firecat

(T.S. Eliot)

I'm reproducing a comment I made in lovenadlight's journal, here:

I was desperate (in a depressed, "this life isn't worth living" way) over the summer because of a health condition. I managed to fix it, but I wouldn't say it was optional in the sense that it was about a story I was telling myself that I could change at will. I wasn't able to just snap out of it with application of the proper workshop or talk therapy. In fact, that was precisely why I knew it was a health condition, because I can usually change my mood at least a little bit by changing my way of thinking and/or my habitual behavior.
I did learn something from that, though, which I can apply now that I'm out of the desperation part: when desperate (which means "without hope,") go ahead and be desperate, and simply move one slow step at a time in a direction that looks like it'll be different from where you are now. Why not - you're without hope, so you have nothing important to lose.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

datagoddess.livejournal.com

When I'm in desperate mode, usually I can't see a direction that's better. Different is even difficult, because I get so focused on the emotional pain and the despair. And to be honest, that's one of the reasons I need meds for my depression, I can't see any way to get perspective and make everything not such a huge hairy freaking deal. Finding a direction when you're drowning in over reactions and continual emotional turmoil is impossible for me. Given the difference meds make for me, I can tell that mine is a health condition, because it makes me functional without changing my life in other ways.

Reading that thread, I'm almost never desperate within the "I need to be happy/satisfied/complete". I get desperate more in the depressed, down, pit-of-despair way. I quit doing the other a while back, when I realized that no one change is going to make me happy/satisfied/complete for more than a moment. I used to think losing a bunch of weight would fix my problems. Having a husband. Having a job. But none of that will make me "better". Only I can do that, from the inside. That was a hard lesson for me to learn.

Although I feel I need to learn new coping skills so that my stress doesn't make my depression worse. I had to have my meds increased about 3 weeks ago to deal with the stress I wasn't handling well.

From:

firecat

Well said. I need meds for my depression too. Over the summer, the antidepression part of my meds stopped working, although the antianxiety part was still sort of working. So the direction I was plodding in was "toward figuring out whether any other meds or other treatments might make a difference." (Which, fortunately, some things did.)

Nothing will make me complete, but having certain things in my life on a regular basis tends to increase my satisfaction. It helps that so far there are a number of different ways for me to put together a satisfying mix, so I'm not dependent on one single thing that I might lose.