I’ve always had severe depression. But this year it’s caused me to almost lose my reason, and the blackness of my thoughts has made it incredible, to the point where I attempted suicide, and have had 4 hospitalizations.
Basically, the way I’ve always dealt with it, but never realized until now was, instead of cutting, taking drugs, breaking things, or so on, to relieve some of the pain, I became incredibly competitive. The feeling of winning is always a good one, and for me it’s always been a rush. So I constantly have to win at things.
Now that I understand this, I can use it to my advantage.
I wrote this out on here, because maybe it will help someone else in a similar situation.
I dealt with post trauma stress for awhile. I think I see where you are coming from. I don’t want to upset you, but I doubt that in two days you will see this new “philosophy of winning”, or “absolute answer”, as the answer to your problems. You are trying to trick yourself into being happy. Constantly coming about new absolutes? Finding ulitmate answers for your life to be complete? Finding enlightened moments in the thick of it all, and saying “Thats the answer!!!” “I’ve got it!!” now everything will be alright. Yet these answers never lead you out of the hole you find yourself in.
The mind searches for order. The mind needs order, so it searches for these absolute answers. In todays world people are stuck within the matrix of the ego. So you are stuck in a process of becoming. Trying to become something other then what you are. Trying to complete the ego. Satisfy the ego. The ego/self is not real, it is an illusion. So you are attempting to satisfy a false image. I can’t stress how important it is to give up the ego entirely. Stop trying to become something you are not, stop trying to be happy. Don’t turn your eyes from the world, no matter how ugly it may be. Be aware, if you do you shall find great beauty even in what your conditioned mind has labeled ugly. Don’t turn away from it, there is no reason for fear. This life, this experience is not seperate from you, there is no reason to run from it. No reason to run from the immediate present towards some illusion of grandeur. Unfortunately if you don’t look at the present as it is, and don’t accept it, you will never find what you seek. Constantly caught in the past, or running towards the future, you shall always be in conflict, seperated from the present moment brings about conflict.
Look into yourself, and ask yourself if the ego is truely what you are. Again I recommend Krishnamurti. I’ve recommended it to you before. I don’t know if you have picked up any of his writings as of yet. Heres the deal, what could it hurt? What could it hurt to read a book ? How long does it take to read a book ? a day? two? I recommend “The Awakening of Intelligence”. The language might be a little hard to grasp for the first couple of chapters, but once you pick up the subtlility’s of the language then it won’t be hard to grasp what he is saying. Anyways, what I’m offering is another possible answer to your prediciment, read one book, even if you think its all bullshit, what really was the harm in reading it?
Well I think that you do whatever the f*** you want to do that makes you feel good! (as long as you consider consequences)
“The Breath of life, lives in the life of your breath”
Do what you do and do it well! Indulge!
But in the same way>>>------------>
dont try and hide who you are and what you feel with external placebo-style mind sets. Dont say “I do it BECAUSE it makes me not depressed” How about saying
" I do it because I LOVE IT, and it makes me feel HAPPY! "
Dont tell yourself that winning prevents depression, tell yourself that winning makes you happy…
Here’s the real conclusion. I finally got back into school.
Get busy, find what you like, or go crazy… I dunno. I don’t feel like talking anymore, and I’m so sorry for sharing these stupid views… wherever they came from
Just like we can’t run away from death, in the same way we can’t run away from life either, even if one tries to commit suicide while being depressed. So we don’t really have a choice but to keep living. I think the depressed become so because they find that they have nothing to look forward to in life anymore and so they come close to suicide. It’s possible they expected too much from life, but did you give as much? Eh? I think the depressed need to find something to look forward to. As D suggests, “Get busy.” I think it’s the only way out of depression. Geting busy will also help one remain healthy because of activity.
Without school in my life, or work, I lose my mind. I never realized how important these things are. It’s not enough to just “get busy” as I mistakenly said before: You have to committ yourself to something that’s focussed, something that you like.
I’ve had a taste of depression over the years. My call on this is that it is easy to win, what’s hard is losing. It’s no coincidence that depression kicks in after big life losses.
My aim these days is to stop running. I don’t chase wins and I don’t run from losses. I’m looking for peace and acceptance, and surprisingly I’m finding it.
I tried killing myself as hard as I could, but couldn’t push myself to fall off that chimney when it came right down to it. Let’s face it, if you really wanted to die, you could kill yourself easily. I think most suicide attempts reduce down to a wish to control your pain and misery. But I finally realized, in an epiphany so brutal it took a year to recooperate, that death is the one thing more frightening than life to an evolved little monkey like me.
I agree that keeping yourself busy is key to staving off feelings of sadness/suicide. At the end of a hard day, you’re much too proud, tired, and relieved to think about suicide.
I mentioned in another thread that I’m a psychotherapist and have been one for 16 years. I just found this site and think that it is very good. Hopefully I can add some interesting to the conversation.
You can’t think your way out of depression.
Really you are incorrect about this. Thinking and changing your belief system is really the only sure way to get rid of depression. Usually the depressed person has some deeply held, unless they were recently shocked, beliefs about their past, present, and future that color everything that they think about.
Without school in my life, or work, I lose my mind. I never realized how important these things are. It’s not enough to just “get busy” as I mistakenly said before: You have to committ yourself to something that’s focussed, something that you like.
This is true to a point. However, if a person does not put their depressing thoughts in place while clouding their mind with activities they can end up increasing their activities in relation to the intensity of their bad feelings. Example: a person was molested when they were a kid. They feel soiled by the event. However, they have learned that if they achieve and do more then they feel much less soiled. So, the negative feelings and beliefs fluctuate along with their activity level. Perhaps if they aren’t doing too much they feel like a soiled looser. So, the increase their activity level to the highest degree possible. This then results in total mental and physical exhaustion, thus proving to them that they are imperfect losers.
The previous was an Adlerian Psychology explanation of bipolar disorder and one that I have seen played out countless times.
The way to fix the problem is to confront the reality of your beliefs by discussing them with a person that does not think like you. Then you have to mentally nag yourself to challenge your own thought process.
If you do this then you can bag all of the inhuman perfectionistic activities and inevitable crashes.
Some good reading would be Albert Ellis’s book The Guide to Rational Living.
Hell, when even the NUMBER ONE proponent of “interpersonal theories” of depression for the past few decades turns around and argues for a BIOLOGICAL explanation for MAJOR DEPRESSION, I’m going to give it some consideration–not to mention my work in HOSPITALS with so many people who are far different from the “lazy” and “selfish” people that Alderian likely encounters in his work.
Alderian, again, are you really a psychotherapist? I’ve been called arrogant and even pompous here. Whatever. But not even my greatest detractors can find ONE post where I demonstrate such an UGLY attitude toward my clients/patients as you have in your posts on mental disorders.
Again, sorry to be so blunt here, but I’m just hoping that anyone who’s considered going to therapy or who has had bad experiences in therapy will read your posts and recognize them for what they are (at least as they pertain to psychotherapy/psychopathology). Think I’ll ease back into semi-retirement…
By selfish I mean self-centered folks. Say someone believes that there is a camera in their TV even after someone took it apart and showed them the contents. It’s an “ if I believe it must be true†kind of thing.
Meanwhile, these people do not choose to be selfish, but rather get caught up in an irrational belief system.
Finally, there’s nothing wrong with being selfish or mistaken at times. It does not mean that you are bad just human.
Anyway, I hope to be around for awhile and I may make my own thread for questions. This is informal though and it will be a combination of my own clinical insight and my knowledge of psychotherapy. So, take it or leave it.
Thanks for the welcome guys!!!
Again, sorry to be so blunt here, but I’m just hoping that anyone who’s considered going to therapy or who has had bad experiences in therapy will read your posts and recognize them for what they are (at least as they pertain to psychotherapy/psychopathology). Think I’ll ease back into semi-retirement…
“Selfish” has many connotations, especially when used within the same context as “lazy,” “silly,” and “ignorant”…
I will. Judging from how you are now modifying your words/tone to others, I take it that you got the point of my blunt posts to you. BTW, I apologize for my “cynical and jaded” line. I thought I actually read that, but it was “cranky,” so I must have truly engaged in some cognitive distortions (which do not apply to my not referring to the non-CBT authors you mentioned; i.e., I was hoping to go to bed so I could only pick up on some themes, and since your first few posts were CBT-oriented, I went with those. Also, I know you didn’t mention that the MMPI was INFALLIBLE, but to choose THAT among all the instruments out there seemed odd, as does your claim that an ex-criminal will look like a sociopath based on only two questions–you know that’s not how the MMPI works, and a good interpreter knows how to look at the same profile patterns of two different people and recognize that they can mean two (or more) very different things…).
Also, if your bias against medical causes for mental disorders stems from what you wrote about re. nefarious (mis-)uses of “science,” I can understand your rationale on THOSE grounds (I’m from the same country that produced Phillipe Rushton… ). But to discount all the evidence for biological pre-dispositions would be naive. I understand that the genes obviously do not cause SPECIFIC cognitive and affective responses that we encounter, but they do make it more likely that someone will develop, e.g., distorted thinking or maladaptive emotional responses.
On a final, non-sequiter note, I’ll say that I loved the idea of psychodrama when I studied it. It doesn’t seem very practical in some of the examples I read, and I believe the originator was either a fascist or a something-or-other (it was years back, so my memory fails me), but its principles seemed sound and fascinating…
Well, welcome to ILP, anyway, I guess.
). But to discount all the evidence for biological pre-dispositions would be naive. I understand that the genes obviously do not cause SPECIFIC cognitive and affective responses that we encounter, but they do make it more likely that someone will develop, e.g., distorted thinking or maladaptive emotional responses.