The nature of depression; or,

[firecat]

or, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps doesn't work if you don't have boots

http://theshadowsanctuary.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/another-word-for-depression-redux/

This is why people’s suggestions about how to relate to depression often strike those of us who suffer it as sententious bullshit. Praying is not going to get me off this ride. Neither is meditation, or drinking wheat grass juice. I cannot change my mind in the middle of the roller coaster track, before the plunge. No one will let me off. Praying, meditation, diet, exercise, therapy, all your suggestions may be useful tools. They may help a person keep breathing until the ride is over, for the time. But they do not eradicate the brain chemistry that makes one prone to depression in the first place.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Definitely. There are often but not always things I can do to modify my response to depression (for better or worse) but sometimes there aren't. One of my friends and coworkers died earlier this year and it was incredibly strange to feel grief that was not depression. There were defintely some overlapping areas, but all the techniques that didn't really help with depression kind of did with grief. It was weird.

Someone on my DW circle talked about "lack of motivation" as a symptom once, and that was tremendously helpful, realising that it was a symptom not a personal failing to not be able to get out of bed or cook a meal or do whatever when the depression is worse. And being fat compounds the cultural narrative of "you are so lazy" that it's so hard to fight off when depressed!

[firecat]

And being fat compounds the cultural narrative of "you are so lazy" that it's so hard to fight off when depressed!

Oh ghod yes.