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Re: It's Treatable. No, it's not.

Posted by aeon on November 27, 2006, at 18:15:30

In reply to Re: It's Treatable. No, it's not., posted by cecilia on November 27, 2006, at 17:48:28

Great thread! I agree with Linkadge that you can never really tell who is actually feeling happy, or not. I fake happiness all the time... in fact people think I "fall" into depression every few months again, and I try to tell them I've been depressed the whole time.

They say "No you've been much better" and say "No I just had slightly more energy for some reason and had more energy to put towards PRETENDING to feel happy, motivated, involved etc"...

That's where my energy goes in the so called "happy" times, to pretense. I can hold it out for months sometimes but eventually it catches up with me, like a dog running at my heels.

I grasp deseperately at any little bit of energy I can find, just to keep up the appearance, buying this that or the other supplement, to the doc to get a new med, anything so that work, partner, parents friends will not have to know that I am depressed.

Within all this there is no real chance to be happy... so much effort time money thought goes into playing a role of the happy functioning guy who has finally recovered.

I really don't know if the oppostite of depression is happiness. Happiness is not fulfilling for me - depressed vs effective maybe. "Depression" is not an emotion... it is a disorder, that is multifaceted. There is even a variant of depression where excessive happiness arises in the midst of it all - Bipolar!

I think that the long term depressed among us develop so many coping mechanisms that we eventually lose touch even with who we are. It gets lost in the layers of pretended emotional states... today is someone's birthday party, put on "social, fun, spontaneous, chatty" face. But what if you feel like curling up in fetal position? Often we manage to drag ourselves out with whatever chemical help we can swing together... there is always the fear that we have made a mistake this time and combined the wrong things. And we struggle through the party, and everyone says isn't it great that he's feeling better? He's like his "old" self....

Inside the loathing and the cognitive behavioural tricks are depleting energy, the fuel guage is below zero and you know that after this you will crash, the energy you had scraped together zapped in four hours, and you do.

So you fake the flu, don;'t go to work, sleep for days, gather some more energy, try to banish that aching stone in your chest , work around it, think of something, anything positive.

But you know you're going to have to go back to work, that you will have to talk to your partner, that the kids need you. So you drag yourself out and this time you are doing it with no energy, there's no pretending, you just go through the motions. Its all you can do. "GOD why don't you put some effort in?" screams your partner! "You're not applying yourself you need to think more positive, get some pep!" says your sales manager.

No one can see that the effort you put into simply brushing your teeth is herculean. Then getting your clothes on without bursting in to tears.

Everywhere you look there is a grey black smog. Your chest is all you can feel and the rising panic and fear and god knows what it is, there's no words.

Through all of this the struggle continues, on and on, year after year, relentless.

This is not a feeling. It is a disease, and happiness is not the cure. Complete removal of the signs and symptoms of the disease is the cure, so that you can feel once again the full gamut of human joys, sorrows, elations, hopes, dreams, disappointments, boredom, peace, fear, love.

All you feel when you are depressed is emptiness mixed with anxiety, this is not an emotion, and it is not fair that we should feel like this day in day out. We are less than human, and that's why our definition of a good day is one where we didn't consider swallowing a lethal dose of all those pills we've collected up.

No, happiness has got little, or nothing to do with it. Once we are better, happiness is one of the emotions we will feel at times, when it is appropriate to feel it, and without having to try.

Sorry for the rant.

aeon


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Psycho-Babble Medication | Framed

poster:aeon thread:706067
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061123/msgs/707971.html