Well, my depression just decided to hit me like a ton of bricks.

[Krishnath]

Chronic depression friggin' sucks.

I have no idea why I am posting this, just needed to get it out there I guess. :/

[toctheyounger]

I feel that in my soul. Its not an easy thing to manage and lots of folk just don't get it. Mine kicked in 3-4 months ago and it was so subtle I didn't even notice until I hit the point of letting everyone around me down abd feeling terrible about myself.

I'm still digging out of it but the impact has been fairly substantial. Family is all ok but I'm definitely going to need to leave my job sooner than later. Its just not the environment for me.

Hang in there friend. You're not the only one abd sometimes its good to just get it out there.

[Krishnath]

I feel that in my soul. Its not an easy thing to manage and lots of folk just don't get it. Mine kicked in 3-4 months ago and it was so subtle I didn't even notice until I hit the point of letting everyone around me down abd feeling terrible about myself.

I'm still digging out of it but the impact has been fairly substantial. Family is all ok but I'm definitely going to need to leave my job sooner than later. Its just not the environment for me.

Hang in there friend. You're not the only one abd sometimes its good to just get it out there.

I've pretty much suffered from it my whole life, most of the time it just in the background simmering, and during that time I feel relatively alright, but occasionally it flares up and I just feel terrible. I'll be alright, I always am, but I will feel terrible for days, and it always comes out of nowhere. Fortunately, I've found that chocolate helps me manage, doubly fortunate, there are now multiple brands of sugar-free chocolate on the market over here, so I have variety.

Also, the people around you can just shove off, your own mental and physical health is more important than the perceived feelings of people around you. It took me a long time to learn this myself, but it was crucial to help me manage my depression.

[The Fluff]

@Krishnath

if it helps to share it.. so just share it here.

are you taking medicines for it?

[Krishnath]

@Krishnath

if it helps to share it.. so just share it here.

are you taking medicines for it?

I am not, the medicine I was offered would have either made me a zombie or caused me to commit suicide. I declined it of course. As I said, I can usually manage it with chocolate, thank Hades for that. It's good that there are natural alternatives that are effective.

I am mostly over the episode now. I mean, I am still depressed, that's what chronic depression means, but I no longer feel the need to just crawl under a rock and not come out again.

[toctheyounger]

@Krishnath

if it helps to share it.. so just share it here.

are you taking medicines for it?

I am not, the medicine I was offered would have either made me a zombie or caused me to commit suicide. I declined it of course. As I said, I can usually manage it with chocolate, thank Hades for that. It's good that there are natural alternatives that are effective.

I am mostly over the episode now. I mean, I am still depressed, that's what chronic depression means, but I no longer feel the need to just crawl under a rock and not come out again.

I'm pretty sure I've been on that med before and its terrible. For the people its good for its great, abd if it doesn't work for you you just become awful to be around. I got the latter. My wife ended up calling my therapist and demanding I switch meds. What I'm on now is fine and has pretty minimal impact.

At any rate, the meds are fine if they keep you stable but the main thing is having a good strategy for keeping yourself on the level or picking yourself back up again. Thats something the meds will never do.

Re your previous post - yeah everyone else can just screw off. Theres very few people in my life that understand the issue well enough to help pick me up again, so having a good plan is pretty crucial. I've also had mine for longer than I've not had it, but only really just got serious in the last year or so about managing it properly. Half of the battle is actually confronting that you have an issue and addressing it. It was scary for me to address it because I was so worried it would end badly.

[Krishnath]

@Krishnath

if it helps to share it.. so just share it here.

are you taking medicines for it?

I am not, the medicine I was offered would have either made me a zombie or caused me to commit suicide. I declined it of course. As I said, I can usually manage it with chocolate, thank Hades for that. It's good that there are natural alternatives that are effective.

I am mostly over the episode now. I mean, I am still depressed, that's what chronic depression means, but I no longer feel the need to just crawl under a rock and not come out again.

I'm pretty sure I've been on that med before and its terrible. For the people its good for its great, abd if it doesn't work for you you just become awful to be around. I got the latter. My wife ended up calling my therapist and demanding I switch meds. What I'm on now is fine and has pretty minimal impact.

At any rate, the meds are fine if they keep you stable but the main thing is having a good strategy for keeping yourself on the level or picking yourself back up again. Thats something the meds will never do.

Re your previous post - yeah everyone else can just screw off. Theres very few people in my life that understand the issue well enough to help pick me up again, so having a good plan is pretty crucial. I've also had mine for longer than I've not had it, but only really just got serious in the last year or so about managing it properly. Half of the battle is actually confronting that you have an issue and addressing it. It was scary for me to address it because I was so worried it would end badly.

For me, I knew I suffered from depression as soon as I was old enough to understand what depression is. I also knew I was asocial since I was a kid (I.e. I have no need or desire for companionship, and i am happiest on my own.), but it was good to finally get a diagnosis, which in turn led to me being put on a disability pension. In addition to my chronic depression, I also suffer from full blown sociophobia, (I.e. I am afraid of social interaction with people. I can't even travel for long without getting panic attacks, and I need to prepare for days just to be able to visit the doctors or dentists, and even then I might bail at the last minute because I have a bad day.), and this is on top of being on the autistic scale. I like to say that I am certifiably crazy, and the funny part is, I really am certified due to the sociophobia.

As for the medicine, yeah, I balked hard on that one, one of my cousins got it when I was a kid and killed himself a few weeks later because of it. I can't for the life of me understand why a medicine that causes one in four people who get it to try and kill themselves within four weeks of starting it could get approved.

It's the same with a lot of other medications, I am also diabetic, and some of the medicines I've been offered to take for it (because me an insulin doesn't work well) are down right insane when it comes to side effects, two of them have a 1 in 10 chance of causing bladder cancer, and the third was banned in the US for causing Necrosis in the same. When the actual heck did it become acceptable for a medicine to be worse than the disease it's supposed to treat?
The one I am on now though is pretty good, it's one tiny needle prick once a week, and the only side effect I've noticed is that my appetite has gone down a little, and I was eating to much to begin with, so that's not a bad thing.

It's good that you have someone to help you manage it, and yeah, accepting you have an issue is the first major battle you have to win.

[benjameenbear]

Chiming in here since depression used to rule a long portion of my life, nearly 15 years. It's become much less frequent now because I've learned better communication skills with my wife and she (who's also dealt with chronic depression) understands it. In fact, she probably has it worse than I do.

I'll second what @Maxxx17 said about finding a good distraction OR career that TOTALLY engages your brain @Krishnath. For me, that was (and still is) EDH and copywriting. Goldfishing decks, thinking about combo applications, mentally forecasting moves that opponents could make, browsing YouTube game content, etc. all keeps my brain engaged and helps to prevent it from turning inwards. And I freaking LOVE copywriting. There's endless ways to persuade people and change sentence nuances that makes my brain feel like it's eternally engaged in a positive way.

Because, in my opinion, that's really a leading cause of the PAIN associated with depression, which is separate from actual depression (totally in my very, very subjective opinion). I'll try and explain the difference so far as I see in distinguishing the pain of depression vs. depression itself.

I am firmly in the camp that depression is a medical condition, where you literally have an imbalance of brain chemicals that help regulate your mood. There's lots of studies about depression I won't reference, but I 100% believe that depression is a medical condition that can be influenced by both genetics (nature) as well as your upbringing (nurture). That's another conversation that maybe we can explore to help bring clarity to the subject, but I want to focus on what I perceive the PAIN of depression is.

For me, I believe the pain of depression comes from an incredibly talented and highly intelligent mind being incompletely engaged in daily life and thus turning inwards to try and find a problem that's truly, mentally stimulating. The biggest problem that's always with us? Ourselves.

Think about it. Typically, people who have depression are often aware of their own character and personality deficiencies. They then measure those deficiencies against other people that they see, interact with, or otherwise observe. These deficiencies are perceived as a PROBLEM. And the incompletely engaged (but highly talented) mind sees this problem and joyously shouts "FINALLY! Something I can focus on and try to improve!" And then it goes to work.

But there's a problem when the mind goes to work: it will do everything it can to try and identify areas of improvement, categorizing weaknesses, possibly even coming up with plans to improve those areas... but then doesn't have the biochemistry the reward the mental behaviors it's engaging with.

Literally, the dopamine and other receptors that help regulate mood are insufficient to tell this mind "Ok, we've done our work here. Time to feel good about it! Now it's time to take action." Enter the fall-off-cliff stage.

See, the brain has done all this work to try and improve its situation and it's not get rewarded for it. So it works HARDER to try and improve its situation, which only leads to repeating the above process... which leads to the same result... which quickly devolves into a literal downward spiral.

To me, this is what the PAIN of depression is. So that's why I'm personally extremely grateful for the career choice I have. I'm a senior copywriter for a fast-growing firm and my work literally has brain completely, fully, and contentedly engaged. Between that and my young family (who I love), a wife who's kickass and an amazing fit for me, and my hobbies (Pokemon Go and EDH), my brain happily moves from one of these things to the other and finds new ways of engaging, improving, adding value, etc. My brain literally doesn't have as much time to begin the depression cycle.

But this has only occurred SINCE I've found my dream career. So, it wasn't all rainbows and sunshine for the past few years or anything. This has literally only occurred for me within the past 6-7 months.

Hope this helps. I'm happy to offer some advice and pose some questions that I think might help, but know that I first deeply sympathize and empathize with where you're at. I don't have the diagnoses that you have (and my heart goes out to you for what you're dealing with as a human being) but I want you to know that you have at least one more dude in your corner.

[RabidVacin]

I've been fighting depression for 30 years. Medication and therapy has helped but I know that I will eventually build up a tolerance to the medication. One thing that I won't build up a tolerance for is endorphins. When I'm feeling down, the last thing I want to do is exercise. But I know that if I force myself to exercise, it is a great way to boost my mood. It can be overwhelming to imagine working out for an hour, but even 10 minutes on the exercise bike can be a big boost.

[Krishnath]

I'll second what @Maxxx17 said about finding a good distraction OR career that TOTALLY engages your brain @Krishnath. For me, that was (and still is) EDH and copywriting. Goldfishing decks, thinking about combo applications, mentally forecasting moves that opponents could make, browsing YouTube game content, etc. all keeps my brain engaged and helps to prevent it from turning inwards. And I freaking LOVE copywriting. There's endless ways to persuade people and change sentence nuances that makes my brain feel like it's eternally engaged in a positive way.

Sadly it does not work that way for me as my depression is a direct result of my brain being, well, different, from the standard issue. All I can do is mitigate the worst of it when it gets bad. MTG helps, so does playing other games. But like my sociophobia, it will never go away, and it will only get worse as I get older. The only two things that could help me without turning me into an overmedicated zombie (and honestly, that is not I life I want), are not currently legal here, so they are not options for me.

[pasednev]

I'm really sorry to hear that you're going through such a tough time right now. Depression can be incredibly overwhelming, and it often feels like it just comes out of nowhere. I completely understand how it can make everything feel so heavy and gray. I've been there too, and it's a real struggle.

Just remember, you're not alone in this. Reach out to friends and loved ones when you can, and don't hesitate to seek professional help if you haven't already. Anhedonia may feel like a dark cloud, but with the right support and strategies, there's light at the end of the tunnel.