I’m talking permanently, not ppl who experience sadness/depression and okayness/happiness in cycles, even if the cycle lasts years. I mean does anyone with severe depression ever really FULLY shake it off?
Even if there are, I don’t think there’s many that escape. I would gather maybe 10% fully escape/overcame their depression, the majority prolly like 70% are just “managing”/feeling okayish/stable, and the other 20% stay severely depressed for life.
4 comments
Its the other way around – severe depression gets rid of you. Im now at the final stage of severe depression I dont have a plan or method but it all starts in the mind and my mind says 6 weeks
In conclusion about 1 percent recovrer from severe depression but i doubt that. Severe depression over decades and ppl throw in the towel 30/40’s seems to be the highest demographic
if you look at Earnest Hemingway’s family, not only did he take his own life, but so did his dad, grandfather, granddaughter, brother and sister. There may be an argument to be made that some people are just more predisposed to higher levels of depression. I’m assuming.
Very rarely, most people with any amount of success and depression has to get them to coexist. I can list the ones I know about; Albert Camus, Kurt Vonnegut, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln.
These men were open about struggling with dark thoughts. Yet they left a legacy that forgets that part conveniently. None of them died by suicide, all met natural or external ends.
Kurt Vonnegut is the one that impresses me most, by all accounts he was suicidal and depressed most of his life. He had a lot of trauma. He smoked cigarettes he said in his morbid humor way “as a method of slow suicide.” He raised a flap when he lived so long, and his lungs didn’t take him despite the cigarettes.
When I read he took a nasty fall, it was a weird day to me. As a young suicidal and cynical person he was an idol, I wish I’d met him. He left a legacy of understanding, humor and wisdom, even after enduring all that darkness.
So that’s how you win against depression in my book. Complete cure? Science fiction at best, scam at worst. Some people manage to completely change their lifestyle, that is one of the few things to really tackle heart disease organically. That change is dramatic though, it takes work.
Frankly though, depression is a protective factor in my life. It makes me back down before I hurt myself. It puts a speed limit on my upper levels of function. It sets a high compensation rate for my work.
How I wish I believed that those things could be accomplished another way. Risk of death, but I never get angry enough to hurt anyone? That was the bargain I took, when I pointed most of that anger inward.
Lady got mad at me over word choice today, and we’ve been slammed nonstop I didn’t stop moving all day again. So I don’t take kindly to that, I help people for a living, if I get tired doing it those people don’t get to complain.
Yeah, depression is a necessary protection on days like today. I’d hate to face my life without a thick layer of callus and cynicism, and what powers all that? Depression. I couldn’t even feel myself halfway through, that’s anhedonia put to work.
The short answer is no.
I’ve been asking myself the same question lately. Most of us likely ask ourselves that question multiple times throughout our lives.
This is the long answer: from what I’ve read on the web and know from close friends, depressed people agree there’s no way out, having lived most, if not all, their lives with it. Others, like me, naively think it is over at some point for it to come back and hit harder than ever. It always comes back. Some get used to it, others don’t. The ones who don’t get used to all the pain and misery die eventually. And life sucks that way, you know? The existing statistics on the phenomenon probably confirm this. Regardless of what the numbers say, what better source than experience itself?
Anyway, I like to say we’re alone and not alone simultaneously in a Schrodinger cat-type situation. On the one hand, it is hard for others to understand what living with depression is like. All this suffering is hard to put into words and adequately describe. Depressed folks also struggle to let it out as a result of society’s stigma around it or/and the urge to punish/”correct” its bearers for it. In a way, talking about depression feels like confessing to a crime. And when there’s no one around to support and care for you, you are alone.
On the other hand, people build communities based on their experiences with depression. They share methods to cope with the pain and get through the day, talk and listen to each other, offer help, and keep each other company. Being surrounded by others who care can ease the pain, yet support networks like this are hard to find. Finding people who both show sympathy for AND understand your struggles isn’t easy either, but it is what it is.