How do you deal with depression?

[Nordic]

Someone here told me that "depression is anger turned inward".

That may be the key.

[Elihu]

hope. patience. endurance. and this encouragement. receive it

Thanks. I hate to say this but what I really need is a certain amount of money, or a new career. I think my problems stem almost 100% from what seems to be an intractable financial situation I cannot seem to escape as well as the temperature of the water in which I'm trapped being gradually but steadily increased to boiling as my already stupidly high rent is being increased steadily. I can't even move. Rents have gone up do astronomically there's no way out right now. I can't even move across the street. And at the same time it gets more and more impossible to pay for, my immediate neighborhood is rapidly declining. I mean rapidly. It's getting ugly and more unlivable. The 3rd-world-ization of our country seems to be accelerating at an alarming level.

I've never been stuck like this in my life. There was always the option of at least moving!!!

Don't really want to share the specifics of my personal problems but feeling completely helpless is, I think, the cause of this.

of course it is man. it is endless and grinding it wears a man down. take hope from me! i just got some relief from a similar situation. an intervention. i told mrs we couldn't a paid that off ever. im just 3 or 4 years younger than you. the relief is extraordinary.

Once in the mountains of Colorado, as night was falling, I tried to climb a very steep and crumbly slope from a rushing creek up to a road. I was very inexperienced with the mountains and didn't really think about the fact that where a road is cut into a mountainside the slope is no longer natural and somewhat stable, but artificial and composed of all the loose crap they cut away to make the road. Anyway, almost to the road I took some chances and ended up ever-so-slowly sliding down on loose gravel toward a drop off that would have plunged me straight down over a cliff to the rocks of the river, now several hundred feet below. The fall would have been either fatal or put me in a wheelchair forever. I couldn't stop myself, and realized it was the extra weight of my heavy camera bag that was pulling me the fastest, in fact my neck, where the strap was looped around, was being pulled toward the edge faster than the rest of my body and I would probably go over the edge head-first because of it. So I pulled off my beloved camera gear and let it go. I watched as it tumbled over the cliff and I could see it hit, and bounce, in ever increasingly large arcs, and spiraling faster and faster, until it disappeared into the canyon. It was just enough less mass that I actually quit sliding. Finally I could stop and look around and figure out a way to climb the rest of the way up to the road, and I did, but barely.

That's kind of what this feels like. Inexorable.

there but for the Grace of God go we you and I. been close so many times. but as you proved the situation was not inexorable. it just demanded a sacrifice.

I'd like to apologize for the level of self pity on display here.

Not having a clue makes it hard to simply get out of bed.

takes a man to share takes a man reach out. don't quit. smiling helps so does thankfulness, and your loved ones. always enjoy your postings!

[82_28]

Boy oh boy. Depression. My best and only advice is to get to a spot down the road where you no longer fixate on it or dwell. It really does take time. In fact, when I first began posting and commenting here I was in the depths of the deepest depression I hope to never have to go through again. It takes time and when you're depressed time is of the essence. I don't get it. In my case it was a murder of my best friend, a break up and awful OCD that I've always had. There really are no answers but that degree of depression has faded as promised by people on some OCD forum I used to read and post to. When you are in the throes of it you feel like it's never going to end. And it won't because your experience right now will live with you forever. Cheery thought, right? But it somewhat is. In fact I told my mom who I am helping through some deep depression the other night:

I'm not going to lie to you, there are no answers and there never will be. If there were answers then you'd wake up tomorrow morning and it would be gone but it doesn't go. Do I have the answers? Of course not.

I have found great comfort in judging no one (except fascist fucks that we discuss of course) and no matter where I go treat people as they are a long lost friend. As a bartender my advice to sad people was that we all feel it and life is just a never ending heap of regret and you can choose to concentrate on that, but regret will always be there. You are a good soul, Nordic and that soul will never leave you. It is you.

You are good, homie. I really wish I could magically take away your pain. Everybody's pain. . .

[Elvis]

Blessings to you, Nordic.

Sharing these things is healthy, I'm with you, and, what 82 said: try not to dwell on the pressures, and counter negative thoughts as they bubble up. Keep an eye out for opportunities that may arise amidst the circumstances; when one comes, it might feel like a blow at first but is often the door to a way out. I say this because it's happened to me more than once. There's no reason to abandon hope -- a change might be a radical break, yet freeing and exhilarating.

82_28 may attest to the relatively lower rents in the PNW/Seattle region, and if you do end up evacuating your family from your current scene we'd love to have you. (The notorious rainfall is largely a myth, propagated to discourage Californians from mass retreat to our paradise -- shhh! keep that quiet).

[backtoiam]

[Nordic]

Thanks everybody. I can't tell you how good it feels to have support. From people I've never met! Isn't it funny how life can be, in that someone can feel more comfortable outing himself on a forum consisting of people he's never met in meatspace with something so personal? I guess it makes sense if you think about it.

Sorry I didn't respond for so long. I was incredibly busy for several days and then was exhausted for several more because of the business. I'm getting too old for the shit that I'm doing! I still enjoy it but it beats me the hell up.

Again, I can't really express how great it is to have support from y'all.

(I like the word "y'all" for the very reason it's the plural for the second person "you". We really need an official version of that in our language. Others languages have it, why not ours?)

[KUAN]

Can you use youse?

[backtoiam]

I love you too brother man. You have added a lot of value to my life. Your words over the years have confirmed many of my own observations.

It is within the strength of each other that the people live....an Irish proverb

[guruilla]

One of the Big Problems with depression, IMO, is that it's been stigmatized as "There's Something Wrong With You."

I've been low-level depressed my whole adult life and it still swallows me up sometimes, or feels like it is. I was feeling unusually swallowed up tonight, when I saw this thread. So, Lo! and woe is we, and all that.

While I still get "depressed," I no longer believe the thoughts and feelings that accompany whatever it is that's happening in the same way I used to.

Depressed people are known to be more realistic, and, flip side of that, facing the facts of existence is gonna entail a degree of depression about what we see. The self that can experience depression is the same self that does everything it can to keep out the irrefutable awareness that it's existence is entirely, 100% futile, that all its dreams and hopes and efforts to feel good amount to dust, literally. And then, not even to dust.

I see being (feeling) depressed as an opportunity for some deep-rest; the hard part for me is taking that opportunity and not trying to get lost in superficially meaningful activity, acting as if the depression came from the outside in, and not the other way around. More money, new job, new relationship, new book deal, nice feedback, sense of purpose, forget about it. Depression isn't about circumstances not being right; it's about the deep knowing that no set of circumstances will ever fill the hole of being cut off from our essential self, or Self, our Soul-self. And it shouldn't ever fill it. There's only one cure for the loss of soul, and that's soul.

Bottom line: depression is a process, a means and not an end. Best description I found for it was Dabrowsky's Positive Disintegration:

“Suffering, aloneness, self-doubt, sadness, inner conflict; these are our feelings that we have not learned to live with, that we have failed to appreciate, that we reject as destructive and completely negative, but in fact they are symptoms of an expanding consciousness. Dr. Kazimierz Dabrowski has spent 45 years piecing together the complete picture of the growth of the human psyche from primitive integration at birth; the person with potential for development will experience growth as a loosening of the stable psychic structure accompanied by symptoms of psychoneuroses. Reality becomes multileveled, the choices between higher and lower realms of behavior occupy our thought and mark us as human. Dabrowski called this process positive disintegration, he declares that psychoneurosis is not an illness and he insists that development does not come through psychotherapy but that psychotherapy is automatic when the person is conscious of his development.

“To Dabrowski, real therapy is autopsychotherapy; it is the self being aware of the self through a long inner investigation; a mapping of the inner environment. There are no techniques to eliminate symptoms because the symptoms constitute the very psychic richness from which grow an increasing awareness of body, mind, humanity and cosmos. Dabrowski gives birth to that process if he can.

“Without intense and painful introspection and reflection, development is unlikely. Psychoneurotic symptoms should be embraced and transformed into anxieties about human problems of an ever higher order. If psychoneuroses continue to be classified as mental illness, then perhaps it is a sickness better than health.

“‘Without passing through very difficult experiences and even something like psychoneurosis and neurosis we cannot understand human beings and we cannot realize our multidimensional and multilevel development toward higher and higher levels.’ Dabrowski.”

Some more here: https://auticulture.wordpress.com/2013/ ... viduation/

[norton ash]

Big pharma has always had trouble marketing anti-depressants in Japan, where depression is accepted as characteristic of intelligence, sensitivity, and good character.

I went back on Remeron (mirtazapine) a few months back for help with appetite and sleep, as booze and weed were no longer helping... they were making chronic depression and anxiety worse. So I'm sleeping deeply now, eating well and gaining weight, but I usually feel a little flat, unemotional, and quite dim... but I've been managing better at work and life. At least I'm calm and reacting to challenges reasonably. Feeling well enough and stable enough that I plan to titrate off the stuff soon, but a couple of months ago I was way way down.

Stoicism is a good stream of philosophy for depressives and recovering addicts.

[backtoiam]

remeron is potent, very potent. I took that about 13 years ago. It will chill you out.

[Nordic]

Good quote, guruilla.

[Joao]

I don't mean to be inappropriate but my honest finding has been that sex, drugs, self-indulgence, excess spending and a little reckless behavior can be helpful in getting through the blackest of the black days. Something to say "fuck you" back to the world for just a little while during those really rotten moments, and then try to move onto something more constructive (exercise, talking, planning life changes) once the nadir has passed. I'm not being glib. I realize this may be bad or unfeasible advice for some, but dirty problems sometimes necessitate dirty solutions. Just take care not to hurt anybody else, of course.

Also: Travel, if you can do it. Leaving all this crap a few thousand miles behind is like nothing else for getting a little perspective and remembering that life can be worth it.

That black shit is a real bitch. I empathize.

[Nordic]

I don't mean to be inappropriate but my honest finding has been that sex, drugs, self-indulgence, excess spending and a little reckless behavior can be helpful in getting through the blackest of the black days. Something to say "fuck you" back to the world for just a little while during those really rotten moments, and then try to move onto something more constructive (exercise, talking, planning life changes) once the nadir has passed. I'm not being glib. I realize this may be bad or unfeasible advice for some, but dirty problems sometimes necessitate dirty solutions. Just take care not to hurt anybody else, of course.

You're describing my 20's. And, I guess, early 30's. Out of the question now.

[Joao]

For better or worse, I'm older than that...

Every situation is unique, of course.