Dealing with depression

The last few days I've been feeling kind of cranky, depressed and lack motivation to do anything. At about 11:00 this morning the reason hit me in the face like a 2 by 4. In a few days it will have been my oldest brother's birthday and a few weeks after that is the day he died from a brain tumor that was the side effect of the chemo he received to treat cancer.

Well, now I know why I've been feeling down and on the verge of tears the last few days. Funny how the brain does it's best to ignore things while trying to remind you about important dates all at the same time.

The holidays suck.

I know a little bit about how you feel. I'm really sorry to hear that, though. Yeah, the brain really does its best to repress bad memories, but I guess it's your subconscious that doesn't let it go. I've had that happen as well---getting cranky and tearful, and not knowing why, and then it hits me that a dreaded "anniversary" is coming up.

I remember something they did at my friend's mother's funeral was tell stories about her and about how she was important in their lives. His is an Irish/half-Irish family, so I don't know if it's something in their tradition or what, but at the time it struck me as a really great idea. It might be difficult for you to do, as I don't know how long your brother has been gone, but it might bring you some measure of comfort someday to remember him and all the good things about him. Of course, it also might be too painful to do. I think you'd be the best judge of this, though. I liked the idea because it's a positive way to remember someone and gives you something else to focus on other than the fact that they're gone from your life, so I thought I might suggest it.

Big hugs, and I hope you make it through the holidays okay.

"Losing weight is almost 100% diet, and in the end the calories are the bottom line.* If you want to lose weight, eat fewer calories, and seek the diet that most easily allows this."

oh okay.
i will just eat even less than i already am. 1200 calories is too much obviously.
obviously.
obv.


i hate when people say the way to lose weight is to eat less. Guess what, jerk, I'm already hardly eating enough as it is. BUT SURE, WHY NOT EAT LESS WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG so full of self-loathing right now


Logically, I know he's full of shit and eating less is going to make things much worse.
But it appeals to the bad side of my brain and I want to eat less. I really want to. I read old food diaries; I was surviving on 600 calories a day. AND I WAS LOSING WEIGHT. /sigh

you should never never never never go under 1200 calories. Unless it's a crash diet specifically prescribed by a physician with VERY clear methods and goals (and you're not 400 lbs so no, you shouldn't try to get one of those) it WILL make you sick. Without adequate replenishment, the body WILL consume muscle and (even more important) *your own internal organs*. If you ever feel like going under 1200 in a day (and I've been there) just picture yourself eating a nice liver meal, except it's your own.

Get yourself on myfitnesspal.com, it's like this thread but for us fatties. Add Astromarine and I'll make sure to poke you regularly about taking care of yourself, if you want.

If you are not losing over time at 1200 cal, and you are taller than, say, 4'10", you are either experiencing a medical condition or counting/measuring wrong. It's easy to miss writing down every little bite or to slip into estimates instead of measurements or to choose prepared foods that turn out to be more calorific than you knew. I'm sure you know all that, so if you haven't, you might want to talk to a doctor/ np.

I always estimate.
Upwards.
ex. "Hm, it says 120 calories per serving. ...we'll just make that 150. or 200. ...yeah 200."

I've got a thing that makes it so it's very easy for me to retain water weight, but I mean what am I supposed to do about that? Do I poke my gut with a pin and watch the water leak out? W-what?

<panic attack about underemployment and having to depend on other people to help make rent>

<again>

I knew contracting was too good to be true, but seriously, two days before Thanksgiving is a shitty, shitty time to be trying to apply for new jobs.

Especially when I promised my mother when I moved that I'd come home for Christmas.

Home is 3200 miles away.

I...feel incredibly young and stupid and vulnerable right now and dammit why am I alone in the apartment.

:)

MulMizu-

Could be worse, you could not only retain water but look 8mths gone in pregnancy for the entirety of your adult life due to hormone imbalance. My hips aren't fat. My fingers aren't fat, wrists noope.. ankles nope, legs ..nope, arms nope til we get to the point of supporting these annoying things they want me to call breasts. Even then the carry weight there is normal for the out of shape I am , not for what the rest of my body displays.

And I cannot lose weight, the moment I do I start to bleed. Then my body stops me from losing any more weight period til it feels safe, I stop cycle .. I try to diet again, and the cycle repeats.. indefinitely.
My solution is supposedly a hysterectomy or waiting til the whole schebang shuts down on its own. Considering I am looking at 40 next birthday I am just coping. Hysterectomies aren't cheap when you aren't insured.

I suppose what I want to say to you is please get yourself checked out for hormonal issues, all of them..even thyroid/glandular since any of it can be influencing your weight. (If you have already disregard and you have my earnest sympathy)

((big hug)) Rot in hell, evil company who canceled the contract! I'm sure you'll find something else soon...

Thanks, SwitchKnitter. They didn't cancel it, they're just...scaling it down quite a bit. Where I'd been getting seventy- or eighty-hour projects, the next one *might* take five if I stretch. We'll see.

Still shaky, but two things helped a lot: (a) getting the roommate to pick up Aaron so I don't have to drive in this state, and (b) a thirteen-and-a-half minute video of baby lion cubs just learning to walk.

I've been checked out.
The only thing the doctor came back with was "WELL YOU HAVE PCOS WHICH CAN MAKE YOU RETAIN WATER".

and then she put me on birth control to help
so now I'm having cycles...i'm just still retaining water.
talking about this is making me want to cry so i'm just gonna stop now.

DON'T JUST MENTION IT AND NOT LINK IT GOD DAMNIT WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!


(hugs. I don't think I'd have the ball to work as contractor/consultant, for those reasons exactly)

Behold, my antidepressant: lion cubs! Seriously, do not underestimate the healing power of stumbling baby animals.

Ok so we are in the same boat, but we won't talk about it. If you would like any nonsense from my life that might be remotely helpful let me know.


I vote watch the lions. Someone linked me kittens ..but I misplaced that. A kitten cam is always nice. Someone please find more kitten cams!

Had one of those development talks with my boss today. Went pretty well, except for the fact that even constructive criticism is something my mind translates into HORRIBLE FAILURE, so part of my mind was going "I see your point and I'll work on it" while another part was so upset I started choking on words as I was speaking.

Developing a thicker skin is also a learned skill, I imagine. Atleast I hope so. Hard to make a good impression if I feel like crying whenever I get criticised.

Trust me on this, Not eating enough WILL make your depression worse. I guarantee it. It's one of the main reasons I was so down when I was living alone in Austin. I would forget to eat, and not even feel hungry either, and that just made it where my body had no energy, which is a bad bad thing when everything else is sapping your energy more. That's the biggest reason I was on Skype and IRC all the damn time. Half the time when I said I had shit to do I was really just being a big fat liar so I wouldn't have to tell everyone that I was going off to just sleep for 14 hours. Because I seriously had no energy. And a borked Sleep schedule. Now that I have my husband making sure I, y'know, put some damn food in my body, I'm in general able to get shit done more easily, but still not as well as I could be doing.

On another note, I'm probably gonna take up running since my current endurance is shite, though I picked an awful time to do so. It's starting to get really cold here, and it's only a matter of time before it starts snowing. This will turn me into an unhappy panda that can't go outside D:

Also what the fuck, I keep waking up at 1-2 am and am unable to fall back asleep D:

Water retention sucks rotten eggs. Ever since my teens I've retained water, mostly in my legs and feet. It sucks to find shoes that fit and while I love the look of skirts and dresses I rarely wear them because my legs, to me, look terrible.

I've been to several different doctors and had EVERYTHING under the sun checked and all anyone can say is gee I don't know what is causing it. Here, have a water pill.

My mom blames the anti nausia med she took when pregnant for two reasons. 1. out of 5 kids the only ones with this problem are me and my brother and she only took that med with the last two pregnancies, that's us. And 2. it was taken off the market after I was born because of side effects.

I'm hugging you along with that sympathy like.
Hugging you so much.

Unfortunately no, my doctor would like to know as well.

Today I meet up with a bunch of friends and friends of friends. Everyone was really really nice, and it was a lovely day, but predictably I've got sad and tired again so I'm going to bed just after this.

When it hit evening we settled into a corner of Costa and just chatted a bit, and there wasn't lots of pressure to be really active in the conversation. It was quite warm so after a while I decided to take off my jacket despite my arms (I was only able to do this because a couple of the others also had what were very clearly self-inflicted scars, so it felt like a safe zone). Yeah.

At the end of the night we were all giving each other hugs and one of the friends of friends of friends came up to me to give me a hug -- which I wasn't really expecting because it would basically be hugging a stranger -- and she whispered 'Stay strong' in my ear and I just knew that she was referring to my scars, and I ended up thinking about it all the way home.

just one tiny gesture
and it feels so, so powerful

what an absolutely amazing person, seriously

that feeling where you think you're okay
you think "OH MAN I FOUND THE CURE AND I USED IT AND NOW I AM ALL BETTER"
and then you learn that that isn't the case at all and it was absolutely pointless to think it would be that easy.

i can do DDR for an hour straight, but I can't stand up for four.

This has not been a very good week. I do not like feeling weighed down by my emotions. It feels like the last three months are quickly catching up to me and I'm not strong enough to deal with it on my own.

[rant]This thing gets really frustrating when you're doing everything right, then suddenly out of the blue your stupid brain decides you shouldn't be sleeping properly. Resulting in one feeling tired and stressed.[/rant]

My mood was fine, then out of random I got so enraged I was screaming at everyone. It was -click- scream. I am not sure why, and today I feel like a train ran over me in the physical department.

Brain is not giving me answers. Trade someone for a functional brain... beuller?

This is tough for me, too. Picture this: I've been working the same job for 15 years; most of that (about ten years) under the same manager, the woman who was my mentor when I first started - someone I've known since my first day here. So we know each other well and generally have a good relationship, but when she's given criticism - even constructive - I've internalized it to an alarming degree. So much so that it's made me wary of bringing things up because I'm afraid of the fallout.

So just this year - again, after more than a decade here - I realized via my DIY psychoanalysis that I may very well be exhibiting a tendency to internalize criticism carried over from childhood, specifically from my mother. Who, though she loved her kids more than anything, was sometimes a difficult parent to have - she would lose her temper and yell at us frequently. It's kind of sobering to realize that my difficulty dealing with criticism at my job may have its roots in getting in trouble with my mom 30 years ago.

Wanting to escape.
But it's my thoughts; you can't run from those.

i am so done.
oh god i feel terrible

Sympathy like, there. ((hug))

Sharing something my roommate sent me when I was being all anxious about this week's still-unidentified health issues. The two people I live with have borne a fair amount of my stress this week already, especially the one who's been doing all the driving. I always feel guilty whenever I cause people to start worrying, even though that's a basic part of being a friend and I certainly do my fair share of worrying over others. This helped, though.

As the person who started this thread and believes the topic is important and worthy of discussion, I want to simply say this is not what I made the thread for.

I sincerely do not understand what you are talking about.
If coming here and stating that I feel awful because I'm depressed isn't something I should do, then it's good to know now.

I've hesitated to jump in here because this stuff is touchy and I really don't want to upset anyone. But since I know Ned probably feels bad for killing the thread, I'll try to explain what I think the spirit of it was and was not supposed to be.

In the Not category would be the self-pity posts that really don't seem to be seeking any sort of actual discussion and amount to not much else besides "I'm depressed :( ". Nobody can do anything with that. We're truly sorry that you don't feel good, but what are you looking for exactly? I'm trying my best not to be harsh here because it does suck tremendously to be depressed, but the only Internet responses to a zero-information post are "sympathy Likes" and platitudes, neither of which are of much help to anyone.

What I feel this thread was designed for, and Ned can tell me if I'm wrong, is active discussion about how you or someone you know are dealing with depression or how you've dealt with it in the past. This is the stuff that helps people. Just give us something to work with and I can guarantee there will be folks here who have either gone through similar situations or know others who have. They may not understand your precise experiences and you may not even want to reveal them completely, but it's extremely likely someone can relate in some way. We've got a pretty smart, friendly and helpful bunch here so it would behoove everyone to take advantage of that. We'll bill you for it later.*


*Kidding, money is definitely not necessary!**

**Feel free to send cookies.

Days later, I understand that that's the case.
It was explained to me a little after the event took place.

SO MANY FEELS

So this medical problem I've been dealing with for a week and a half now...I'm supposed to get the results of the CT scan sometime today. The scan was Friday, and they told me then "we'll call you Tuesday if we don't find anything urgent, sooner if we do." I've heard nothing since Friday, so the way I see it, there are three ways this could go.

1) They find something and it's easy to fix. Best possible scenario.
2) They find something and it's chronic/going to kill me, in which case, better that I know now.
3) YET ANOTHER result of "we didn't find anything useful, here's another set of tests to go get."

I went to bed stressing over this, after having vented to my roommates a bit. I woke up still stressed and snapping at my boyfriend when he tried to snuggle me. And now, I'm curled up on the couch putting off taking my last Vicodin, dreading my mother's "we need to talk about big important things" phone call today, and gearing up for yet another day of getting nothing done until my brain shuts the hell up. I am probably working this up to be a bigger deal than it actually is, but I am so afraid that I'm putting off eating anything until after the results phone call, for fear that I'm going to vomit it right up from anxiety.

I just want this to be over. I am so tired of being shuttled from doctor to doctor with pain that nobody can pinpoint, tired of blood draws, ultrasounds, tired of stressing out my roommates, and tired of relying on the Vicodin to get me through the day. At this point, I barely even care if they find something that's going to kill me, just so long as they find something.

help.

Are you getting therapy for your anxiety? Quite often anxiety can manifest as physical symptoms, even extreme pain. The good news is that CBT works great for this kind of thing.

At the moment, no, and we're reasonably sure this isn't just anxiety manifesting. There's something wrong in my internal organs, but apparently we've been going about finding out what entirely wrong. Thanks for the thought, though.

Still no phone call. I've told myself I can't call them before four and reasonably expect results.

Edit: oh sweet lord. Everything normal. Again. I cannot handle this.

Congratulations. I'm sorry.

Longest week and a half of my life. Honestly, at this point I just want to curl up and die.