Thoughts on depression

[deathpixie]

This post, by a friend of [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s, almost perfectly encapsulates what it's like to be clinically depressed. I heartily recommend reading it.

This part, in particular, resonated for me:

Clinical depression is a hostile entity. It's you, but it's not-you. It's an imbalance in your body's basic mechanisms that affects your higher thought processes--the stuff that's not hormones and nerve impulses and biological imperatives. They're your thoughts, but something is thinking them for you.

It is, in simplest terms, a hostile entity in your mind that uses your own thoughts to kick the crap out of you. And when you're crumpled in a broken heap, it doesn't stop. It keeps right on kicking. Like [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] said, it's very disturbing having something inside your head that's not entirely you, thinking your thoughts for you.

Its goal is to make sure it's here to stay, and wreak as much havoc as possible in your life while it sticks around. And it will. On you, on the people around you. On your work, on your social life. It knows no pity, no mercy.

It'll use your doubts and fears, your pride, every negative quality you've got to knock you flat. It might even create some you didn't think you had.

Perhaps I'll dig up the work-related counselling service number today. February is always hard on me, and external factors haven't helped at all.

Comments

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

If you haven't had good luck with some counseling, would something like yoga (movement, centering, etc) be good for you? You seem like someone who needs to move. My therapist/social worker is my yoga teacher, too, and I swear that her yoga classes have been better therapy than most I've had in the past. I know she studies at a center in Toronto to further develop her teaching skills.

[deathpixie]

It's definitely a thought - that or tai chi, which got me through the worst of the immediate post-breakup issues. I just don't have a lot of money atm to put onto something like that and the work thing is free. Hopefully things will improve soon.

And you're definitely right about needing to move - the depression makes me into a lump, and I tend to hate myself more, so activity helps.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

Activity is good for a lot of reasons. I hope the work contacts can put you in touch with someone useful. <3

[fixeight.livejournal.com]

Just to drop into this. you know I will always go to the gym with you if you need a coach. :)