do you take psych pills?

[DanaC]

My depression manifests itself more as a complete lack of starting ability. Not lack of motivation; I feel like doing things it's just that I get overwhelmed by the enormity of getting dressed and all the effort that goes into that. Sometimes when it's been bad, I had to make the choice between putting gas in the car or going to the post office because doing both was more than I could manage.

That is very similar to how I get when depression hits. The other problem is spending night after night in an anxious state: have I turned off the grill I was using earlier? leading to thoughts of fire, leading to an obsessive need to plan out my possible escape route, including how I'd get the dog out (there's only one access in and out apart from windows, I don't mean I just work it out. I kind of put myself into the situation and imagine myself doing it all, sometimes several times, almost as if, as long as I am imagining it and 'thinking it through' and not going to sleep, I'll be okay. Then there's the destructive thought patterns. Whirls and swirls of hopeless reverie, or self-character assassination, thinking through the conversations of the day, or encounters with other people and beating myself up over some small miscommunication or stupid remark. Death as a concept features quite strongly in my mind on those nights, my death, mum's future death, my Dad's more imminent one, my bro, my best friend...my dog. The absolute conviction that I have never been truly tested and one day something's going to tear my heart out and I won't be able to cope. Wondering if I am capable of the kind of honest emotions other people seem capable of, am I a fraud etc etc.

I won't go on....there's a lot more. It used to really knock me off my stride when I got like that. Weeks or months of 'trying to act normal' around people whilst secretly thinking I was completely lost. I used to engage in an unusual form of self harm.....so used to scratching the eczema rash, I would sit and just rake at the skin on face and hands, til I bled, but it made me feel better whilst i was doing it. Sometimes I'd do it for a long time.

Drugs didn't help. What helped was when i started to recognise the pattern and just let it happen. I don't 'pick myself up', I don't 'snap out of it'. But after a few days or maybe a week of slipping into those thought patterns, it usually clicks with me...I'm depressed. I then give myself permission to be depressed, I consciously refrain from any 'life-planning' or self analysis, I become completely hedonistic and just try to cope minute to minute in a semi unthinking state. It seems to work, usually.

What makes me think it's depression rather than just feeling down, is that it seems to be unrelated to my general happiness levels. I can be enjoying myself with it in the background, ready to come to the fore the second I am on my own.....it can completely wall me off from other people, or it can just make me feel unreal. But it happens regardless of whether I am doing well, doing poorly, succeeding, failing, surrounded by friends or alone. And it happens about usually about once every three months. Since giving myself permisison to be depressed, it is a hell of a lot less destructive than it once was.

I am grateful for the fact that I don't seem to get as floored by it now as I used to. I used to lose months at a time. Never entirely goes away though, there's always that little shiver in the background. I sometimes feel that it will have me by the throat one day