to be quite honest I did myself a favor cutting back on anything social media based really. I use the internet as a tool. I don’t quite get the same anxiety you seem to from it. I can’t quite imagine what I’d do without it. most of my life is lived online, I don’t have a lot going on here, my family is all deceased or moved away or estranged.
Yeah, everyone is different. I’m knee deep in it with my work and haven’t had the opportunity to cut it out for a good length of time but I personally noticed a major change in behavior and alcohol cravings when i did. The alcohol cravings completely went away which almost felt like I had a coincidental medical problem at the time, but again all came back when I hopped back on the saddle. - Figured I’d share.
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I suppose I should note the incongruity of saying you can stick to a treatment plan but have problems making weekly appointments.
Can you get to a place where you accept it’s always going to be like this without feeling despair? Is acceptance a bad outcome?
Hey all, a step that’s too often not taken by therapists is referring clients with complex issues to a psychologist for formal psych testing. This is either due to hubris on the therapist’s part or just oversight. Honestly there are licensed therapists out there who also just don’t fully appreciate or understand the value in formal psych testing, but it’s really helpful if you’re unsure about where you’re at or where to go with treatment.
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accepting that you’re always going to be alone and miserable is some thing I’m trying to figure out how to do at the moment, but yes it would be a good outcome because it’s really the only one that I see
it’s been brought up but they’re like $2800 and they don’t get covered
give it that I’m at least 100 K in the hole, conservatively, dumping more money into this is something I’m really really really having to be sold on now
That’s probably not the way I would put.
I’m not much into sharing personal details online, but let’s say that some of things you describe resonate with me. The last six or so years have been the most mentally healthy years of my life by far. I won’t say that I am happy, but I’ve found a level of contentedness where life is usually bearable. I wish you could find at least that.
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I had 1 solid year like this i think. 2014 I would have described myself as “ok.” not happy, but not miserable. it didn’t last and I don’t know why it was that way.
last several years deep lows were not super common, maybe a medium one 1-2x a year, a big one every few years. so I sorta tolerated the constant mild low I usually experience. To some it may seem like depression talking with the #foreveralone stuff, or that I don’t think I have value, or can find anyone, or whatever - I’m more than aware I can find a partner and that plenty of people would be fine settling with me. however, due to the nature of this, finding someone who’s ok with me going into deep lows occasionally is probably doable but it places tremendous strain on nearly any relationship, even non-romantic ones, which is why for years and years I just go into hiding whenever it happens and my friends learned not to ask too many questions. I found a way where I don’t have to date that I’m ok with and that’ll be fine for the forseeable future.
this year though the masking became too much and I followed the playbook my therapist told me to when I had a really really bad dip and I told a bunch of people I wasn’t ok. lost basically every friend I had. bit of a rude wakeup call but I guess it was good.
Because they were indifferent and distanced themselves? Did you tell them some tough truths you had to get off your chest that they didn’t take well? Distanced yourself afterward and they were then apathetic and that was the end of that? Did they never really consider themselves your friend in the first place and that was an awkward discovery?
Just spitballing different scenarios bc on it’s face, that sucks. I’m sorry that happened. How did it go down?
the reaction was split into a few groups:
- no response (a few). those are done forever in my head. i’m told i can be a little heartless and i am trying to work on that but i swear to god if they were dying in the street i’d step right over them.
- one guy i’d been friends with since 2010 called me a ■■■■■ but I’d already been expecting that one to die because the dude was enormously insecure and my last few years clearly triggered something jealousy related in him
- one guy i wouldve described as one of my best friends, had a similar but worse meltdown 2 years ago and i pretty much saved him from suicide and prodded him into rehab and he got his life together. actually, I wrote about him waaaaaaay up thread. that one’s a little confusing and complicated and i dont fully understand it. didnt even wanna burden him with anything, so i reached out like “hey man, i know my behavior might have been concerning, just reaching out to let you know im ok.” he told me he didn’t care in like a “i dont want to hear about it” way. i downgraded him massively and then it came out one night when i was kind of buzzed, i was like lol get fucked forever dude you’re not that kind of friend to me, and that was it.
- few others made half-hearted plans to get together which never materialized so those are done in my head. they dont owe me, but the fact they offered and never followed through told me a lot about where i stood. i even reminded them a few times.
- one guy actually engaged but then a few weeks later seemed to have completely forgotten we even spoke.
- my sister was a predictable “everyone’s going through a hard time”
basically just a few online friends were supportive. i think @boredsocial has taken the brunt of it and one of my discord channels that was supposed to be private but i doubt whether it is sometimes.
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The key to a successful relationship with depression is really really liking the person.
Me and mrs rugby are quite happy sitting around together on the couch having a cuddle, no matter how depressed I am, it always helps.
I spoke to my dad about my mum’s depression recently (she passed away a while ago) and he said something similar. That when mum was depressed she wouldn’t talk to anyone else, but was fine with him at home.
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It feels a bit like you have binary thinking where people are either doomed to be alone forever or they’re great relationship material. Do you crave being normal and see being in a healthy relationship as a sign you’ve attained normalcy? Are you trying to work towards a vision of what you think a normal life looks like?
Did you tell your therapist about losing friends or was that a fail that caused you to look for a new one?
Psychologists are absolutely covered by insurance, but some opt to not credential with insurance panels. Call member services on the back of your card and get a list of in network psychologists within 25 miles and they’ll email you dozens of options.
I can’t just start over with a new therapist, we’re five years into this, and I have very particular needs.
Those lists are worthless too, usually the lists they give you, no one is accepting new patients anyway.
john oliver covered it in this week’s episode on mental healthcare, highly recommend anyone checking it out
special-needs solidarity
Never tell your psychiatrist that this is your favorite song
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Thought this was really good based on the newest science.
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On inner voice. I’ve come up with a technique that has helped me over the last few weeks.
I ruminate a lot over things I’ve done or got wrong in the past. Some big. Some small. Some from years and years ago.
I do this more when I’m depressed. Although I think it’s a correlation more than a cause.
Anyway. I’ve found I can interrupt these ruminations by asking myself “and how am I better now?” which gets me to focus on the ways I’ve improved and got better, often specifically having learned from whatever I’m feeling bad about.
On things where I’m NOT better. At least it gets me looking forward not back.
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i love this, despite the last one showing some severe misunderstandings about how depression works, i think. the fact that 90% of the society sees mental illness as some moral or other failing is a cause of a lot of heartache. it’s a double whammy when you’re also physically disabled.
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second newer therapist has been working on a lot of reframing and stuff that I’d fallen out of practice with and we spotted a lot of bad mental habits I had. one exercise I do now, which gets exhausting, is when I’m confronted with behavior I have a hard time stopping or not impulsively doing, which for me can run the entire gamut of random ass things, I have to go through this whole routine of “is this making your life better or worse? if worse - do you want your life to be worse? No, you don’t. Ok, so, we’re not going to do it.”
if some activity makes my life better, i do the same thing except asking myself then why am I not doing it right away.
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