I like him. Let’s keep him.
Tag: depression
Some people say ‘just turn off the lights and go to bed on time,’ and this is terrible advice for people with depression and anxiety.
It’s actually caused me to hate going to sleep for the night. Seriously. I have chronic fatigue and a couple other conditions that make me tired all the darn time and I hate going to sleep and because I have this strong emotional reaction to it my brain and body will put a lot of effort into avoiding it.
Once you turn off the lights and get rid of all ‘distractions,’ there is nothing to think about. This leaves you easy prey for anxious thoughts, obsessive ones, and depressive spirals.
And, if you are depressed, the more time your brain spends in depressive spirals the sicker you will get.
One of the best methods of treating depressing is teaching people how to ID depressive spirals and figured out how to break out of them and avoid them.
And for me, one of the best ways of avoiding getting stuck in a depressive spiral for hours is to not go to bed until I have reason to believe I’ll actually go to sleep instead of lie there trapped in one while my brain gets sicker and sicker for hours.
I developed the habit as a kid of having a book on me at all times, bringing three books to school to ensure I wouldn’t run out, so I had something to occupy my brain to stop it from dragging itself down.
I just spent thirty minutes lying still with all lights out. That was a terrible idea and I will now be up even later trying to calm down and undo the damage when I could have spent that thirty minutes reading something or doing something else to wind down and calm my brain enough it wouldn’t go and stick its fingers in an electrical socket the instant I left it alone. ‘Free hands do the devil’s work’ definitely applies to sick brains. It is now 4:40am. I do not need to stay up even later than I would have otherwise.
And this kind of thing is why I have developed a Pavlovian avoidance of trying to go to sleep unless I’m certain it’ll be over quickly and relatively painless. I’m already sick, I don’t need to get even sicker and feel any more pain.
The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.
I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.
Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.
People with depression can smile
People with depression can laugh
People with depression can eat normally
People with depression can have good sleeping
People with depression can seem happy
People with depression can have good grades
People with depression can be happy at some points
People with depression can have good days
People with depression don’t always appear to have depression
People with depression can be in the process of recovery and still have depressed days.
Bedtime 12 Jul 16
Hugs for everyone, and I hope you sleep well!
Tracking things under the cut.
One near panic-attack, more laundry done, some work done on getting all my fic uploaded to off-site back up (and updating the massive story chart of doom to go with it so I can find everything and have the important information where I can find it), food eaten.
Am going to trap that fucking ground hog and have it removed by animal control to somewhere far, far away from here. No more parsley for you, you little bastard. Or strawberries, for that matter.
Actually, I’ve given up on fresh strawberries from the garden this year – I’ll put up mesh for next year, enough to keep the critters out and let insects in to do the pollination thing.
And my plans to go to Seattle in September have been moved to the spring, because this is not the first bout of brain weasels that’s been more than I’ve expected this summer, and I need to not exacerbate things by drastically cutting my sunlight over the winter.
*makes a face*
But. I need to be mindful of myself, and I need to take care of myself, and not do more than I can handle doing. Which means waiting on Seattle. And it means that this fall I get to take dad with me to go argue with bureaucrats about health things, and then I get to make sure any doctor’s appointments are such that I can take someone with to be the backup against doctors being assholes.
*takes a deep breath* I can do this. I can.
And part of doing this tracking of things on the last post of the night is because then I have a record, and I can use that along with other bits of record keeping I’ve managed to go “here, I have a pattern, I have records”. They might not go back as far as I’d like, because of brain things that never have had a proper diagnosis or anything, but. I have them, and I can point at other things, and I can use all of that to push back at any doctor who tries to tell me that no, it’s just I’m not trying hard enough, it’s I’m fat, it’s I’m “merely” depressed.
Because while I’m not entirely certain what’s causing the problems, I have some clear ideas and potential culprits, and at this point I need information I can’t get without access to professionals in order to pin down what actually are the issues.
And there are some which I’m firmly certain of. ADHD. Arthritis – probably rheumatoid. Allergies. Migraines.
On top of those, probably fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety. Something fucked up with my ovaries (PMDD is likely, PCOS is possible).
And adding before an earlier-than-this-is-queued bedtime:
That was also more exhausting an emotional ride than I expected. Imma go pass out early.
you don’t “beat” depression. you don’t “defeat” eating disorders. you survive them. stop making severe mental illnesses sound like something you can overcome just by throwing the right punch.
Things I never knew about depression until I finally had a doctor explain the disease to me
Depression can manifest as irrational anger.
My complete and total inability to keep anything clean or tidy for any amount of time is a symptom of my depression. I may never be able to do this. It’s important that I remember that and forgive myself when I clean something out (like my car) and it ends up trashed within a week.
Depression IS A DISABILITY. Requiring accommodations is okay.
Medications don’t make you better, they don’t cure your depression. They serve as an aid. Their purpose is to help you get to everyone else’s minimal level of functioning.
Depression can cycle through periods of inactivity. This doesn’t mean it’s gone away.
The reason I don’t feel like other people understand me is because … well … other people DON’T understand me. They can’t. They don’t have my disability.
Paranoia is par for the course.
Depression can and will interfere with your physical mobility. Forgive yourself when you can’t physically do something.
It’s entirely possible that I may never be able to live by myself. I can’t take care of myself. I need help to do it. And that’s okay.
I wanna wear this on a shirt.
The actuality of depression that no one seems able to grasp is you have to fight for your own life. You don’t have doctors forcing standard treatments or have an entire support team praying for you. You’re solely responsible for providing the encouragement and care necessary to keep you alive. The times I’ve been at my sickest I had to fight with every last drop of hope I had to get myself out of the grave my mind was digging for me. The disease is what kills you. It corrupts your mind forcing your every thought to scare you enough that suicide seems like your only way out. I wish people could understand that… not only to show the respect those who lost their battle with depression deserve and not view it as an act of selfishness, but also to realize how f*cking strong a person living with depression has to be to not slip into that same scenario. Personally, I think that there’s always going to be something better than not being here at all… not to mention the fear of where I’ll end up, there’s far too much unknown, which terrifies me, which is good…
Because I know what it feels like to be in the position people are in before they end it all. It’s a feeling I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy and I wouldn’t even want to attempt to explain it to you. Because it’s, well, depressing.
About as depressing as it can get really
,
It should not make someone uncomfortable to publicize facts on mental illness. Like arms and legs, the mind is a part of the body.
(via
)
Something else people don’t understand is the massive amount of self-advocating depressed (and other mentally ill people) have to do.
Through my latest crisis, the system meant to help me access care has failed me repeatedly. With two exceptions it has been up to me to find every door myself, and either open it myself or fight until someone FINALLY opens it. Nothing I have asked for has been provided without a fight or without ridiculous delay.
This shit is asked of people who by definition are less capable of fixing things by themselves. It’s like asking someone with a broken leg to run to get help.
(via naamahdarling)
Jessamine decided that clearly I needed her to come sit on me and purr at me for a bit. And to give her scritchings. Possibly the lack of music, the not having turned the fan on, and generally being slow about doing things this morning. Because rain and because depression sucks… and apparently, also because sensory issues, since I just tried to turn the fan on, and had to turn it off immediately because of the sound of the motor. (Not a migraine, since thinking isn’t impossible, I’m not dizzy, and I’m not in pain.)
Twitter is having a very important conversation right now.
Why are these all me?
^
There's a Mirror on the Wall 