The depressing depression thread

[AdmiralMemo]

Am I really worth anything to anyone? I feel at least second-best in everything, if not lower.

Also, Ix, you might be up right now, but I have no idea what your Skype is...

Edit: Found ya.

Edit 2: Feeling better after a talk. Why can't I do this more often with other people, too?

[hascow]

Why is what I have not enough?
I have a great job that I love and do well at.
I have a wonderful group of friends that are a ton of fun to do things with, and I do that pretty often and really enjoy it.
I have hobbies that I love and spend time on.
I'm losing weight again(10 pounds since I decided to turn everything around)

But I still can't just enjoy my "unscheduled time"(the time that I spend on my own). Why? It's incredibly frustrating to just spend that time feeling like I'm moping over nothing.

[Lord Hosk]

Alex's stream today really got to me... put me in a bad place

[Elomin Sha]

Not really depressing but it made me sad. Had a dream about someone, only an image of them smiling but when I woke up and thought about it, did I get sad.

[Kapol]

Alex's stream today really got to me... put me in a bad place

I know it's late, but for what it's worth Hosk... *hug*

[Khorn]

Venting ? I'd need a vent system powered by plane engines to vent...

Let's see, where should I start, a bit about myself maybe ? I'm a 24 years old french canadian, I've been a socially awkward kid since I was born. I have insane memory for useless stuff (sadly, in this case school isn't considered useless) I have very high understanding speed, as in I tend to understand stuff way faster than everybody else around me. I've been bullied since Day 1 of kindergarten and the only moment it really stopped is at puberty and it's not 'cause people don't want to bully me, it's 'cause they fear I'll crush them with my bare hands. I went from 5'1 to 6'0 and expended my shoulder width by nearly 50% in under 2 years (I physically changed enough in that 2 years that even some of my cousins wouldn't recognize me) I now am a 6'0 tall metal head with very long black hair and wide shoulders so people try to avoid getting in trouble with me because they fear me. Fun fact: I wouldn't hurt anyone unless they did something to hurt my friends and family, in this case, I wouldn't like to be in their shoes 'cause it may sting a bit. I've preferred the company of a mouse and a keyboard more than actual people since I was a kid. I hate society, and most human beings out there.

I don't even know what to talk about... I do not fear death nor pain and I'm not afraid to inflict pain on someone if I think they deserve it for what they have done. I've been waiting for the day I die for a while now and it hasn't hit yet. (obviously...) I do not see death as most people do. Most people think of death as an end, I see it like any other event that happens once in a lifetime, like puberty. If there really is Heaven and Hell (I am an atheist by the way) I will gladly enter Hell because that's where I'm going, there's not doubt about this, because it cannot be as bad as life on Earth. Most people on here shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. Natural selection can't do its thing anymore because of all the warning signs and stuff like that and it's slowly decreasing the average level of intelligence because people that should have used a hair dryer in the shower didn't cleanse our world of their presence...

To this day, I have completed studies in computer science and started studies in business management. (that I have never completed) I'm currently unemployed, I started trying to live stream for a while without much success. (too used to being alone, I don't talk while I stream XD) My life goal was to own a business (any kind) but I don't know what kind of business to launch so it probably won't happen. I had a collection of my own poems that I wrote over the last 10 years, sadly I deleted most of them when I changed computer and forgot to back them up. Some of them are very dark, others have a motivation kind of background.

I spend most my time playing games that I'm bored of while watching streams, mostly because they help me keep my mind away from dark thoughts. If I ever make up my mind about those "dark thoughts" I know exactly how and where it'll happen and I know I won't miss, 200 KM/h (120-ish MPH) in a concrete wall should do it.

My current source of distraction is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. I missed Counter-Strike a lot and I learnt recently that I can actually make money with the game selling gun skins, so I'm trying to slowly gather skins and sell'em for steam money to buy games on my wishlist.

That's it for now... If you have questions of w/e, I'll try to come back to read and answer them, if you want to make sure I get them, send me a PM on Twitch www.twitch.tv/Khornpop or on my facebook page www.facebook.com/Khornpop

[AdmiralMemo]

Hey dude. Welcome, and we're here for you. You sound very similar to Dewknight, another poster on here. I'll see if I can get him to talk to you.

You have a lot of similar thoughts to me, but perhaps a bit more extreme. Life is what you make of it. I know how hard it is to decide on goals, but if you can figure out what you would like to do, setting out for that goal will give you something to do.

If you need help in figuring out what to do, how to start, perhaps SuperBetter can help you. It is kind of like a video game for your real life, but where you make the goals instead of the game.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

When it's not a Saturday or a Tuesday, I feel really very lonely in the evenings.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Khorn, your post made me smile sadly just a little. You sound like every little tic and personality feature I've seen amongst the frustrated and the sad and the lonely and the goddamn angry condensed into one being. A lot of them from here (I shall be polite and avoid naming names).

Dude, if you want to do this properly, give me a buzz on Skype- my username is Gniffish78. It would honestly be my pleasure to help you. But briefly... you say you 'hate society and most human beings out there'. Honestly, it's like what Memo said- life is what you make of it. In my current state of existence, I could adopt any position on life from getting plastered every night to semi-professional sportsperson to full-on nerd to entirely insular never-leave-computer type. I could quite easily never interact with anyone outside my chosen mode of existence if I wanted to. It sounds like you've had a string of terrible experiences with people, particularly schoolmates, and you're (to put things bluntly) scared and distrustful of human interaction. I can empathise utterly with that temptation, and I've been there myself, but it is simply not healthy for a person.

If you want more concrete advice, then you can Skype me or ask again here. The community is good like that . I can also back up Superbetter- wasn't to my taste because of my schedule, but it can be a very useful tool if used properly. Stay strong man. You can do better.

[DewKnight]

Hi Khorn

I've been in some of those places (though I'm a scrawny kid even now). I still don't know about life and death and how everything works. I have incurable cancer, though I have no idea when I'm going to die. At times it hits pretty hard.

My suggestion: Therapy man, and lots of it. That's one of the few things that has gotten me through anything. And it doesn't have to all be "sit down with a therapist" stuff. Just hashing out stuff here with other likeminded people can help.

I am a firm believer that every single person should be in therapy. Some people may not need it more than a couple times a year. Some people may need it more than once a week.

I have enough college credits for a degree, but they're all in different departments. I've studied everything and never found what I want to do. I found a few things I am good at and so I try to do that in the little time that I do have daily.

Death is a part of living. Everybody dies. But we can all try to do our best in life to either have a good time ourselves, do good for others, or whatever. There are so many things you can do. To quote one of my favorite movies (Stay), there's too much damn beauty in this world to quit. I don't know if that's even a thought in your mind, but I felt to say it.

As for me, I "own" a business and see doctors and therapists a lot. I take about a billion prescriptions a day and I feel like a 90 year old man. I do a little bit of IT work, then my business partners are planning on doing some other things, though I'll unfortunately be unlikely to assist very much in that stuff.

I also strongly dislike just about everybody except me. Well, except that I dislike myself a lot of the time too. My brain is weird and messed up. It's something I'm working on.

Try to pick up new hobbies, or just small outings with similar people. I found a boardgame meetup in my town that has some similar people that I'm able to attend at times and it is fun. I also absolutely love camping and the outdoors, though I'm barely able to walk at all cause of treatments and crap.

Feel free to PM or email (username at gmail) if you like.

[Khorn]

The fact is, life isn't what you make it. You aren't the only actor in your life, you are but a little piece of a big puzzle. I don't know if you've ever tried completing puzzles with 2,000 other person at once, people just throw pieces where they feel like putting them, even if they don't fit, they leave them there and proceed to throw other pieces randomly. I'd prefer building a 2,000,000 pieces puzzle by myself than get random people come over and screw everything I try to build.

I feel like we're in an era where common sense isn't that common anymore... Every time I think of some activity or whatever thing that I could do, I end up not doing it because it comes back to "what's the point of it?"

The only thing that makes me special and unique is that (coming from most of my teachers and nearly every specialists that I talked to) I have mental abilities and ease of understanding way above average. Sadly, that's most likely the reason why I feel like my life is a waste of time, because I have nothing to do with my abilities. One of the specialist even said that the fact that I want to be alone most of the time is a defense mechanism that my brain developed to protect itself from the idiots out there... I have very few physical abilities (other than the fact that I look like a serial killer XD) and the only things I'm able to do do not appeal me at all.

I like helping other a lot (I'd give anything to the ones I love, even my eyes if they needed them) this is the only thing that keeps me here, I don't want to hurt people around me and I want to be able to help them as much as I can, I hate my life and I try to make everyone else's life easier. It's the only use I found for my time, the problem is that recently I do not have the energy to help people anymore, so I'm sinking down and digging my own hole. The saddest part about all this is that I'm aware of that and I'm unable to change it and like every hole, the deeper you dig, the harder it is to get back out.

I even tried not coming out by the hole I dug becuase it's too high to climb, recently, I've been trying to dig my way out of the hole from the sides, going up slowly, but I keep digging into bigger holes :\



EDIT (you posted while I was writing my post XD): @DewKnight sorry about your health issues :\

I've tried multiple kind of therapies, including relaxation stuff and lots of other crap that ended up costing a bunch of money for little to no result. (most of'em gave very short term results, but nothing on the long run)

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes is this: "There's gotta be more to life than this, There's got to be more to everythin' I thought exists" - P.O.D. - Youth of the Nation,
"Everyone is somebody else's reason to smile" - Unknown, some famous people probably said it, but I thought it up myself.
"Remember, the darker the night, the more beautiful is morning light." - Ensiferum - Last Breath.
"One of the best thing in life is that there is no such thing as overkill, so give it all you got." - That one is also from me.
"Because that's what kindness is. It's not doing something for someone else because they can't, but because you can." ~Andrew Iskander
"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one." ~Mother Teresa
"There is no failure except in no longer trying." ~Elbert Hubbard

I also have a couple poems that I could post... if you guys want to see them/some of them, let me know.
END OF EDIT---

[DewKnight]

Nice quotes.

I've heard the same thing regarding pushing people away from my therapists and such. I'm also above average intelligence, and I totally push everybody away. Part of it is OCD and other stupid stuff with my brain, and then part of it is those defense mechanisms (which, okay I guess those are brain too).

It took a while to find the right therapist for me. Luckily I found one. I go whenever I need to, we talk about whatever the hell I feel like talking about that day. I would push you to keep trying. Maybe try some colleges (they usually do student therapy that is monitored by teachers), or more group type stuff.

Or again, therapy to me can just be getting together with people and doing something. You want to do something good, go join one of those groups that builds a house. You'll certainly have to at least get somewhat friendly in that type of situation. Put yourself out of your comfort zone.

And you don't have to help everybody. I will go on and on working on crap sometimes to the point that I have to say screw it. Now I'm all weird and messed up there too, but don't be afraid to be selfish sometimes.

Since we're posting quotes, here are some I try to live by or at least consider every day.

"My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer"
- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Don’t tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon."
- Said by a paralyzed Sawyer Rosenstein, but it comes from some song.

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!"
- Hunter S Thompson

"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions."
- Douglas Adams

"The only ship certain to come in has black sails" (a darker one, but I love it so much. From a fictional poet in a movie, Cassandra's Dream).

[Psycat Aurora]

One of my birds nearly died today. My other bird attacked her while she was scavenging on the floor. Somehow, she's having trouble breathing now and has been throwing up. I had to leave her at the vet overnight on oxygen. I've had to drain all of my accounts and credit card to pay for the fees.
Now I have to find a new home for the aggressive one but I don't want to give her up.
I'm worried sick.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Khorn, you might not be the only actor in your life, but you have entirely free will as to where you go and what you do with it. Example: in my current mode of existence, I could choose to direct my life in the direction of academia-obsessed type, semi-professional sportsman, obsessive drinker/partygoer, insular never-leave-computer sort, exclusive tabletop gamer or simply ingratiate myself into one of the thousands of little cliques, hobbies and social groups whirling around me (we'll temporarily leave aside the difficulty of said integration, that's an issue for another time). Point being in literally any of those ways of doing things, I would never have to interact with anyone in any of the other fields if I so chose. To use the jigsaw example, if invited 2000 random people over then things would absolutely get chaotic, but I'd slash the completion time by just asking a few mates I know and trust to come over and completing the entire experience over a beer or two. The idea you have that there are idiots out there is frankly not representative, and even if it were it wouldn't matter- there are good people out there, people you will want to be friends with, people who are not idiots. If you dig just a little, you might just find they're after some fashion in the majority. As your therapist said, your attitude sounds like a defence mechanism against the idiots you perceive, the demons who bullied you in school, the stories you read about online. There is no need to live your life for them. Life is yours to live for the people you care about, and for the opportunity to meet people like them. Simple as that.

The best thing about living in the 21st century is the sheer amount of agency you have over your own life, simply because of all the options you have available. There are so many people, so many stories, so many little tales and character arcs waiting to be acted out, and all are made more powerful by the drama of shared experience. If we're doing quotes, here's one from Matthew Inman: "I've always considered the question to be "Why am I alive? Why am I here? What's the point of me?". And to that I say: WHO CARES! Forget the WHY. You are in a raging forest full of beauty and agony and magical grapey beverages and lightning storms and demon bees*. This is better than the why"

*yeah, it starts to lose context about then. Still relevant.

But I digress- the 'what's the point' feeling is probably the single most common depressive trope and comes simply from an imbalance in brain chemistry. Finding joy in helping others runs it a close second, at least from my experience. Intelligence is also correlated with depression. You are not alone.

Once again, this is just a whistle stop tour. But y'aint getting away from it that easily

[Dutch guy]

Khorn, I have no idea what to say about a lot of the things your going through. I've been in the hole myself. It's not a pretty place.

They way I see it you've focused so much on giving to others (probably because it is/was the last thing that gave you some modicum of joy) that you've sort of lost contact with yourself. You're so busy taking into account what all those others need that you try to help you are no longer considering yourself in the bigger picture.

Some people suffer from self importance and an oversized ego. But I always think that if there is such a thing as an oversized ego, there must be such a thing as an undersized ego too. Sometimes we need to be just a little bit selfish. Sometimes you need to just ignore anybody else and do what YOU consider is right. Even if, in your analogy, that means sweeping away all those other puzzle pieces with a broom. And then beating some of those other people out of the way with it.

Society at large isn't that bad. The problem is that the minor minority that fucks it up for everyone is also the most vocal minority. The group you are most likely to experience. These are the people you ignore, walk away from or beat with that hypothetical broom.

[Dutch guy]

One of my birds nearly died today. My other bird attacked her while she was scavenging on the floor. Somehow, she's having trouble breathing now and has been throwing up. I had to leave her at the vet overnight on oxygen. I've had to drain all of my accounts and credit card to pay for the fees.
Now I have to find a new home for the aggressive one but I don't want to give her up.
I'm worried sick.

Need a small bit of financial support? (And do you have paypal or something?)

Regards,

Dutch Guy

[hascow]

I read this post on reddit recently. I found it beautiful and sad, and might start to point people towards it if they ask what it feels like to have depression, because it feels very visceral.

[elcalen]

Wow, this is a long thread. Obviously I'm not going to be reading all through it. (Yeah, I'm new to the forum, and only been following LRR content since last spring-ish.)

So, here's my story, in a nutshell. I've had a few drinks tonight, probably wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't. The thing is, I have a very hard time accomplishing anything. I think it's been a problem through most my adult life (I'm in my 30s now), to some extent, but in recent years it's only been getting worse, to a point where my life's currently basically at a standstill. Neither my studies or creative projects I'd like to do are going anywhere, and the stress and anxiety caused by this has been increasing. For a while already I've suspected I could be suffering from some form of depression.

But here's the rub: my problem is with achieving anything and seeking help would obviously be a major achievement... Reaching out seems to be almost impossible. Like, I almost literally freeze when even thinking about researching how one would go about seeking help. (And I live in a country with decent public healthcare, so it's not like seeking help should bankrupt me or anything...)

I don't expect anyone here to have an easy answer to these problems. Easier said than done, and all that, right? Just venting, I guess. And, you know, I think it's actually the first time I've tried to put this in words or share with anyone. Which, I guess, counts for something...

[Deedles]

The best suggestion I have is to do what I did; Call your local clinic(this was just a medical clinic, not specifically a mental health one, they passed me on to one after I met a doctor at the local clinic) and make an appointment for an evaluation. In my case I specifically wanted cognitive behavioural therapy to help my social anxiety, so that's what I asked for, in your case I would say asking for an investigation on whether or not you have depression would be good.

[Psycat Aurora]

One of my birds nearly died today. My other bird attacked her while she was scavenging on the floor. Somehow, she's having trouble breathing now and has been throwing up. I had to leave her at the vet overnight on oxygen. I've had to drain all of my accounts and credit card to pay for the fees.
Now I have to find a new home for the aggressive one but I don't want to give her up.
I'm worried sick.

Need a small bit of financial support? (And do you have paypal or something?)

Regards,

Dutch Guy

Thanks for the offer, but it's ok. Sadly, Lilo had to be put down today. I miss her so much...

[cuddlyblade]

Dunno how much use the words of a complete stranger are but i'm very sorry to hear that. *internet hugs*

[Elomin Sha]

Sorry to hear that.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Right now I feel very low and vulnerable.

It being 11pm and me feeling very tired isn't helping. I'm grieving over times that never were.

[elcalen]

Merrymaker_Mortalis, I hear ya. It's 1:30am right now here, plus I'm kinda drunk. And I've been feeling kinda anxious and down all weekend... I have a social engagement next weekend, and I think I'm already kinda stressed out about it, for no good reason (just a RPG session with friends, nothing more, nothing less)...

Re: Deedles's comment: that is pretty much what I should be doing, I'm well aware of that. Just finding it incredibly hard to take the first step. But I know it's something I need to do myself, no one can really help me with it, I'm afraid...

[Deedles]

You can always ask someone to come with you as moral support, but yes, past that it is something you must do on your own, at your own pace.

Edit:
If there's any almighty power out there I would say that I'd like to feel happy right now, but really I'd settle for just not feeling shit about myself, okay?