1- How much of your day are you depressed?
Half the time? More like 90% of the time? Or like 10% of the time?
2- How much of your overall life are you depressed? On avg?
The 1st question is more short-term, day to day, or like the last few weeks. The 2nd question above is more long-term, like overall, over years and decades.
Or shall we parse it out, like this:
1- Short-term (currently, lately):
“Happy” 1% of the time, “Meh” 14% of the time, “Depressed” 85% of the time
2- Long-Term (over lifetime, last several decades):
“Happy” 10% of the time, “Meh” 30% of the time, “Depressed” 60% of the time
What’s your breakdown?
7 comments
DEPRESSED. I’m depressed more like 90% of the day or more. I’ve had depression for 13 years and I’m 20. So about 2/3 of my life
Same, I’m 21 (in a month) and I’ve been depressed for about 10 years now. And pretty much 90% of the day I am overall miserable and depressed.
It depends if we are talking about active depression or functioning with depression. In terms of being actively depressed: 10% of the day. I’m fatalistic 100% of the time. If I stop distracting myself I’m back to active depression. I’m just good at distracting myself.
The same goes for long term. I had my first symptoms at age 16, and I’m 29 now. That’s 13 years out of 29, so roughly half my life. Three to four of those were entirely lost to mental illness. That means zero productivity, just trying to pull my shit together. However about two and a half of them were spent on paying work. 1-2 were spent in college.
I’m not depressed. Iam 90% of the time passive suicidal not active suicidal. I’m writing about Suicide I’m watching it dreaming of it. And depression comes and stays for more than half a year where I cannot get off the bed if I’m on one. 22 been having depression from 14 years this is the 14th.
Hmmm… to quantify the illusory..
To define some terms, for me:
Happy = having some genuine hope and excitement for the future
Content = feeling briefly at peace with things, however fucked
Energized = feeling absorbed in something to the extent that I forget how fucked things are
Anxious & moderately depressed = feeling exhausted, ill, unable to function, trying to distract myself from how fucked things are
Severely depressed = being fully exposed to how utterly fucked things are
Wanting to end myself = being unable to see any way to live with how utterly fucked things are
So…
Short term: Content 2%, Energized 20%, Anxious & moderately depressed 50%, Severely depressed 25%, Wanting to end myself 3%.
Long term (10 years) : Happy 1%, Content 10%, Energized 25%, Anxious & moderately depressed 50%, Severely depressed 13%, Wanting to end myself 1%
Husk: Love this post! Love that you defined your terms, then quantified them. Love the way you worded it. Love the honest, pragmatic self-realization the anx/deprssn w/n change, but your outlook will. Terrific stuff, this!
Thanks SQ. If only I could maintain the outlook consistently. Unfortunately the mind rebels.