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

[samy.livejournal.com]

I'm glad the pimp was useful for someone. :)

[mikaboo.livejournal.com]

*Hug* Counseling is always a good idea in my book. That's one of my top priorities when I get my paperwork.

That's similar to what how I describe being bipolar. For me it's like I'm sitting in the driver's seat of a really fast car and normally I have control of things like the steering wheel, brake, and gas... But there are many times when no matter how hard I punch the gas or turn the wheel. I'm only going to go a crawling speed. Other times, no matter how hard I hit the brakes or try to keep the wheel straight, I manage to go 170km and hit everything in my path.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

You can always cancel the appointment, or go once and get confirmation you don't need to be there. <3 Sometimes, just making the step can lighten the world a little. I hope you start to feel better. I've really been in the hole, myself.

[fixeight.livejournal.com]

It's a weird topic to breech but I think I get it better now from this explination than I ever have, because I've never understood it before, or been able to.

[threnody.livejournal.com]

Honestly, the best representation I've seen that fits my mental image was Gollum from the Two Towers movie, where he's arguing with himself. That is my LIFE.

[shaiyela.livejournal.com]

It's a little different with manic depression, because you get the insanely happy highs too, but reading this helped me realize I am still not out of the depression I sank into after my dad died. There have been up moments, for sure, but if you were to put me on a map of a deep well, I'd say I'm still only halfway up. Feels like I haven't been at the top in years - which is true, I guess!