Because people on here know I’m fighting with an on and off depression right now (right now it’s on). Feel free to visit my previous threads to get the whole story.
Right now I feel like I don’t belong, or I belong to the wrong things. As a music teacher…I feel on the outside…I’m probably too deep in my dance hobby…it should just be a hobby. I don’t feel like I’m a typical male…more yin than yang. I live alone…and feel alone. Went on a dateish thing last night…was with a freind…I think we were both trying to decide if it could be something more. It didn’t. I felt kinda rejected…all my hobbies put me in the spotlight. I want to shut my door and not go outside and just read and do things for myself. I want to hermit. And I really don’t want to go to work tomorrow…I probably will.
So I feel like my life is a mess…maybe it isn’t…maybe I’m just distorting it through a depressed lens. I’ve remade my life a few times…but now I feel like there’s no point to trying to change things again…I’ll just end up back here. Help. Did you change your life? Get out of a state that sounds similar to mine?
I mean it, I just want to be alone and hermit. Maybe just be with my parents.
Depression isn’t really an issue I deal with anymore. I had a lot of issues with melancholy when I was younger, but they stemmed from the fact that I wasn’t facing various traumas in my past. So like a bunch of bags of garbage that I hid in a closet, they stunk up the whole house. When I got into therapy and worked on the issues, the depression mostly lifted. I really don’t think I suffer from depression anymore, at least the last few years it hasn’t been an issue. However once I started therapy, the depression was replaced by a sense of genuine sadness that I had to deal with for over a year. That wasn’t fun, arguably it was more unpleasant than depression. However even though both were low moods, they felt different. The depression felt like it came out of nowhere, the sadness felt like it was a more authentic feeling due to facing past traumas. Eventually the sadness lifted, but it took a year or two.
I’ve had good luck with my PTSD also via propranolol therapy and brainspotting (which is like EMDR, but it worked better than EMDR).
Anyway, my quality of life is better than in the past. But I have no idea how long it’ll last. Mental illness can come back with a vengeance, and I’m always wary of it. It seems like you can do 10 things right and 1 thing wrong, and that 1 wrong thing will have more impact than the 10 things you do right.
What does your therapist say about an anti-depressant for you, Quasi? If you’re on one I think it’s not working.
By “hermit” do you mean a few days or for an indefinite period? I’d think a few days would be ok as maybe you need to recharge your batteries? Or would isolation push you further into depression?
More questions than answers. You’re a good guy. I hope you get a handle on all this.
No anti-depressent. I refused. I’m so against it…but like everything in my life I could reconsider. I’ve been pretty ok for the last 2 weeks…I want to be strong on my own. Right now I just want an in person friend to listen to me and to maybe cry. I just don’t feel loved or cared for by anyone. I went and gave blood last week, and visited my family on mothers day. I found some articles I thought freinds might be interested in and messaged them. I bought my friend drinks. Went running with a friend on the weekend. I’m trying to do something nice for others every day. And I still feel unloved.
Ya know, the wife and I have been on brain meds…took awhile to find the right cocktail, but both of us are much better for it…if you broke your arm, it’d be silly to swear off casts.
That’s your depression talking. It’s not a mind-over-matter condition; it’s a chemical imbalance in your brain. It’s* physica*l. Please consider talking to your therapist about medication. If you don’t like one, there are a bunch of others. If there’s a possibility of you being happy isn’t it worth a try? This unhappiness has gone on for too long.
Does it mess with your brain? Yes…there are several medications that can be applied in several ways that work to change the chemical makeup of your mind…in my case it took BOTH medication and CBT (Cognitive Based Therapy) to help my mind unlearn habits that were unhealthy.
It can take time to arrive at the right mix of the right medications, but when that happens, the results are very good.
Please do. I’ve known two people who were publically on mood meds and it was quite amazing how every single time someone asked “:dubious: did you take your meds today?” it turned out they hadn’t.
There is one difference between those and the ibuprofen I take during my periods: one is taken only if your back is trying to divorce the rest of you. Both are linked to medical issues which “one does not speak of” (or did not speak of until very recently, right now there’s ads trying to make periods “sparkly” all over non-sports TV).
In my experience, no, it will not dull you or dumb you down, if something like that is a concern.
My husband had an experience where the first one he tried just made him irritable and the second one has turned his emotional life around. In other words, sometimes it can take a little while to find the right medication for you.
To me, an Internet friend, you come across as clinically depressed. I would urge you to try an anti-depressant if that has been suggested. Even suggest it if it hasn’t. It doesn’t make you a failure for needing one, anymore than needing antibiotics to fight an infection makes you a failure. You are going through a hard time right now, and this is something that might help you manage it.
I went on meds too, after many years of resisting them and finally being tired out and frustrated enough to try. I’m on a low dosage and it doesn’t make me happy all the time, but it takes the edge off enough that I can see things more clearly and have the capacity to work through negative emotions.
The side effects will depend on the meds and how they work for you. It may seem like a chore to have to try them and find the right one, but you will have the strength to do it. For me, my dreams a more vivid, and I do find myself with a less strong memory, but I compensate by making lists, etc.
I also don’t mean to “push” pills; they are one tool available to you. Some people just use them temporarily to get through a tough time.
Inspiring? I will say that in 1997 I was so overwhelmed and sick with panic attacks that I didn’t think I would make it. I am still here and have learned a lot since then.
Side effects:
Side effects may vary depending on the medicine you take, but common ones include:
Nausea.
Dry mouth.
Loss of appetite.
Diarrhea or constipation.
Sexual problems (loss of desire, erection problems).
Headaches.
Trouble falling asleep, or waking a lot during the night.
Weight gain.
Feeling nervous or on edge.
Feeling drowsy in the daytime.
I’ve been sad before, and have had long stretches of happiness, I’ll exhaust all other options before this. I have none of these symptoms.
Yes. An unequivocal yes. You think BETTER. It’s not happy pills. I started with Prozac 18 years ago and almost immediately (a few days) I found I was thinking better, more coherently, and in a more-linear fashion. Ritalin helped even more; I have a co-worker offering to talk to my doctor about my transformation.
Fuck side effects. Mine were a loss of 3D vision, for some reason, and my crap is oranger. The effects are much more worth it. I rarely ideate suicide and, shit, I HAVEN’T HAD AN UPSET STOMACH FOR EIGHTEEN FUCKING YEARS!
Treat this as you would any other undesired condition. It is no bad reflection on you.
I took Paxil for a couple of years while my long term marriage was falling apart. It did not fuzz up my thinking like I feared, I was just calmer and more rational in dealing with my problems. It did not make my problems go away, it just made me more capable of dealing with them. There was still pain and sorrow dealing with the unexpected changes in my life, but they weren’t so overwhelming.
Quasimodal, I know you are afraid of side effects, but you should be even more afraid of wasting your life being depressed. That is a much more likely outcome. You might get no side effects at all. I am willing to bet the only side effect you are actually worried about are the “sexual difficulties” ones, anyway.
Ok, the inspirational part: I am enjoying my life as never before!
My music selection is pretty stale… can you recommend a few “seeds”? No, I’m not telling you what I like, the idea is that you tell me what you like and I try it out.
If a friend was diagnosed with diabetes, and wanted to fight it by being strong instead of insulin, would you think he was an idiot? Depression is a real illness. Taking medication isn’t a weakness.
Don’t be a schmuck. Depression is a real illness. Treat it. Medication can help. No one with an ounce of sense will judge you for taking something. If you have a headache, do you take an aspirin? If your soul hurts, a round of Prozac or such might help.
Depression is a real illness. It can kill you. Treatment isn’t a weakness. Really.
Just casually observing that the common theme of all your threads and the basic root of all your problems more than anything is that you are lonely. You almost sound like you have Borderline Personality Disorder:
This is just armchair psychology, I could be completely wrong. It seems like a difficult thing to manage. But maybe its worth looking into, I apologize if you already have some other diagnosis and I’m totally off the mark.
I feel bad for people who have real depression on a daily basis, Its not something I understand cause my brain just doesn’t function the same way as a depressive’s I only ever have fleeting depression for a day or two. Exercise and playing music seem to help me anyway but you sound like you already do those things.
Let’s not diagnose a hypothesized psychological disorder over the internet, please.
Quasimodal, medication may very well help, or it may not. You may experience dramatic side effects, or small ones, or none. I personally found the benefits to knocking off the worst of the anxiety and depression to be small but noticeable, but the effects on cognition and intestional issues pronounced, so I stopped taking them as soon as I could stand it. The effectiveness and side effects vary so widely from person to person it is impossible to tell without trying them and sticking with it for at least a few weeks. In the end, what helps most is getting to the root cause, whether it is a traumatic event, or a neglected childhood, or an innate chemical dysfunction in the brain, exposing it for what it is, and dealing with in the method most effective. It isn’t weakness to admit pain or failure to accept help. It’s a process, and there isn’t going to be an obvious switch or immediate cure. But if you work at it and try out the toolbox of treatment options available to you, you’ll figure out what works, and the dull grey emptiness you feel now will go away and be replaced by a sense of normality and well-being (or at least as normal and well as anyone feels).
I don’t mean to pry too deeply into your psyche over the medium of a message board, but if you feel as I did in a similar situation, I strongly suspect that what bothers you the most is the lack of control you have over your own emotional state; that you should be happy and satisfied, and nothing you can do seems to get you there. But that isn’t your fault; it’s the chemistry of your brain and (perhaps) the training of your unconscious mind in conflict with itself. It may get better on its own with time, or in talking out your concerns, or with medication, but pick something and keep trying at it until it works.
A side effect of not taking psych meds can be death.
I struggled for years thinking that ‘resorting’ to some kind of meds made me weak when in reality, learning to love myself and giving my body the tools to get well made me so much stronger than before.
