The Depression/Anxiety Thread

[Vera]

(05-01-2013 06:15 AM)DLJ Wrote:  But I have tasted depression and again I offer a short term fix... get yer ass over 'ere!

Sometimes short term fixes are all people have. Plus, if you can find enough of those, they can last you until you die...

Plus, as long as we can laugh at ourselves, depression can never really win.

[smidgen]

(05-01-2013 04:50 AM)Erxomai Wrote:  Smidgen, it's pretty much what Vera said. It's described as a low-grade depression that lasts two years or more. It explains to me why I've felt depressed most of my adult life. There aren't suicidal lows and there aren't any real highs either. It's just a straight line of affect, that runs below being in a good mood. Something like 5% of the population has it and the vast majority of those are women. Lucky me for beating the odds! Since there aren't suicidal lows, most people with Dysthymia don't seek treatment because they don't feel like it's "that bad" and they think that's just the way they are, that it's natural. Then when Major Depression hits, the person spikes down toward suicidal feelings and it's kind of a sine wave up and down, only it never goes higher than the low-grade depression line, it only goes down to the low lows and then back up to the mid lows.

And Vera hit the nail on the head: if the person starts to feel better, they feel like something's missing from their "natural" state and their mind fucks with them to find ways to stay that way.

Anti-depressants at normal dosages keep me from staying at the suicidal level for too long, but they haven't elevated my mood beyond that low-grade line.

It was a bit gratifying to learn this because I couldn't figure out why I've been majorly depressed for several years when it's only supposed to last from a few weeks to maybe a few months.

Next week I go back to narrow down my anxiety disorder diagnosis. Woot woot!

Thanks for the info. Good luck with your anxiety. About five years ago the doc took me off my anxiety meds because I kept taking "more" than the recommended does soooo I pretty much learned to deal with it myself. I have to thank my friend more than anything for that. His favorite quote is "is their anything you can do to change what you are stressing over. If not why are you wasting your time and energy stressing over it." After hearing this a few hundred times it finally sunk in and now I throw it in his face when he gets stressed. He gave me some tough love but I never would have recovered to the point that I have without him. Actually I would probably not even be alive without his help.

[smidgen]

(05-01-2013 06:20 AM)Vera Wrote:  

(05-01-2013 06:15 AM)DLJ Wrote:  But I have tasted depression and again I offer a short term fix... get yer ass over 'ere!

Sometimes short term fixes are all people have. Plus, if you can find enough of those, they can last you until you die...

Plus, as long as we can laugh at ourselves, depression can never really win.

Oh I laugh at myself all the time. Tell jokes to others about my many trips to the nut house and being "crazy". I also feel the need to share my story. It helps others understand why I act the way I do and I feel that I was meant to do all that I can to help others who are suffering.
I'd like to post something that I wrote if anyone would like to read it.

[Vera]

(05-01-2013 11:30 AM)smidgen Wrote:  Oh I laugh at myself all the time. Tell jokes to others about my many trips to the nut house and being "crazy". I also feel the need to share my story. It helps others understand why I act the way I do and I feel that I was meant to do all that I can to help others who are suffering.

Totally agree with you on the first point (the not taking myself too seriously); totally disagree on the second one (telling people my story, either to explain why I am the way I am, or just in general). But as they say - different strokes, right...

Quote:I'd like to post something that I wrote if anyone would like to read it.

Of course we would

[kim]

(05-01-2013 11:30 AM)smidgen Wrote:  I'd like to post something that I wrote if anyone would like to read it.

Well... HELL YES!

[smidgen]

I wrote this after about a dozen hospital stays and got the right meds and was really starting to feel really good, the suicidal thought had totally disappeared and this just spilled out on paper. I'm not a writer, my spelling is horrible. Copied from wordpad with no spell check. But for me this has become my rock. Something that I have to pull out when I start to slid backwards a little and it brings be back again. It slaps me in the face and says, hey you stop it. LOL



The Hole

Finding my way through the fog.
Looking for the answers to what is right and what is wrong.
But for me the reality of these questions and the answers that followed became full of distortions.
Nothing was as it seemed.
It was the fog slowly closing in around me
A fog filled with fears, nitemares, and paranioa.
Feeling that your worst fears can become reality at any moment.
A reality that is so terrible and painful that all I could do was run.
Running from or running to....I could not tell the difference.
No matter what diredtion I ran all I saw was fog.
As the fog grew thicker and thicker I began to feel myself falling.
As the fog began to finally disapear I found myself in a hole.
A deep, dark, hole.
A hole filled with sadness, pain, hoplesness and dispare.
As time went by these things comsumed me.
I did not know any other way to exsist.
Life in the hole was all I knew.
I had no memories of life before it.
The hole had become my only comfort, my only friend.
I didn't even think about leaving.
I did not know how.
I had no hope.
I was in a deep, dark, hole lost in a sea of fog.
And I did not think that anyone even knew I was there.
I was doomed to live a life of fear, pain and such horrible saddness,
that at times I wished that the hole would just colapse in on me and end my pain.
The pain had become more than I could bare.
And at the moment that I could bare no more a faint ray of light hit my shoulders.
How long had it been since I had seen a light such as this?
I did not know.
My first reaction was of fear.
So I dug deeper info my hole.
Then I saw a hand slowly reaching down.
Not knowing what to do I dug even deeper.
What did the hand want?
Why was it there?
What did it want from me?
A fear of the hand grew intense.
I sat weeping, not knowing what to do.
Not knowing how to feel.
I began to here a comforting voice coming from the hand.
A voice that I did not know for it had been many a year since I had heard such a voice.
I was told that I would be helped out of the hole but I would have to make the first step alone.
I would have to stand up and reach for the hand.
I felt nothing but fear.
My body trembled as I slowly reached for the hand.
I felt a sense of warmth and comfort from the hand.
It was a very unfamiliar feeling.
But the fear still dominated my emotions as I was slowly helped out of the hole.
It was a very long and hard journy before I was finally free from the hole.
And in days to come I would surch long and hard for it again.
For their were times that I again disired it's comfort.
But with all my surching I could not find it again even to this day.
The struggles that came after were hard and challanging.
I learned many new things and met with many comforting voices.
The journey to freedom has been difficult and not without it's trips and stumbles.
But it was a journey that was well worth taking and it comtinues to be so.
Because the journey never really ends it just changes shapes and colors.
The way that the seasons come and go. Always changing.
But always changing for the good.
For now I finally have hope that I will never return to the depths of the hole within the fog.
I have the strength to keep them in my past.
And the disire to never return.

Author, Wendy aka Smidgen

[Erxomai]

Nice work, Wendy. Thank you so much for sharing. Maybe one of these days I'll be able to poke my head outside the Hole and see what all this fussing over Life is about.

[smidgen]

(05-01-2013 07:10 PM)Erxomai Wrote:  Nice work, Wendy. Thank you so much for sharing. Maybe one of these days I'll be able to poke my head outside the Hole and see what all this fussing over Life is about.

Thanks. Ah come on out and join the fuss. It's not so bad.

[Erxomai]

(05-01-2013 07:55 PM)smidgen Wrote:  

(05-01-2013 07:10 PM)Erxomai Wrote:  Nice work, Wendy. Thank you so much for sharing. Maybe one of these days I'll be able to poke my head outside the Hole and see what all this fussing over Life is about.

Thanks. Ah come on out and join the fuss. It's not so bad.

Maybe next week. The playoffs are on.

[smidgen]

(05-01-2013 08:45 PM)Erxomai Wrote:  

(05-01-2013 07:55 PM)smidgen Wrote:  Thanks. Ah come on out and join the fuss. It's not so bad.

Maybe next week. The playoffs are on.

LOL Sounds like a plan.