Does anyone else ever get so fed up with feeling bad, and bored, and lonely, and just fucking awful that you just... give up on trying to feel better for a little bit? Okay, that sounds weird and hopeless, but let me explain. So, I guess my thought process is that I have all these depression issues and executive functioning issues and it makes things feel really difficult and boring. But when I can't stand feeling like that anymore and nothing is helping, like today after days and days of it, I just... stop caring? I try to do all these things to feel better, talking to loved ones, reading, rest, drinking tea, or whatever and it's not doing jack. So I don't feel good and it's like... alright. So I feel bad. Now what? Like, I am physically capable of vacuuming the apartment. There are no barriers there. If someone else were driving my body, it could do it without any issues. It doesn't matter how I feel about it, or how crushing the messy apartment seems, or that I'm distracted and bored and miserable. I CAN clean. So I do. I did. I have a clean apartment now and it's nice. I don't need to think about cleaning the apartment, or have feelings about it or be entertained by it. So my options are being still while depressed or moving while depressed, "what's the fucking difference" is what I'm telling my brain, right? :I I guess this works until something goes wrong in the cleaning process, which means forcing me to actually engage the executive function and emotions area of my brain because suddenly something is difficult and I get irrationally angry at that thing. So then the cleaning becomes angry aggressive cleaning until the issue is solved and I go back to regular cleaning. But, you know, so what if I kick a few stuffed animals that happen to be in the way of what I'm trying to do, right? Same with fish tank care, I can do that mindlessly until I accidentally spill salt water all over the entire everything and have to mop it up before it gets too dire. But then it just becomes angry fish tank care for a minute until I get over it. I can do that. I don't know. It seems like a good idea for at least doing things necessary for making myself feel better once I care about that again, but I don't like how it puts me on a short fuse I guess. Also I was getting a whole bunch of weird, phantom body pains which was like... o.O; Does anyone else do something like this or is this really weird? I dunno, for some reason I feel like there might be something wrong with this way of thinking/handling things.
Yes. I do this. I definitely do this; you are not alone. In fact, I've found that giving myself the space and time as early as possible in a depressive episode to just feel it - and to validate it in any way I can - will often clear the brain chemicals at least a little. Then the self-care and feel-better-ness has a little more ground. It doesn't always work, but it does pretty often. Usually I'll find music that matches what I'm feeling, and sink into that for a bit, or I'll write out whatever I'm thinking/feeling if there's anything in particular that's bugging me. I dunno what the mechanism is, but I guess I can't always just slather on nice stuff over the gross stuff. Gotta rinse it off first. :) also, *hugs*.
Seconding literally everything @Kaylotta just said. With addition of "are you me?" The most important thing when I'm angry, is that I have to slow down and do everything really carefully. I mean, I'm still doing it angrily, but I've noticed that when I fuck up while angry, the resulting emotional feedback is really obnoxious. But I am apparently an excellent vacuumer when pissed. Usually, though, there is a weird sort of acceptance of "ok well I'm pissed/depressed/whatever today." mostly because I can't really reach into my brain and adjust chemical spigots until the balance is right. There are things I can do to be ok with the fact that my brain is not working that day, but unless I go on meds, that chemical issue is probably not going to be fixed. So yeah, validation.
hee hee angry vacuuming. XD (also, the idea of chemical spigots is an excellent one, and I shall be stealing it.)
Angry vacuuming was exactly what I was doing yesterday, and woe betide anything that got in the way. But OH MAN, YES. The horrible feed back of being irrationally angry, doing stuff in an angry manner, fucking up or injuring myself because of carelessness, INCREASED ANGER TO INFINITY.
Yep, I punched my printer once because I was pissed & in a hurry, and managed to fuck up everything. It didn't solve anything and it didn't even make me feel better, which I think is just unfair.
