write your depressed thoughts here

let us shed the light of knowlege on your darkest dreams

my haircut is a little uneven and i feel like it is the end of the world

my kid has a cold - surely this will lead to respiratoy failure and death

Okay, CBT your way out of this:

I let debilitating social phobia completely destroy the last 15 years of my life, and despite the minor improvements I've been able to make to regain some tiny bit of self-confidence I still can't get over the fact that no matter how fast I fix things it's too late to have the life I actually wanted, and my "peer group" (whoever/wherever the fuck they are) have long since moved on.

And I still have no friends, social phobia is still present in full force, I've just developed a few strategies for dealing with it beyond the previous "no human engagement with anyone, ever," and I think I might be developing an Ativan problem.

Xpost OK, I obviously did not correctl gauge the tone of this thread. Fuck it, posting anyway. Do be careful, floor is slippery when wet (with bile)

am sick and bedbound...being sick in a more normal flu/cold always makes me depressed cos of chronic illness, don't know why. also stress about calling in sick to work and losing money by doing so cos i'm freelance. and knowing it'll be a miracle if i'm okay tomorrow. AND i want some food but am too fucked to get up and go to shops...

muus lääv - can you describe the life you wanted?

I basically wait until I have an actual reason to talk to someone, take a deep breath, and then say whatever I came up with. If someone doesn't feel like talking to me, then I either let it go, or test to see if maybe I just came in at the wrong angle.

That works about as well with lifelong friends as it does random people at a bar/restaurant, it's just that you're more likely to have an easier opening.

In other words, you posted here, so you've already made a step, and we're responding. Success!

Telephone, i have dealt a LOT with social phobia, and i have been exposed to ativan as well. if u need someone to talk to please feel free to message me. i have developed some good coping mechanisms on the subject.

Life-affirming things that have crossed my mind of late:

If life throws a constant string of obstacles your way, that might be life telling you something. Like maybe that the whole concept of being a survivor isn't quite as heroic as we've been brought up to believe but is, in fact, foolish and possibly in opposition to the universe's plans.

There may in fact be a grand design to the universe, but humankind is too self-involved to acknowledge that our respective roles in that grand design might be little more than to fertilize cemetery flora.

And then lots of random things about how I may be too old a dog to ever really learn how to be a functioning adult, how I may have just had one too many serious relationship collapse under me to ever feel comfortable settling into another, the daily struggle to make myself get out of bed when I know I face a yawning chasm of nothing at the end of a road that'll end at a point that I neither know nor can fully prepare for (and how a whole lot of people I care for are likely to reach the end of that road before I do), etc etc etc.

Trying to get out of the miserable fucker rut. It ain't eeeezaaaayay.

My warpy thoughts:

* what's the point of painting/making music just for the sake of it?
* if you criticise me, you hate me
* arguments/disagreements must be avoided at all costs
* i don't have enough skills/i'm over-qualified

So, yeah, I guess I'm way too much with the external validation and being seen as good/nice.

i often think that i would like to be dead, or that someone should just kill me in order to improve the world we all share, but i fear death terribly and lack any desire to do myself harm. also, when i have such thoughts, i'm aware that i'll probably feel better tomorrow (or whenever i'm not so entirely destitute/hung over). so i just keep truckin on.

the most depressing thought is that i will die childless and without having published anything substantial. i'm saving that despair for my old age.

xxpost

Well, I'll help you out on the first count, jel. Seems to me that creative endeavor undertaken for its own sake is the only thing humankind can claim as an unambiguously positive contribution to the world-at-large (that isn't a direct response/attempt to rectify a previous negative human action). Outside of that, we're pretty much just either complying with our biological imperatives or acting in direct opposition to our well being and/or that of every other living thing on the planet.

And on your last count, I identify completely. I'm too smart and well-educated to have much of an excuse, but too much of a dilettante and a scatterbrain to get my shit together and figure out what I should be doing with myself.

contenderizer, I don't think about my death per se, but there are lots of times when I feel like just, y'know, not existing would be a boon for me and of little notice to most other people.

The other day, I was thinking that I would totally trade bodies with Stephen Hawking. It seems so unfair for someone with such an amazing mind to be saddled with such a shit body, whereas I'm not doing much with either, so...

I let debilitating social phobia completely destroy the last 15 years of my life, and despite the minor improvements I've been able to make to regain some tiny bit of self-confidence I still can't get over the fact that no matter how fast I fix things it's too late to have the life I actually wanted, and my "peer group" (whoever/wherever the fuck they are) have long since moved on.

― muus lääv? :D muus dut :( (Telephone thing), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 12:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

hey, can i ask how old you are, Tt? i ask cuz i would have said something similar in my mid-late 20s, but that things improved remarkably in my 30s - partly due to antidepressant drugs, partly due to a real effort on my part to break the established patterns of my life.

(I should note that three sudden deaths, a major breakup, and quitting a horrible job without a backup plan within the span of a year have played a significant role in the formation of my rosy, rosy outlook.)

we are doomed. weather will get worse. colder in the winter, warmer in the summer. oil consumption will rise and rise to meet the increased demand for air conditioning and heating. thus making the winters and summers even worse. people will be sick all the time. low-level colds and fevers and flus and viruses. because of the weather. lots more air-borne/insect-related illnesses and deaths. every year will be worse than the year before. people will at first shrug off the amount of storms and tornados and floods and the need for more and more summer cooling stations and antibiotics and summer flu shots, but in the next ten years things will get harder to shrug off. we will be inside all the time. towns and cities will be regularly quarantined.

If anything, self-acceptance of some of my aspects as personal preferences, not limitations, has been really helpful. Not everyone is cut out for every social situation, every relationship, every friendship, or every job. Being honest with myself about how I'm feeling, and expressing my preferences to others and acting on some of my instincts has been the most rewarding thing I've done.

(oddly , like Deric I had a lot of traumatic stuff too: I had a major breakup, a shakeup of my living situation, legal problems, bought a house, adopted a cat, and broke both wrists all in the stretch of eighteen months or so)

Yeah, I forgot about the shakeup of my living situation precipitated by the death of my roommate and subsequent eviction by his mother. That happened, too. Wheeee.

we are doomed. weather will get worse. colder in the winter, warmer in the summer. oil consumption will rise and cetera...

since it's predicated on the patently ridiculous notion that i'm not the main character, none of that really gets me down

dang, deric, i'd say you're doing damn well, all things considered

I lost a few close family members including one immediate. Of course this is depressing, rest of family isn't too supportive but what else is new. I guess they have a different way of coping. I suffer from panic disorder and I keep switching doctors because they keep throwing depression in with that. I'm not depressed, other than situationally.

Thanks, contenderizer. It actually does help a little whenever someone validates the absurd level of hardship I've dealt with in the past year. Like, it makes me feel like I should go a little easier on myself for not having my shit all the way together just yet.

And I'm trying to maintain some perspective through all of this. Several people have mentioned to me that there's probably a book in this, so that's something, maybe. I'm kinda just waiting until there's some discernible happy "ending" so that it doesn't wind up being a book that induces mass suicide, y'know?

Sympathies, u s steel. I lost my grandma (my dad's mom) last year. My dad was diagnosed with throat cancer a week later and died five weeks after that from the chemo. We had a difficult relationship, and the last time we spoke, I had an impatient tone toward his calling and hemming and hawing and seeming to have nothing to say before he broke the news to me. And then I got to literally watch him die a few weeks later. Soooo that's all maybe weighing on me pretty heavily, I guess.

Thanks for your response Deric, very helpful...really, yeah, you have every reason to go easier on yourself!

I will try to help people feel better by exposing the irrationality of their depressed thoughts but I will fail and they will just get sadder and so will I and it will all sprial down and I will be a heroin addict

Ha ha. See, that's kind of the problem though, Latham, is that I feel like a good number of my depressed thoughts of late are some of the more incisively logical thoughts I've ever had. I've managed to hack away at a lot of the comfortable lies people tell themselves to get themselves through most days without falling apart, and there's really no percentage in it. I've come to realize the extent to which wisdom without utility is pretty much a recipe for crazy.

...I feel like a good number of my depressed thoughts of late are some of the more incisively logical thoughts I've ever had. I've managed to hack away at a lot of the comfortable lies people tell themselves to get themselves through most days without falling apart, and there's really no percentage in it.

truth bomb for the ages

You know how people say when something bad happens that you will learn a lot from it? I decided that's a lie, there are few lessons to be learned from most of the bad things (that have happened to me, anyway). Deciding this actually granted me a lot of relief.

I agree with everyone that you have lots of reason to be easy on yourself, Deric!
One thing that has helped me is to move the goalposts on "fully functioning adult" to wherever I goddamn feel like.

The only lesson I learned from larger bad things is that the smaller bad things aren't so difficult to overcome after all.

xpost

I wish I was comfortable moving the goalposts within the range of what I seem to be capable of maintaining. But as I've expressed to others before (and as I'm sure has been expressed about me by others), I basically function not much differently than a moderately intelligent and responsible 12-year-old might if left to his own devices (and assuming he had the ability to get an adult job). Meaning, yeah, I pay my rent and haven't yet died from starvation, but achieving much more than that with any regularity requires gargantuan effort. I can and often have been able to function at a higher level, but not with any consistency. And even if I were willing to just accept that about myself, I have my doubts that many other people would be willing to deal with me if I did. And so I'm constantly exhausted and stressed from trying to reach some semi-acceptable baseline (which I barely do) so that other human beings won't reject me en masse.

But thanks for your support, also, Abbott! Ha ha.

Deric, by your writing alone I'm guessing your baseline is probably a lot higher than you give yourself credit for

I basically function not much differently than a moderately intelligent and responsible 12-year-old might if left to his own devices

so relate to this. my baseline level has improved since taking antidepressants, but it's nowhere near so-called "normal" yet. tasks of any complexity agitate me and take me 20x longer to do than my peers. i was really really hard on myself about it all through college and the horrible mid-twenties; now i'm just like "my friends who can do more than me have their own set of problems; i'll do my best and try to be okay with what i know are my strengths and weaknesses." then again i'm lol single, so.

You write really elegantly, Deric! I have to say I have been happy to see you back lately. Sorry things have been apparently incredibly shitty!
Pay rent/feed self is a big fucking deal when a person is in mental pain. I hope that doesn't sound condescending; it's fucking true, imo. That is shit you earn.
mh otm! Respect to you!

Just read something about ADD/ADHD in adults and how damaging it is to people -- I think it was online, and maybe everyone else read it too? Because it's seen as a kid's condition and so if people aren't diagnosed when young, after a certain age the doctors don't think of it anymore. It sounded awful: people unable to pay bills, concentrate on anything they knew they needed to do, have relationships, hold jobs. And sufferers described having occasionally "lucid" days when their brain chemistry was cooperative, and trying to smash weeks of work into that day because they never knew when it would be *just right* again. It sounds horrible, and I guess often leads to depression and stuff too because you just can't get ahead at all. Just uh I don't know throwing that out there.

I have a friend who finally got decent treatment for ADD as a 29 year old, and he's doing great!

Oh, yeah. I'm in that boat, Laurel. Late diagnosis adult ADD, medicated and all that. It definitely helps when I'm mostly up & on otherwise, but it doesn't do a lot of good when I'm gettin' the wind knocked out of me by other stuff. But I also think that late diagnosis basically stunted my development in a lot of ways that weren't staggeringly apparent until I got to college, and then a whole lot moreso by the time I'd finished.

And to clarify: when I say I function at the level of a 12-year-old (and, yeah, lately that's true mostly due to stress & depression effing up the efficacy of my meds), I'm really only referring to basic life skills that a lot of adults take for granted. In other words, stuff I have to do for myself (and that I have to motivate myself to do) to push past that baseline of mere survival. But, yeah, I thrive in almost any environment where something/someone else is motivating me. A friend agreed the other day with my assertion that I have a really good brain that functions incredibly inefficiently. Like a Porche engine that someone poured a two liter of Coke into.

But thanks again, folks. It's good to read nice and supportive words. They unfortunately haven't been as forthcoming from the corners from which I would've expected to receive them, and I'm not the type to go seeking them out even when I could really use it.

wait a minute, tihs thread was supposed to help people feel better!
"Ha ha. See, that's kind of the problem though, Latham, is that I feel like a good number of my depressed thoughts of late are some of the more incisively logical thoughts I've ever had. I've managed to hack away at a lot of the comfortable lies people tell themselves to get themselves through most days without falling apart, and there's really no percentage in it. I've come to realize the extent to which wisdom without utility is pretty much a recipe for crazy."
so on some days you fall apart and then when you're done crying you put yoruself back together
anyways logical thoughts don't necessarily bring sorrow unless they are really emotionally colored thoughts

I basically function not much differently than a moderately intelligent and responsible 12-year-old might if left to his own devices (and assuming he had the ability to get an adult job). Meaning, yeah, I pay my rent and haven't yet died from starvation, but achieving much more than that with any regularity requires gargantuan effort.

Yeah, paying rent and feeding yourself is nothing to sneeze at . . . it took me years and years to get to this point. What more are you interested in achieving?

I can and often have been able to function at a higher level, but not with any consistency. And even if I were willing to just accept that about myself, I have my doubts that many other people would be willing to deal with me if I did.

Not sure what the exact issues are here, but you can only do what you can do, not what you think others expect from you. Maybe you could take a brief mental holiday from being hard on yourself? What sort of things do you think people are doing who are not at this presumed 12-year-old stage?

And Jel, you are one of the sweetest people I've ever met . . . sending good thoughts your way from across the Atlantic.

Sorry, I have no depressing thoughts to impart; I burned them all off at yoga last night.

going to shit my pants

be careful 5$! mack daddy's dont shitpant!

That's why he's depressed, you see.

"Nobody on ILX likes me."

my coworkers think I am a dud and not classic.

maybe you should have a beer with them

that would just be giving in to the depressive thoughts

what if they're the duds and I'm the classic!!

there was actually just an outing last night but my whole family is sick so I had a great excuse to avoid the fun

ENBB hates me

I'm ugly, I'm mean, I'm vindictive. I'm Peter Sarsgaard in The Green Lantern.

Misread that as Peter Sarstedt.

People misread my posts on ILX.

you love The Goonies?

blueski thinks I love The Goonies

It sounded awful: people unable to pay bills, concentrate on anything they knew they needed to do, have relationships, hold jobs

eek, that sounds familiar. i always wondered if i have ADD or not...

I will never be able to sell my house - or rent it successfully - or if I do the tenants will barf on all

the doctor is going to eat my head

people i like on the internet don't like the same things i like

I made a baby cry :(

My mouth seems to be a shovel sometimes. Better learn sign language.

Virginia Plain, thank you :)

Oh, here's a doozy I had the other day. Walking down the street, I saw that someone had written 'JUGGALO' in some wet cement. And after a brief moment of amusement, it occurred to me that being a Juggalo is no more absurd than any of the multitude of things we've collectively codified as normal. So that's where I'm at: mentally assigning the same value to my own goals and passions as I do Juggaloism.

take hart jel

my "friends" don't actually like me, i am merely tolerated.

I smell like mildew

Tonight's meetup, which I spent about $50 and pissed off my boss to attend, ended in the usual total social failure. At least the movie was good.

Everything I say is stupid and regrettable. I never finish what I start; I will grow old alone and directionless, without realising whatever potential I may have had. I need to go back to being vegetarian, because I'm not worth the lives of all these chickens &c.

I kid myself any time I try to believe I'm attractive anymore. I'm not. I look in the mirror and a defeated, aging loser stares back with dead eyes. I'll never be able to afford to own a home in this country, and I'm terrified of being old, on a meagre pension, with no where to live, eating cat food out of a can.

not depressed but i'm def in 'avoid people' mode atm. the good thing is i generally know when I'm feeling that way in advance.

I'm terrified of being old, on a meagre pension, with no where to live, eating cat food out of a can.

eh, i imagine that you live in a part of the world where it's kind of difficult to starve these days or even in 35 years from now.

but more importantly, we all can imagine all sorts of horrible scenarios in the future, but why bother? we can only be in the present, one moment in a time. better to not fixate on loveless themes in our minds.

also, the narcissistic fixation with wanting to be "attractive" to others is something that i'm all too familiar with and can totally relate to. looking in the mirror and seeing some jackass staring back at me can be off-putting to say the least. but simply put, when i am most real and honest with myself, i don't truly want or need that kind of adoration, but rather i just want to be able to give love to people that are in my life. so that's just another one of those traps that we fall into. at least i think so.

eh, i imagine that you live in a part of the world where it's kind of difficult to starve these days or even in 35 years from now.

I dont think the many homeless people in my city would agree with you, but eh, its all relative I spose.

I think I'm just generally wary/frightened of old age. WHy! I do not know.

"I'm terrified of being old, on a meagre pension, with no where to live, eating cat food out of a can."

If my dream of founding a non-species-specific gourmet catfood company is ever realized, you can cross that off your anxiety list,
because that cat food will be delicious.

like, human avg human iifespan lasts a few score decades. the glamorous part in terms of good looks maybe endures for a decade and a half in the early middle of it. which to me speaks to the fact that we are here for other reasons than looking good. don't get me wrong. i love attractive sexy people and i would sort of love to be one forever, but evidently there are other things in life. and i feel like i'm at least a borderline NPD person, but if even i can overcome my native cravings for vanity, then maybe there is hope for everyone.

After several weeks of not drinking at all, I've resumed today and I feel decidedly less miserable than I have in a while. This is both relieving and unnerving. I mean, I know it's just because I've been able to shut off the hyper-critical part of my brain (which is a huge comfort), but there's still a fear that functional alcoholism is gonna wind up being my lot in life.

Tracye, for what it's worth, you're plenty attractive. One less thing to fret about, yeah?!

trayce, you live in a major city in australia, right? the chances of someone literally starving to death there are few. i say that not as trying to be a jerk, but more b/c i was freaked out once about that several years ago, and a friend was like 'uh, you live in the first world, more or less. you're not going to starve to death no matter what terrible choices you end up making in life'

I'm not afraid of old age because there's still a large part of me that doesn't think I'm gonna make it that far.

aww Trayce, I have similar fears -- at least we have the internet -- in 35 years we can post from our depressing window-less hovels in threads where we argue the merits of different brands of cat food.

but there's still a fear that functional alcoholism is gonna wind up being my lot in life

yeah man i gotta figure that shit out. b/c. i am the most boring person in the world when i don't drink. i can barely get words out to other human beings in the same room. and even though other people might be like 'dell, love ya but when you drink you get tldr, obnoxious and tmi'* it doesn't dissuade me. HOWEVER going on three to four day long benders on a monthly basis is not healthy no matter how self-deceiving i get. it's just not good.

i do feel like i've made substantial progress w/my mental health issues in the past couple of years. and i recognize that none of us all get it all together. completely. but i know i need to switch things up in my life over the next couple of years or the next few months. i do have a contingency plan, though, involving going to aa and getting married. i guess it could be worse.

*sctually no one's ever said that to me per se, but i guess my friends are just too polite.

I feel like I'm a prime candidate for a destroy-everything-good midlife crisis.

Yeah, I am 38 and a half at the moment, and have been earnestly working on that to some extent, or at least my unconscious has?

And I'm fairly sure that I will not come to a tragic end imminently or whatever. It's just a process that's working itself out. At least I keep telling myself that! But yeah, seriously, I think I am just shedding some weird stuff before moving on to a more peaceful domestic existence. I haven't killed anyone, I haven't harmed myself, there may be some dents in my bank account and I should have done some things that I didn't do and not done some things that I did, but it's alright.

I just need some grounding . Like, not the kind of "grounding" when your parents forbid you from going to the movies when you're fourteen years old, but more the kind of grounding when you have life situations that chill you the fuck out and eliminate the desire to do crazy shit all the time. I just want to have a boring sedate life and yeah, chill the fuck out. At present I can only manage to do that maybe 16 days out of every month. But I would vastly prefer to do that 27 days.

I haven't killed anyone, I haven't harmed myself, there may be some dents in my bank account and I should have done some things that I didn't do and not done some things that I did, but it's alright.

― dell (del), Saturday, June 18, 2011 10:14 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

~lyfe~

also ps youre grounded

I wish there was a way for everyone to be apprised of their objective worth, and perhaps also the subjective worth placed upon them by those whose opinions matter. I'd probably eschew a rundown of the latter (can't help but feel like the majority of people in my esteem see me as an abject fuck-up), but the former might be enough to give me a kick in the ass. I really do have something worthwhile to give. I just don't know where to put it.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_n35PfUpWyak/TI335kKuqFI/AAAAAAAAXzo/-5LbJf1eoq4/s1600/Magnolia+Still+%28J.D.%29+Macy.JPG

xxpost

lol

i feel like i tell this story too often, but my friend instead of saying "aw" when she sees something cute instead says variations on "errr" or even "ehhh" but in this really guttural way. which is what i sounded in my mind when i read your post two ones up. she was born in a village of 200 people in alaska but somehow ended up being raised by a hot-tempered sicilian in s. philly. which speaks to something i guess. holy cross ak by way of ricotta

every one has the same worth as a human being - there is no objective "worth" except in dollars - people are worth different things to each other at different times in their lives

also that would predicate the myth of separate "persons", which i'm pretty sure don't exist as such. there is awareness. and that's it. the elaborations which arise later don't have to be attended to if you are interested in reality. but don't take my word for it; i'm just a latter-day passive aggressive asshole.

Why do I have this thread bookmarked?

unresolved vasanas

I don't know the right way to get into or out of relationships and I'm either going to be alone forever or get scared of that thought and get into another poorly-fitting relationship and end up moving to a crappy suburban house and have uninteresting children

they might not necessarily be uninteresting

probably juvenile delinquents

"boring children" = a bad thing??

I think the idea I'd be having them with someone who wasn't a very good match was the bad part

marry someone you love, who doesn't leave your heart, no matter how often you try to push them out of there. marry someone you can watch a boring repeat of an american sitcom every night with before falling asleep, but with whom you still make each other laugh and want to hold each others' hands and they still make you feel dizzy sometimes when you kiss them. entirely possible, and not one of the things you should compromise about. love, of all areas in life, or raising a kid should not be complicated by neurotic bullshit. fuck it. i mean, if you can't follow your heart, and those constellations are truly THAT blurred then you should give up even before you're in the running. imo

Today was okay, made some progress - worried about tomorrow being a damp squib.

worrying is like praying for bad things to happen to you.

So true, but how do you stop worrying?

play video games

Staying busy is definitely a good way to not worry.

to be honest about my earlier comment, I'm happy alone or with good friends 90% of the time, but really don't have much motivation to actively search out any sort of romantic relationship

then don't - save y

Depressed thought, everyday model: nobody likes me.
Depressed thought, sadsack edition: nobody likes me because I am a bad person.
Depressed thought, bitter edition: nobody likes me even though I am not a bad person but they ignore me while rushing to hang out with jerks.
Depressed thought, combined edition: nobody likes me because I am a bad person in some mysterious secret way that I'll never know about or be able to fix.
Depressed thought, Sunday best: nobody likes me, therefore my other half is wrong to continue to put up with me and is doing so out of some terrible self-crippling impulse and one day he'll realise I have ruined several years of his life which he'll never get back by letting him do so.

It is a multi-purpose thought, available in many varieties!

(Nobody needs to say anything nice, should such a thought even have crossed their minds, as I am in a pretty good mood this evening and just thinking through the thoughts of some previous not-good moods)

I'll say something nice anyway - "May the planets send you ultramarine heaven-messages"

So true, but how do you stop worrying?

just let go

like most neurotic thought-patterns, it's just indulging in some crap that is not real.

possibly there is benefit to be gained from worrying. but probably not as much from doing the opposite. imagine if you worry about making a good sandwich. what if the mustard runs out? what if the bread is moldy? what if everything goes horribly right? then our minds have no occupation. our minds are based on worrying about the past and worrying about the future and so forth. without those diversions, what use the mind? it's just a tool to avoid reality and fetishize our pet conceptualizations. the mind is sade. but not the awesome nigerian singer/erstwhile drug addict. rather the lame marquis/theorist about torture.

worse of all if you are worrying is to sit in your bed staring at the ceiling worrying more and more - desigante a "worry chair" and go sit there to do your worrying and when you are done, get up

could do worse than watching "worries" and other thoughts like passersby in a park. some seem threatening, some seem sexy. the more attention you give to the thoughts, the more life they take on. so just see them but don't chase after or shrink from them. if you still want to chase after phenomena or shrink from it, then you can still do that. there is always time for that. but whatever the world of limitation gives you will never take away from nor benefit the mind of stillness. sorry i get all satchitananda at times. give up desire. it has never satisfied. but don't give up worry. that's fucking great.

what if everything goes horribly right?

my worst fear!

my depressed thoughts look like this:

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.

I feel like part of the genius of India is that it produced at least two distinct strands of philosophy which seriously attempted to reckon with the sentiment of this quote. So while Continental philosophers were behaving like teenagers and announcing the non-existence of God while they were dying of syphilis or garden variety enuui and anomie, the non-dualistic thinking ppl of India were like, well 'yeah maybe wanting things to be different than they are in my mind just at this moment' was the original mishap. b/c. man... i personally, love everything that leads to syphilis and all forms of pleasure and decadence under the sun. i'm a simple man. i love sex, beauty, spicy food and caviar. but, no limited pleasure will ever satisfy. the ultimate bliss is found through extinguishing the mind. which is based on worry about the past and future. that's its only function! also when you become realized you have extraordinary love for people. you understand the cause and cure of suffering. but i can't do that for a couple of years b/c my gall bladder meridian is fucked up. anyway, peace!

Thanks Dell and Latham!

A worry chair or zone might be a good idea! Maybe I'll make it the musty smelling cupboard under the stairs, that way I won't want to spend too much time in there.

make it your King of Fret throne

a v irl problem w/worrying is that if you have yr built in alarm system going off all the time it wont be able to warn you when something is actually wrong <<< worry abt that

I have spider sense but its alwasy wrong

tbh I never thought Spider-Man's spider sense seemed to warn him of things far enough in advance to be very helpful.

One or two minutes before the fact is not going to do anyone a whole lot of good.

I seem like I post a lot more here or about trivial things when I am depressed, which accounts for my recent posting spree.

xpost

It would be if you had the proportionate reflexes of a spider.

So I'm getting to the point where, as almost every conceivable thing in my life currently sucks and I seem incapable of making it not suck, I'm slowly getting over my aversion to antidepressants. Because those things I might've been afraid of antidepressants subsuming in the past (intense feelings, creativity, etc.) are almost entirely absent at present anyway. I kinda feel like I have nothing to lose, as there's currently very little qualitative difference in my mind between eating a sandwich and lying down in a ditch and waiting for the sweet, sweet caress of oblivion. At least I haven't lost my senses of humor or extreme melodrama.

Antidepressants don't necessarily squash those things!

Antidepressants don't necessarily squash those things!

Antidepressants don't necessarily squash those things!

Antidepressants don't necessarily squash those things!

Antidepressants don't necessarily squash those things!

I mean, I obviously have an extreme sense of melodrama, and I'm medicated!

I know people don't always have those sorts of issues with antidepressants. I'm just to the point where, even if I do wind up having those issues, I won't be any worse off than I am currently. So what the hell, y'know?

why don
't you try going to the park and feed the ducks?

Prior to antidepressants I would suggest: diet, exercise, meditation, yoga; the problem is that someone who is depressed is not likely going to have enough motivation to try to incorporate any of those things into their life.

Antidepressants can be good for getting you out of a rut (or worse) but they can become their own sort of rut. It would probably be better if we all had the time and resources to holistically self-medicate, but that would probably be a full-time project.

tahts what I like about cognitive therapy - its quicker and ou can do it if you have a pen and paper and 10 minutes

Already pitched this info to the depression thread but LG, you have to be well enough to do CBT before you can do CBT. Last year I got to the point where I HAD to get medicated before I could even consider starting therapy. Not saying folks should just reach straight for the drugs, but it's important to acknowledge that some ruts are so deep you need to fix yr brain chemistry before you can fix up yr life.

http://grab.by/cBVZ

boring brain chemistry, boring life

agreed Zora!

Big Pharma just needs to make some non addictive meds, is all. But yeah, it's really impossible to say at what point someone should start with medication, given the subjectivity of it all. If you feel like it would help you, that's probably a good indication. My mom was erroneously prescribed Paxil and was extremely hesitant to take it and when she did found it did nothing for her . . . damn these people with fully functioning serotonin levels.

I think studies are starting to show that depressed/anxious people don't necessarily have lower serotonin levels than other people, just that elevating those levels seems to treat or mask whatever else makes the state of mind depressed

Very interesting.

My only depressing thought is that Steve Shasta is bumming me out on the Mets thread.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_W-xzAe-8Fl8/Swyb8SR53UI/AAAAAAAAAMQ/VT1XFQQRkQs/s1600/brown+trout+for+web.jpg

uh oh - fish killed post - I always kill threads with a fish

there's currently very little qualitative difference in my mind between eating a sandwich and lying down in a ditch and waiting for the sweet, sweet caress of oblivion.

A half-eaten sandwich sat atop the landing where someone had felt too sad to finish it.-The Virgin Suicides

i want to give up drinking but ive neither the balls or imagination to do it

dunno if anyone saw thing in nyrb couple weeks ago . piece on three books that are supposed to show that the linking of the different neurotransmitters and they way the new classes of drugs are supposed to help with them are largely based on faulty premises and skewering the results in a way that is fda approval-friendly . i don't know what to make of it, frankly.

This may be kind of 'a-doy', but it occurs to me that the thoughts themselves are almost 100% of the problem in these situations (or in my situation, at the very least), largely because they so directly inform the attendant inaction that steadily makes things worse. I've been pondering lately the extent to which confidence determines success, and the extent to which its opposite determines a lack thereof. The longer self-effacing thoughts are allowed to fester and undermine behavior, the harder it is to move away from them. So maybe the trick is just having an impartial party around to cheerlead and constantly remind me of my capabilities, to essentially function as an external source of confidence, until I manage to dig myself out of my hole. I'll let you guys know as soon as I find someone who provides that service.

i don't want to give up drinking becasue i've neither the balls nor imagination to do it...

xpost you could always eliminate the need for a second party and "fake it till you make it" as it were, or just try as a thought experiment viz walking around and living your life as if you were extremely confident and deserving. ime this works quite well. but almost too well, in that, if you have long-standing unconscious issues with feeling undeserving of "good" things in your life and so forth, then when good things crop up in your life it can sometimes seem really threatening and occasionally lead to self-sabotage. but surely it's worth experimenting with, since as cbt and similar therapies underline, our attitudes are one of the particular areas in life in which we do turn out to have a surprising amount of power and control. not to mention that the alternatives, of NOT being for yourself or whatever, have gotta go sooner or later.

left out an "it" in the first sentence there. was supposed to have read "try it"

i havent cried in 10 years. is it possible im DEAD INSIDE? well maybe thats a extreme take on it but I usually get angry about stuff rather than get sad, which cant be good

Naw. You're still alive inside. You've just pushed that part of your life down to a place where you don't feel it.

Speaking generally, anger is often just a way station on the way to sadness. If the anger consistently allows you to fix the things that anger you, then sadness isn't needed or appropriate. If the anger just bangs around inside, but nothing changes, then you're stuck and you either need to make the required changes, or you need to move on to feeling sadness over whatever feels bad and wrong that you can't change.

There's a common, but I suspect unprovable, idea that anger is a defence mechanism, and that as such it can stop you from looking inwards. So rather than just being a 'way station on the way to sadness', it's an actual barrier to sadness. The theory being that this prevents you from making the internal changes you might make if you were to let yourself feel sad, because anger is more useful for action than reflection. And it can feel pretty good being angry, making it harder to judge whether it's actually helping or not.

However, Aimless otm; anger may be entirely appropriate and sadness not required.

I just can't stand people

I shouldn't bring children into this world because humanity has fucked it up in every possible way.

The other day I thought "I'm tired of hoping." I am so sad.

I feel similar but mine is "I'm tired of waiting".

The alternate depressing thought about the idea of not having kids is I will never be able to afford retirement and the only hope of me getting any end-of-life care is by having given birth to a child who will someday take care of my dying ass. This assumes the kid is of good health and of sound mind in the first place (no guarantees based on my family's or my husband's family's history), that the kid lives to be old and financially sound enough to take care of me, and also that I haven't made the kid hate me.

I am honestly considering leaving Chicago for a while to spend some time back home with my mom (something I've long considered the ultimate instantiation of giving up). The only thing I'm doing here is spending more money than I should while I do nothing of any import and slowly fall apart.

I'm beginning to suspect that I'm suffering some level of PTSD from literally watching my father die. Talk about things you can never unsee...

I feel you, Abbott. Except that, more importantly, I don't wanna have kids because I haven't figured out how to take care of myself yet. I cannot imagine that I wouldn't massively fuck up any kids I were to have at this point. And I really have no hope of having retirement lined up, either, so I just have to keep praying that my ship is gonna come in soon and that it's a ship I'm gonna want to sail indefinitely (i.e. past retirement age).

bitcoins will fall

part two of that nyrb article is here btw

I started reading that Whitaker book and it gave me so many depressed thoughts, I was advised to stop reading it.

haha i did too!

Ugh stuff like this about rar grar bad psych meds just irritates the fuck out of me, maybe instead of issuing forth indictments of the whole mental health system that imply that anybody taking psych meds is just a tool of the man these people could spend their time on something more important like shutting the fuck up already.

And so what if the DSM 5 would make it "harder to be normal", I basically don't know anybody who is normal to begin with. The solution to over-reliance on pillz in the system is not gonna be a pr campaign about pills being bad, it is going to be outreach and education about mental health and treatment options for mental illness and improved access to those interventions. And if anyone ever tells me to my face that taking pills somehow means I am doing it wrong I am going to stab them.

Oh no wait I won't because my pills are making me an emotionally dead sack of crap I forgot sorry I will just enjoy my soma haze with the rest of the betas thx

The solution to over-reliance on pillz in the system is not gonna be a pr campaign about pills being bad, it is going to be outreach and education about mental health and treatment options for mental illness and improved access to those interventions.

i doubt it. outreach and education don't have nearly the concentrated money behind them that pillz do. also pillz are, in some ways, easier and even cheaper than other options

I guess I meant "goddamn it why can't people who apparently care do some legit outreach on crazy ppl topics" and not "this is how it'll go down just u wait". The whole system is screwy in a lot of ways and I have been lucky but you should not have to be lucky to have more options than seeing a terrible shrink once a year to update your rx.

But that is just one of lots of fucked up things about being alive.

BUT BECAUSE I AM ON ZOMBIE PILLS I CANNOT ACTUALLY EXPERIENCE SADNESS ABOUT THIS.

Ok gonna chill now as I am just rage tripping against a straw man.

fwiw I was much more emotionally dead due to being locked up in depression/anxiety before getting on any sort of medication. I know some people get zombified regardless of what medication is used, but really, there should be options or at least the ability to cut down on dosage combined with some sort of therapy until you get to a reasonable level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zunmrvke7w

thx mr. green

Exercise is probably the best natural cure for depression. Find somewhere that is within walking distance and walk there & back. For instance there's a grocery store in a 15 min walk from my house so whenever i need anything i just walk. A friend lives a 45 min walk away, coffee is 30 mins away, etc. It lightens your mood and gets you in shape too. Plus you may meet some people on your walks.

Not having a car is a big help with this, i have found out recently!

there's currently very little qualitative difference in my mind between eating a sandwich and lying down in a ditch and waiting for the sweet, sweet caress of oblivion. At least I haven't lost my senses of humor or extreme melodrama

The other day i saw a bumper sticker with a similar sentiment, something about how they were 'enduring this meaningless existence'. A few things struck me. First, if you really think things are meaningless (in the sense they are w/o meaning) then why are you going through the extra trouble of pointing this out. The meaninglessness of existence should kind of cancel itself out, I think, if you truly believe it to the core. It shouldn't be a good or bad thing at all. Most times when you read 'meaningless' someone is either in want of attention or comes across as somehow jilted out of 'meaning'. Thinking like this is kind of intellectual dishonesty and if you think you are being cheated out of meaning in life then obviously life isn't 'meaningless' to you. Because it means something, the fact that you are 'being cheated out of meaning'!

I think there are plenty of 'atheists' out there who have logically decided there is no god and no meaning but still have that religious guilt and it shows up in statements like this. If nothing matters, then shut up about it not mattering, because who cares.

:-)

In re: meaningless existance. Nihilism reminds me of the old pastime that is constantly rediscovered by 8 year olds of retorting "why" ad infinitum, no matter what answer they are given, except that the nihilist forgets to take it all as a jolly joek.

the older I get, the more my depressed thoughts have to do with how quickly time is passing, and how little I've really done in life. too many years spent surfing interwebs, drinking beers, and playing the vidya. I've been more active in the past year, getting married, probably going to have a kid... but I can't shake the feeling that I'm starting it all way too late.

One of my patrons just randomly recommended "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" by Dale Carnegie to me. He said it will teach you how to take any problem you have and make it disappear. He then recommended "You've Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish" by James Lerner; I'm not sure if those books are so supposed to be complemetary or not.

There is no "too late." As a society, we're always interested in people who accomplish great things at a young age, or people that accomplish single notable tasks. Really, the majority of people accomplish a great many small things over their entire lifetimes.

The idea of anything being "meaningless" is kind of ridiculous. I came to work today, is that meaningless? By a lot of definitions, maybe. Going to work every day for a year? Accomplishing goals at work for a year? There's a level of meaning, but at the granular level it's hard to see.

certianly anal discomfort can make life meaningless

true, that

burdensome =/= meaningless

asshell~meaningless

I can't speak english properly. I'm trying but I cant write my depressive thoughts, and that is depressing me even more.

i can't speak it very well either, tat's why I am using a tilda to represent anal existentialism

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v491/stinkylulu/2007/TS-TildaSwinton-headshot.png

http://www.seeklogo.com/images/T/Tilde-logo-58F77C4949-seeklogo.com.gif

The idea of anything being "meaningless" is kind of ridiculous. I came to work today, is that meaningless? By a lot of definitions, maybe. Going to work every day for a year? Accomplishing goals at work for a year? There's a level of meaning, but at the granular level it's hard to see.

to me the idea of anything having meaning is ridiculous. Trying to think about things from a cosmic perspective, I don't see human life or our society as being any more meaningful than moss growing on a rock in some forest. My life has meaning to me and those who know me. In 30 or 40 years I'll die. 60 years after that, the small handful of people who knew me will all be dead. A few hundred after that the society I lived in might be largely unknown to anyone but people who study it. A few thousand and human life might be extinct. A few hundred million after that the sun might burn out. Nothing I do is of any consequence in the long run, which is something I usually find more comforting than depressing. About life I feel like I get one to live and hope I don't have too many regrets down the road about how I lived it.

meaning is assigned by the observer no?

basically

'It's all meaningless waahhh!!' is just you not wanting to admit you believe in God.

If you insist that meaning only can exist at a cosmic level, then of course you are correct within that context. Meaning is a construction of the mind. Lack of meaning is, too.

Good point. ps I like the Zen direction this is all going in!

xp Adam, seriously, it isn't.

I mean, the "believe in God" thing.

unless you're ascribing the loose concept of "meaning" to the word "God" of course

God is a moth

So was Mothra.

rockapads, that is exactly why meaning is relative and why I should do whatever I want as long as it doesn't break what works in my life. Because the sun, it doesn't give a fuck.

It's not the idea of meaninglessness itself that is horrifying and overwhelming, AFAIC. It's the idea of meaning as something that is wholly ascribed by oneself unto one's life and, given that as a starting point, trying to scrabble something meaningful together when nothing in one's life feels worth ascribing meaning to.

So, given my failure at making that work for me just now, I'm trying to shift my paradigm such that the value I've ascribed to certain things (which, I'm trying to convince myself, is just as arbitrary and self-generated as meaning itself) is a little rosier. Like, instead of feeling crippled and deeply saddened by the fact of impermanence, I'm trying to just accept it as a value-neutral fact of life rather than something that induces dread and inertia. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm convinced that I will convince myself eventually.

The idea of permanence is just a metaphor, derived from long-lasting things like the sun, and suggested by the innate process of the mind to couple things in opposite pairs. You're right to think you ought not get hung up on it.

For related thoughts, see also: Eternity: Classic or Dud

Thinking it and believing it are two entirely different things, unfortunately.

That is where meditation comes in handy for me. I can internalize this sort of shit through focussed attention.

amor fati, you slags, again & again & again

Boy I almost forgot I was embracing ugliness, but thank you for reminding me, ogmor!

ha, the concept of ugliness is kind of anathema to the nietzschean spirit, if yr going to get on the program, you'll have to ditch it

How can eternity be classic. There is no point of reference

Getting depressed made me lose sight of lots of things, and react in totally the wrong way - or maybe I'm using 'depression' as an excuse for my failings? How to get over the feelings of depression that arise from my feelings of failure/defeat? How to say "I'm depressed" without it feeling like a manipulation on my part? Or maybe that is my subtext "I'm depressed, feel sorry for me, treat me differently"? Or maybe that's just part of the course of getting through it, to be able to say "I'm depressed, but I don't want to be". Okay, just pondering things...

oh, I just need a hug sometimes, I guess.

((((JEL)))))

Ditto that.

(((((KI(( JEL))) M ))))))))

Group hug!

I have worked an additional 25% over my required work hours for the past 12 months straight, and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I expect to receive an additional 7% in compensation for this amount of work.

F. M. MF. L.

"instead of feeling crippled and deeply saddened by the fact of impermanence"
in this age of regretful emails and tattoos, isn't the relative permanence of things what teeth ought to be gnashed over?

There is no such thing as permanence, unless you believe in God or some other kind of mystic/abstract conception of eternal reality. Even on a cosmic scale there is only impermanence; it is the nature of material reality.

Even the internet, which paradoxically makes things more extract and seem more permanent than ever, could be wiped out forever with some kind of magnetic storm or polar shift. Or take a look at the data on hard drive from the early 80s and see how much of it is salvageable. Even the pyramids will eventually turn to dust.

But the vibrations of all thoughts are stored eternally in the existence mind

(shakes fist angrily) Damn you, existence mind!

it recorded that

http://theselvedgeyard.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/collective-unconscious.jpg

the existence mind is in a constant of flux imo

Haha never heard the term existence mind before. Awesome.

"Even the internet, which paradoxically makes things more extract and seem more permanent than ever, could be wiped out forever with some kind of magnetic storm or polar shift."

don't get my hopes up!

Gregory Peck is angry again