I’ve read up enough to know how it manifests itself and I’ve read that cognitive therapy is an effective treatment for some. But I’d like to hear your experience with this condition: When did you realize something was wrong?, How was it diagnosed?, What form of treatment worked for you?, Did you hide it from others?
I suppose this might belong IMHO but I’m looking for factual information, so I’ll post in GQ and mods will move at their discretion.
thx.
I used to have depression but eventually decided I didn’t give a shit whether I did have or not.
Problem solved.
Uhm, thank you?..
Moderator Action
Since this is looking for personal experiences it is better suited to IMHO.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Some years back, a combination of a miscarriage and extreme stress at work caused me to become moderately depressed.
If I had to describe it, it would be like someone threw a wet blanket over me emotionally; where before (and now), I’d get excited and happy about stuff, during that stretch, I didn’t. Everything was just sort of… blah, and I didn’t really see any hope or improvement anywhere. Now I wasn’t the level of depressed that made me sleep 18 hours a day, or suicidal or anything like that. It was like that feeling I’d get after a girl would dump me, except that instead of lasting for a day or two, it never went away.
I didn’t recognize it as depression; at the time I wasn’t so aware of things like that. My wife ended up laying down an ultimatum that I see a therapist. I found a cognitive-behavioral therapist through my insurance, and set up an appointment.
The therapy itself was very interesting. In a nutshell, it focused on being aware of what I was thinking in the moment, and stopping and analyzing those thoughts as to their validity, basis in fact, or just analyzing the actual language I was using in my inner monologue. For example, one thing people do is to use statements like “I should have done X”, or “I should do X”, which is a mistake, because the use of the phrase “should” paints the accomplishment of “X” as a black or white thing- pass or fail, and on past things especially, that sort of thinking sets you up for bitter recriminations and guilt, when in reality, if you’d always phrased it as “I’d love to have done X” or “I’d like to do X”, then it’s not black and white, and there’s no pass/fail aspect- your not having done X or not ever doing X doesn’t become a failure.
CBT is that sort of thing combined with identifying places where you’re possibly comparing yourself unrealistically to others, blaming yourself for things outside of your control and the like, and training yourself to realize when you’re doing that and to evaluate your thoughts and come up with a better way to think about it / better word choice in your internal monologue. We also did some work on more traditional psychological stuff like setting boundaries.
Anyway, it worked like a charm. I went for a few months, and my therapist basically told me that I wasn’t showing the symptoms, and I’d really done well at applying the techniques. Beyond that, I’ve noticed that I’ve internalized some or most of the techniques; I find myself thinking “No… I’d like to have done that, it wasn’t a pass/fail situation.”, for example.
Only because it’s you asking, QS. I had promised myself I wouldn’t discuss it here anymore.
Short version:
Longer version:
To be fair, not strictly depressed. Just as prone to manic rage. Both states are normally brought on by triggers but can also just turn up out of the blue. I did go to my GP in like 2001 and got a prescription for Paxil to help me manage some blues that accompanied a couple failed business ventures, but I didn’t stay on it because it was too much like not being alive–didn’t feel anything. I realized something was seriously wrong with me in late 2004 when my first marriage hit the rocks (you may remember…). During the first separation I got all introspective and started pulling at some threads a couple of my friends had pointed out to me maybe 15-20 years earlier. I had been ignoring the comments but somehow could not forget them. Did some internet research and bipolar disorder seemed like a good fit. Visited a psychologist and after a couple sessions he confirmed the bipolar pigeonhole seemed like the best fit for me. He said I could seek meds from a psychiatrist, or I could do some work on identifying triggers and managing symptoms. I tried meds for a bit but really didn’t like the side effects, one of which was: none of the highs and lows I’d known all my life. I suppose to some extent I became “normal” but I felt dead. So I don’t take meds anymore. Got back together with the wife and decided to give things another try. Turned out, she was a bag of triggers and it ended for good after a few years.
I manage things by always questioning my feelings about everything. I see my emotions as being churned out by an organ that has minimal contact with the rest of my mind. Fortunately, the rest of my mind controls my speech and my actions. So what you get from me is someone who can process information, make decisions, and take action with almost no emotional consideration. In real life, I’m visibly impaired in this respect. I tend to avoid situations where I might be the focus of attention, even positive stuff, and downplay any successes I see at work or at home. Mania is triggered by positive attention, depression is triggered by anything as innocuous as constructive criticism, and rage is triggered almost exclusively by my son’s symptoms.
Because of how I carry myself I’m often seen as cold and a bit robotic. So I can’t really hide it from others, not without giving an explanation. People who work with me know my deal, and seem to accept it. How I manage things now, and how things were before, have pretty much hobbled my career, and I’m ok with that–I have no business managing people. Wife 2.0 climbed aboard despite full disclosure and she has been magnificent, especially with helping me get along with my son. She can sense when either of us is about to escalate and steps in to separate us before things get hot. I’d probably have lost my kids but for her.
So…what jezzaOZ said: I have emotions flying around in my head, but I ignore them. Athletes work through physical pain, I work through destructive emotions.
We’ve had so many threads about this; you can look them up.
Mine was a combination of medicine and then eventual acceptance with it.
I was put on a combination of Citalopram and Busparone. These evened me out a bit to the point where I didn’t really have emotions anymore, but throughout that process I just looked at the things that made me depressed and dealt with them via cold-hearted logic.
That’s pretty much what I do now. I just know that I have things that make me depressed, I have things that set me off so I try to avoid those things…but I also know that mistakes happen and sometimes I’ll have an…episode, I guess we’ll call it.
Also I just wanna say that I absolutely HATED therapy. I was forced to go to it because it was contingent with getting my pills (from college), and I hated every second if it. Telling someone my problems didn’t make me feel better because I let them out, it made me feel worse because I was saying all the thigns I hated about myself so I walked away feeling worse. I don’t mean to say it’s not something you or anyone should do, but I wanna say that its not the end-all-be-all and if it doesn’t work for you don’t feel bad
Thanks, TGSJ, and everyone.
I guess this topic has been covered here a plenty. Think I’ll do a little more research on my own and ask the mods to close this thread.
I’ve suffered from depression for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been quite open about it as appropriate while trying not to get moany about it.
I’ve had a bit of non-CBT therapy which helped a little but basically I just put up with it as I’ve learned to “power through” the pain. Of which there is a lot sometimes and the “powering through” process is exhausting and it’s probably not very good for me in the long run, but it works in its own limited fashion.
Ohhh boy, where to begin. I started an off/on battle with depression when I was 12. I told nobody.
Left home at 17 and entered 3 years of personal hell. You know how when you’re having a hard time you’re told to ask for help? Yeah right. I reached out for help a couple of times - I called Kids Help Phone once and the guy essentially just laughed at me for being a Christian. Called a free counselling centre once only to be told that their services were only for people with “real problems” - ie. trauma. (I didn’t have insurance at the time and was too poor to pay for counselling.)
At 18 and tried antidepressants for the first time and have tried various types at different times over the years, all with god-awful side-effects ranging from excruciating chest pain to weight gain and fatigue. I missed classes in college (1999-2001) because I couldn’t get out of bed. I told nobody what was wrong because I felt that I had nothing to be depressed “about” and nobody would care anyway, other people have way worse problems than I do.
Last time I tried an antidepressant was around 2005-07 I think. Long story short, it turned me into a fat zombie. I am naturally very thin and this medication made me gain about 15 pounds. I developed a muffin-top and puffy cheeks. I would go home after work … sit down on the couch … wake up 3 hours later, with just enough time to walk my dog, eat dinner and go to bed. Where I’d get brutal night sweats. When I went to the doctor pinching my side-fat going “THIS IS NOT COOL” she said that the antidepressant can cause weight gain I thought “That’s it, no more” and weaned myself off it. Still told nobody.
To look at me you wouldn’t know that I’m depressed because I hide it very well. But every day is a struggle. I know I should work out in the morning (the only time I consistantly have every day) but I haven’t been able to drag myself downstairs to my workout room in months. I finally researched various antidepressants, went to the doctor (not my regular doctor, this one was filling in for holidays) and said “I’m ready to try an antidepressant again.”
As soon as she said “Well what do you have to be depressed about?” I knew I wasn’t getting any help that day. Because that’s the point, I literally don’t have anything to be depressed about. I am living my dream life. I have the best husband anyone could ever ask for. I have a secure, well-paying job. I can travel whenever I want. There is absolutely no reason for this deep-inside sadness and feelings of inadequacy. She asked when it started and I said “It’s been on and off since I was 12…” and she was all “What happened when you were 12? Were you abused? What?” No, I’ve never been abused. I said I know I need to work out in the mornings but just can’t. She told me I need self-discipline. She asked when it started this time. I said it usually gets worse in the winter… she goes “It’s SAD. You’ll be fine in two weeks.”
sigh. Okay then, no help for me. Because I guess you have to be suicidal to be taken seriously and no way in hell would I do that to myself.
So yes, I suppose you could call this “high functioning depression.”
Wow, that’s seriously unprofessional.
Yes, I’ve had that issue too. It sucks to be in a situation where you’re trying to get better before things get bad but you have to let things get bad in order to get the help to make you better.
Seconding Soylent Juicy’s excellent description, this is me exactly. I tried the medicated-fat-zombie path and said no, the minor increase to smile frequency just wasn’t worth it. If my role at humanity’s party is “anti-social brooder”, then so be it.
I function much much better than I used to, and that is mostly self-discipline now. I did actually stay in bed through a finals week in college just because I didn’t want to deal with the monotony of the day. I’m better at recognizing the signs and knowing my limits now.
The only problem with self-discipline is that it is just so damn exhausting. The description of athletic powering through the pain is spot-on. I have to tell myself constantly that every play of my life doesn’t have to be with the effort of a game-winning touchdown. I can selectively half-ass in the right context, and the world will still keep spinning.
It took a long time for me to recognize that I was depressed. Even when I’d been seeing a therapist for over a year, I kept insisting that while I knew I wwas going through some things, depression really wasn’t one of them.
The reason I thought this was because in my mind, I didn’t act like a depressed person. I was the complete opposite of the stereotypes. I wasn’t sleeping too much or crying too much or eating too much. I was productive at work. I wasn’t suffering from mysterious illnesses or pains. I seemed “normal” to me.
Yet there was a constant dread with everything. I dreaded the weekends, because the weekend represented huge spanses of emptiness and boredom. I’d spend hours walking around the hot city like a zombie, with absolutely no destination or purpose. I would have catatonic spells too, as well as psychomotor retardation, but I would convince myself that it was just me being “crazy”. I dreaded spending money, partly because I perceived myself as being impoverished but also because everything seemed pointless, wasteful. I dreaded talking to people because I couldn’t stand the fakeness of small talk. (Indeed, I know I am having a depressive spell when I have visions of cutting out my tongue). I dreaded doing anything outside of my normal routine, because that meant having to think too much. If it wasn’t something easy and 100% pleasurable, I didn’t want to have any part of it.
In retrospect, I wasn’t able to see that my “opposite of depression” was actually the signs of melancholic depression. The psychomotor stuff was the clearest sign. I didn’t have an appetite. I was emotionally numb. I was anxious. Depression is different in everyone. It’s not just sitting on the couch, crying over bonbons.
The thing that made me realize that I needed help was when I started having suicidal ideation all the time. Every cross beam or dangling rope made me think of hanging myself. I’d have flashes of me cutting into my wrists or jumping off of a bridge. It’s been a long time since my mind has turned on this playlist, but I still remember how peaceful the thoughts made me. I think part of the reason why it was so hard to convince me that I was depressed was that the suicidal thoughts felt so good. I didn’t want anyone taking them away.
I don’t really know what fixed things. Therapy has been awesome, so perhaps that’s it. I did take some drugs, so maybe that did the trick. Or maybe the depression just resolved itself as the quality of my life improved. Like, I wanna say a turning point came when I moved out of the crappy apartment into a house, when I started doing yoga, and when I filled my leisure time with my little business selling my artwork. I definitely think being less frugal has helped my well-being a lot. But I don’t know if that cured my depression, or if it’s more like not being depressed made me less frugal.
I’ve struggled with depression for a long time. I am not sure when it started but, at some point, I was full of self loathing and thoughts of suicide. I never made an attempt, but I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I also didn’t say a word to anyone about it, except my best friend, for a long time. In college, I finally opened up to a friend of mine after I broke up with my boyfriend at the time. I was in a dark place and things were getting worse. I started dating that friend and, after a summer of long distance relationshipping, he also broke up with me. That’s when I started to spiral even further downwards. I obsessed over my thoughts of inadequacy and worthlessness and contacted my now exboyfriend about it constantly. Finally, in October, he talked to a mutual friend and they staged a sort of intervention. They wanted me to get help. I felt betrayed.
See, up to that point, I truly thought that what I was feeling was normal. I thought everyone was sad for no reason and that they thought about killing themselves all the time. I really did not know it was not normal.
I lashed out at them for showing their concern. They were worried about me so they called the cops that night. It was when I looked out into the parking lot of my apartment and saw the police coming for me that I realize I needed help. And I got it. Through the health services at my school, I got therapy and Prozac and Wellbutrin.
The therapy helped me relearn how to behave in relationships with people. I learned how to not rely on one person for my everything. I also learn how to evaluate my thoughts. Drugs helped me find happiness again. Before, the world was shades of grey. Afterward, it was like the color had come back into the world. The sun felt warm again. The grass was green and the air smelled wonderful.
I did experience fatigue and sleep problems with Prozac alone so we added Wellbutrin for energy. And when I moved more during the day, I found it much easier to sleep at night. I have lived without the drugs since then but I recent asked for Prozac again. I try not to take it as a personal failing.
Glad the mods didn’t close this thread. I’m reading all your responses with a new appreciation for something I have little first hand experience with but something that I need to understand more about in order to be able to help my son.
Everyone’s illness is different in personal ways, and the treatment will be different in personal ways. If I can offer some advice from a non-doctor perspective, I would say that one of the big steps in understanding depression is to read Soylent Juicy’s doctor story and remember that while depression can be triggered by events (personal setbacks, someone being mean to them, etc) and exacerbated by various things (poor diet, not enough sublight, chaotic surroundings), it’s not about being depressed *about *something. Objectively my life is pretty good - I’ve got a loving family, good job, nice place to live, etc - and yet I still carry with me this horrible feeling like trying to breathe through a heavy wet blanket. It’s not a reaction to the outside world; it’s part of who I am like any disease or disability would be.
I don’t know how easy it is for someone without depression to understand what that’s like - certainly I’ve had a heck of a time trying to get my own mother to grasp it (although to her credit she’s been making an effort to understand). But these might help.
Whew - glad to know I am not the only one who failed at therapy 
I got told pretty much the same stuff!
I haven’t taken any anti-depressants yet but I do take a beta blocker to slow down my heart. I was having problems with my heart racing and my doc couldn’t find anything wrong physically so we finally decided it was mental. It was anxiety. But I’m too depressed to really show signs of anxiety so I just bottle it up and it makes my heart race.
I do force myself to work out and I have gotten it down to a routine (I only swim, because it’s the only work out I enjoy right now). And my life is boring and routine. And some times I give myself a pat on the back for doing dishes or moving empty boxes from one room to another or opening mail. But I’ve learned to be ok with my life. It’s not going to get any better, really, but it’s not going to get worse.
Do any of you guys who deal with “functional depression” feel like it would be annoying or too hard to be “cured”? To become one of those people who gets dressed and goes out and does things and has a full schedule and eats and cooks and joins things and stuff? I feel like I’ve become so “ok” with how my life is now that I would kind of hate myself if I wasn’t depressed. Depression is kind of comfy, and easy.
Aware of what will hurt you
You’re prepared to remain this way
So sad yet safe with your afflictions
Afraid to start a brand new day
Sounds kind of pathetic stated like that, but between low energy and no great desire to confirm the self-worthlessness you’ve long suspected, it’s a dead on balls accurate description of depressive inertia. To be cured of the only thought process you’ve ever known would be to become a different person. What’s not to be afraid of?
My depression came about through a job loss, death of my mother, and a whole bunch of financial reversals. The biggest problem for me is the loss of sleep-which makes things worse. I am able to function, but I have lost interest in lots of things-like eating (I lost 20 pounds). that was not such a bad thing, but i also dread the future-i fear more things will go wrong.