I am so tired. ALL OF THE TIME. It could be the anxiety that is wearing me out or just not wanting to get up because of the knowledge of how bad the day is going to be. In all honesty I feel like this is just the beginning.
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Hang in there. Anxiety can really be exhausting but stay positive and just breath. It could be the beginning of something good. :)
Take it one step at a time, even if you just do something small, you'll see soon you'll have plenty to do.
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You ARE tired all the time because being depressed is exhausting! I watched a good video on YouTube where a professor explains depression to a class of health care workers. I should go find the link for you. But when I watched it, it didn't necessarily stop my depression but I understood for the first time -- very clearly --- what I was up against. AND most importantly, I stopped beating myself up for staying in bed all the time, doing nothing around the house, NOT running errands or calling friends -- not doing anything all day long. That's a symptom of depression and not an indication that you're lazy or a bad person. The most amazing person on the planet is going to be laid flat by a major depressive episode. Right now -- it's not your job to educate anyone in your life about what it means to have a major depression going on --- it is your job to reach out for help because there's LOADS you can do. Being here is a good one. Getting help from your family doctor, a talk therapist is excellent. But don't treat this like it's some personality flaw - it's a medical condition and it's HIGHLY treatable. The question is quite simple -- do you want to feel better? If so --- baby steps. Just start somewhere and get the help you need. If you had crippling asthma you wouldn't force yourself to train for a marathon. You'd get help from your doctor!! A journal is another GREAT thing you can do and it's just about free. Write down how you feel --- just a way to get it out. And as you write you'll maybe be able to figure out somethings that could be changed to make life better. Like, if a relationship is toxic -- who says you have to keep it? In my journal I also made some modest goals for myself --- and focused on how I would feel when the goals were met. I'm talking REAL simple stuff like, clean the bathroom. Stuff that really needs to get done and I'm just not that ambitious. But it really does feel good to be doing things I need to do to take excellent care of myself. Like, "Hey everyone, look at me doing ADULT things!!!" ha ha. I laugh because it's funny but also - true. I try to squeeze as much happiness as I can out of reaching even the most basic goal. Baby steps my friend. Happiness is there and you can get there, one tiny step at a time. And if you loose the way, just start over. Everyone here is pulling for you.
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@LizaBLUE Thank you. And I would really ike that link if you can find it!!
@LizaBLUE. That is one of the best post I've seen on here! Hallelujah! Someone who is actually trying to do something, no matter how small. Excellent encouragement. Please no offense to anyone but just writing "I'm so depressed" on a post doesn't get us very far. I have had and still struggle with paralyzing depression. I'm so glad to read a post that truly gives me support. I hope one day to be the person encouraging someone else. Thank you
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I just joined this group today, and I find reading about other peoples struggles to be offering the consolation of shared experience, shared suffering, even though no one is suffering in exactly the same way. The above piece of advice and empathy strikes me as excellent. I'm 52 years old, and I find it a bit vulnerable-making to share anything about my pain even to strangers on an online support group. For almost two decades I suffered from an incredibly severe depression. I was in and out of psychiatric emergency a couple times a year, on many meds, nothing helped me. Now these past eight years I've been doing better, no longer depressed, but I think I'm still traumatized from time to time from all I've been through. Two days ago, I had the first seriously alarming bout of near-catatonic misery I've experienced in years. I called up a friend admitting I was in crisis. That truly went as badly as possible. She spoke down to me from a very high place, metaphorically speaking, and I was quite clearly working on her last nerve. She just couldn't handle my level of pain, as, too often, people can't. Sometimes, when something like that happens, a lot of things spiral down, and I know I'm experiencing every bad thing that ever happened to me all at once. Now I'm better at living in such a way and thinking the right things so that it passes faster. Some of it also requires patience of the recovery process and a willingness (for myself anyway) to accept the fact that once in a while this is just going to happen, and I have to deal with it the best I can when it does. Well, I'm trying something new with this support group. Once I called a suicidal helpline just needing to talk to someone with a bit of common sense and compassion. The person on the other end wouldn't let me talk. He had a whole series of textbook questions he kept grilling me with and was very controlling--none of it was relevant to me at that moment. I begged him to do some active listening. "We don't do active listening on the Helpline." That really struck me as very absurd, considering it was all I needed at the time and my life was truly at stake. I do better when I don't think of the thousand different episodes like that that Helpline incident I've been through. And when I start thinking too much about bad things in the past, I know that it's a red flag for me and I've got to do something that gets me out of it. I once made a list of the 20 Main Things that I need to balance in my life to keep my overall health. And I think in terms of overall health, not just "mental" health, because now matter how unhealthy I feel, I'll never be as crazy as all the people whose abuse of me made me so sad and alone. I re-focusing on that list now. And I've begun attending a liberal-minded church that I hope is going to continue to be good for me. And I've trying to begin writing a memoir of my struggles in and out of psychiatric emergency almost a decade ago. But I'm having a hard time spitting it all out. I know I have to keep being proactive and try new things and see if they help (hence this paragraph). And I know I need a new doctor who is easier to talk to than my present doctor. But with the system so broken--even here in Montreal, Canada--I also know I have to accept that certain things are simply going to be difficult, and I'm in for a long, difficult ride. I'm girding my loins for that. Thanks for listening. I'll keep reading what people write and comment when appropriate. Sending love and empathy and compassion all around to all in this support group. I want to see for a while what I can bring to it and also get out of it.
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