Readit News> This is something with which many of us struggle on a regular basis.
it certainly feels that way at times :(
Don't self-medicate with alcohol, "drugs" (the non-prescription kind), promiscuity, video games, or other things that numb you. As the psych meds take hold, you'll be able to get up, but you'll be dragged back down as well.
Be very conscious of suicidal ideas as you heal. The real danger point for depression-driven suicide isn't when things are so black you can't even get out of bed. It gets dangerous when you start feeling energetic again. Then you have enough energy to hurt yourself. Have a support group or friends who understand, and check in all the time.
Consider getting a new job now. It might help you to have a fresh thing to care about, and getting fired from your existing job will only hurt you.
poignant. I either have at one point or actively self medicate with all of the above.
> Be very conscious of suicidal ideas as you heal. The real danger point for depression-driven suicide isn't when things are so black you can't even get out of bed. It gets dangerous when you start feeling energetic again. Then you have enough energy to hurt yourself. Have a support group or friends who understand, and check in all the time.
this is valuable, thanks. I tend to be very private about anything concerning my mental health, but this makes me consider sharing it with a friend I trust who I can check in with.
> Consider getting a new job now. It might help you to have a fresh thing to care about, and getting fired from your existing job will only hurt you.
this is something I've considered very strongly. I'm a bit hesitant because I worry I'll fail to produce in my new position (if i don't take the time to heal), but it's definitely worth considering.
The wrong medicine will dull your focus (I had a very bad sedative reaction to Lexapro) but the right ones will make you feel more normal. My work is the same as it was before, except I am happier now.
I'm really glad to hear that. It's surprisingly reassuring.
Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to decide Lexapro wasn't right for you?
TLDR: stay on the meds; do what the therapist says to do, no matter how dumb or inconsequential it may seem; exercise.
Sometimes you can't fix depression with pills. There are alot of mights in this situation because none of us know what OP is actually going through.
I would kindly ask that you consider my advice from personal experience and not downplay it so much. I never suggested OP not take medication or seek out a doctor, I was just giving other, more personal advice that may help them in their situation.
>They might not have good familial relationships or friends to fall back on, or they might have issues with non-hallucinogenic drugs as it is.
I listed a bunch of different things they can do, with ors and ands all throughout. Also, hallucinogenic drugs have very strong evidence backed-trials in their favor. Of course as long as you do it in a safe situation.
I was not, in any way trying to be edgy. It's awfully offensive that you and anyone who down-voted me would think that. The guy is already a programmer, he's clearly not benefiting from the ultra-safe sterile environment that the HN crowd constantly promotes.
Sometimes you have to get dirty. Sometimes you have to make mistakes. Sometimes you have to drop shrooms and find yourself in the middle of someone else's living room dance rave party.
Maybe it's not for OP, maybe it is. Maybe none of the other advice in this thread will work for them, either. But regardless my advice is just as fucking valid as anyone elses. Coming from the perspective of a person who, as I said, went through this, still goes through this at times, and who medication has had little effect on.
But, if you want to solve his depression with condescending suggestions of medical help and medications, back that up with medical journals and statistics, that's your prerogative.
//edit Also for more clarity, when I said "don't listen to this advice" I was actually referring not only to my comment, but everyone's. I wrote that when there was like 2 comments on this thread. I'm not trying to demean anyone else's opinion. Why would I do that? I'm not an asshole.
The spirit of your post(s) is well taken. Also, I watched the shit out of the magic school bus (which is, at least, what "sometimes you have to get dirty. sometimes you have to make mistakes" reminded me of)
If you're still having a problem imagining other places you want to go, work with your therapist to identify what sort of things you feel unambiguously positive about even though you may get intense anxiety that you don't deserve to enjoy such things. I have a theory (which I'm going to completely handwave here) that when we're depressed we often avoid thinking about the good things in life too hard because our brain is churning out hormonal painkillers of offset the mental and muscular pain of anxiety, and those painkillers are actually rather addictive, so you get used to feeling bad because once you feel sufficiently awful at least you get to wallow in your own hormones a bit and that yields relief. Thinking about good things initially makes you feel worse because you know they're good but you don't feel any chemical payoff, so when you try to model yourself enjoying this good thing you are only conscious of the burden of pain you're carrying and the temptation is to shift the focus back to that burden to get another shot of compensatory hormones. So say your happiest memory involves, I dunno, hot air balloons. You think about hot air balloons but you don't get any particular charge off it so you begin thinking that once hot air balloons made you very happy but now you only feel pain, and so you have lost your capacity to enjoy hot air balloons (or anything else) forever. But did your earlier self who derived great enjoyment from hot air balloons deserve to suffer for the sake of that enjoyment? Of course not. Can you imagine someone talking to that younger and happier version of yourself standing there saying 'oh, you're a horrible person, your naive joy in hot air balloons is an illusion will be crushed by a lifetime of misery, ha ha.'
I'm pretty sure you can because that's basically what you're telling yourself as a despressed person here in the present. Now focus once more on the imaginary person saying this to your younger and happier self, and actively trying to make that self feel awful in the same way that you feel awful right now. What an asshole, right? IF you saw someone else doing that you'd tell them to shut up and shove off, and stop trying to ruin other people's enjoyment of life. Well, that's what your depression is - an imaginary miserable person that you carry around in your head who is constantly running you down and telling you that you're No Good. It's your own critical faculty on steroids a useful faculty but one that has gotten out of control and turned into the mental equivalent of a scab that you keep picking at day after day and never allowing to heal. It's not evil, or inevitable, or or inaccessible. It's just a part of your psyche that's stuck in a self-reinforcing loop, a race condition if you like.
So all the coping strategies I've outlined above are ways of establishing different perspectives to stop seeing that psychic irritation as The Only Thing That Matters and instead acknowledge it as a Painful Thing but not the Only Thing. Drugs may assist with that process (or not; don't be surprise if it takes several attempts to find something that works, or that things work for a while and then stop etc.). I say 'process' because it's not a threshold thing where you have some big realization or turn a corner, come out of the darkness into the light, and you're not depressed any more. Instead it's this thing that just comes up more or less intensively and you need to develop a process of recognizing it as a symptom of your depression, remembering that its a painful internal injury rather than some objective moral flaw in the world or yourself, and then try to sidestep the pain the same way you would with the pain from a broken arm or whatever.
This process won't make much difference at first, the same way that taking a deep breath doesn't help much with the pain from a broken arm when you need to do something like buttoning a shirt or turn on a light switch, never mind things like pulling on your pants or lifting heavy weights. On bad days you have to remind yourself 100 times a day that it's only a symptom and that sooner or later it will heal if given the opportunity, and then do it again 5 minutes later. but after a while you find you're only dealing with it 80 times a day instead of 100, or 50 times a day instead of 80, and so on.
And that's how you learn to manage it. The more work you invest in managing it, the more it is to recognize as a symptom rather than The Awful Truth, so that when it waxes and wanes you can learn which strategies work best to deal with it, like when it's more effective to work or to take a rest. You know how kids are horrified by physical injuries because the pain if such a novel sensation and now they think this is how it's going to be for ever? Exact same thing. Just as it still hurts to hit your hear or cut your finger or break a bone, but you have learned that physical pain is transitory and treatable, you need to learn the same thing about mental pain, and keep patiently trying out different things until you identify the characteristics of of your particular mental injury and what you have to do to handle it. It is absolutely a manageable problem that becomes easier with practice - much easier, and that practice can significantly improve your competence to deal with other external problems and support creative and professional accomplishment.
my therapist described me as having an "idealistic streak" and mentioned I might be happier if I were working on something that motivated me more than a paycheck. This is something I'll have to take into account as I look for a new position.
There are some very good reasons why it takes a high level of training to counsel people.
In England front line treatment for depression is a talking therapy. This would normally be cognitive behaviour therapy, butthere are others. This works best one to one, face to face, with an experienced practitioner. But some people like and get benefit from group therapy, or from telephone provided sessions, or even self-guided by book or website.
Meds should help. The side effects can be unpleasant and you need to be able to be honest with your clinicians about what the side effects are and if you're taking the meds.
It's really important to hold onto the idea of hope. Things feel overwhelming at the moment, but recovery is possible.
Once recovery has started you might want to look at "resiliance" - ways to protect yourself in future. This might be taking part in team sports or gardening or meditation or putting in place some stuff around work. People talk a lot about the curative powers of exercise for depression, but we don't have enough evidence to show that exercise is a cure. http://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depre...
> When only high-quality trials were included, exercise had only a small effect on mood that was not statistically significant.
Exercise probably won't hurt, but don't beat yourself up about it if you're not exercising.
Here's a nice UK website discussing "talking therapies". http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/content/assets/PDF/publicatio...
Here's the recommendations for treatment of depression in adults in England. http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg90
If you want a book for cbt I've heard "Mind over Mood" is a useful workbook, although it's probably for the milder end or in conjunction with a therapist. I've heard "mood Gym", and Australian website, is also good. https://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome
There are other computer guided therapies. It's a good idea to check the research because some of them are not very good. The Cochrane Collaboration has checked some computer cbt programmes for anxiety or depression.
It's great that you are doing something to tackle this health problem! Good Luck!
Here is a video I recorded the other week of one of our walks. We've walked along this path at least a thousand times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH4TsjD97cU
Get a dog. Give it all the love you have. You will receive the same, unconditionally. Go do all kinds of things that your little friend enjoys. Go for long walks as often as you can, morning and night, at least. Your friend's excitement and joy over the smallest things will rub off on you too. And you'll come to realize that, to your dog, you are literally everything. It really puts things into perspective. There really isn't much more to life than that, and I think there's a certain beauty to it.
> And you'll come to realize that, to your dog, you are literally everything. It really puts things into perspective. There really isn't much more to life than that, and I think there's a certain beauty to it.
this, and the video, made me smile. thank you.
That said, a therapist can probably guide you better than the internet can. The trick is finding the right one. Most of the effectiveness of a therapist comes down to the "fit" between the two of you, so if you've gone to about three sessions or so and you're still not feeling it, it's encouraged and expected to try another one. Your current therapist may even refer you to another.
Above all, just keep fighting the good fight, and never be afraid to reach out for the things you need.
thank you. this is very helpful. you're the second person to mention this, and it's the sort of advice about treatment I may not have come by otherwise.
as it turns out, this is something I've been curious about (how / when to change, the etiquette of switching therapists, etc).