If you have a smartphone you could try a mood diary. :) I use Daylio, which has the advantage that it prompts you about your mood once a day at a time you set. It gives a good overview, I think :)
nah, I don't have a smartphone (I am pretty sure I am literally the only student in my college right now that has a phone that is not a smartphone lol) but I might be able to use my regular journal like a mood diary. I just have to get a schedule going, and maybe writing a kind of forum to fill out a few days in advance. What are some of the prompts?
They are the same every time. 'How has your mood been today?' And then there are a couple of choices, and you can edit them if you want: Rad, Good, Meh, Fugly, Awful. And you can add what you have done today in little pictures. You can also add notes if you want.
I've been back on my meds regularly for awhile now and while it's great to not want to actively kill myself or feel pure dread at the idea of phone calls or someone at the door, my mood still doesn't feel...happy? Like I'm still struggling to be a responsible adult and I can't help but think that's less depression and just me being a lazy fuck up. Today my housemate, in an effort to cheer me up and be supportive, told me that it's okay if I don't save the world, that I save my own world every time I do the dishes or manage to take a shower. And it just felt so...pathetic, I guess. That the bar for success had been lowered for me so much and that I can't even clear it half the time. So now I'm more bummed and loathing myself than I was before he tried to be nice. Oops.
It might not feel like it today, but he's right. I know it's really hard to accept, it took me a long time as well, and it sort of feels condescending when people say these things, but he's right. Just, recovery mostly means small steps in everything. That's the same for mental as well as physical issues. A friend of mine had her arm in a cast for 8 weeks, because of a broken wrist. It's been out for two weeks, and it's not like she's already rockclimbing! So, don't think you can do all the spring cleaning in one day right now. One day you might be able to again, but today, the dishes were a great accomplishment already :)
Thank you. I guess I just feel like I don't have anything to really recover from so it feels like...I don't know. For once in my life, words fail me. I think part of it jarred me because I'd sort of forgotten the impact my not doing dishes every day or taking a shower every day would have on other people, so there's that embarrassment going for me too.
Depression doesn't always happen for a reason. Depression in itself is something to recover from ;) It's hard to remember, but someday, hopefully you'll be where I am right now, and look back and think: man, I did manage to get stuff accomplished during that time! Or even: 'I am so proud of myself that I managed to accomplish anything at all!' Right-now me is a lot kinder to past-me than past-me ever was.
My depression manifested often in being in a really sour mood for no reason or for perceived or real slights of no actual consequence. I've been on antidepressants since the beginning of August 2015, and while they improved my life substantially and made me feel like a functional human being for the first time in approximately "shit I don't know, forever?", I do occasionally still get Sour for No Reason. It's bad news bears.
I have people irl I talk to about my depression, and I love em and all, but I swear to god if I hear "just do things a little bit at a time and reward yourself after each little thing!" one more time my cellphone is going to get thrown against a wall in frustration because no you don't understand that is a solution to a different problem then the one I am having. When I say I am getting no work done and have no motivation and I can't do anything it means I can't do those "little things" either. Otherwise I'd be doing that!
I mean the one great thing about all of this work that I am Not Doing is I looked up how my meds work and aparently an overdose causes seizures/cardiac arrest/coma (and eventually death) and I'm like "yikes." so that's one method I can cross of the table right now because that sounds like an extremely unpleasant way to go* *I am not actively suicidal or anything right now. just, you know.... for future reference and consideration.
Just Little Depression Things: not having the energy or emotional stamina to maintain friendships, then one day looking up and realizing all your friends have moved on without you. The only friends I have left are the ones I RP with and I'm pretty sure if I stopped RPing with them, they'd gradually drift away too.
Do you think if you re-contacted your old friends you could strike up old friendships? I mean, my moirail is someone I knew like 6 years ago, drifted away from for a few years, and then now we're tighter than ever. So... idk. I know exactly how you feel, it's a shitty, lonely feeling, and sorry if all you wanted was a witnessed.
I've tried. It felt forced and that chemistry from before just isn't there anymore. And it's not like I blame anyone but myself for this. I could try to make new friends but it seems like it'd just be a new group of people I only have so much energy for, and that's not really fair to anyone. Also thanks, for advice and the witness. Just kinda bitching, you know how we do.
Yeah. Well, hopefully someday you'll have more energy! You've just got to do what you can for now. -fistbunp-
"...it may be what in the old days was called a spiritual crisis or whatever. It’s just the feeling as though the entire, every axiom of your life turned out to be false, and there was actually nothing, and you were nothing, and it was all a delusion. And that you were better than everyone else because you saw that it was a delusion, and yet you were worse because you couldn’t function." Apparently David Foster Wallace wrote this. It's... very accurate for me, in a way that other people's descriptions of depression have not been. I should read more David Foster Wallace.
Glad you found something accurate! It's really lovely to have someone else help put words to what you're feeling, I think, and it makes it less... lonely.
Been on the meds five-ish years now. Things have been looking up this year, I have a paying job, I am getting my life in order. Yeah, depression doesn't care. I've spent the past couple of days feeling tired, restless, bored but unable to enjoy anything, and with that slight feeling of discomfort in my chest, like it's just unpleasant being me. On the upside, I've learned that it doesn't mess with my focus, and getting work done actually distracts me a bit for the duration. On the downside, everything.
