My turn for an advice thread.

On the other hand, what do I know?

Good luck!

I find it difficult to see depression or even just "low-ness" as an entirely negative thing. Sure, you dont want it controlling your life and restricting you, but you said that you are sick of it and that sounds like you don't feel powerless over it.

From what you write, I suspect that you live a very examined life, which is something of a burden, but much better than walking around not even thinking about how you live, how you feel, who you are. How boring would that be? How rewarding would that be?

People who get low, get depressed, they are the brave people. I cherish my melancholy. If I didnt have it, my life would be less rich, less beautiful.

I say that though with the benefit of hindsight. There was a time when I felt powerless over the sadness, but maybe even then I always knew deep down that I would climb out and that my life would be all the more wonderful for having experienced a blacker side of it.

The ways I started to make myself feel better were very superficial at first. I bought new dresses etc, made a conscious effort to gain some weight and start feeling beautiful again. Forced myself to grab life and shake it. Like the alcoholics anonymous thing, "act as if".

DONT BE HARD ON YOURSELF, dont worry if your writing has starting or finishing. Do nice things for yourself, and take it seriously. Be selfish. Embrace everything about yourself. Go to the pub every night if it makes you happy, just do what makes you happy. Be gentle with yourself. I dont know if you ever feel guilty about being sad, but I used to and that was wrong. Own your depression, make it yours.

I'm really sorry if this advice seems superficial, but I am writing it with a true heart. From how you write I already have faith in you that you are already well on the way.

Keeping busy and having plenty of distractions, even foolish ones, is a certain boon for me - the happier end justifies the crap means or something like that. It keeps you out of the fetal position = it's good. I realize this completely invalidates my answer in Mike's anxiety thread, but that was a bold faced lie. Anxiety sucks royal rocks.

The thing that saves me from total debilitating depression is pride. Sometimes I have become so depressed that I can't do anything except lie on the floor and I have gone through long periods of just going through the motions of life without actually participating. I used to go from class to class at school but without speaking or writing or moving except to walk to the next class. The thing that has always got me going again is that I don't want to admit to my family, friends & enemies that the world has defeated me. So, I dig myself up some belligerant pride and get going again. That is the only time that I'm grateful for having so much hate in me.

Here is some of what I think might be true about depression. Depression is grief for your unmet needs (as well as guilt for not having met your own needs). You need to feel your grief and then let it go by allowing it to turn into anger. If the grief is supressed or it is not allowed to evolve into anger, or if the anger is supressed, then depression results. Supressed grief and anger combined with an overactive mind become depression. Grief combined with real sadness becomes despair. Maybe to kick out depression you need to show anger (not resentment - rather the sort of anger that is also found in joy, you know, hypo anger). People feel that they are not allowed to feel/show anger when they have been depressed because depression is sad, flat & down whereas anger is energetic and "up" (as is laughter).

Don't know if that helps any. I think it helped me a bit writing it though!

Ever since Sunday, I've been in a really "low" way myself. And this coming off a confidence high on Saturday night. I don't know if it was the random immensely painful leg cramp (coupled with hyperventilation and nausea) I had in the middle of Sunday night, or the fact that my attempt to get my mind off the pain by reading CNN.COM put me in a deeper ditch as I found out about the beginning of the attacks.

For the record, I always alternate between being Mr. Happy Confident Stud and Mr. Sad Dejected Milquetoast every month... the peaks and valleys aren't so high enough for me to think I have some sort of bipolar thing going on, as I'm always able to function socially through it all... and I'm sure that's a very common thing with everybody.. but who knows?

Anyway, the first thing I always do when I'm in a low point is to just call my friends and talk about it. I'm sure, Tom, you hardly lack in friends that care about you, and would like to have a nice, intelligent conversation with you. It never really fails to bring me up a little every time. The magic here being that the subject never really sticks to depression when you initiate a phone chat about depression, but the segue out of the topic is smooth and slow enough that you don't notice, and realize that easy relief can exist. Reassurance is a good thing

You didn't mention anything about the current political situation and the anchor that is a harsh sense of mortality that seems to be attached to it, so I wasn't sure if that has anything to do with it. In my current case, it's certainly a part of it. I always feel happy when I know that I'm in control of the decisions that are making me happy; but now we're all in quite a depressing global situation that not a single one of us can really control right now. The lack of security and uncertaintly is extremely unnerving to everybody right now, myself included -- so, Tom, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that you're not alone.

Hopefully by the time you read this, you'll have kickstarted yourself. (And if not, you're obviously more than welcome to e-mail me personally... )

Works wonders for me, take care

Hope you feel better soon.

Talking about creativity and ideas - I wouldn't be too worried about 'finishing' things. Some of the best things I've ever read have been half-finished 'scraps' - Rimbaud, Coleridge etc. If you're easy on yourself about 'finishing' things, maybe your anxiety will be replaced with fruitful, relaxed thoughts.

Another thing to cheer you up should be this thread. This has been one of the most, sensitive, enriching and wise threads I've read on ILE. Thank you everybody.

Otherwise what everyone else said. And there's a lot to be said for patience. I bet in happier times, when you re-read what you've written now, you'll actually like it a lot.

Apart from that I can't suggest anything cos I'm a whinging old bint. Of course, you could get Final Fantasy 8 for the PlayStation but then face falling further into depression when you get stuck on the most mundane part of the game EVER, that DAMN WORLD MAP. Where the hell is the White SeeD ship?!

But at least it provokes you to feel something, albiet intense irritation.

I'll help out with the "being down the pub" situation though - unless it was last night in which case I was so tired I got home and fell asleep and AGANE forgot to my laundry. Actually, doing laundry helps. Maybe you should come over and do mine cos quite frankly I can't be arsed. It sits in my room and glares at me. IT IS NOT BETTER THAN ME!

And some of us don't have special Wolf Sense to help us find things either, Wolverine!!!

Tom, I'd also like to say that when you do write, it's damn good. And don't believe I'd say that to anyone who'd complain - you've just written something very good (and purposeful!), I believe...

Rainy you seem very wise. I like the idea of depression as a non- negative - in fact that's what led me to wanting to write my way through it in the first place.

Otis I think is also right - living alone has de-structured me in that it's allowed my lazy side to come out. Allied to that is a very free and unmanaged working environment. I need to beat laziness before I can deal with the depression properly, I think.

Therapy - I did try therapy on one occasion to see what it was like. It worked for a while but I also felt uncomfortable with it. If NHS- recommended therapists were as clever as the people on ILE I would jump at it. I might give it a go again though anyway.

The global situation is actually as much a help as a hindrance - forcing myself to think rationally about something, even something I can do nothing about, is a Good Thing. 9/11 was a trigger for this bout of depression, certainly, but on the other hand I have at various points convinced myself that I was going to die of nuclear war, ebola, being buried alive and vCJD, so anthrax and terrorist onslaughts are just another couple of morbid little demons on a long list.

Cleaning and exercise - yes. But this is what I mean by laziness - how to actually start on the cleaning or the exercise, how to find the willpower. It's the 'blank page' thing. BTW if anyone knows some good insect-killers apart from cockfarming Raid which the flies larff at could they let me know.

Anyway thanks again, very much. Good old ILE: I'm glad you exist.

My suggestion would be to make something or try out an artform you don't normally do, such as: (assuming these aren't already hobbies) spend a day photographing, maybe develop them yourself. Do a painting or sculpture. Buy some glass paint and cheap glasses and paint them. Build a bit of furniture. Write a song. Something like that.

I believe more in therapy than drugs (tho I know the tandem is how it's often done). I've seen three different ones at various stages in my life, but only one was worthwhile. Don't be afraid to shop around like you would for any service.

I agree that if you are mildly depressed, you need to embrace it, accept it. As long as it's not keeping you from working and playing then it's not too big of a problem. It's just a daily battle w/ yourself to get the motivation to get up and take a shower, find the willpower to actually eat something, do something more than watch TV. (Mild depression for me results in lethargy, can you tell?) It's normal.

What's not normal is to cry multiple times a day, not eat anything all day, sleep through the day or not sleep at all, be afraid of going outside and talking to people, or think about dying all day long.

As long as I make that distinction I know that I am doing pretty good. If you know you're headed to the land of serious depression, then you should never feel bad about seeking medical help, or burdening your friends. :)

And, as others have mentioned, cleaning house is great too. Reorganizing the music collection is a good trick - lets you wallow in old favourites while feeling productive and organized.

Actually rainy made me better when i was sick so her advice has been tested. but maybe it was just her, i don't know

It's nice to see that ILE is no different from anywhere else when it comes to This Sort Of Thing: "Depressed? SEX and BEER!" Hoorah! These are all obviously true, especially the bit about not being hard on yrself, etc etc.

BUT: Practical Long Term Advice! I used to get like this all the time, until i (DAN DAN DA!) spent a week meditating. No, really, i didn. Sat down quietly a spent most of the week thinking through everything about ME, drank some TEA, faced up to all self-issues with BLISTERING HONESTY, and at the end of it i found i had settled these issues, thrown out an AWFUL lot of EGO, and have never looked back. Now i have inner peace, a happy outlook on life (as, compared to the alternative, life is GRATE), and an VAST appetite for the two vital cheer-me- ups mentioned elsewhere.

The fact i also have a faint whiff of patchouli to my soul and a worrying tolerance for the sitar is a small price to pay. It might be a bit (er... OK, a LOT) HIPPY, but it works baby! Tho if you do it, might be best to face the inner self of YOU and not ME. But you never know.

Mmm... where did i put my KAFTAN?

ok, I have a week to decide if I want to register for school this semester. I've only got the time/money to take one class (probably geology, to finally start getting my science credits out of the way) at night, and work may be taking me out of town off and on starting in October/November.

My dilemma is thus: do I keep going one class at a time, making no real progress, or do I take at least a full year off, probably pay off all of my debts and try to figure out what I'm doing before going back full time?

My problem is that I have no real endgame for a degree. I have a wide variety of interests and very little in the way of specialized skills.

Or I could say fuck it, lose twenty pounds and join the Air Force.

Could you take the course externally?

No, sadly, all the science classes require on-campus lab work.

As someone who has blown a fuckload on directionless education, take the break.

directionless education has this for it- it does impress employers into giving you jobs that suck a little less than minimum wage work while you try to work out what you want to do with your life.

how much study have you already done? if you've already been at it for awhile then take a break and go back refreshed. i took 7yrs off, and i totally regret ever trying to go straight from high school to uni. but if you've been slogging away part time for ages, then maybe you should just go for it and get it ove and done with.

there seems to be a lot of jobs out there that don't really care what degree you've got, as long as you've got one.

If only we could do a quick test to check whether the depression/feeling low comes from a chemical balance or not. I sometimes wish I could find out. It isn't so much that I have a constant feeling of lowness (?) but I would prefer to get *rid of it*, especially my anxiety. Then again I feel a bit silly and selfish for having done therapy: I feel as though my mental state is probably relatively *okay*.

i think going for it, is best, it gives the feeling of progress also, actually getting somewhere etc

I have about sixty hours total over six years with breaks here and there - basically a minor in fine arts, with starts into either English or history as a major and all of my non-math/science reqs taken care of.

I'm leaning toward taking a real break and then starting up when I can go full time (for the first time). One or two classes/semester leaves me feeling like I'm spinning my wheels.

On the one hand, whenever I've taken a semester off I start out like, "Oh yeah, time off, gonna get all this shit done, X and Y and Z." And then, inevitably, I don't. After figuring out how to avoid this disappointment (don't tell myself I am going to make 5 paintings when my average rate of progress is one a year), I realized an excellent way to make myself motivated FOR a full semester of classes was to do no school, no personal projects at all, just work. Working at whatever shit job I can get without a degree, just setting my goal on making catch-up money, really makes me think, "Jesus F. I certainly do not want to do this for the rest of my life." After 5 months of this I am ripe & ready to tackle 15+ credits.

Also I do think it is best to take time off & figure out what you want to accomplish, maybe read up or volunteer in the various fields of your interest. This way you are not just throwing money at classes that may or may not be worthwhile while hoping something comes along & clicks.