On depression: living it
Thu, Dec. 22nd, 2005 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI've been meaning to write this for a long time now, but I couldn't figure out how to organize it, or what to say, or how personal I should make it. I knew that I wanted to make this (and any subsequent) post public so that other people who are suffering from depression can stumble on it and read it.
I think I'll limit the content of this post to the experience of depression and leave recovery and the experience of having people you care about being depressed to other posts. Also, when I talk about depression here, I'm talking about major depressive disorder, not seasonal affective disorder or the downswings of bipolar, though it may also apply.
I used to read magazine articles on depression and wonder how people could tell the difference between being depressed and being moody, or sad, or angry, all normal reactions to external circumstance. As such, it's easy to go out and say that depression isn't really a mental illness, that it's just a slightly more extreme reaction to things. After all, everyone feels sad or down every so often.
Depression (for me at least) makes it so that the sad, down, grey, dreary feeling is the norm, that anything that brightens your day will quickly pass, that all you have to look forward to is drudgery, misery.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffeeandink writes that depression is the least linear of narratives; it's an endless loop of self-loathing and recrimination, of a constant lack of energy. Every step forward only leads to two steps back, everything good is temporary, everything bad is forever. It's not dramatic, except for the occasional bursts of temper or crying jags, the suicide attempts or suicidal ideation, the bouts of self-injury. Even these are relegated to monotony; from the inside, it's only an increase in the level of misery. It will go away, but only for greyness to take its place, only to lurk around and come back another day when you're more susceptible.
That sounds bad enough, but the problem is, that's only the foundation. I don't know which is the cause and which is the effect, but on top of this drab existence is self-loathing, disgust, anger at yourself, at your friends, at your family, at the world. There's the bone-deep conviction that something is wrong with you, and that it's not a mental illness, but a character flaw. There's the thoughts that while other people have real and serious problems, you're only being weak and selfish. Other people suffer from depression; you are just stupid and lazy and fat and ugly.
I hope this doesn't sound romantic. It's not. It's tiring and boring and repetitive. After a while, you get sick of yourself, you get sick of your own misery, but the worst part is that you still can't stop. The suicide attempts and self-injury look like action, the anger and the crying jags are extreme emotion. But the day to day is feeling so worn down that the thought of getting out of bed to shower is too much. And you know that this is an easy thing, that everyone in the world over the age of six can do it, and yet, you continue to lie in bed while people tell you that you're going to miss class, miss work, miss going out. And you care, but not enough.
Everything in depression feeds into itself; you can't be depressed because you're just lazy and selfish, so you resist treatment. Labeling yourself as depressed is just a way out, it's another excuse, another act of selfishness that takes away from the seriousness of the disease. You're so mired in self-hatred and pain and lethargy that you can't imagine another way of being; you convince yourself that this is normal, that the brief moments of happiness are all you'll ever get. You remember the happier you of the past and believe that that person is dead and gone, or you remember the you of the past and can only hate yourself more for all the things that have gone wrong.
You lie there, unable to do the simplest things, while everyone around you gives advice and means well, but you can tell that they don't understand why you can't just get up/clean your room/write your paper/answer email. You feel like an even greater failure. Or else you rage at yourself for lacking the willpower, for being a failure, for being wrongwrongwrong. Then you hate yourself even more for being a horrible, ugly person, even as you alienate the few people who are still sticking around. You want to make them see how awful you are, make them leave, even while you're desperate and lonely and terrified of being abandoned. You test people to make sure they'll stay, and nothing is ever good enough. You cry without knowing why.
There's so much self-destruction underlying this, there's so much self-hate. You hate yourself so much, not passionately, but with a dead, grey certainty, that anyone who sees anything positive about you must be deluded or stupid. You sabotage everything you do. Your brain is your worst enemy.
Sometimes it gets so bad that the only thing you can do to make it stop is to hurt yourself physically, to scratch or cut or drink, to distract yourself from the pain that your life has become. Sometimes it gets so bad that the only thing you can do to make it stop is to think about everything stopping, when the only way to not hurt is to not be. Sometimes you only fantasize about these things and shy away, and instead of this being a good thing, it's only another sign that you're not really depressed. Sometimes you read about these things and know that you aren't there yet, so you take it as a reason why you are just messed-up and not mentally ill. Sometimes you are there, and you take comfort in the cold planning, convince yourself that everyone you know would be better off if you were dead because your very existence wrecks everything.
And then, when you can't go through with it, that's yet another thing that you fucked up, not a reason for celebration, because your life isn't worth celebration.
Depression is a disease. It's the worst kind of disease, one that takes over your entire self and convinces you that it's the real you. It closes you off in your own self-contained world. It flips a switch in your head so that any criticism or frown means that you suck, that any praise only means that you will disappoint people later. It translates "I like you" to "I liked you the way you were and now that you're like this, I'll abandon you." It takes everything good and twists it. And then, after it's done all this to you, it convinces you that you aren't sick at all, that this is the world, that this is reality. Or even if you do realize that things aren't normal, you lack the energy or the desire to make things better, because you don't deserve it.
And the worst part is, even when you're armed with knowledge, the voice in your head still goes on and tries to convince you that you are worthless, takes anything around you or in you and turns it into a weapon.
More smart people write about depression:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rachelmanija/10020.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rachelmanija/104788.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rachelmanija/107785.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/coffeeandink/298674.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/clementine13/47906.html
Index of "On Depression" posts
I think I'll limit the content of this post to the experience of depression and leave recovery and the experience of having people you care about being depressed to other posts. Also, when I talk about depression here, I'm talking about major depressive disorder, not seasonal affective disorder or the downswings of bipolar, though it may also apply.
I used to read magazine articles on depression and wonder how people could tell the difference between being depressed and being moody, or sad, or angry, all normal reactions to external circumstance. As such, it's easy to go out and say that depression isn't really a mental illness, that it's just a slightly more extreme reaction to things. After all, everyone feels sad or down every so often.
Depression (for me at least) makes it so that the sad, down, grey, dreary feeling is the norm, that anything that brightens your day will quickly pass, that all you have to look forward to is drudgery, misery.
coffeeandink writes that depression is the least linear of narratives; it's an endless loop of self-loathing and recrimination, of a constant lack of energy. Every step forward only leads to two steps back, everything good is temporary, everything bad is forever. It's not dramatic, except for the occasional bursts of temper or crying jags, the suicide attempts or suicidal ideation, the bouts of self-injury. Even these are relegated to monotony; from the inside, it's only an increase in the level of misery. It will go away, but only for greyness to take its place, only to lurk around and come back another day when you're more susceptible.That sounds bad enough, but the problem is, that's only the foundation. I don't know which is the cause and which is the effect, but on top of this drab existence is self-loathing, disgust, anger at yourself, at your friends, at your family, at the world. There's the bone-deep conviction that something is wrong with you, and that it's not a mental illness, but a character flaw. There's the thoughts that while other people have real and serious problems, you're only being weak and selfish. Other people suffer from depression; you are just stupid and lazy and fat and ugly.
I hope this doesn't sound romantic. It's not. It's tiring and boring and repetitive. After a while, you get sick of yourself, you get sick of your own misery, but the worst part is that you still can't stop. The suicide attempts and self-injury look like action, the anger and the crying jags are extreme emotion. But the day to day is feeling so worn down that the thought of getting out of bed to shower is too much. And you know that this is an easy thing, that everyone in the world over the age of six can do it, and yet, you continue to lie in bed while people tell you that you're going to miss class, miss work, miss going out. And you care, but not enough.
Everything in depression feeds into itself; you can't be depressed because you're just lazy and selfish, so you resist treatment. Labeling yourself as depressed is just a way out, it's another excuse, another act of selfishness that takes away from the seriousness of the disease. You're so mired in self-hatred and pain and lethargy that you can't imagine another way of being; you convince yourself that this is normal, that the brief moments of happiness are all you'll ever get. You remember the happier you of the past and believe that that person is dead and gone, or you remember the you of the past and can only hate yourself more for all the things that have gone wrong.
You lie there, unable to do the simplest things, while everyone around you gives advice and means well, but you can tell that they don't understand why you can't just get up/clean your room/write your paper/answer email. You feel like an even greater failure. Or else you rage at yourself for lacking the willpower, for being a failure, for being wrongwrongwrong. Then you hate yourself even more for being a horrible, ugly person, even as you alienate the few people who are still sticking around. You want to make them see how awful you are, make them leave, even while you're desperate and lonely and terrified of being abandoned. You test people to make sure they'll stay, and nothing is ever good enough. You cry without knowing why.
There's so much self-destruction underlying this, there's so much self-hate. You hate yourself so much, not passionately, but with a dead, grey certainty, that anyone who sees anything positive about you must be deluded or stupid. You sabotage everything you do. Your brain is your worst enemy.
Sometimes it gets so bad that the only thing you can do to make it stop is to hurt yourself physically, to scratch or cut or drink, to distract yourself from the pain that your life has become. Sometimes it gets so bad that the only thing you can do to make it stop is to think about everything stopping, when the only way to not hurt is to not be. Sometimes you only fantasize about these things and shy away, and instead of this being a good thing, it's only another sign that you're not really depressed. Sometimes you read about these things and know that you aren't there yet, so you take it as a reason why you are just messed-up and not mentally ill. Sometimes you are there, and you take comfort in the cold planning, convince yourself that everyone you know would be better off if you were dead because your very existence wrecks everything.
And then, when you can't go through with it, that's yet another thing that you fucked up, not a reason for celebration, because your life isn't worth celebration.
Depression is a disease. It's the worst kind of disease, one that takes over your entire self and convinces you that it's the real you. It closes you off in your own self-contained world. It flips a switch in your head so that any criticism or frown means that you suck, that any praise only means that you will disappoint people later. It translates "I like you" to "I liked you the way you were and now that you're like this, I'll abandon you." It takes everything good and twists it. And then, after it's done all this to you, it convinces you that you aren't sick at all, that this is the world, that this is reality. Or even if you do realize that things aren't normal, you lack the energy or the desire to make things better, because you don't deserve it.
And the worst part is, even when you're armed with knowledge, the voice in your head still goes on and tries to convince you that you are worthless, takes anything around you or in you and turns it into a weapon.
More smart people write about depression:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rachelmanija/10020.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rachelmanija/104788.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rachelmanija/107785.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/coffeeandink/298674.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/clementine13/47906.html
Index of "On Depression" posts
Tags:
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 03:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 03:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 03:24 am (UTC)I hate it. Passionately. I want to destroy it. If I can't destroy it, though, I'm determined to defeat it as many times as I have to.
(no subject)
Fri, Jan. 6th, 2006 03:33 pm (UTC)I'm recovering currently too (and my depression is closely tied to PTSD and anxiety), but I, too feel it out there, and believe that there will never come a time when it is vanquished, and that it will always be ready to pounce me out of nowhere when I least expect it and can least respond.
It's nice (if one can say that...) to know that others have the same sense about it.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 03:41 am (UTC)For what it's worth, bipolar depression has looked qualitatively different to me, but I don't know how this pans out with, hmm, any sort of useful sample of the population.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 03:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 04:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 04:21 am (UTC)What I've found is that friends and family who have never experienced depression -- true depression, not just feeling down in reaction to life events, as you've described -- can never *quite* understand what this particular ring of hell feels like. And because of that, I tend to gather people around me who have experienced depression, who know exactly what I mean when I say "It's bad again," without any other explanation.
If you have any interest my own experience of depression is in this entry (http://www.livejournal.com/users/stephl/9834.html).
Again, thank you.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 05:02 am (UTC)Depression destroys time and destroys one's sense of time: everything is always. That may be what I hate about it most.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 07:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 05:14 am (UTC)Shining a light on dark places is a start; those of us who have not experienced what you experience can never really understand it, but this kind of sharing is so important. Only by acknowledging the fact that depression and other mental illnesses are diseases like diabetes etc., can the stigma be lifted. There is no difference between taking insulin and taking anti-depressents: each treats an imbalance in the body/mind, and there is no shame in either.
Bless you for having the courage to write this.
{{hugs}}
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 09:33 pm (UTC)True--but the scary thing is that there are diabetics and their friends and family who associate taking insulin with shame and failure: That if they'd done a better job of controlling their disease, they wouldn't have had to "sink" to insulin therapy. This is so alarmingly like the operation of depression on one's world view that I can see why there are researchers who are studying the ways in which diabetes and depression interact.
(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 05:44 am (UTC)This describes me to a T: especially since some of the terms are so vague. Depression manifests in so many ways, so it makes some kind of sense for articles to not be completely specific, but its not really helpful when you're wondering "what is this going on in my head?"
I echo the thanks and the praise of others that commented before me.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 07:07 am (UTC)Living post-depression, for me, is living with the nagging terror that it will come back.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 06:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 07:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 07:58 am (UTC)Gina
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 08:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 08:49 am (UTC)Yes, that's just how it feels for me, too. All of that reads achingly familiar.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 01:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 01:21 pm (UTC)And no, of course, because you wish you could say to a post like this, "No, that's not me--that's not what it's like."
But yes, of course, it is.
Thank you.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 05:09 pm (UTC)"Then you hate yourself even more for being a horrible, ugly person, even as you alienate the few people who are still sticking around. You want to make them see how awful you are, make them leave, even while you're desperate and lonely and terrified of being abandoned. You test people to make sure they'll stay, and nothing is ever good enough. You cry without knowing why."
I suppose this is what illustrates me most. And I am literally reminded every day by my own brother that I am afraid of socializing.
Well, I guess I just have to say thank you since I've never read something quite like this which tells the whole truth yet doesn't give me a stabbing feeling. Thank you. :)
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 05:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 06:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 06:31 pm (UTC)...to recognize how well YOU know it. But laying it all out there in black and white really IS a big help, to me at least. Thank you for this.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 07:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 08:09 pm (UTC)A life dominated by depression can still accomodate a lot of joy, but for me, I know it's always there, and one day it will probably kill me. It's better than cancer in the way that no death sentence is actually written, of course.
(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 11:38 pm (UTC)And thank you, Oyceter, for an excellent post.
(no subject)
Posted by (Anonymous) - Sun, Dec. 25th, 2005 06:06 am (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
Fri, Dec. 23rd, 2005 09:21 pm (UTC)I think I've been under a cloud for several years now, and I find it's just an endless loop of misery, self-doubt, loneliness, and fear (of trying anything that would improve my life). The worst thing is that a person learns to deal with it, even though like you said, you get tired of it and you get tired of your misery, but you can't stop feeling and thinking the way you do. I can remember a time when I was happy, but I feel like that's beyond my ability to reach anymore. I've just learned to put up with low self-esteem and being miserable. Honestly, I just don't know how my husband puts up with me. He really deserves a medal. Oddly enough, it seems that the outside facade I put on is quite convincing. Most people, even those who think they know me pretty well, think I'm a happy, cheerful person.
My husband thinks I should go on Prosac or something similar, ('Happy Pills' he calls them). He's taken them before, and I've been thinking about it, but in truth, I feel rather suspicious about antidepressants. The side effects seem rather frightening, especially those which makes kids even MORE suicidal. Granted I'm not a kid, but still, the med option makes me wary. However, I have taken SAMe before. It's an effective herbal supplement with minimal side effects. Also makes your joints better. The only thing is that it's expensive.
(no subject)
Sat, Dec. 24th, 2005 12:41 am (UTC)I can remember a time when I was happy, but I feel like that's beyond my ability to reach anymore.
That's not good, you know. And you really don't have to feel that way...
(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Sat, Dec. 24th, 2005 12:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Sat, Dec. 24th, 2005 06:21 am (UTC)Sadly, it just doesn't work because seriously, the depressed brain can turn pretty much everything into "I suck, the world sucks, I should just die, etc." And it's awful because for me, at least, it made me resistant to treatment because I was convinced I wasn't really depressed.
*kicks depression*
(no subject)
Sun, Dec. 25th, 2005 06:31 am (UTC)I think the scariest thing about first experiencing depression is not knowing you are sick, and that this is NOT normal. So, you only blame yourself and wonder why you can't fight it or why you're suffering it.
"As such, it's easy to go out and say that depression isn't really a mental illness, that it's just a slightly more extreme reaction to things. After all, everyone feels sad or down every so often."
i find it hard to explain to people when they comment something similar to the above to me. Like if they say "everyone's down some time, you can snap out of the low mood as well" I'm not sure they're ready to hear me explain why I think depression is really not what they experience when they're down.. like i can say, oh, when i used to be super depressed, i have obsessive suicidal ideation constantly, like, a minute-by-minute basis! and .. oh, i liked to keep a razor near by and have constant cutting and bloody toughts? LOL. But, I guess they're just trying to help, which is a good sign and which is why posts like Oyce's is good to let other people understand (versus my uncalled for version).
off topic, it seem more accepted for people to attribute illness like schizofrenia to a "real" mental illness, probably because it's harder for people to relate to psychosis symptoms like hallucination.