Depression - a two-weeks-or-more sad mood and/or loss of interest in activities that are normally pleasurable to the individual
Seasonal Affective Disorder - depression that occurs year-after-year during the same season, often winter
Reactive Depression: depression in reaction to a pin-pointable external event or circumstance (e.g. a death, being continually harrassed at one's job)
Endogenous Depression: depression that's not in reaction to any identifiable external cause
Enjoy!
Why? Are you feeling sad?
ReplyDeleteI've been tempted to ask a bunch of similar questions- some but not all so grim- just out of curiosity about unites us as a little cluster of people.
ReplyDeleteTo answer this, what do I put if I react with depression to external events, but depression-inducing events occur on a constant basis?
semi-constant, i mean
ReplyDeleteWhy so glum, chums?
ReplyDeleteLindsay: I was having a real rough few weeks, but the last two days have been better, with today being downright okay, so I'm hoping things are turning around!
ReplyDeleteJulia: I guess it depends on how depressing they would be to most other people? Like if they're things that anyone would get really sad about, then probably reactive, but if it's stuff that most people would view as relatively minor like, I don't know, you've been doing fine for a few weeks and then you burn your toast and that's what sends you into a weeks-long depression, then probably endogenous.
Also, we got our first no!
Also, for the record it counted my vote twice for some reason, so subtract one from the "combination" answer.
I'm interested here to see what other people's experiences actually are in terms of the slightly more strict, clinically-oriented definition of depression, since the general topic of being sad about the world generally and with our own personal situations comes up in our conversations a lot, but we never really talk about how much of a real mental health issue it is or isn't for us. We talk about the thoughts and events that could be causative of depression if one were inclined towards it, but not, at least in my experience, about what actual emotional and thus functional impact it actually has on our lives. And so I didn't know if I was the only one of us who has days where I just alternate between sleeping and crying in my bedroom until 5pm when, once my roommates have all left the house and I won't have to see or talk to them, I go downstairs and make some toast for breakfast, take it back to my room, and then repeat the preceding activities (or replace with whatever your personal equivalent might be), or if all my friends actually know exactly what that's like and we just haven't been sayin. Also, my issues tend to be endogenous and I feel so stupid being utterly devastated and not knowing why and it's hard to not feel like I'm the only one. When I was doing a placement for school at the hospital last year and I did a day in the psych ward, I sat in on an interview with a woman who said that same thing, that she felt ridiculous and isolated in being sad-without-a-cause, and hearing that made me feel slightly less alone and has helped me, in a tiny way, ever since. I wanted so badly at the time to tell her privately when I saw her in the hallway afterwards that she wasn't the only one, but of course I never did. I still wonder if I should have, because otherwise I did nothing to help her at all, I was just a student observing her pain who never said a word. I wonder what happened to her.
Personally I've never sought medical treatment or told any doctor about it ever because I'm worried about being taken out of control of the situation, I don't really want no medications, and I'm unsure about how much therapy would help me. That said, this most recent round has been relatively short so far but pretty bad, and if things aren't for sure improved I'm considering going to the free counselling my school offers just to check out what it actually entails and because it's not a doctor, just a guy named Eric who I met before when he gave me and a few other people training for doing peer crisis support (so... is THAT irony, guys?) and he seemed pretty chill. If any of you have gone to counselling or therapy or anything you don't have to talk about it on Isle of Bile (and I'm sorry if I later delete this post, everyone!), but I'd be interested to hear about your experience and thoughts by one method of communication or another.
Glum because it's just my luck in life, I guess!
ReplyDeleteI really want to go into therapy, even though I don't think I have mental health problems. I'm not sure how much a psychologist would help me, since when I need a therapeutic session all I need is someone who can listen and understand the frustrations I'm going through. However, since you don't seem to understand the cause of your depressions, therapy may prove very useful.
ReplyDeleteAm I seriously the only no vote? Weird!
ReplyDeleteMy anxiety issues sometimes make me feel depressed, but I don't think that's the same thing as having depression.
I have not taken any psychiatric medications. I have gone to counselling and therapy and I find it awful and totally not at all helpful. I've done basic talk therapy, which MADE me depressed by forcing me to emotionally dredge up and re-live a shit I'd been doing a good job of not thinking about. I've also done cognitive behavioural therapy, which I found totally silly and not at all useful.
The only way I would ever try therapy again was if my mental state became much worse, or if I had access to a hilariously cliched Freudian psychoanalyst or something, just because I think it would be fun to try.
Sorry to hear you're having such a hard time, and as you say it's all the worse for being hard to pin-point a cause. I know people get very political about going to a therapist or not, and I have no idea what's better, but I have heard some people say that even just getting pills from a doctor has helped them a lot, when they had experiences/distrust for therapists similar to pam, or when they felt their issue was more intractable/clinically-based. I've heard other people say that taking medication helps with getting over the hump only alongside therapy, so I don't know. I think that the only times that I've been depressed on a basis long and hard enough to be similar to what you're describing it was more anxiety-related depression, like what pam's saying, and just part of being a highly-emotional person. I cry at least once weekly but it's usually not an unhealthy thing, just healthy sadness alongside healthy happiness, i think. In contrast I used to cry every morning for weeks before going to that really brutal job just because the anxiety over everything I had to do and how embarassing (and likely) a fuck-up would be was like a wall of awful looming up in front of me. Twice I made myself so ill with worry (not able to get out of bed, throwing up, etc.) about it that I actually was able to justify staying home. Now that I'm doing something hard/stressful but that I love and that I actually have a realistic possibility of succeeding in (unlike the coin job, which was a set-up for failure), things are a lot better, so if anyone has that kind of problem I highly recommend shifting towards attainable goals. Anyways, it always corresponded with events etc. (although it was too much of a reaction, if only because it was so paralyzing/problematic) so I never got to the point of medication/therapy, although i thought about it, and there are times where if it were free I would have gone.
ReplyDeleteIf you're ever feeling really awful and want to talk about it, you or anyone else reading can always feel free to get in touch with me or come out for a visit, to talk it through or even if just to have some fun and relax with company, without feeling embarassed, even if we haven't spoken in a while. It's so easy to become isolated when you're busy, and then etiquette can stand in the way of seeking company or other things that might help you feel better, and I really wouldn't care/find it awkward, and I'm sure that's true of most of us. I always found joel and alex's provided a great haven when i was down because they never have any particular social expectations and are always welcoming.
I have been feeling depressed often throughout the past week or three. Since my previous, Deep Madderian experiences with awful feelings seemed exogenous, due to situations such as romantic starvation and Crohn’s hell, my recent feelings of depression have been almost unique in that they seem at least more endogenous than I am accustomed to. I've only experienced fairly indubitably endogenous depression twice, and for some reason both times happened in 2007 at Pamela's old apartment on St. George shortly after we met.
ReplyDeleteOn two different occasions, spending a lazy night watching a movie with her or something, I remember suddenly being overcome by a feeling that nothing in the world could ever excite me or make me happy. There was a crushing feeling of pointlessness to life, like an elephant sitting on my face. I recall thinking that it was a very peculiar mental-physical effect on my body, whereby my toxic mental state seemed to be paralyzing me, making me unable to get out of bed. The only thing I could conceive of as a reaction to this feeling was going to sleep; it felt like my only recourse to life. It was like all the world was me in that room and it was pointless and I wanted to leave the room in sleep. The fact that Pamela was with me and that I was generally happy with my life (in fact one of the happiest times of my life), not to mention how quickly it came and went, suggested to me that this feeling was some sort of deep dark endogenous depression as opposed to the external melancholy I had been used to.
As for my more recent experiences, a week or three ago I started feeling like life is pointless (more than I usually do). That is, it was an oppressive, conspicuous sense that would prevent me from being able to enjoy myself in whatever activity I was engaged in. I had been playing video games often for a while, and suddenly every time I played one I almost instantly bored with it and felt depressed when I turned it off. It felt like, if video games can't be fun – the easiest, most indulgent fun I partake in – what can? And then I would quickly get bored of looking at the same websites over and over, and Pamela and I would just be sitting in her tiny apartment for a while not doing much, and my life started to feel somewhat suffocating. I felt my life was severely lacking and I had no purpose in living. There was also a Pamela aspect to it; I love Pamela and usually her very presence would comfort me, but when I felt this way it was basically the same as feeling alone. Ordinarily, this sort of feeling would be mitigated by working on creative projects, but, strangely, I had no desire to write or make music or anything. In fact, the idea of doing so seemed completely pointless, like if I made a c.d. it would just be one more piece of music thrown into a landfill of history that doesn't care. It was a very disconcerting feeling of pointlessness (though not nearly as horrible as the hardcore ones described previously). At this point I attributed it to not being in school or having a substantial, full-time job; I suspected it was just a matter of not having enough of a social life or sense of purpose. Usually this feeling would go away on its own after a few hours or overnight.
...A particularly bad recent night, comprising a sort of hitherto nadir of my recent mood, was when I went out to dinner with a comrade and started feeling just as pointless right after when I got home. Since I initially suspected my mood lately was simply due to lack of social cohesion and purpose, the realisation that I start feeling this way even right after I've had a good time with a friend was really disconcerting. I felt like my sense of the pointlessness of life lately must be a constant, internal phenomenon, rather than merely dependent on my social circumstances. I worried that I'd never be inspired to be alive again.
ReplyDeleteOf course, it went away quickly as usual, within a few hours or so. And I haven't been feeling this way that past few days, finally, so perhaps I merely had a brief taste of depression the past few weeks. Who knows. I'll report any further experiences if they happen any time soon.
This is a good forum. It's always important to talk about feelings, as we at Deep Madder always advocate. Speaking of which, this is the most Deep Madderian post and discussion on Isle of Bile ever. In fact, if people would like to translate anything they have expressed here into an article, please let us know.
Lastly, I'm sure that I can speak for Christopher as well when I say that I, like Julia, warmly welcome any sort of transmission of personal issues and emotional discussions, particularly for therapeutic discussions. Whenever anyone has problems, feel free to visit 100 Spadina (or wherever I am at the time) and I will always be happy to listen and help. I understand how terrible life can be so I always want to talk about these things.
I always find boredom to be much worse than being too busy and stressed out. I can't imagine life without a full-time occupation of some sort.
ReplyDeleterotten to the bone.
ReplyDeletedead life
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