I had mild-to-moderate postpartum depression after my first two children. I was not treated for it, and it eventually lifted on its own. (Well, sort of.) With my third pregnancy, I began experiencing severe depression in about month 3. Throughout the pregnancy, I had better days and worse days, but no days I would really call “good.” After I gave birth, I had about 3 good days and then sank back into severe depression worse even than anything I had experienced during the pregnancy. It was bleak, and terrifying. Some thoughts I can remember thinking from that time: “Nothing in life is good.” “I don’t like my children.” “This family would be better off without me.” And so on.
I went to my family doctor, who prescribed me Zoloft, and shortly afterward I started cognitive-behavioral therapy. Both the medication and the CBT helped me immensely. I really felt like I had my life back, or at least an idea of how to start to get my life back. I’m honestly not sure what would have happened without the meds. Nothing good. ETA: I discontinued medication after about 10 months and haven’t been on it since. I am also not in therapy anymore either.
What to expect if you suffer from severe depression:
phouka and nikonikosuru’s posts above are heartbreakingly vivid and resonant descriptions of the experience. Here are a couple of other things.
Think of the people in your life that you’re really close to, that you really trust. Most of those people will be gone before this is over*. It’s not their fault, they just can’t handle it. If you try to put on a happy face, they’ll still know something’s wrong, and they’ll freak out. And they’ll start to resent you, thinking “I’m trying to help, why doesn’t he feel better? Doesn’t he appreciate it?” That way, at a time when you can least afford to be alone, you are more isolated than ever.
What else… oh yeah, your sex life as you knew it is over. So you’ll have to start getting used to that. The medication will neuter you, and if you don’t take it, the depression itself will drain your desire for everything including sex.
*It is never over.
This is almost exactly what it was like. I even described it to a friend as like being “stuck inside a bell jar of filth”. I could see out, but I was isolated from the rest of humanity, and everything I saw was tainted. Al, I genuinely hope you never get to understand it. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
I’ve had two bouts of major depression, the first undiagnosed - I thought I was just very very sad indeed after breaking up with the love of my life, but in retrospect it was far worse than that. In addition to the symptoms brilliantly conveyed by phouka, I had near-total insomnia for nearly three months, was unable to eat, had an inability to gain enjoyment from anything whatsoever, and unpleasant thoughts dominated every waking minute for six months without reprieve. I wasn’t suicidal, but I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up, and even at one point thought I was dying, so wrote a letter to my lost love apologising for fucking up her life by being dead.
I never had any treatment and eventually recovered to a dysthimic state.
The second bout was ten years later, also after a breakup, same symptoms but felt far worse than the first (though there’s a good chance that my mind just forced me to forget the first one because it was so unbelievably awful), which eventually lifted to ‘atypical depression’, which has been with me for the two and a half years since. It sucks but is infinitely bearable in comparison, and at times I can be lifted completely out of it by positive life events.
I eventually realised the danger is there that major depression will happen again when I have another traumatic life event, so sought CBT to give me the skills to cope, should that eventuality occur. I’m still undergoing treatment. Not sure how much good it’s doing. Never tried any pharmaceutical treatments.
I saw a therapist when I was in the middle of getting dumped by my wife. She (my therapist) had said it was a pretty good bet that I was clinically depressed at the time, but I was never officially diagnosed and I was never medicated on account of it.
I’m sure I’ve suffered from certain levels of depression at different times and to differing degrees throughout my life, but it feels a little disengenuous to say I was treated for depression with therapy. I was treated for being emotionally crushed which seemed a lot like depression.
this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say/think. The problem is:
that you immediately ignore that lack of understanding to jump to erroneous judgements about people who do live with it.
It’s perfectly fine to not understand something, especially something like this that you may never have experienced (as much as I hate to invoke the “you don’t know, man, YOU WEREN’T THERE!!” argument.) But it’s crass and ignorant to pass judgement on people who do experience it.
I don’t understand the distinction between poll options like:
I have been treated for depression with psychotherapy/talk therapy in the past, but not currently.
and
In the past I have been treated for depression with talk therapy and alternative treatment.
It’s the “not currently” that throws me: is it implied that the second option is supposed to be “not currently” too? That would make the difference in combination of therapies, rather than when the treatent occured. I can’t think of what the difference is between in the past and in the past but not currently would be…perhaps in the case of the latter one is still depressed but not getting treatment?
Anyway, I did talk therapy from ages six to seven when my grandmother was dying of cancer (and then died). I don’t remember it very well.
I suffered through anxiety related depression for four months. I didn’t treat it with medication unless cognac counts as medication.
I used to be like Al Bundy, with no real understanding of what depression was like. Now I know. It’s terrible. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. If you can’t tell whether you’re depressed - you’re not depressed.
The scariest part is how everything that you used to rely on for instant gratification stops gratifying you. Things like chocolate, coffee, and sex all stop being useful. Normal people at least get to go on a cycle where they can eat chocolate and that will cheer them up for a little while before they feel the consequences. Depressed people get no cycle. You try, but the boost of happiness never comes. You only feel bloated after eating chocolate. Dirty after sex. All regular coffee might as well be decaf. It’s a craving for gratification that nothing will satisfy.
It’s amazing how something like not feeling good after a chocolate chip cookie can be so traumatic. You rely on cookies bringing you happiness all your life and then one day they don’t.
I ran into the 100 character limitation, and has to edit some of the longer options. I had them all typed out with consistent wording, but when I pasted them in, some of the longer ones wouldn’t take, so I edited them on the fly. Sorry for any confusion.
The difference between the two you noted is one is talk therapy (not currently), and one is talk therapy and alternative treatment (not currently).
This is what happened to me with exercise. I used to get a good endorphin buzz, albeit it use to take 45 minutes of hardcore cardio. I’m not talking a simple jog but a “omg I’m about to throw up but I WILL keep going for that rush at the end” kind of work out.
Then it took an hour of hardcore cardio. Now I can’t get it at all.
It makes me sad because I really enjoyed that 15 minute feeling of wellbeing. It was like the cherry on top of exercising. I still exercise now but it’s mostly because of the anxiety giving me that nudge and saying “Hey, you’re gonna feel guilty alllll dayyyy if you don’t do your workouts.”
The thing is, it certainly doesn’t feel irrational.
Even as someone who has studied neurology, and knows that depression is something we can even image (with certain SPECT and PET scans), when it comes to my own depression, dammit, it’s different for me, everything really is pointless, dismal etc…
Been on pills since I was about ten or so. My doctor just discovered that the Zoloft had stopped working, and had possibly not been working for the last year or two (which explains a lot). I’ve dropped out of school for the semester and now I’m sitting here at home while my body gets over things, after which I can maybe get some new medicine.
It’s puzzling to me that depression on the cognitive level would be treated on the organic level. To me that’s like the opposite of treating a broken leg with talk therapy. But someone in a different thread (Qadgop?) explained how it’s not that crazy.
My last girlfriend, who always seemed cheerful, was on anti-depressants since her divorce. That seemed really strange to me. Just get over it, already! But apparently the divorce almost destroyed her, and the doctor apparently thought medication was the way to go.
This is one of the things that cognitive-behavioral therapy helped me with. When I’d get into these negative spirals of, “Everything sucks, people dislike me, the world is a miserable place,” I could use some of the techniques I learned in CBT to identify that this was irrational, and pull myself out of it at least somewhat. Not simple or easy, and it’s still a work in progress, but it’s a major improvement from where I started. (To be fair, I no longer suffer from clinical depression, but I learned this stuff when I did, and it helped then too.)
I currently see a psychologist once a week, and a neuropsychiatrist once a month just for a med check.
My depression is weird. It doesn’t affect my energy or appetite (although the meds have done a number on both). It doesn’t make me sad or burst into tears. But it does make me suicidal and intensely so. At first it starts off with me thinking, with relief, how “it” will all be over soon. Then I start “seeing” myself hanging from crossposts, tree branches, and even doorknobs. I’ll start doodling nooses in the corner of my papers in staff meetings. There’s always a bit of relief associated with these morbid images.
Then I get this sucking, gnawing hopeless feeling. Nothing matters. The world is fake. Nothing is real. I go through the motions of life and I do so successfully, but inside I feel completely hollowed out and numb. Like I’m a dead robot.
I have to rely on my doctor to tell me when I’m not depressed, because I’m not a good arbiter apparently. I have told her repeatedly that the suicidal thoughts will probably never go away since I don’t resist them, but she insists that she can’t give me a clean bill of health until they go away. I’ve had brief spells when the thoughts are gone, but then something (known or unknown) triggers them and they return. I don’t think drugs will ever fix this particular problem, but I try to be a good patient and take the meds prescribed to me anyway. They’re helping other problems I have, though, and that’s making the depression seem less important.
I’ve been depressed since entering middle school, suffering bullying, and having bad parents. A bout with alcoholism in my 20’s. Frequent anxiety attacks. A good measure of OCD. Insomnia. Sucks to be me, though when really stressed I get anorexic, and at least I lose some weight! I took Paxil for several years in my 40’s and it sort of flattened me out. It did not make me ‘happy’. Example: confronted with a sad or happy situation and expected to react, I didn’t really “feel” anything, I would have to exert myself to think of, and elucidate, a proper response. I weaned myself off Paxil because frankly it stopped working and made me tired and I gained weight. Also, my doctor, an overworked GP drone, was a total asshole and I would have to be carried by stretcher into his office if I was ever to see him again. Right now I deal with all of this by drinking a hella lot of coffee in the morning, and checking off my ‘to-do’ list for the day (exerting some kind of control). Then at the end of the day I can sit down and relax, knowing I’ve gotten through another day without being a complete loser. … Wish exercise would help me, all it does is wear me out and I’m exhausted and STILL can’t sleep through the night, or wake up in a cold sweat with an anxiety attack (which wears off eventually - can’t have a dark night of the soul when the sun is shining and there are things to get busy with). … Depression sucks harder than just about anything. It’s like dragging around a cold wet gray blanket over your shoulders, and no, you CAN’T just cast it aside.
Recently went through a short but intense relationship that she ended just because her ex questioned her mentioning me on Facebook. We had made some plans, both short and long term and I was on cloud 9. When she told me she needed time to herself and that I should start dating others, I lost it. My step daughter suggested professional help so I did. I am doing much better and have become very popular on Match.com. One or two emails a day and a couple of dates in the works.
