For older readers

I’m 45. I have suffered from my late teens, perhaps before. Do I remember extended periods of relief ? I imagine that there have been but when depressed I find it very difficult to imagine not being depressed, when not, I can’t remember what it is to be depressed. In short, when depressed, I find it difficult to remember periods of relief. I suppose though that it has always been there, though not always centre stage.

Thoughts of suicide did come to me in my late teens, occasionally through my twenties, they really kicked in in my late thirties and have been particularly aggressive these past few months.

I think one does to begin to feel more hopeless the older one becomes or rather more hopeless the longer it lasts. I have suffered for more than 20 years and have been treated for perhaps 10 or 15. In my early thirties I was more hopeful of a ‘cure” , now less so. Personally I do not believe depression to be a clinical illness, though I do think that certain people have a greater propensity to depression, learnt behaviour, genetic predisposition etc., depression is something I believe is learnt, a behaviour and one that becomes reenforced by habit. Social anxiety is also an issue I have though I have tended to bulk it together with depression. Again, I think SA, a habit, a phobia built from continued avoidance.

Their not there