Dealing with depression

Yes we do appreciate that, it was just straying too much into the 'snap out of it' theory of how depression affects people.

I think people are being unfair on Brian. What he says is correct to a degree, and it does work with some people.

For some people a structured, logical approach of addressing negative thought patterns is what works for them .For those people it doesn't mean they had easy-mode depression, or their depression is less serious. It can be incredibly difficult to be constantly looking at yourself and fighting against yourself, and I know people who would much prefer the take-magic-pill, depression-goes away form of depression. For other people the structured, logical approach to negative thought patterns is what's necessary for cutting off descents into more serious bouts of depression. And, of course for some people it makes no difference whatsoever. Over my lifetime all of those forms of depression have affected me, they are in fact all part of an overall mental health status and I need to swap between different approaches. To say he's simply wrong isn't fair at all. And to say, "He's only anxious, not suffering from anxiety" (anxiety or depression) is downright patronising.

Honey badger don't care.

i'm just calling the pharmacy instead and seeing if i can have it delivered
i am sad it has come to this
i used to be able to go out at any time and not even care

what happened to me

This is a pretty amazing metaphor. Can I quote it on m'tumblr?

Today's trip to the doctor was predictably useless. I haven't heard from NHS psychiatry yet, so I'm still just on fluoxetine 60mg when I think I'd do better with a lower antidepressant dose and an anti-anxiety. Eh. Dunno.
But yeah, she asked how I was feeling ("just the same"), commented that I seemed a bit better (apparently not listening to my previous answer), and got me to fill in one of those loathsome mood surveys. They probably have merit, but I seriously overthink them every time.

I'm feeling pretty horrible and worthless right now; I might go for a midnight walk to see if I can clear my head a bit.

I'm going to second "depressed person is not a good judge of how much they need the meds." Even if the pharmacy runs out or it's really out of the way and you don't feel like going, I can say from my own experience that this is a key time to be on the goddamn things.

My problem is the other way around. As I said before, I'm currently off the meds. But lately, things have been getting pretty bad and I asked to be put back on them (I realize they're not tiny miracle pills filled with instant happiness, but I'll take whatever I can get right now).
And now a group of people that I've barely talked to, let alone know me, have decided not to give them to me, cause they want to see how I'll do without them (which pretty much means they don't think I'm depressed enough).
So now I have a talk with one of them tomorrow to try and convince her that I do in fact need them and that I'm terrified of what might happen if they decide against it. I don't think I can take much more of this...

BABY, HERE IS MY BOSOM
PLEASE
USE IT AS A HEADREST come here come to me i will hold you let me hold you
ilu bladi forever fiveever twentyever

I am happy! It won't last - by God it won't last - but for now joy runs through me. It's shocking how great life can be, however infrequently.

Soon enough I will again be troubling deaf heaven with my bootless cries, but for now I scorn to change my state with kings.

This is a shitty situation and you're in much need of hugs, I can see, but I find myself thinking about what my psychologist said to me pretty recently when I was having lots of weird feelings of inferiority over not being medicated (along the lines of that "not depressed enough" sentiment). It doesn't actually mean "you're not depressed enough", it really does mean what they say. The thing about the non-medicated part of therapy is that in order for whatever strategies they are using to be really effective, you need to be actually going through the processes of those "unhealthy" (forgive me) ways of thinking in the first place. It's shitty, but if you're not having the thought processes of depression and anxiety at all due to medication (not saying this was your situation, I am just speaking generally here), then very little of what they can talk about in therapy would actually apply to your present situation. It is part of why they will usually seek to reduce medication gradually, dealing as it comes with whatever happens as a result.

That's all I wanted to clarify though, I'm glad you're going to talk with them face-to-face. I hope the best solution comes out of all that. *thumbs up and also hugs*

It's 5:30am and I still can't sleep so I'm drinking a beer. I've been writing in my paper journal for once, with my poor neglected fountain pens. Brown ink is so handsome... I have to be up in three hours to go vote, and then Quat has a doctor's appointment this afternoon and I'm going with him. So there will be no time to nap. And still I am awake. wrrrgarbl.

i can't sleep so i am playing a really fucking creepy as fuck neverwinter nights module.

CHEERS.

Well, you'd think I'd have experience with this, but I don't. When I was younger, I had plenty of fights with my mother over what I wanted to do with my life, which was be an artist and a writer. The only thing I got from all of that was that I couldn't get through to her to explain why, and she didn't really care. So I stopped discussing it with her and just did what I felt I needed to.

I didn't have as much contact with my mother once I moved out, so she didn't really know what I was doing most of the time. I never told her I was on anti-depressants, and she only knew about my therapist because it came up once. I just didn't tell her what I was doing, because anything or anyone that made any hint of telling her she was a bad parent would have had her flipping out on me big time. I didn't keep her out of my life entirely, though, because I wanted to still see my dad and having lunch with her at her work occasionally was actually not that bad.

Are you on anti-depressants? There are certain ones that can make you gain weight even if you aren't over-eating, and if you're trying to lose weight they can prevent you from doing this as well.

Yep, I've volunteered at an animal rescue before. First time was a long time ago, and that's where I met my kitty girls, Persephone and Diana. The rescue I was with wasn't well organized, so they didn't know what to do with either one of them, since they weren't tame and couldn't be adopted out. I took them home with me to tame them, and they never left. :D I had a feeling that they wouldn't get adopted anyway, cats don't show well at adoption venues and semi-ferals show even worse. I only have Diana now, as Persephone died from lymphoma earlier this year.

I briefly volunteered at a rescue that was much more organized last year, but since a neighbor of mine also volunteered there and she was friends with a neighbor that was harassing me, she started showing up at the venues when she wasn't signed up to show but I was. She was also ignoring me on purpose and acting like a bitch towards me, and since I already I felt like she was stalking me, I left.

So this rescue actually has its own facility, and works mainly with cats, which is unusual for a rescue. Most of the ones I know of mostly adopt out dogs. I went to the first training session on Sunday, and there's another one this coming Sunday. I'll be walking dogs and playing with the kitties at first. :D

Aww...dolphins really do have a porpoise, even if it's not as obvious as whales. :D

Thank you for trying, anyway. There are times when I use logic to get myself motivated to do stuff ("I don't feel like going there today." "You already signed up to the volunteer training, if you don't show you'll have to wait until next year." "Bleh. Don't wanna go." "You like playing with puppies and kitties. Don't you want to play with the puppies and kitties there?" "...okay, I'm going."), and it does work in some situations, but it doesn't always work with my anxiety issues. I usually have to calm myself down first--and good luck doing that if I'm off my meds.

I've always found that depression is more like art than it is mathematics, though. Then again, that's where most of my education came from, so of course I'd see it that way. :D I had a teacher that once said "There are no rules to art, only tools." Well, there aren't any rules to depression, just tools we can use to try to relieve it or overcome it (if you're lucky). Unfortunately, not all of the tools work for everyone. XP

I agree with Brian here. Using self talk and logic are an important tool to becoming well, by 'well' I mean having a well managed illness. Like Brian said it's not a cure, just another tool in your mental tool box. It won't prevent you from having a relapse. What it will do is reduce the severity of symptoms and more often than not reduce the duration. For me it helps in calming myself down when in a severe state of anxiety. It helps most of all as a reality check when I get the severe agitated depression that always comes with a lot of SI. It's less useful for the long drawn out winter depressions. As I just run out of willpower after a month or so. That's ok though as the winter depression I get is mostly the low energy/motivation type. I just get lazy compared to the agitated type which is a constant state of distress.

I realise it can be quite hard to accept that we have some control over our emotional state. A couple of years ago I was also under the impression that it is entirely biological, my thinking had very little to do with the way I felt. The reality is, in my case at least, and what I've got from a lot of other people's experience, it's both biological and psychological. Both elements feed off each other. There is a feedback loop between our biology and psychology, where one can make the other worse, and vice versa, one can make the other better. We have limited control over our biology(this is what meds help with). What we have more control over is our thoughts. Which in turn have an effect on our biology. Just to be clear here, I'm not talking about trying to prevent or stop negative thoughts. It's more about acceptance and having the ability to do a reality check. You need to accept it's ok to feel like crap. There's no point beating yourself up over something you don't have control over, you'll just stress yourself out. The little energy/willpower you do have is better spent focusing on more productive things. Doing a reality check is about applying logic and reason to your thoughts.

Apologies if this makes no sense, my brain has been a bit too active the last few days making it a wee bit tricky to translate my thoughts into coherent words. I was going to write more but I forgot what that was halfway through :/

Good news: finally fell asleep. Bad news: woke up an hour later and couldn't get back to sleep. *headdesk* At least I have good, strong, black tea to get me through the morning...

Dudebros and dudebrodettes, you need to establish regular times of sleeping and waking. I know this is hard but there are good medical reasons for it.

Basically, body wakes up at around the same time no matter how little sleep you've gotten because science. So you'll be sleepy and stressed all day. Then that night? You'll be tired and stressed and want sleep but be unable to get sleep because of all the built up stress.

It's a nasty cycle and you've got to find a way to beat it by establishing healthy sleeping patterns. If you've got a choice sleep early rather than late. Your body prefers to stay awake in the light and be asleep in the dark because it's designed for one and stressed by the other. It's not the be all end all cure you need, but trying to keep your body within normal operating parameters allows you to focus on the funky business of the mind.

I've been sleeping an inordinate amount lately. (Friday after a busy day at work I came home at 5:30 and went straight to bed and slept until about 8am the next day; then I took a 3 hour nap later, and went to bed early.) My meds were just adjusted, I may need to talk to my NP about this sleep thing if it doesn't settle down soon. On the other hand, I feel fresh as a daisy today.

I know, but there are two factors:

1) Mental illnesses seriously fuck with your circadian rhythm, so much so that some medical types think the sleep issues may be a cause and not a symptom.

2) Medications can also fuck with your circadian rhythm.

Some days I sleep one hour, some days I sleep 20. Some days -- the ones where I'm exhausted -- I can fall asleep standing up. I regularly fall asleep behind the wheel of my car if I have to drive more than half an hour, even if I'm going 75 on the freeway at the time. When I used to get manic, I'd stay awake for days. (I eventually learned to just medicate myself so much that I fall asleep for 6 hours. Poof, mania gone.) I don't get manic anymore thanks to medication, but I still get depressive sleep problems.

So... yeah. Setting and sticking to a sleep schedule is reeeeeally hard.

Thanks, I really appreciate that :). And now I've calmed down, that other post is a bit embarrassing. Oh well.

If you're like me and have been an insomniac all of your life, then you don't know how much sleep you used to get when you weren't depressed, and therefore don't have any guidelines for establishing a regular sleep cycle. Argh. I've tried to figure it out, I really have, but I guess my sleep tends to be too disturbed or something, so I can get four hours one night and be fine an entire day, then get nine the next night and be exhausted as all heck the entire next day. I know I really need to figure it out, though.

Heh, nope. The time I naturally wake up tends to be random, but is a good indicator of the mood for the day. The time I go to sleep is usually more of a constant, it will occasionally jump around though. Like Switchknitter said, having a messed up circadian rhythm is a hallmark of mood disorders.

For me, exercise really helped get it back on track, and it's something my old therapist recommended. Physical activity seems to be what my body needs in order to get tired.

i sank to a horrible low
may i never sink there again.

and thus i ended up skipping a psychologist appointment because i didn't want to leave the house and i was exhausted, even though there was a lot of important things to talk about (like the crisis mode from that other night).

even though i'd gotten a full night sleep, i ended up going to nap at 11 AM and waking up at 5:30 PM

ugh, this hasn't been a good day at all. i have an appointment for next week set up, so hopefully that time i'll attend

I come to throw comfort. At 6am because I am up all night.

Having nightmares again, or ..what I call nightmares. I seem to think when I sleep instead of exactly dream. I wake up from this even more tired since I was trying to achieve/solve something.
Having flashbacks to ..well the desperation when I bought the new truck. I was using Dad's money to further Dad's buisness and buy a replacement truck for the other, because it was needed and this was a great deal.
And Dad was in the nursing home slowly failing. It seems for me the grieving really starts -long- after the event. Crying jags aren't helping.
I got far too stressed over the election, being a woman.. with medical female issues I was strongly anti Red. Now I read things like worrying an old sore that for now is healing some.

-takes a deep breath- Today I will make it to 5pm before sleep, I hope.

I don't think you're unusual in this, though.

Even if your Dad's illness was long and drawn-out, when they die it's still a shock. I remember the first year after my Dad died was the hardest, especially since he died just before Christmas. But the thing is, the mourning doesn't stop after that. I still think of my Dad fairly often, and how much I miss him, and how much I could have learned from him but never did. He's been gone eight years. I also think of my grandparents, too, and they've both been deceased for a really long time. It's not like I'm trying to think about them, it just...comes up. Sometimes I cry because I miss them, too.

I don't think there's a time limit on mourning, though I hope you haven't been repressing your feelings about the event. That just makes it worse. But your Dad is someone that was a part of your life for quite some time, so letting go of that can take some time as well.

Of course i am repressing everything to do with it, I am living in a tomb. -sad smile- Mom then 5yrs later Dad, the entire time him telling me he wasn't going to live long and having no reason to do so even though I was RIGHT HERE.

I am running his business since that is the major income. I cannot effectively probate his business til may due to how regulation works for the industry. My other half could not get licensed if I do. I am taking care of his dog, his three cats, my four cats, my son ...
Hmm, ranting. I don't want to rant. I don't have time to be grieving nor do I have the patience to deal with all this.

Talking about all of it just makes it harder to get through each day and kiddo brought home a flu. Yay coughing.

Wow, got some deja-vu from your post. My Mom died first, then my Dad five years later. But it was so long ago for me, and yours sounds much more recent. I understand your pain, though I have to admit that my complicated relationship with my parents made my grieving process far different than most people's. Also the fact that my Dad wasn't talking or even opening his eyes just before he died, so it's not like he could say anything to us---though I did find out after my Mom died that he believed that he had married her a couple of years before and had just had my oldest sister, so he'd already forgotten me. I can attribute that to his Alzheimer's, though.

I am sorry about what your Dad said to you before he died, though I know there isn't anything that can be done to change it. I don't know what he died from, but it's possible that he didn't really think of the implications of what he'd said. I remember when my Mom was dying from liver failure (an end result of her cancer) that she was hallucinating pretty badly those last six weeks she was alive. I don't know what she said to my middle sister, but now my middle sister acts like the Chosen One in our family and is extremely arrogant about it. I know that pain, both physical and emotional, can make people say things they don't mean, and quite often it makes people say things without thinking of the repercussions on anyone around them--including family. However, since I don't know your dad or the situation surrounding you too well, I can only assume things and make generalizations. So forgive me if things don't sound quite right to you.

You sound like you're very stressed out on top of everything, too. I am sorry about what you're going through. I don't feel like you're ranting, though. Big hugs and please let us know how you're doing when you feel the need to.

Do any of you guys with bipolar have any physical symptoms that you notice when you are hypomanic or manic? Things like feeling hotter than normal, racing heart, tension, feeling jittery. Or in other words do you think there is a physical element while experiencing any type of mania.

My flavor of mental illness is bipolar crossed with schizophrenia (lucky me), so I think I can toss in my two cents on this one. I get restless. Really restless. I bounce my knees, tap my feet, play with stuff with my hands (pencils, straw wrappers, whatever's handy).... Also, I laugh inappropriately. I and the people around me can usually tell something's wrong when I laugh too much or at the wrong things.

Am I allowed to use this thread to complain about fluoxetine and depression giving me an absolutely horrible sex life?

I've been on fluoxetine since I was about 15, but I wasn't in a relationship until I was legal so we're all good on that point.

I don't find people sexy, I don't experience arousal, and I almost never find sex interesting or satisfying. It makes me feel broken and I'm just so tired of waiting to be referred to a psych to discuss switching meds (I'm not going to do something stupid like go off them, though).

As for a general depression report: middling.
Okay, that's enough venting. I'm going to see if I can be bothered to play a game.

Thanks for that. I'm currently going through the process of getting a proper diagnoses and trying to get a better idea what's going on with myself. Reading other people's experiences makes it easier to explain what's going on to the doctor, something I really struggle with. Depression is easy to explain, the other stuff not so much. I know I've never had full blown mania, just really unsure on the hypomania thing. Ignoring what is a cyclic depression, my hypomania like symptoms could be bipolar or adhd.

Good luck, DocLazy. Keep us updated on what the doctor says, yes?

I have been diagnosed with bipolar II after a psychiatrist finally recognized that every antidepressant that I've been on has made me anywhere from simply worse to batshit insane, but can't say I notice physical symptoms of hypomania. Looking back, I think I can recognize one two or three year episode of hypomania, during which self-medicated with very heavy drinking. For the past couple years, I've been in a prolonged episode of major depression with hypomania manifesting occasionally with very rapid cycling or mixed episodes. The depression has seriously tried my marriage, but the mixed episodes are where I really get into trouble, to the point of finally landing me in the hospital last year (or the year before? that period is pretty hazy). However, the symptoms, especially hypomania, can manifest very differently for each person. It is my understanding that rapid cycling or mixed episodes are pretty uncommon in bipolar II.

Incidentally, the chances of a person with bipolar II being an alcoholic is absurdly high, something like 50%, and similarly the rate of an alcoholic having biploar II is around 50%. The similar rates with bipolar I are much lower. I think. I could be recalling incorrectly and don't really have the energy to find the statistics again.

Ugh. I really need to figure out how to reestablish my meditation practice. It seriously makes a big difference when I can stick to it.