't received, and obstacles to acquiring EQ.

I got choked up when I read about "remedial emotional skills education" for counteracting missing developmental milestones. I think of myself as intelligent but this book reinforces the extreme deficits in my life, so much so that I am barely aware of that absence most of the time.

Depression and mental health issues are potential outcomes of poor emotional regulation skills. Well worth anyone but a hawk's time.

I think that it's safe to say that a lot of us have attributes associated with the Autistic Spectrum. Doesn't mean we're diagnosable, just that we share the characteristic shortfall of unconscious social and emotional awareness. We have to intellectualize it (at least I do) or distance ourselves ("go flat"), and if we let ourselves get engaged in the insanely complicated social fabric our lack of understanding often turns into panic/fear reactions. It's not supposed to be that complicated, we see how other people "just know" the right things to do or say, the effortless way that they navigate the tripwires and traps of complex social interaction, and it just baffles us. It's like there's this whole extra dimension to reality that just isn't *there* for us, we see it projected onto the dimensions we see, but we can only deduce and infer it, never "see" it directly..

We wind up on a "slow burn" sort of arc when it comes to emotional maturity and management, like many high-functioning ASD cases. What we understand, we understand extremely well because we have had to think it through rigorously, but we are constantly on watch for the signs that a deficit in our knowledge has created a blind spot, we learn to recognize the discomfort and confusion in others that signals that we have, once again, failed to respond properly to a social cue. But especially in our late teens through 20's, we're way behind the curve, often socially isolated, and vulnerable to depression just because we can never escape the feeling (and often the pronouncement from others) that there's something fundamentally wrong with us.

But, it gets better. Bit by bit you build up the knowledge and experience to navigate these unseen dimensions, go beyond mere coping mechanisms to an actual, useful, approximation of the social unconscious. Eventually, somebody has to know you well to realize that you're not just a little quirky, but closer to being an alien trapped in a human host. And with a little luck and practice, that will be confined to people you can trust.

The really good part: Those masks that people project to keep other people from seeing what they're really like? Those are in the extra dimensions, we don't have to be fooled.

--Dave

This week has been bad. Major depressive episode. When I am in the middle of it I try to spend my way out of it: excess spending and binge eating. I drank so much coffee Thursday and spent so much time awake that I was numb at the end of the evening and spent most of Friday asleep with a headache from withdrawal.

A series of events triggered the episode: not enough social contact then feeling compelled to sever a damaged relationship that meant something to me but I had an irrational view on: a female friend I lusted after and was too deluded to accept it wasn't going to happen... for two years.

This is not one of those posts where I am asking for advice. I have been in therapy long enough to understand what the healthy decisions are. My trouble is making them. There is a carrot missing to keep me on track, when I am not trying to stuff myself for a small hit of dopamine.

That sounds encouraging, at least.  A lot of people with depression don't know that there even is a "better" way to handle things, or can't see beyond their problems.  Sounds like you're making some progress.

Sorry you had such a shitty week otherwise, sounds rough :(

This may sound dumb coming from a 33-year-old but I was able to pinpoint anxiety yesterday. I had not connected the word "anxiety" with the excessive worry and doubtful thoughts along with a facial expression characterized by pinched eyebrows and tightness.

My issues aren't the issue, my anxiety is the issue. I have anxiety leaving the house. I have anxiety whenever I have to deal with other people outside some rules system. I am anxious whenever something happens that I doomcast into hurting my relationships (when its the actions I take as a result of anxiety that often do the harm). And I am fucking terrified if a member of the opposite sex shows signs of interest in me.

I get why people smoke weed or drink alcohol to deal with the anxiety. It's not fun. A brief bout of exercise helped manage the mental state.

So, you seeing a shrink yet or just self-diagnosing and not doing anything real about it?

Edit: And yes, I know that you said you're in therapy. Is it helping? Because identifying and trying to explain shit to yourself sounds more like it's a tertiary set of things to think about, but not something actually making a tangible difference.

I bought an Internet spaceship from Chris Roberts, a lifetime membership to an Internet cafe / collective, and stocked my pantry with munchies. I plan to live the rest of my life as a Firefly parody, with myself as Captain Chong Blazer.

Define something real you wouldn't immediately mock or dismiss. My therapist and I have spent the better part of a year helping me connect with my emotions, identifying them, and taking steps to manage them. Before that it was making pro-health life choices and medication to stabilize moods. After my recent episode I was placed on a new medication to help stop my explosive rage episodes, which has become an official disorder according to the psychiatrist.

I am not going to be gleefully muff-diving anytime soon because there are still numerous unaddressed issues. What exactly do you think is going to happen?

I'm not mocking or dismissing it, I'm just saying - you made this thread on 2/24: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=24724.0 - a mere 5 weeks ago. While you just touched on a new medication, I mean, that's a medication compensating for what is pretty obviously a missed social immersion part of the teenage lifecycle. I can't help but think it's time for a different/better therapist. But don't take my advice, I'm just addicted to social manipulation as a hobby.

(https://imgflip.com/s/meme/Futurama-Fry.jpg)

I'm familiar with ADHD and it's effect on social decision making, so I can tell you -- mental disorders CAN cause you to basically fuck up socialization. Entirely.

ADHD? You tend to just...miss...social cues. On your meds? Fine. Off your meds? You can't spot any emotion that isn't flagrant. You can spot towering rage, but you can't spot "deeply annoyed". It's weird as hell, and has to do with a bunch of focus-related things and facial and body language processing, but it's true.

Everyone I've known with severe ADHD (sample size: 3) has been the same way. Handling social interaction off their meds is like......well, you're playing Sherlock. You get really, really focused and stressed out trying to parse social cues, tones of voice, phrasing, all these things that normally you handle without thinking. But off your meds, assuming you're even aware of the problem, it's like doing complex calculus in your head. (Including being wrong most of the time).

That doesn't mean you're wrong about Maven, just that brains and socialization and stuff are complicated as hell. Sometimes things you don't think are connected are. (I literally have no idea if depression or Maven's meds or problems has ANY bearing on socialization. I just know other mental disorders can cause such problems).

There is no magic bullet.

It's hard to get a real grip on this kind of thing from a few forum posts.  He's complaining about being nervous around girls, not that he must silence the voices before he kills again. 

Sometimes writing stuff out helps people work through things.  I know it helps me, I just don't post it online... but then again, in a thread with a bunch of depressed people, hearing other people talking about their experiences is probably helpful to the rest of us who are too shy to do so.

I am in no way whatsoever mocking Maven for saying it. That was for the other thread. In this thread, I'm merely saying, a mis-prescribed medicine + a "better part of a year" of therapy and 5 weeks ago he posts as if no such thing/improvement has taken place - well, it indicates to me that he may want to see someone new or at least different.

The vast majority of us come from a generation where nearly every kid was diagnosed with ADHD/ADD regardless of if they had it or not. In short, whatever Maven was diagnosed with, he should get a second opinion. And then a third and a fourth.

Sigh.. anxiety.. dysfunction.. Society.. They are all illusions of the subconscious, yet are chemical, biological, environmental, and even DNA. Emotions all flow from same sources and dichotomies abounds.

My visiting psychoanalysis and psychiatrists with medications, I actually found the medications dulled me to things almost worse, but I suffer from bouts of Bi Polar Disaffective. I more needed people to relate to me and my specific defects and talking about how detatched I was seemed much better than me drugging and feeling worse. I mostly found a philosophy that helped make it clearer how to deal with my Dichotomy.

I am not depressed, and actually quite jovial and easy going, but sarcastic and quick to go Dr Jekyl and Hyde or get megalomaniac and make others think I'm looking at them as inferiors or worse dumb blind cattle. I am social but my own worst nightmare socially, but the carefree attitude helps with me.

BTW My philosophy is that everything is nothing, that good and bad are as relative as space time or atoms charges, and that all things swing wildly between Yin and Yang. Taoism truly saved my life, and years ago being a hippie drugging bouncer with rage and tendancy to snap I possibly might had WORSE than being a crippled back guy genious computer nerd gaming weirdo.

This place might be an interesting guide to "what game should I buy" or "what's fun about a game that most people don't know anything about", but it's about par with sticking your head in a nest of bees when it comes to getting therapeutic advice. You might even think, "I'm not even getting stung that much!" but it's pretty much just a matter of time until one of the more sting-prone locals decides to jab to see if you're allergic to bee venom just for the lulz.

Oh, we all got bored with simple anaphylactic shock years ago. They swell up, they gasp, they change color a few times, then the show's over, same thing every time. Now it's about drawing pretty pictures with the swelling, showing a little *artistry*.

--Dave

We may have different criteria for what constitutes improvement. I disarmed my way through a rage cycle by talking it through this morning. I could not stop the feeling from happening in the first place (random technical failure caused uncontrollable and unexpected loss of Clash of Clans resources, delaying an expensive upgrade -- triggered larger frustrations with control, I know how bad and minor that sounds by itself). But I was able to calm myself soon after the flare-up.

It is little victories like that which show therapy is helping: understanding and being aware when I have been hijacked with emotions and taking appropriate steps to regulate. The social cues thing relates to very specific scenarios and is a different vector. We have tried to push me into new social situations but I have been stubborn; seeing the anxiety at play for the first time represents progress to me.

What does improvement look like? How fast? Married with kids, high lay score, max-level Diablo 3 character? Do you understand how stubborn I am?

I am limited financially by the options I can explore and no one is going to crowd-fund a mental health program. The binge purchases during major depressive episodes aren't helping either. It costs me $30 a week for my sessions.

Diagnosing ADHD is easy as hell. I mean FOR REAL diagnosing it. There's two ways. You can get an fMRI wherein you ask the potentially ADHD kid to do mental problems in his head (FUN!) or....you can give them a stimulant.

If someone has ADHD, and you give them a stimulant, and they calm down -- it's ADHD. (if you don't have ADHD, stimulants...well, stimulate you. They don't calm you the fuck down. Sure, you have better focus, but you're jittery as shit.)

That's why perfectly reputable psychiatrists will see if the kid checks off a few "eh, maybe?" boxes and slap some ritalin in there and see what happens. It's a cheap and easy test.

Of course try explaining to the parents that you fed their nightmare child amphetamines, and since it made him worse the problem wasn't ADHD no matter how much they want it to be. Or that because he was more focused but also practically vibrating out of his chair, it's not ADHD. They generally don't want to hear it.

I'm not kidding. School teachers, special ed teachers, and just basically anyone that works with kids professionally knows that if you have an unmedicated ADHD kid, try to slip him some caffiene. It's not as good as speed, but it'll tone him down a few notches. (There's a reason my sample size was three. It's the three people I know have ADHD, which is a small subset of the people who claim to have had it. I've seen them both on and off meds, and it's pretty obvious when they're on them and when they aren't.

All of what you just said is common knowledge at this point, as like I said, nearly every kid in our generation was fucking diagnosed with it (and the diagnosis was wrong in nearly every case). My point was Maven should get more opinions. If not one, two, three or four. It can only help.

I have the opinion of two therapists, a psychiatrist, and the Ph. D. overseeing both my therapist and the clinic as a whole, drawn from over two years of session data.

I am the problem, not them. They are doing their best. In my more lucid moments, I see what it is they are trying to guide me towards.

I'll spare you the illustrative self-analysis. My mood bombs have been a lifelong quality-of-life issue. Whatever normal is, I am not it, as the forum was so quick to point out when I described my head space during the last incident.

There is no standard normal. There's feeling good and living well in your own skin.

I can only say that while sharing and being social about these issues can be helpful, there is a lot of risk with the understanding and insight of some people on f13. Using this thread or any part of the forums as a confessional is possibly not the best.

If saying things here helps get them off your chest, I'd say go for it but obviously treat our advice with a grain of salt.

Normal is over rated. What you want is to have the upper hand on your neurochemistry and pathology, so that your abnormality is manageable. Not easy, but it is possible.

--Dave

What you want is 'functional'. Can you hold down a job, can you pay your bills, can you find some happiness in your life?

If so, fuck 'normal'. Normal is mostly the fake faces other people put on. Shit, go ask a sex worker about 'normal'. The more damn normal someone looks in public, the more likely they are to be off the end of the scale when it comes to their private lives.

We've abandoned the quest for 'happy' then?

Normal and Happy can be mutually exclusive for some people. Morat did mention happiness in his definition of functional.

Yep. Happiness is important. More important than normal, for sure.

As far as I'm concerned, it boils down to "can you function in society" and "can you find some happiness there" (no one is happy all the time. People die, bad things happen, whatever). Normal is only important insofar as normal is the same thing as functional. (Can you remember to eat? To pay your bills? To support yourself? Take care of the things that matter to you? Etc).

My choice of normal was poor. I am struggling to establish and accept a unique identity of my own. Reading a critical analysis of Metal Gear Solid 2 and its major themes helped identify my own obstaces.

I don't want to be ashamed if, for instance, some quality of mine is frowned upon by some societal standard. One reason I spent little time exploring sexuality is because my twin brother is homosexual. Even though I am attracted to females (visually, physically is another question), I was afraid I might be too because I saw social consequences in identifying homosexual.

In a sense I don't feel I have chosen my identity but conformed to whatever reduces my risk of rejection by the highest amount. It is strange to be accepting of others for something you would be ashamed of for yourself. I am not sure I am wording this right. It questions whether you ACTUALLY are accepting if the emotional acceptance isn't with the intellectual.

1. Oversharing.
2. You do not have to worry about having a unique identity of your own. The moment you start worrying about shit like that is the moment you cross over from "natural" to "tryhard weirdo." See: Juggalos.

Bronies would be a more contemporary example.   :awesome_for_real:

I knew what you were getting at, the point is that "normal" is at best a sham, a model of socially acceptable behaviors and identifiers that people adopt without ever considering them. It's just aspiration to be average, and average, 'normal' people are fucking boring. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that most of those "normal" people aren't actually fitting into that box very well, and aren't very happy with being there.

Even the counterculture often lets itself be defined by its departures from 'normal', to the point that they can be even more aggressive about enforcing their norms. "Yes, we are all individuals!" See; Hipsters and all of their tryhard 'I'm more different than you' bullshit. Don't aspire for normality, or even to be taken for 'normal' at more than first glance. Aspire for functional within your weirdness, find ways to make the weirdness work for you.

--Dave

 :oh_i_see:

Do you think you're being supportive, schild?

Edit: I don't know who I am and when I find out something I reject it or feel bad. It frustrates me that I can't be this model human that gets bandied around by "healthy" people, like I'm weak or broken or always need help.

 Did anyone see the breakdown of a nice guy rant on reddit (https://np.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/323lr2/about_the_nice_guy/cq7obck)? I felt like such shit after reading it because there's a grain of truth to it and I see myself as having negative "nice guy" behaviors. It's the idea of championing something about yourself that's immature, and the real issue being your inability to overcome that struggle and be mature.

And everyone laughs or avoids. Nice guys are mocked or pitied. They lack self-awareness and have no idea why people mock them. They're lonely and subscribe to a self-defeating romantic rule set. They double-down in the face of mockery and don't grow.

I don't know if you know how much it stung when you said you get what you want and I don't, schild. It's true, but the fuck if I know what to do about it.

In his bizarre, tough-love sort of way, he actually is. He's not telling you to fuck off or mocking you, for Schild that is actually an expression of kindness and acceptance.

--Dave

It is unfortunate that I can't see that because I'm so inflexible with different types of people

I'm tired of being this weird thing to others and to myself. Emotionally crippled. Always sunk by my issues and gushing at every opportunity.

Edit: I'm sorry schild and everyone. My mood crashed after reading schild's post.

He's trying to follow an aspirational model of behavior that is mostly a work of fiction, and not understanding why it doesn't actually work. He doesn't want to do the hard work of understanding why it doesn't work, he wants an 'A For Effort" for having internalized the model to begin with.

Maven, part of why I'm in this thread when I usually don't get into the advice/drama stuff is because I am terminally 'weird' myself. I am an alien trapped in a human host, with no chance of ever really being an integral, fully connected part of human society, because there just aren't enough people willing to accept my weirdness, not enough flex in my psyche to stop being weird. But I've learned to work with that, to work around it, to make it work for me.  Wasn't easy, isn't easy even now, and there were times when I was around your age that I simply didn't believe it was possible.

I learned to recognize my pathology, accept it, and rub the worst corners off of it. To use my inability to instinctively be aware of social context and cues as a platform for standing outside of them, observing them in ways that nobody who was 'soaking in it' ever could, and from that gain insight that had escaped them and eventually a 'backing into it' intellectual understanding of them that could substitute for the real thing under most circumstances. It's hard, because there's a part of me, and probably of you, that instinctively wants to be in that social fabric, and it flails about trying to force the connections, triggering anxieties and depression when it fails, confusion and anger when it seems to almost make them only to get them all scrambled and dysfunctional.

You're not emotionally crippled, the emotions are all there. What is missing is the feedback channels for making them properly correspond to your external circumstances, so like any system with uncalibrated controls, they oscillate all over the place. One thing that you may want to consider is meditation, the real Zen stuff. I got mine through martial arts training, and without the ability to be the 'eye that sees itself', get outside of my emotional and physical states and observe them, I might never have been able to stabilize myself enough. It's pretty much what the medication is trying to do, but you may be able to learn how to do it in wetware, internally, now that the medication is damping down the dysfunctional feedback cycles.

--Dave

I just...wow. I think you're trying way too hard, waaaay overthinking things.

There's a fine (possibly nonexistent) line between being a "nice guy" and being a doormat with no self esteem.  Hence the truth in that post.

When I was last in therapy one of the pieces of advice my shrink gave me was to work on being an asshole.  She figured that with my natural doormat tendencies it was not possible for me to actually become an asshole, so if I just aimed for that target I'd be moving my interpersonal interactions in the right direction.

 :why_so_serious:

I think that line (the distinction) is actually quite obvious, but I am not eloquent enough for a proper explanation. It's sort of "You know it when you see it." Too nice, shy, self doubts, etc isn't off putting per se, (even self destructive behaviour can be intriguing in a way), but when someone radiates a sort of self hate and fatalistic self-deprecation than it is very unattractive. IE Not someone who still struggles against his issues, but when you get the feeling this person has already given them-self up. No one wants to board a sinking ship.

As long as there is some "spark" alive there is a potential for attraction.

(IMHO and all that)

That was you missing the point; "Overthinking" it is the only option, the automatic intuitive understanding of social context most people have isn't there for me. My choices are semi-autistic emotional flatness, dysfunctional social weirdness (and accompanying emotional unpleasantness), or "overthinking", intellectualizing and explicitly deconstructing what most people just pick up by osmosis and imitation.

The first is easiest, and what I have to fall back on when my circumstances move outside my intellectualized framework (read: when I get it wrong and go off a cliff that I didn't see), the second is a slice of hell, the third is a lot of work and took a lot of spadework, but lets me see past some of the reassuring nonsense that people use to reconcile what they want to believe about themselves, what they want other people to believe about them, and what they actually do.

It's not that I am overthinking it, it's that most people aren't actually aware of most of the unconscious thinking they do about social context, so they just assume everyone else has that same set of precepts.

--Dave

Of all the people on f13 Strazos, 17 year old you should relate to Maven now.

You were as awkward as they came back uhhh whenever that was.

For the record, I was 21 when I started over here, but the point is taken.

That being said, I don't recall ever trying to deconstruct the behaviors of other people to this degree, or this much analysis into trying to articulate who "I" am. Heck, I probably couldn't do that last part now even if I wanted to.

I guess I just don't get it.

Some cultures believe that twins share a soul, and in order to be made whole one twin must kill the other and eat their heart.

Just something to ponder.

Twenty years ago, I wouldn't have been nearly as coherent. Five years ago, I wouldn't have been nearly as verbose. My version of a midlife crisis.

--Dave

Psychology is complicated, imperfect, and in unusually high focus if you've got issues. A friend of mine focused on abnormal psychology in literature because of how she felt about herself.

Overthinking is one of the most common observations I get when I share my thought process, and I'm certain it is closely tied to anxiety or some other depressive cycle. I can't or don't cleave through the miasma.


I tred for years to be "better" than him. I don't really know him anymore nor have a relationship. He was once visiting my area and made no effort to reach out nor contact me. So this extreme self-centeredness isn't just my problem.

And don't worry, I get you were making a joke, but he did try to commit suicide once and I have no idea how I would react should someone in my immediate family die. Maybe I'd snap out of this then.

Are you good at trivia?

No, but I'm an expert at murdering people with words.

"Words"?

We've answered questions about as well as we can given how we've gone through stuff. The point of this thread is to realize you're not alone and that other people have struggled with things.

That being said, this isn't a personal blog.

This isn't a substitute for therapy, and many therapists will likely tell that what gets said there stays there.

So either follow the instructions that almost everyone has said and continue to get professional help, or suffer the consequences of self-destructive behavior. Because at this point, we've covered the issue.

This is a bit of poking the bear, but I don't care.

I'm 100% sure I could make you fold like a cheap suit in 8 words or less. You need to never, ever think like that.

It was only a matter of time before the intensely cathartic nature of this thread changed into something else.

I was making a self-depreciating joke.  :oh_i_see:

You should never joke about losing value...

Edit: It would really go a long way to helping you out by finding the right balance of sharing here. These forums can be a great place where personal growth can occur. Unfortunately, too much familiarity can have the reverse effect. I find the best strategy here is to share a little and then give people space to share a little too. Then reflect on their experiences in comparison to your own.

Try it sometime. Not someone estranged. Someone you're really close to.

Fucking tourist.

Stop smoking dope.  It is obvious you are trolling.

edit.  By the above I truly mean lay off the marijuana and googling about depression.  Obvious you need a life.

Who is trolling?

Wow, some of you... I get it now, this IS a terrible venue. Internet anything is a terrible medium for real issues. I'll continue with the professional help but it's on me to deconstruct my negative beliefs and put positive ones in their place.

Thanks to those of you who offered kind and supportive words. And schild.  :grin:

I wasn't sure of your motives until that post.

Yes, it is.

Sometimes I feel I would prefer to be a fond memory than a continuing disappointment.   Not sure why it is such a persistent thought.

I don't know you, new fish, but I'll tell you this -- if you ever knew someone who offed themselves, you'd know that the clearest memories people have of them are not fond ones.

If you are being genuine, you need to speak to the people in your life about your feelings.

If you are trolling this thread in particular, you greatly misunderstand this place.

What the fuck is going on in this thread  :uhrr:

I try to remember the good moments, but they're usually shattered by the very last one.  All it does is hurt the ones who would have the fond memories otherwise.

I'm not talking about killing myself.  I'm not going to do that.  But sometimes I do feel like I'm not doing any favors by being in their lives. 

I tend to go through bad periods and then good periods.  Venting helps, because then I don't have to keep the thoughts to myself.  Keeping it bottled up just makes it worse.   I used to go to therapy, but that's not much of an option right now.  I find it more helpful to talk than to take personality altering medications. 

I have spoken with them and will continue to.  The people closest to me are not particularly understanding.

Two of my friends have committed suicide over the years.  I still have fond memories of them.

Found out an ex-gf of mine took her own life 2 years ago this week. I found out about a month after it happened. We hadn't seen each other in about 10 years, but it still hit me like a brick. This was someone I did a lot of stuff with over the time we were together. It wasn't all nice and great, but the amount of stuff we did and places we saw together really struck me. I always thought I'd see her again and be able to chat about how life was and where it went. Not having that ability sucks, but that is selfish of me. She was bipolar and her depressive periods were intensely low points. I saw a few over the years so in a way, I understand why she chose not to go through any more of those periods. Still sucks - but like I said, for my own selfish reasons.

Her life and it was her choice - but it impacted me but denying the chance to speak to her again.

I've never had a problem with someone taking their own life if it's what they want.  It's a decision only they can make and I have no trouble with it.  Life is pretty miserable for a lot of people & I'd probably end up the same way depending on how some days go.  I remember the good times and bad alike, to this day I've never had it cloud my judgment or opinion of them.

I think you guys are stuck on what you thought he meant as opposed to what he clarified himself as meaning--e.g., that feeling that I think often comes with depression that it would be better for other people to just leave them in the more conventional sense of the term--to stop being part of a couple, to stop being part of a family, to stop dragging friends down, to stop making other people feel like they have to help you. It's a common enough feeling for *anyone* with a serious chronic illness, really--a frustration with that sense of being a burden on people. I think depression may make it especially hard to evaluate clearly whether you are or are not a burden, not the least because it often makes it hard to see what you're deriving from the supportive presence of other people. If you already feel isolated and alone and unable to benefit from social connection, I think it's natural to think that you ought to be the way you feel and just moulder away in a little studio apartment by yourself.

Arise.  Or stay prone if you wish.


2017:  we're going to need a bigger boat.  How is everyone doing?  IR suk. 

I'm fine for two and half-ish more days.

And then what happens?  :ye_gods:

The Apocalypse?

Cheethulu rises from the depths and takes the throne.

Let's call him Toupeethulu.

Get the prescription refilled.

? :headscratch: 19 January is my birthday, I'll be 48. Oh is that when Donald is sworn in? Between work, teaching, family, and chasing tail, I've ended up sleeping for like a day, damn it is catching up to me. Hope everyone is doing great! And I found out my family came from Germany, pretty cool, so if the new president keeps acting up, maybe I could learn German and head over there, or maybe Scotland, I hear they have the most redheads!

If the cheeto and Richard Spencer have their way, you'll be needing to learn Russian.

My little black pussy chases her tail on the big black Hitchcock chair.  Picture that and maybe it'll help with the depression.  It makes me laugh and laugh. 

Happy BDay 2 U, Jimbo.  (http://emoticoner.com/files/emoticons/smileys/cake-girl-smiley.gif?1292867563)

I have to say, Jimbo doing well is cause enough to feel well.  Happy birthday you pervert. /fistbump

Drinking too much and just going in circles in general, without making any improvements.

Thankfully I'll (hope) soon be 8 weeks in psychosomatic day clinic treatment, where I cant run from problems.

My chronic social anxiety is really affecting my life. I literally cant walk into a group now without feeling sick and having a massive anxiety attack. Fun times.

You guys have a better treatment program that what we have in the states, sorry you guys are feeling down. We lost a 2 year old the other night, we worked him for like an hour, then got him back, sent him to the children's hospital and he died 2 days later. It affected the younger RN's a ton. I had to help with the critical incident debriefing. I feel like I'm becoming more like Dr Perry Cox more and more from Scrubs. I'm doing great, but I always have to keep my co-workers in mind and how to support them.

Hang in there guys and gals, it does get better.

Just don't forget to do regular self-checks along the lines of "Am I overtaxing myself by taking care of others".

.So the last three week was actually very good.

Antidepressants/Anxiety medication got changed from Escitalopram to Venlafaxin (and then this got upped to the max) and for reasons I don't understand the latter actually works.

I am in a sort of psychiatric day-clinic "light" insofar it's only 3 half-days per week, and it's great. Quite a few of the therapy sessions are of the type that would be beneficial/enjoyable to everyone:

Ergotherapy (handicraft, painting...etc), Ergotherapy cooking (cooking, duh), Nordic Walking, Psychical Therapy (=Yoga). Or a little more specialied but probably something most people still strugle with:  "How do handle stress" or "training attentiveness".

Since I am on sick leave all the desire to drink on the evening to calm down after work is gone too. Which I kind of expected actually, I always used alcohol as a form of medication (as stupid this is).


Today the left lense of my eyesglasses shattered, which is a small catastrophe as I am heavily shortsighted and don't have backup glasses. And it will take around a week to get replacement.  :oh_i_see:

The other issue is financial. Health insurance doesn't cover the frame at all and only pays what the most basic type of lenses cost. As I have -9.75 dioptres on both eyes (a lot) those glases are going look like a heavy glass ashtray.

Since that all I can afford now that's what I am going to take (and be grateful for that, don't meant to complain!) and then slowly start saving up money for the fancier type which are thinner, flatter. Had I taken the best category of Zeiss glasses today I'd have to pay 440 € extra on top of the what the insurances is willing to pay. As I took the cheapest version I only pay the frames really.

Well thats it. Sorry for being rambly.

Edit: Oh and glasses broke because some teenager pushed his rucksack in my face in the tram. Fuck em.

Bad luck Calapine :(  I live in fear of my glasses getting broken for similar reasons. No NHS cover for specs here any more unless you're on benefits. My prescription is only -5/6 approx. per eye but I still need to spend something like £200 to get ones that are reasonably thin.

Glad the new meds seem to be working, I've been on citalopram for a while now and often wonder if it's doing any good any more. That kind of day clinic sounds really good. Hope it helps.

Is Zenni Optical (http://www.zennioptical.com/) (direct from China glasses) not an option where you are? I get mine for $50-100 from them, depending on how high end I want to go (my main pair is all titanium with spring hinges and photoreactive high-index lenses with anti-scratch coating, for about $100, my reading glasses and backup pair were $50 a piece). My prescription is -5.25, so I got 1.67 index lenses.

I was stuck wearing my prescription sunglasses all the time for a year, since then I make sure I always have at least 2 backups (in addition to the sunglasses). I got two pairs of glasses, two pairs of reading glasses, and a new pair of prescription sunglasses for less than I would have paid for the main pair in an opticians.

--Dave

Second on Zenni. I've gotten several pairs of backup glasses from them, for about $30 each (frames, lenses, and shipping).

For basic glasses with lenses of the highest density material they sell (1.74), it looks like single-vision glasses would be a bit more than $100, or ~$60 for the 1.67-index lenses (or $20 less than that with the least "stylish" frames). Coatings and such can add another $50-ish but may not be necessary. International shipping looks to be around $10 more, so potentially about $50 for not-necessarily-stylish but fully functional glasses. Delivery may take 3-4 weeks so it's not great if one needs new glasses right away, but it's hard to beat for backup glasses or for a "next" pair after getting an updated prescription as one ages.

As a disclaimer, I'm currently wearing my first set of progressive lenses and got them from Costco locally due to potential issues with fitting and tweaks. They were about $200. Even after several months, I'm still tempted to go with carrying around several pairs of single-prescription glasses and swapping them as needed just for a bigger field of in-focus view. I'm still waiting for bionic eyes.

I have -11 diopthingies Calapine so I feel yer pain. Like having a hubble telescope attached to your face unless I get these stupid expensive german compressed lenses.

I can't comment on the drinking after work, since I long ago quit that, but I have found that my greener alternative is less appealing on the weekends. Is having a slug or two, or a toke or two after work really self-medicating or just a chemical aid that is less effective than say, modern antidepressants, etc?

Word.  I was not drinking alcoholic levels, but considerably more than I should that went from "a drink Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons" to "at least once a night, if not more all week long." Since quitting over the new years (yay resolutions) I've been exercising again and lifting weights, which has really improved my depression.  I'm almost worried that if I stop my regimen that it'll go back to that horrid place again.  And needless to say I don't want that.  I've still got other shit to deal with, but that's just life as it's never going away.

Cheers for the Zenni link, it hadn't occurred to me that I could get specs online for complex prescriptions but that site seems to cater for it all. I'll need to get an up to date eyesight test but that's no problem.

I also constantly battle with drinking too much. Some weeks I keep it to weekend only, some weeks I don't. Would love to replace it with weed but it's still illegal in the UK and I don't know anyone who could supply me these days. I also really really like beer, wine, whiskey, rum, gin, etc  :awesome_for_real:

Calapine sorry to ask, but what country are you in? That mental health program sounds wonderful! Or the crap I deal with over here in the USA is so horrible, that all other mental health programs sound so much better than the one I work with.

As far as indulging in things, it's all moderation, and i know, moderation is hard. Like fatty foods, good drink, good food, good loving, good anything (hell playing too many video games) too much can hurt. ‘Moderation in all things is the best policy,’ per Plautus. Maybe not methamphetamines...but still a little good wine and good cheer, but not to excess.

Oh Selby, that is one of the best things for depression is working out, if I ever get to go see or help David Vobora who runs a gym to help vets get back on there feet, it will be a goal where I think I can actually help with those who hurt. His story is over at http://adaptivetrainingfoundation.org/who-we-are/  I've seen that patients that have depression and get to work out and do therapy like you guys are saying and doing, with meds sometimes, seem to work so much better.

Interestingly, the guy who introduced MDMA to psychologists, Alexander Shulgin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin) wrote in his seminal work PIHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved - a great book I highly recommend) that he used to use MDMA like a "chemical martini". He'd ingest a small amount of it, 100mg or so, before social functions and said it gave him a sparkle and vivacity similar to a drink or two. Of course he synthesized it himself and it was very pure and he knew precisely what was in it, unlike street drugs cooked up by random weirdos in dodgy trailers. And of course MDMA is a different drug from simple N-methamphetamine.

Certainly reading that book convinced me that the majority of the problems associated with most drugs are because of the illegality of them, not the inherent properties of the drugs themselves.

Not surprising, but sinus surgery can be pretty bad for your anxiety.

It's been a fun tour through the mental health system here. Luckily, I have very good insurance and work that can put up with a lot of generic "doctor appointments". Citalopram may not be cutting it, but Xanax sure seems to help things. Trying to manage this and work has been quite the challenge.

Citalopram is the devil. Fucking frogs dude.

Strangely enough, I am moving closer to being put on an SSRI for migraines. Wonder if it will affect my delightfully chipper social disposition.  :why_so_serious:

I think I need new glasses; I read "rucksack" as "nutsack"  :uhrr:

I've had progressive bifocals for several years now and been pretty happy with them, but this most recent iteration has never felt quite right.  I don't know whether to go with single-vision and swap, or the traditional old man bifocals.

Nutsack certainly makes the story funnier.

Anxiety is still going great. I was supposed to visit my mother on Saturday and I was hanging over the toilet retching from the stress on Friday night! Good times. So now I'm going tomorrow instead. Place your bets!

The polarized glasses from Zenni were not able to withstand being left in a car in Atlanta.  The film got all fucked in the heat.

Were they on the dash? Because I leave my sunglasses in the car all the time, even on visits to Austin in August it didn't cause any problems. But they sit inside a neoprene case in the door pocket, not anywhere they will get hit by the sun directly.

You can bake cookies on the dash of a closed car in sunny climates, so not a good place to keep anything plastic.

--Dave

Haven't really shared anything of it on here, but my partner has been dealing with anxiety/depression/ED for the last 4-5 years. It's incredible how much stuff can change, and how quickly you can adjust and take it in stride. Where things are today would have seemed like an impossible dream even just 12 months ago.

She is now down to only a half dose of her depression medication, has no anxiety medication, and is significantly recovered both in her physical weight but also her relationship with her body and food.

Personally I have gone from living with almost constant stress and tension and fear to sometimes even forgetting how difficult it was - and still remains in moments (and making stupid flip comments about things I should know better).

I'm deeply thankful for all the help that people gave to get to this situation, and blown away with how hard she worked - an incredible achievement that most people aren't ever going to know about or really understand.

I hope all of you who are struggling with these things are able to find a way to manage and improve, and get the support that you deserve. I hope that things can get as better for you also and I know it is possible.

That's really good to hear lamaros, well done to both you and your partner - as you say, it's hard work to get to that stage, and it takes it's toll on the people closest to the person with the illness too.

Great to hear, man! :heart:

They were not on the dash, but I'd still complain.  I have some polarized RayBans that I purchased in ~1998 which are fine in the car.  The prescription is a LITTLE out of date.  I did expect the Zennis to perform similarly.  My bad, perhaps, but I'm not accepting that.

That's great. And props to you for being so supportive!

Thanks peeps.  :heart:

Yeah, good job. Change is hard.

Having a bit of experience, both professional and personal, I take my hat off to Lamaros' partner, and also him. The pit can be deep and the walls filled with spikes. Getting out of there  in emotional stamina alone is a positively athletic feat. Being outside the pit trying to get someone out is also perilous, because it constantly threatens to drag the other in with them.

Seriously, congratulations you two.

That's really good to hear, and I hope it just keeps getting better. My heart goes out to the two of you.

So...I am going to be 8 weeks stationary starting tomorrow morning.

To "fix" my anxious personality disorder.

I am actually quite anxious about that, not being able to go home everyday and hide from the world outside in my room.
Don't have a laptop to bring with either, so I'll be missing a lot of internet. Plus side is you will have less politics spam from me.

Good luck!

What is "stationary"?  In any case, best of luck to you

ie, I am not going home every day, but staying over night. With the option to go home one night on the weekend.

I'll be in the psychosomatic deparment, focused on Borderline, Eating disorders and Posttraumatic stress disorders.

Strictly seen I don't have any of that, but avoidant personality disorder.


Thank you!  :heart: :heart:

Good luck cala!

Good luck I hope it works for you!

Good luck Calapine! Tough road to hoe. Cheering you on from the interwebs.

meh, stop it. I am blushing.  :oops:

I'll see how it goes. My understanding is that it's sort of tough, as it mostly focused on practical aspects. Dialectical behavior therapy, its called I think.
And to learn better coping strategies. In my case it's me currently being dumb by drinking to be calm and not attending appointments or dates that stress me. Which leads to far me problems of course down the line.

it really doesnt help that I freeze when panicky either. But stopping here before I say too much. But yes, I need it. My life has been going in a circle for ages. Just good enough to not crash, but not any happyness either. And the older Id get my drinking would get worse too I bet. I dont have cravings yet when I dont, and lose the urge to drink when things are going fine, but as I know from family members, this is a slippery slope.

Good luck, learning healthy coping mechanisms that work for you is a great thing to shoot for.

No!  Don't go!  Stay here with us!  ;p

I had a similar experience some years ago although it wasn't quite as restrictive.  Mine was mostly just called rehap.  I don't drink alcohol much but there's this other stuff....  :oh_i_see:  I found the group therapy incredibly interesting.  I think I became addicted to it.  Srsly.  Usually I'm not crazy about being in places where there's more than 0 people in the room.  I was riveted for the five or so hour session every day.  Most of the people lived crazy lives and had totally outrageous stories to tell.  One woman who had served quite a bit of prison time for various drug and alcohol related crimes had a slew of prison stories to tell.  Most of them were scary but there were also hilarious ones.  Stragely, it somehow helped me put a bit of my own life into perspective although I had very little in common with most of the people there.  They had it much tougher than I ever did. 

Anyway, anything that helps is worth it.  Good luck and I'll seriously miss you.  I  :heart:  your posts and pictures. 

I sure hope you are OK Cal.  You can always rely on us for "cynical" commentary and support :D   Please rest up and come back.  /fistbump

Good luck, Cal.

Good luck, Cala!

Hope it goes well!

Stopping drinking is the first step. It's a crutch of the anxiety-ridden that develops into a habit when you don't watch it. Things that helped me a lot on my journey were the following:

1 - Taking a multivitamin every day. Often my diet was shit and getting all the nutrients was impossible with what I was eating.
2 - Taking a probiotic. The connection between my anxiety and my digestion was strong. You can improve both by taking one.
3 - Breathing exercises. You can ramp yourself up with poor breathing. Taking a second, sitting down, and doing some 4-7-8 breathing can help regulate your stress. 4 counts in, 7 counts hold, 8 counts out.
4 - Get an ice pack and hold it against your wrists and neck. The cooling can be soothing on your sympathetic nervous system and help calm you down.
5 - Taking time every day to think of things your grateful for in your life. The pyschological act of "counting your blessings" so to speak can trigger you to slow down and not become obsessed with the negative in your life.
6 - Talking to a professional. It will help and you will get results. Don't think because you tried one method of talk therapy that they are all the same. You have to establish the right relationship with the right professional, and it can take time.
7 - Using whatever medication you need to bridge the gap. You may need to go on a beta blocker or antidepressant for a while. You may not need one forever. The important thing is not to reject it out of hand if it can help you heal.
8 - Address the roots of your anxiety. Part of talk therapy is to find out the why of your anxiety. What are your triggers and why do they exist? What can you learn about yourself and your past and how to create a better future?
9 - Be honest and open with people. Many are afraid of admitting what's going on when they are having panic attacks or anxiety, so they lie or avoid it. But in reality, people are usually very understanding of what's going on, especially those close to you.
10 - Understand that it's not forever. You won't always feel this way. You can get better if you focus on you and put in the work. It's time to be a little selfish and put you first. That's the way you can adjust and have a happy life.

Good luck to you and I hope it all works out well.

I think a key aspect to going into treatment for some psychologic/psychiatric issues is to realize that it's possible that things may not get "fixed", per se, but that you can learn how to cope/deal with things so that you are a happier and healthier person.  The hardest part is often after the acute phase of treatment.  Sometimes to make the most effective recovery it requires severing some old ties......friends and acquaintances that you may not have realized were pathologic before but that certainly don't help your situation once you figure it out.  It is a bit like quitting smoking or drinking-  it's tough to quit smoking when you're hanging out with smokers all the time. 

Good luck, homes.  I know you'll do great. 

I guess I made it sound worse than it is, judging by all the reactions. I am not locked in, I get out weekends & have access ton Internet.

I will write a proper reply later this week, typing on the phone is in pain in the bum.

But thanks very much.  :heart:

*cuddly hugs* Thanks for your nice messages. That really lifted me up more than I expected!  :heart: :heart: :heart:

Just got home over the weekend. And now having some wine (I know, I know.)

It's pretty interesting, but also really hard (as in very tasking). (For me, but other patients as well) Anyone interested in the types of therapies? If so can ramble give a concise description tomorrow.


The hospital itself is a really a place Ian with this photography skills should visit. It's part old building, part old-new fusion and part newly constructed. Overall quite a pecular atmosphere from the outside.


I can't do it justice, but just to give an idea:

(http://i.imgur.com/fUYRGA7.png)

The old entrance, which is now actually the backside, that's why it's so quiet.


(https://i.imgur.com/ojU15HZ.jpg)
That's the church (duh)

Closeup: the old section has a sort of fortress-feel, with the onion head towers. Especially if one is in a special mood to begin with:

(http://i.imgur.com/x4uyapu.png)


(http://i.imgur.com/ralCijK.png)

There isn't much that gives it away, only the the metal blinds in the windows.

Mentally insane criminals are housed here. It's the same building, so I could literally visit them. (well, I'd get until the entrance to the department)

Good to hear it's going well :}

I for one would be interested in hearing more about the therapy.  My daughter has some similar anxiety issues to what you've described, although likely not as pronounced.  She's in counselling for them, but I'm curious what approach Europeans take to it.

The look of the place reminds me a bit of St Josephs. the Mental Hospital in limerick. Its actually a really nice place to walk around.

Welp. I am glad inside it looks different, because this is serious horror film material:

Limerick Lunatic Asylum/St Joseph’s Hospital (https://vimeo.com/112586187l)

I'm interested!  :)  My Brain Camp was in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere which was cool.  I was hoping for scary disappearing corridors and creepy hidden sex torture dungeons but got group therapies and helpful behaviour alternatives instead and although it was helpful in some respects, it could have been more entertaining.  They didn't even broach the subject of primitive shock therapy machines or or other devices, which was kind of disappointing.  They did give me some absolutely horrific drugs that turned me into a paranoid turnip for a few months.  I thought I was going to hate it but I enjoyed the fuck out of most of it.  Hours and hours of people telling weird and hilarious stories... it was almost like being here!  ;p 

I have to mock myself or I'll cry!  Anyway, my behaviour was caused by an incident but I was getting the same treatment that people who had clinical depression and addiction to drugs and alcohol were getting.  I think that's all they knew how to do.  The drugs, though... I firmly believe they threw whatever the pharmaceutical companies threw at them, regardless of what they were actually for.  The one named Seroquel nearly killed me.

Uh, the link does not work but I never thought it looked that bad. I mean it's an old building and they all have a certain starkness. The park it's in is lovely. vOv

Sorry.

Here: https://vimeo.com/112586187

And personally I wouldn't want to be locked in there:

(http://i.imgur.com/oHBLeqg.jpg)(http://i.imgur.com/6t4Oz4T.png)

Well ya, the building is decaying now. It was massivly overcrowded when it was in use

http://www.thejournal.ie/donal-moloney-limerick-asylum-1805379-Nov2014/

Eh scew it :(

edit: thought i was in another thread, backing out slowly now, as I have no place in this thread

*hugs*

Best wishes Cala! :heart:

Thanks, I am fine. It was a long and way too personal post about my internal struggles and what I saw as progress, but after a bit realized what I meant to sound impressive had exactly the opposite effect. There is just no way you can spin "Today I managed to speak for  myself when talking to my social worker,  for the very first time! Very progress, much independent and strong" to sound impressive.

And then I went even more intimate because talking about your sexual fantasies on an open internet forum is super clever idea, why not, totally not a lapse of judgment...

I did read the post--progress were made, and I ain't judging you.  Stick with it!

Ya, it was a good post. It almost sounds like your social worker wanted you to get angry and stand up for yourself.

*hug*

It doesn't matter what other people want. It matters what you want to do--that feels as if you are deciding to do it, as opposed to having it done to you/for you.

I doubt that. It's his modus operandi since always. I feel it's really time to find a new place, preferably own flat. But that's also an income issue for me.


100% true. The latter is also very self-confidence destroying over a long run.

Cal, you do realize that your command of the English language is better that some US Presidents?  :grin:  I understand many folks are bilingual/trilingual in Europe, but maybe there's something you could do with that skill?  You write well.  Hang in there regardless.  /fistbbump

Though to be fair, the {better than current US President} {command of English} returns a pretty large percentage of humanity. So we need to say {way better than US President with English language} {honest and observant generally} {knows a ton about space} {eye-opening descriptions of possible posting to f13.net practices} and we have delivered a more on-target assessment of skills.

Does anyone have any practical tips on how to get out of an acute phase of feeling lonely?

(Probably not just me looking for an answer)

Yep. Here's some things I've done in the past that worked.

1 - Clean up where you're living. I've found that the act of cleaning can often help break me out of my general funks, clutter tended to dampen my moods and make me notice my things that were lacking.
2 - Go Outside. Force yourself to get out of the house for no reason. If nothing else, walk around the area, the parks, places where people congregate but you feel absolutely no reason to interact with them. The act of being around people helped me.
3 - Make a list of the thoughts you're feeling. Make a list of your fears and say them out loud. Often bottling up these emotions makes them more real than speaking them aloud. Getting the emotions out, even by yourself, was helpful.
4 - Consider volunteering for something. Showing up to do some charitable work can make you feel better by looking beyond your own struggles to the struggles of others, and create meaningful bonds in the process.
5 - Consider going to a place of worship. Many times, people look to faith to help with their loneliness or isolation to help find a community. Many have smaller groups if the idea of getting involved in something larger is scary.
6 - Evaluate your living situation and see if a roommate might help. I went to live with relatives as a roommate for a year when I was going through my deepest issues. Being around them really helped, simply by knowing someone was there.
7 - Realize your loneliness is a feeling that is created by a desire for others. It's natural and it's healthy to feel lonely at times, because it's supposed to inspire us to go meet and commune with others.
8 - Realize that screens and social communities can really just be a crutch or substitution for true connection and intimacy. We can get some things online, but we need to venture beyond the screens when we're ready.
9 - Understand nothing is permanent. You will not feel this way forever. There are things you can do. There are actions you can take. You are not the worst things you've thought about yourself, and there are people out there you can connect with.
10 - Move in stages. If you're not comfortable, take small steps. If you're more comfortable, throw yourself into something you never thought you could do. You'll often be surprised at how forgiving and cool most people are.

I've always kept very few friends but I've never really felt terribly lonely past awkward teenage years as I've always had insanely time consuming hobbies that require I concentrate. Games used to be that but I demand more of a challenge for myself these days.

Also, a clean space.

So, I'm either not a lonely person by nature or have coincidentally staved off any chance of medically relevant loneliness.

I usually have the opposite problem—I find myself wishing people would go away and leave me some peace and quiet.  Keeping busy helps, reading or building stuff or cleaning ‘til I’m too tired to care.  Between the house, property and work there’s always more to do than I can keep up with.

That is an incredibly comprehensive list from Paelos. I would add to four and five that getting involved in any sort of structured outside activity can be great. Something that puts you out with other people, but doesn't demand social activity (or at least lets you set your own pace). Open mic nights, poetry readings, trivia nights can put you in relatively undemanding social scenes. If you don't like the bar scene, then consider signing up for art/pottery classes, or theater (not all involved in community theater are actors -- they need stage hands prop makers and costumers and makeup too). Hiking/biking groups if you are into the outdoors.

I just realized that my suggestions fit more with "things to do if you are lonely but have agoraphobia and/or other social anxiety," but write what you know I guess...

I would also add an 11) Grow older. Honestly, the above used to be me but now I'm married with grandkid I'm more Polysorbate80 -- where did my alone time go!?
 :uhrr:

Also a 12) -- Get married.   :awesome_for_real:

I found this essay by Johann Hari about his upcoming book pretty interesting. It certainly speaks to one of the major reasons I don't want to seek conventional therapy--because I think it presupposes that my issue is chemical and needs chemical fixing, when maybe I'm just reacting to the way the world is and the way my world within that world is, without much ability to change the circumstances of either.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/07/is-everything-you-think-you-know-about-depression-wrong-johann-hari-lost-connections

Yeah, a psychologist once said to me that my depression is perfectly rational considering the things that happened to me, and that the only irrational thing is why I hadn't killed myself. He didn't mean it badly, he just meant that he regards suicide as a very rational thing to do sometimes, and that people have the strength to keep going most of the time is a truly amazing thing.

I was assessed for having Asperger's a couple of years ago, and after a LOOONG series of questionnaires, and interviews with my family, she said that it was inconclusive, as the amount of Trauma that I had suffered would cause the symptoms of the Autistic spectrum regardless of whether I had it or not. Good times!

Do not do this;  it is folly.

And not with 10,000 men could they drag you out!

I posted in Awesome pictures, but drinking wine I got rambling and went too personal for a pic thread. I don't want to delete though, so ill put ill copy paste it here.

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I was at an exhibiton today, saw the picture below. Luckily I found it online as high res, definitly wil lget that printed as painting:

(http://www.landesmuseum.at/files/project/userdata/ausstellungen/Landesgalerie%20Linz/2016/Klemens%20Brosch/14_Klemens%20Brosch-Sternwarte_1926_NORDICO%20Stadtmuseum%20Linz.jpg)

To me the style seems so...familar. And nothing like a painting for 1926


The surreal part (I found out only after when googling) is that the artist, Klemens Brosch, was an Upper Austrian, who lead a rather tragic life and killed himself, at age 32, in the same year as the painting.

He and his wife Johanna both fell into Morhpin addiction, in his case it started during WW1. (Galicia, now Ukraine/Hungary, back then border to Russia)

(https://i.imgur.com/TvmRH12.jpg) (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Brosch_Portrait_1925%2C_1926_001.jpg/463px-Brosch_Portrait_1925%2C_1926_001.jpg)



Edit: He subjected himself to two failed morphin withdrawal therapies at what was then Landes-Irrenanstalt Niedernhart-Linz (State Asylum Niernhart-Linz). The same I stayed in. I even recognize the layout as the clinic got extended around the old core, not rebuilt. From the station I stayed (in the old part) it I looked down at the front of the church. Freaky.

(http://psychiatrische-landschaften.net/wiki/images/thumb/9/9c/Niedernhart.JPG/400px-Niedernhart.JPG)

(http://www.hross-partner.at/cms/images/HPbilder/referenzen/kh_wjl-alt/image108.jpg)

I think it shows he was a child of the war. His method of suicde was using a gas mask filled with chloroform. Think I am going to visit the place he killed himself

btw, all the plaes patients stays in are up to date and modernised.

But for example my therapist lost her room to free it up for renovation and now has her office in and old-building wing that is at 1960 standard and then was the closed station.

So you have rooms with super high ceilings, but the corridors are rather small, and all the windows are have 1960-prison-style steel bars. And if you go there by lift you enter into a big central room, parted by wood walls, you see wher the "nurse station" aka reception area was.  Now totally deserted. At the ends of the room is a big window, but old-school, note one glass pane, but seperated into 3x3 windows. With old school dual-windows (do you americans know them?)

(https://i.imgur.com/ndkkR1t.jpg)

Omce you are in the middle of the central room there are two corridors branching off. Both closed with wooden doors with mesh wire glass.

like this:

(https://cache.willhaben.at/mmo/3/226/572/113_-1681405445.jpg)

Just not as big, just a window-inlay in a door.

The right corridor is closed off. When you go into the left you pass 4 offices with similar massive wooden doors and mesh glass.

The corridor ends with another (normal!) glass window with steel bars, and to the right a wooden door with (mesh glass) inlet. Which is her office.

On the first appointment there I joked to her she that must not be in good graces with the boss.

The office window is barred too. But the room itself is nicley high. Twice the hight of  door you go in.

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Ill try to provide some pictures next time I go there.

Edit: I just read my own post and holy shit I do I sound truck..........

That is an amazing painting. What a sad story, and that seems like it was a terrible place.

That "high ceiling with small rooms" style seems to have been an in thing here in Ireland too. A woman I know in Dublin lives in what was once an old British Army Barracks, and the ceilings are really really high on it. Basically where she lives used to be a dormitory for the infantry, but they split it up into rooms and left the old staircases, which are way too steep for old people and have been worn down over the decades, so she can barely use them.

Ok, looking at the images from today, maybe I exaggerated a bit. But the place still has a nice special aura:



(https://i.imgur.com/WnM8wrL.jpg)


(https://i.imgur.com/TERHW03.jpg)

Came home early from work planning to get shit done here at home , but wound up drinking and passing out feeling overwhelmed and sleeping all afternoon instead.  It’s no the first time i’ve felt like I’m in over my head.  Might be time to go talk to the doc but I’m also afraid to go on the record admitting personal issues...

Don't be afraid of that.

I went to my doctor when I was not coping with grief in 2011. He referred me to a psychologist near my workplace, who I saw for two batches of appointments until 2013. Nobody knows it happened except the doctor, the psychologist and me (and anyone close to me whom I've chosen to tell).

My employer now actually offers that to staff. If they are sensible they would prefer that you receive help and be able to do your job, rather than have it affect you more.

Makes sense. Healing staff are more productive so it's a win win for everyone.

Life continues to be interesting, with my partner having been diagnosed with chronic fatigue post anorexia recovery. Who knows where it will end, heopfully we can come out the other side with some peace.

Good employers make a huge difference. Her situation isn't worst case and she can still work a bit, but only because they've let her work from home three days a week and change her hours to part time. As it is one of the most difficult thing the condition is bringing (aside from constant pain and tiredness) is the loneliness of being house bound most of the time. Getting a dog at the start of the year proved to be a very good thing for helping with this, but having a workplace and a job is ineffably important.

The endless meetings with Doctors and specialists continue. Thyroid condition, then depression, anorexia, anxiety, then now coeliac disease, and chronic fatigue. I don't know how she - and other people who get such dud hands in life - manage to do it.

And I can't imagine how people who are less well off than us with worse support ever get through things like this. The emotional and physical drain is enough, I can't imagine being overwhelmed by financial pressure too.


I've struggled to commit to going to see someone to talk about how my situation has impacted on me too. I know I should, and that it would help both of us. But it's still hard to find the time and energy to get someone good and useful... and also a bit of stubbornness on my part about thinking I can figure it out...

Time for an update:

It got to the point people close to me started to give hints that I was being extremely short-tempered.  I’d noticed it myself, but thought I was hiding it better than I was.  So before I turned into that asshole boss everyone wants to get rid of, or wound up causing a family crisis,  I went in to talk to the doctor.

Full disclosure, I really should still talk to a therapist, but there are things I will never, ever say to them.  Not because those things are objectively bad, but because one of my problems is still distrust of authority and a bit of paranoia.

However, Prozac is helping.  I’m lucky in that it had extremely mild side effects (the first couple days I had *too* much energy, and a bit of flu-like joint pain) but it really keeps my thoughts from spiralling into a hole.  I don’t feel numb, but I can break away from negative thoughts now.

The one potential issue I see is possibly increased unintentional aggressiveness.  I find myself being not angry or upset, but arguing things I normally would be afraid to even mention.  That’s had mixed results—I have been too reserved and afraid to speak up, but I worry it could easily go into full-Slog jerk dumbass argument mode without really being aware of it.  I’m still adapting to the meds, so if I’m a dick please tell me; I need to recalibrate a bit.

One of the things I find withthe stuff I am on is that I feel my emotions are very damped down. I can go through days without smiling, but I don;t feel as bad as I used to.

However, it does mean that when emotions do come through I cant deal with them. I have anxiety about being with people, and I spend most of my time on my own. I try my best to get out to a support group meeting, and every Tuesday morning last year I would be curled up in bed not able to leave. So the end of last year I called the organiser and she was lovely. So I've been going to the support group since and find it good.

I've been taking Prozac continuously since 2010 so I have no idea if it's still helping or if it stopped working and I've just become used to my strange brain.  I'm reclusive but I've always been reclusive (as are most of my relatives on my Dad's side) so nothing has ever changed in that respect.  Since the demise of my marriage, I have never been, nor will I ever be in a romantic relationship again.  Anyway, I do try and come up with ways to make myself a wee tiny bit happier.  Like subbing to a brand new game.  That hasn't happened in ages, though, and when it does it doesn't last very long.  Although I don't have great focus generally, I blame that squarely on the state of MMOs.  My latest way to ease my mind when I get anxious or have a bout of panic is I say to myself, "at least I don't have bees in my eye".  Srsly.  This is a thing. 

Days are longer, brighter and sometimes warmer.  That helps, too, although not as much as not having bees in my eye. 

And you have us!  :awesome_for_real: :uhrr: :awesome_for_real:

Here’s to not having bees in your eyes!

I just started researching CBD treatments for my anxiety. This has been fun, trying to find the dose that keeps me from being too stony. It’s such a wide open area.

Don't forget you are awesome. You have this mysterious aura I wish I had and am jealous off.

Hawkbit: It's not as fun as pot but quetiapine really worked well with my anxiety. Can recommend.

Works well, but that stuff put 15 pounds on me. I think I lost the weight in 2 weeks when I was able to ween off it.

It was supplementary, so it was easy just to move to something else for helping me sleep. Of course, it's nice when your psychiatrist doesn't tell you the other reason you were on it.  :roll:

Yeah, that sucks. I am super paranoid about that and count calories. Still better than my DIY sleep medication of white wine. (Haven't read the books, but didn't Cersei get fat from her alcoholism?)

Is there a word for the type of loneliness where you don't really think "I feel lonely" but feel starved for human contact and attention? Kind of having that now. :/

edited,  because incoherent and even dumber than my usual derp.  Sorry.

I started this in the Useless Discussion tree as drunk reminiscence about MMORPs, but the it turned rather personal halfway and bit sexual at the end. Overall too private for that thread. It's not about depression either though, so I am putting it in spoilers.

Actually the risk is you’ll wake up hungover.  Drink some water, young lady.

I kept meaning to say thanks for posting this, but never got around to it.  So, thanks.  Was having a rough bit and for whatever reason this phrase really helped crystallize things.

Don't know if this is what you meant, but I feel like it's not so much that I want company, but I want to be valued by someone (without having to do anything crass like 'earn it'). Like, I don't mind being alone, but I wish someone else minded, if that makes any sense.

In movies there's always the character who's like "I'm a lone wolf I do my own thing grr" and everyone else is like "no, we need you, we're a team, etc." and they learn the value of friendship or some crap and you think "wow, that lone wolf character looks so cool and aloof".

Then in real life you go "I'm a lone wolf and I do my own thing grr" and everyone else immediately finds someone else to replace you and you feel like an idiot sitting in the corner by yourself.  It's a lot less dramatic being a loner when the rest of the world is just cool with never seeing you again.

As Eeyore says, “Thanks for noticing me.”

I hate being the center of attention, but I also hate when people ignore me.  WTF?

Mostly I wind up keeping emotionally distant from others so they lack the power to hurt me, I guess.

This is me right now.  I don't suffer from depression, but this you wrote right here describes my life pretty well.  I bet it is fairly common.

If I've learned two things from moving from a more introverted style to a less introverted style it's this:

There's a difference between being introverted and being stand-offish.
The World will not seek you out, you have to choose when to engage people.

Waiting for people to always approach you and notice you is not a good recipe for success if you want people to understand who you are. When people ask open ended questions in group, waiting for everyone else to response or choosing not to respond at all isn't going to make you seem mysterious and interesting. It makes people forget you are there, or worse they think you are perfectly fine not interacting so they don't want to bother you.

That doesn't mean you have to be the person who starts every conversation, or that you can't be by yourself when you need to charge your batteries. However, when you choose your battles as an introvert, you need to actually engage people. Always expecting people to come to you and draw you out, then getting frustrated when nobody seems to care, is almost as self-destructive as talking about yourself non-stop at every turn.

Everybody likes the person who is "easy to talk to" which is basically code for, they listen and ask questions. You don't really have to talk about yourself at all to engage people. You just have to ask questions, and not care if they ask you a damn thing. Eventually when you start doing that, people start also engaging you back. Not every time, but most of the time. And you'll get the ebb and flow of when to interject something you enjoyed into the conversation.

Sorry about my public breakdown.
Struggling at the moment. Nothing clever to say about it, just in being in bed a lot and sad. And then I drink and the days after a worse. (Big surprises that)

Don't be sorry. Nothing to apologize for.

Yeah really, nothing to worry about :) Most of us breaks from time to time, and then we get glued together again somehow.

Despite not being part of the generations before me, where being a stone face and strong on the outside was expected, I have somehow inherited my father´s behavioral pattern when facing hardship. I know it´s no good not talking about my mental issue with friends, familiy, or god forbid professionals, but I just have this barrier I cant get myself to cross. Never been to a doc or recieved medication, despite the obvious good it would do me. I guess this text is some how a way of trying to work this problem. I know this sound silly, but I somehow feel fear of reaching, afraid of what I might learn about myself, and what others might learn about me. Acceptance, it´s an easy word to say, but incredible hard to actually achieve for me. Fear and shame on the other hand - no problem there. I am like paralysed.

How did any of you find the courage to seek help?

When I finally made the commitment to go find a therapist (and it is a commitment, especially in the US where finding any kind of doctor and figuring out how you're going to pay for it is a big ordeal, much more so for anything related to mental health), it was because I very clearly reasoned out that if I didn't, there was a good chance I'd die.  Once it became "thing I need to do" as opposed to "thing I really should do" I made it happen.

I'm kind of with Korachia except that I have actually tried therapists twice and both times it was everything I feared and worse. The first guy especially was just awful.

I basically need to find someone who actually understands my world and the things I do and the things that matter to me. I asked my primary care doctor once how to find someone who could be a kind of gateway--who wouldn't instantly funnel me into what they thought was the only therapy that worked or who instantly came to a diagnostic conclusion about me. She basically said, "oh there's a wellness encounter group in our hospital system, go to that" and I just calmly said that was exactly the kind of thing that was the problem--I know too much about where all of that comes from (it's rebranded Stoicism) and I'd spend most of my time annoyed by how lame some of the ripping-off actually is. She calmly said, "Well, good luck then", which was a pretty fair rejoinder. I have some neurotic intellectual friends who recommend neurotic therapists and that's no good either. Basically I think I need someone like Atul Gawande--a wise person who knows a lot both medically and philosophically and is a good listener. I think those people are in very short supply.

Problem if you're down South is what my wife has constantly run into. Every single therapist is either in a hospital setting (i.e. their office is basically just a fucking doctor's office, which is hardly a conducive environment for calm) or they immediately start with the Jesus stuff, and I mean the evangelical flavor of Jesus. Neither of those things is helpful.

I started therapy for the first time in May after having it in the back of my mind as something to get around to for, oh, a decade or so. For me it took hitting a low point at work. I'm usually a pretty high-functioning depressive but my job was becoming a huge source of self-reinforcing anxiety. Every Monday we have a planning meeting where we assign tasks for the week, then I'd spend the week doing anxious-avoidant procrastinating, start stressing out around Thursday/Friday because I hadn't finished anything, and spend the weekend frantically trying to make up time so I didn't have to admit my failure at the following Monday's meeting. The actual meetings weren't bad and my boss never made a fuss about having to roll work over from one week to the next, but the anxious anticipation was completely ruining every weekend I had. I'd start the week exhausted, let myself take it easy for a couple days to make up for the weekend I didn't get to enjoy, and the cycle would repeat.

One time it got so bad that I called in sick just so I wouldn't have to think about that stupid Monday meeting. I'd never faked being sick before (I'm a goody-two-shoes at heart), and I really, really didn't want that behavior to become just part of the cycle, so I made myself spend that day researching and calling therapists. Got set up with a weekly appointment that I maintained up until just a couple weeks ago. The guy was nice enough and it was helpful to have someone to dump on for a while but ultimately I thought his advice was mostly mumbo-jumbo and I wasn't getting anything actionable from our sessions, so I called it off.

Anecdotally, it seems like most of the therapy success stories I hear involve switching therapists three or four times before finding one that actually helps. I suspect the only winning strategy is to treat it as a numbers game and go in expecting to bail if you don't establish chemistry in the first few sessions. That's why I'm happy I went to my sessions even if they weren't everything I'd hoped: I know more about the process than I did before and have a better idea of where to set my expectations for next time.

The first guy I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to talk about, starting with my inability to complete several long writing projects. He cut me off and said, "Oh just write, that's not hard" and then proceeded to tell me a bunch of generic Hallmark-card level aphorisms such that I maybe talked for five minutes out of 45 minutes. He also told me about his life and his successful practice. And then at the end he said I should get divorced (having not asked at all about my marriage) because "that usually makes middle-aged men feel better". He didn't ask me a single question. It was mortifying. I remember feeling about a hundred times worse walking out of that room.

I was really scared. It wasn't an option not to. It was either that or accept my new state of near constant crippling anxiety as the norm. I don't think myself or my family would have survived that.

This all started when I had sinus surgery due to having sinus headaches every day for multiple months in a row. Due to some complications during recovery, I stumbled upon a drug combination that caused me to have a massive "freakout". This was probably the most awful experience I've ever had. I didn't know what was real and what wasn't. I'm lucky I didn't call the cops on myself or hurt someone (including me). Although the initial scary state was done, I was left in a pretty bad spot. I had to be on a lot of drugs just to stay functional. Even then, I was super angry all the time. I was really jumpy. Loud noises would send me into a panic. It wasn't fun.

Along with a psychiatrist and a therapist, I was able to make sense of what happened and deal with a new heightened state of anxiety. I don't like therapy, but it helped get me to a stable state and helped me cope with the new way my brain wanted to do things. I stopped going when she started to go to work on me as a person. I didn't like that, and it wasn't helpful.

I ditched the therapists when I could not find an acceptable one after the good one I had got a divorce and moved away. I now visit two community groups, one for anger management, and the other for depression. They operate anonymously unless you want to put yourself out there. The depression group is particularly hard to force myself to go to when depression sets in, but the anger management group has saved my life. 

Tagging onto comments above, when you go, be prepared to try out multiple therapists. A few years ago I had a breakdown days after I got a lucrative IT contract. It was an open office and daily standups pushed me over the edge. There was no single moment to be away from anyone else. It pushed my anxiety to the max and I walked from the contract on day three, which made my wife mad, which pushed my anxiety further. It was a pure meltdown.

After weeding through insurance-approved therapists, half were not taking new clients. Finally found a lady that could see me right away. She starts pulling out crystals and essential oils. I'm like 'mam, I am in crisis and about to go for a very long swim'. I left after 20 minutes of the session as she was still trying to get me to smell oils and associate them with feelings. Learn to read a fucking room, lady.

Ironically, the best therapy came the week after when my dad died suddenly. It forced me to deal with everything my mom needed and it made me put myself on hold for a few months. When I got back home after dealing with all that, I found a decent therapist and she helped me by not helping me very much at all. Nice lady, but she was very focused on some childhood trauma and I disagreed. I went to her for about six sessions and was able to dump a lot of feelings out, but when it came time for to help, she just wasn't getting me. Around that time I got a job that was crappy but kept me busy, so I just didn't go back to her.

After actually writing all that out, I suppose I never really got the help but just moved on. Makes me wonder what having a good therapist is like.

I got lucky out of the gate with the first one that (a) took my insurance and (b) returned my phone call.  Didn't bullshit me, and focused mostly on concrete steps that I could take to help dig myself out of the hole.  

Some of it was lifestyle stuff to help break depressive cycles (like: you're depressed and not cleaning your house and your messy house is making you more depressed?  hire a housecleaner, it's very fucking worth it).  Some of it was talking through recent experiences and feelings to help me unpack them -- a big theme for our first month or so was dealing with the fact that I'd spent years being effectively gaslit into not trusting my own perceptions, and that was going to continue making me feeling crazy until I took some time to "reset" and rebuild trust in myself.  We touched on childhood stuff here and there but mostly our sessions were grounded in whatever was going on in my life at that time, and using that to help me learn how to process my feelings better in general.  Eventually I got to a point where I had kinda built up the toolbox I needed and there was less to work through each week, so our sessions got less frequent and eventually stopped, and I've felt significantly less crazy ever since.

IIRC her methodology was cognitive behavioral therapy, which from googling I guess is the "rebranded Stoicism" that Khaldun was kvetching about.  Different things work for different people, but I obviously found it extremely helpful.

CBT I think has some real usefulness, if I could find someone who was sensible about it. What bugs me is just the "I can't change anything but myself so I will let go of the world", which is absolutely fucking fine as Stoicism or Buddhism--as a religion or philosophy--I just don't want it dressed up as medical therapy that doesn't acknowledge where it comes from. And if I'm going to sit with a philosopher or a monk--something I'm quite glad to do if I can find the right one--I want them to know what they are rather than claim an authority that obfuscates what they're working with.

I have trouble reading this thread when I'm anxious or depressed. So I didn't read it for over two years!  :awesome_for_real:

But I'm feeling a lot better and thought I'd throw out  a couple thoughts that might be helpful.

The biggest one is, keep looking till you find a good DOCTOR. In the US at least, your primary care physician should be the quarterback calling the plays for a whole team of specialists. That includes therapists and/or psychiatrists.  You can't really heal a sick body while ignoring a sick mind, that just leads to whack-a-mole symptom chasing.  And vice-versa as well. So your primary needs to be INVOLVED in whatever care you're getting whether chemical or psychiatric, and monitoring its effectiveness and any side effects.  If your doctor is just handing you off to some other specialist to take care of you and isn't interested in and actively monitoring your progress with them, you need a new doctor.

Next, keep trying on the therapists.  Even if you're on meds, a good therapist can make a world of difference.  Don't be afraid to bail on one if they aren't helping you, if they aren't listening to you, or if you just don't like them.  This is someone you need to establish a trust relationship with.  If you've gotten a good primary care doctor, odds are they will be able to recommend someone (usually a group practice) to see. If the first one you get to see there doesn't work out, try the others.  Even in a group practice they are likely to all be completely different from each other.  And provide feedback to your primary care. Again, they should be actively involved in your hunt for what you need!

Now, personal anecdotes. My first breakdown was in 2002 and featured severe depression, to the point where I didn't leave the house for a month at a time (loooong before wfh and pandemic stuff). Therapy didn't help much, other than that one public assistance group therapy I ended up in when I was nearing the point of having myself committed.  Those sessions "helped" by making me realize that a) I was nowhere near the bottom yet, and b) I did NOT want to go there!  I tried 5 or 6 different therapists, learned a lot of the lingo, but didn't get squat useful out of any of them.  Fortunately, meds actually helped a lot. Well, right up until they started making things a lot worse!  :why_so_serious:  But that's another story and the relevant thing is it reinforces the first point: your primary needs to be monitoring this stuff. Oh, and never trust a pill-pusher who is making more money doing "seminars" for the drug company than he is making from his medical practice!  But in the end I got out of the depression hole and was able to rejoin the workforce and eventually survive and even thrive without any meds at all.

My second breakdown occurred like a slow moving train wreck from 2017 through 2021.  Some depression was involved but the primary issue was anxiety.  And it not only basically ended my career because I didn't get it treated soon enough, but it almost killed me through stress-induced (or amplified) illnesses.  Unlike the first time, with the second one I couldn't tolerate most of the meds at all and the few I could either did nothing or left me completely numb.  I wasn't willing to settle for numb, I actually liked my life when I wasn't so freaked out I was soaked in sweat and shaking like a leaf, so I made the commitment to, once again, try to find some legit medical help that wasn't just a pill-pushing shrink or a one-size-fits-all snake-oil peddling therapist. This time I did have a good primary care physician who helped me find an honest to god good therapist.  It didn't come in time to save my career, I got to the point where I was basically unable to function at work anymore and was forced to take early retirement before I could even get started on the counseling (new patients were backlogged 3 months!). But it has helped enormously, both with dealing with the anxiety issues that took me to her in the first place, AND with dealing with the shock of the sudden unexpected change in lifestyle from a competent, productive, busy professional to a pensioner.

As best I can tell from being force-fed it several times now, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy basically boils down to convincing yourself that things aren't as bad as you think they are.  Which might be true for some people, but is frankly bullshit for many others.  But if it's true for you, or if you can con yourself into not worrying about things that actually are worrisome, then I can see it being very helpful.  Of course, so is prayer, meditation, or going on a vacation, for some people at least.

I never tried CBT for my anxiety.  I was working for state government and strangely enough they didn't bat an eye at me carrying around a prescription bottle of Xanax, but if they'd spotted CBT on a random drug test I probably would have lost my job.  And now, while getting stoned actually sounds nice, I don't need it.  I VERY rarely used the Xanax btw.  It worked so well it scared the shit out of me. Like man I could see becoming addicted to that so easily!