Normally, I would not address the subject of clinical depression in the BBQ Pit. But for reasons which I won’t go into, I am posting here so that everyone interested will feel free to say exactly what they think.
I originally composed this for another thread and for the purpose of offering some insight into the mental illness which I and many others here have, but that thread was closed.
I have decided to post this as it was originally written, including some personal comments that may not make sense to some of you reading.
I would add to this original composition that depression is sometimes seen as a character weakness to those who do not understand. It is not a matter of will power or of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Very often it is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain – and is “related” to Parkinson’s Disease in that way. It is not a matter of an “attitude adjustment” – your “adjuster” is broken.
It is sometimes a terminal illness. The more it is ignored, the more likely that is to happen. Take people seriously when they talk about suicide. You may think that they are just trying to get attention, but often it is a cry for help that needs attention. Also, sometimes a person can kill themselves accidentally when making a suicidal gesture.
Some of the symptoms of depression are
a change in sleeping habits – either difficulty going to sleep, staying asleep or sleeping too much
recent weight gain or loss
feelings of hopelessness that last more than two or three weeks
a lack of energy
There are other symptoms that a good google search should be able to locate. These are the symptoms that I often have and so they are the ones I remember. I also have problems with concentration. Often a person who is depressed angers easily.
Strangely enough, you can have many bouts of clinical depression and still not recognize it for what it is. Every part of your life may seem much more dismal than it actually is because your sense of reality becomes a little distorted.
One out of every ten people will have depression at sometime in their lives. One out of four families will be affected by it. I hope that someone will find this information helpful. I am not a doctor and if I have said anything that is in error, I welcome correction.
Just don’t ask why this is in the pit. It is not a happy story.
Just to add my voice, the symptoms that were diagnosed as major depression in 1995 are symptoms I’d been dealing with since I was seven years old; they made highschool nearly unsurvivable for me. And they still, despite medication, make me nearly unemployable.
Depression is a very real thing and not a character weakness. Like AIDS is a nearly perfect disease in that the first thing it attacks is the body’s disease fighting mechanism, depression “attacks” that part of the brain with which we deal with stress and . . . depression.
This is a very important point, I found, and I believe this is normal, that being long term depressed was very unlike the ‘mood depressions’ you would get whe something goes wrong. The long term depression being without a known cause seemed like reality was just unpleasant. It is hard to say you are depressed since you do not feel that you are reacting to something depressing. Instead reality seems somewhat nasty and you feel you react appropriately to it. You can see others about you who seem to act the same way and others around you who seem to be happy. Those who seem to be happy are the ones who seem to be psychologically floored, you believe that they simply do not have a good understanding of the world, that it is they who are living a blinkered existance. If is therefore very difficult to make the first step of seeking help, since you are not the one who needs help according to your depression-damaged world view.
Cheers, Bippy
Sometimes I think of depression as a disease of time. When I’m having a “flareup,” all thoughts of time are distorted and overwhelming. I can’t do laundry because suddenly I’m so sensitive, almost like an allergy, to the time involved: to do laundry means gathering the dirty clothes; then you have to sort them; then you have to put the first load in; then you have to wait for it to finish; then you have to put it in the dryer; then you have to wait for THAT to finish; then you have to get them out; and THEN you still have to fold the damn things. And THEN–and then and then and THEN–you have to do the whole damn thing all over again in a few days. It’s SO much easier just to take a nap. The thought of going to the bank unrolls in my mind this tortuous process of finding my keys, finding my coat, walking to the bus stop–what will I think of while I walk?–waiting for a bus, getting on the bus, getting off the bus, walking to the bank–more time spent with myself–waiting in line at the bank, walking back to the bus stop–I can’t be left to my imagination–waiting for the bus, sitting on the bus, walking back home, walking up the stairs . . . it’s SO much easier just to take a nap.
lissener very interesting points you make about time, I had never thought of it that way. I find that things seem to arrange themselves into some sort of giant puzzle, where I need to find just the right piece to move and then everything else falls into place. I know I even enjoy cleaning my appartment, but I often find I cannot do it, somehow though time is available, it is not the right time to be using cleaning the appartment. I find I have to invite a friend over maybe for tommorow evening, then I find I can use the time to clean the appartment. But if the friend isn’t invited somehow that time isn’t allowed to be used in cleaning the appartment.
I used to spend a lot of time playing highly involved computer games, as that allowed me to use up huge ammounts of time without having to think about the time I was using.
I guess this all sounds wierd, hell it is wierd.
Cheers, Bippy
Zoe, lissener, Bippy: Excellent points, all. I find that, to someone who has not experienced it, it’s impossible to describe unless they’re truly willing to understand, to step inside your world and descend to its depths for a while. Some people are too afraid of the challenge to their comfortable assumptions this descent entails, but who could blame them, really.
Yes, exactly. And can you see how this would be incomprehensible to someone who never went through it? Even if they manage to wrap their minds around the fact that merely being alive and conscious is painful, it’s hard for them to understand the pervasive effects of that kind of flipped-over mode of existence.
Since this is a thread of random comments, I want to say something about “recovery”. It’s not like recovery from in injury. I guess it’s more like recovery from alcoholism or drug addiction. A person who suffers from clinical depression or a similar mood disorder is prone to certain types of moods under certain circumstances. The moods go away, but the tendency usually does not. This means that treatment can go on indefinitely. There are certain “maintenance” things I have to do for myself, such as taking medication and seeing a therapist. I hope I get to a point someday where I don’t have to do these things, but I recognize the possibility that I may not.
I think of it not as a recovery as from an addiction but as a maintenance effort similar to diabetes or other metabolic imbalances.
One of the pieces that can tend to aggravate the downward spiral is actually people trying to “cheer you up.” No matter what they do, it doesn’t work, because there isn’t anything particular that you’re sad or anxious or afraid about. But there efforts magnify that there are things out there that other people are happy about, that you should be happy about, but you can’t. Making it even worse is when you remember that once you were able once to enjoy them.
Tiredness and apathy, mixed together, make a rather potent formula for going a month and not doing much but sitting/laying there and eating, or not even doing that. And then you think to yourself “Man, I should really do something” but you don’t care enough to, and you’re so tired, both of which mire you even deeper, and the realization of that mires you even deeper, and…
It’s the ultimate vicious circle. If you could get away from the fatigue/tiredness and apathy … it seems so easy to do from the outside, but once you get in it just …
Sure, you too. Actually, I was really echoing a couple of things you said, so I should have quoted you, too.
Oh, Oh, why can I never get anything right :rolleyes:
And for some people, that’s exactly what it is; my depression stems in significant part from a metabolic glitch that means that I don’t get enough B vitamins from a normal diet. (There are something like three different B vitamins involved in the serotonin cycle.)
I take a B-vitamin complex supplement every day, now. It’s interesting, the whole “being sane” thing.
How ironic that you all should be discussing this today. It’s 2:48PM my time and the only reason why I am able to read this thread at this moment is that I am home from work because I just could not get up and go today.
How to say what I mean? I wish that I could simply be honest with my employer and call in and say I’m having a depression flare up. And have it stop at that. I know that I have a serious, chronic illness that is simply a bitch to deal with and will be for the rest of my life. Part of my problem - is it really MY problem? - is that I am a “high functioning severely depressed person.” (A very apt description from the only really good psychiatrist I have ever known. During my worst depressions in college I still pulled off a very high GPA.) I am quite skilled at pretending that I am fine, am happy, am engaged. I smile and laugh almost uncontrollably, it is such a knee-jerk coping mechanism. And so, of course, it comes “out of the blue” when it gets so bad that I can’t deal and just need to stay home. I adapt because I’ve learned that I have to. And then because I adapt so well, I feel like many think I am a liar and a sneak calling in to work. Talk about your negative, viscious circles…
There is another in my office who has MS. I am sure that when she has a flare up that no one would question her credibility if it kept her from coming in to work. Perhaps I do myself a disservice by coping too well? By covering too well? How many of us out there have been able to be honest with an employer and have that it accepted? Anyone?
I suffer from this. I get panic attacks, too. My “flareups” are extremely widely spaced - my last bad one was last year, and I got drugs for it which I had to discontinue when I lost my insurance, but I haven’t had a big one since, just a few little ones that I usually get over soon. Don’t ask me how I get over them, I don’t know - they just go away. I think the minor ones may be seasonal affected thingy, because they’re all in the winter and I’m so overwhelmingly pleased by the sun and the springtime. (The “big ones” don’t seem to care what time of year it is - last year’s went from before Christmas until well into June.)
Gunslinger suffers from this also and I can’t get him to go get help. He recognizes that he ought to, but he can’t bring himself to do it. I want to do something for him but I know I can’t. Does anyone have any advice? I love him very much, and I want to “fix” him - he’s in the middle of a flareup lately and he’s so different from his normal self when he’s like this.
I’m currently taking Effexor and Adderal and seeing a counselor once every two weeks.
The difference in me since I started seeing the counselor is nothing short of amazing. A good friend said it best: "Servant, you’ve blossomed!!
My productivity level at work went up dramatically, which led to my getting a better rehire grade.
I think the best thing was being able to tell my counselor " horrible truths" and not having to worry about my counselor being judgemental about what I told them.
The most important rule about seeing a therapist/counselor/shrink/psychiatrist/psychotherapist is that you MUST be willing to be completely and utterly honest and truthful with them or you are wasting your money.
And that can be such a hard thing to do because if you are depressed you tend to have this whole series of walls set up to prevent people from getting inside and to prevent things from getting out.
Because I’ve been able to tell my counselor these horrible truths, my relationship with my dad has improved so much, and we’ve kind of reached that level where when we talk, it isn’t father-son, but adult to adult. I’ve been able to tell him some of my horrible truths, but there are still some things that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell him.
I feel like if a baseline of “normal” is 100, I’m at about 95, and the last 5% is turning out to be a hard road to climb.
I have good days and not-so good ones, but at leats now I will tell someone about it.
racinchikki , I don’t know that there is anything you can do to “make” him go–he has to want to go. Hopefully he will when it gets bad enough.
I just wanted to say that I agree with everything said so far. I, too, have suffered from depression all my life, and God, I am so sick of it. I basically lost the entire decade of my 20s to depression, which has left me years behind my peers in everything from relationships to child rearing. I am right now in the biggest episode of my life, lasting two months now. I’m on antidepressants, but all they do is take the edge off, like Tylenol that doesn’t make the headache go away, just dulls the pain enough to carry on.
I have also noticed that depression affects the way I react emotionally to things, making me almost hypersensitive to things. When somebody is nice to me, I’m on cloud nine all day. If she’s female, I absolutely fall madly in crush, whether they even realize it or not. I’m crushing bigtime right now over somebody, and I don’t think she even knows. Naturally I can’t tell her, because, not only am I not in a position to do anything, but to tell her hastens the day when I will crash in flames.
Of course the opposite is also true–slights, however trivial or unintended, can shoot me down for days. If the crushee du jour does not return my affections (I’m batting 1.000 so far) the blow is absolutely, well, crushing. I deny any self worth I might have developed, and go right back to being the World’s Loneliest Loser.
I take no comfort in knowing that this is how the rest of my life will be.
I too have suffered from depression. I lost my early teenage years to depression. I even tried to kill myself several times. Luckily, I got on some medications that change it. You don’t have to live with depression, it can be fixed, it just takes some experimenting with meds. Sadly, many people just give up. I nearly did.
This is me. The high functioning thing? Me. The comment about time, and weighing it for every little thing? Me. Sleep? Hahahaha!
I need help. Now.
Christ. But I knew that. I have tried.
This is in all seriousness people, how do I get help? Where do I go from here? I tried going to the school’s conseling center but the intern they assigned me…poor match, we’ll leave it at that. What do you do?
Just to clarify a couple of things–I have learned recently that, the older a person is when their depression is first treated, the lower the likelihood that they will be "cured, " that is, suffer no more bouts of depression. Also I learned that, if the depression is treated after the first episode, there is a 75% “cure” rate. After two episodes, it goes down to 50%. After three, 10%.
I am 48, and this is my third strike. Hence my comment about the rest of my life being like this.
:rolleyes: