I don’t know if I’m suffering from depression. Even though I was diagnosed with it over 20 years ago, and have sustained 20 hospitalizations, over 40 shock treatments, numerous med changes, and that I have a very limited ability to work, finish college, establish close relationships, or simply feel good feelings.
But I still feel that everyone is looking at me like, I need to snap out of this. I am doing it to myself.
I feel guilty when I’m depressed because of how everyone reacts when I feel this way. Constantly I feel undermined. Voiceless. I express what I feel and I see people have already made up their minds as to how I really feel and what I need to do to stop it. Drs stop listening to what I have to say the moment I stop meeting their criteria. And I don’t understand why medical professionals keep telling me that I really need to find something I enjoy, when a symptom of depression is an inability to enjoy things. As if in my 39 years I was unaware of the fact that there are activities I can engage in simply to experience enjoyment.
I struggle to work the fifteen hours I work a week. It is a major accomplishment for me when I can show up. The rest of the time I take care of myself and my dog the best I can. I am on disability for my depression. I feel so ashamed of that. I don’t feel like people believe that depression is disabling. They don’t think that feeling profound sadness is what restricts me from many activities or having a job or a lot of friends or a boyfriend or a career or education. They think I need to stop being negative. Or tell me how other people have it worse. Or that everyone struggles in life, it isn’t easy. Or that I am the one who really needs to help myself. No one else will do it for me.
I feel so much negative support. So often condemned for feeling so much pain. I am tired of being held to these impossible standards and being told that I am hard on myself. I’m told that it doesn’t matter what other people think of me, only that I love myself. I need to let the past go, stop worrying about the future. It feels like people are telling me I need to be self-actualized as if that is the common state of being.
I often get suicidal thoughts. I live with them a lot. 90% of the time I don’t say anything to anyone. I have had many experiences in which I have been in overwhelming emotional pain, alone, hopeless, and the thought of suicide is ever present because I am so desperate to escape this hell. I feel so cowardly because I don’t do it. I am so afraid of it. Not death so much as this kind of death. That this is really it. I often visualize what my body will look like after I kill myself, who will find me, and then what I become. I am no longer. All that is left is this decaying corpse, and I become “a suicide” or a statistic and that is all there is of me. I die unloved and alone. And its over. And that is all I ever am until very soon I am forgotten forever and I am doomed to eternal meaninglessness.
I think some of this, any of this, has to have been experienced by someone else.
8 comments
I can relate. I dunno what else to say. I’ve had suicidal thoughts for many years myself, and I’m always looking for that silver bullet that will make them go away, but I can’t seem to find it. If I had to give any advice, I’m not sure the “treat-patients-like-porcelain-and-drug-them-up-but-don’t-engage-with-them-or-help-them-feel-useful” approach has done me much good. I don’t believe in bootstrapping either. I think modern society is profoundly alienating: people’s skills are being made redundant by technology, and social interaction has migrated online. I think we need community, and we need to feel needed.
“I think we need community, and we need to feel needed.” I agree with this. Very much.
I think that “normal” people (my self included, i think.. I hope) will never be able to grasp the seriousness of chronic depression. Its perhaps like describing what being in love feels to anyone. If you dont feel it you cant get it, words cant describe it. I know it must really suck that all people look at your situation like this but I think that it isnt 100% their fault, they just cant know what you are going through… That of course doesnt justify people that are being jerks to you. I just thought that perhaps looking on your situation from this point of view could help you just a bit maybe. Try to not feel guilty for being depressed coz its not your fault and people that bring you down dont really know what you are going through..
BTW Its a stupid question but Imma ask anyway. Have you tried psychedelics? I think that the research on treating chronic depression with them is promising.
Yes, I am beginning to understand that people don’t understand. It has been very disheartening. And leaves me feeling achingly lonely.
I tried Ketamine. I was very hopeful. But it was outrageously expensive. I’ve heard a little about mushrooms but I’m hesitant.
I think “depression” is the most useless, divisive and dismissive term since “crazy”. It attempts to cast a blanket diagnosis over an infinite number of issues and thus corral us all into a box that can be conveniently filed under “sick”.
That said, what are your reasons for feeling this way? If 20 years of textbook cures have done nothing, then maybe it’s time to concede that doctors have failed and it’s up to you to figure out how to fix yourself. That’s not very comforting, I know, but at least you may feel like you can regain some control if you take over your own treatment. Nobody else seems to have done any good.
I have been integrating my own “treatments.” Like getting a dog. I’m seeing an art therapist, too. I have very little faith in psychiatry anymore. I am working on a project to keep me going, as well. I don’t know why I don’t respond to traditional textbook treatments (not cures). But I know that I need some kind of help because i need this to stop. I need this to stop
I always tried to make it so my body wouldn’t be found but it’s getting harder to get away.. I never wanted my body to be found. Eck. I hate the folks who will find it, I don’t want my body around then dead or alive.. and it’s terrible that I can’t get away to do it..
I’m angry. So angry because I’m so hurt. And so betrayed. And I think it might take suicide for anyone to understand that. And when I think about the gruesome details of what I leave behind—I want them to see that. I want them to know. I want that image to be burned into their brains for the rest of their lives. I think I must be the most selfish suicidal person there can be.