Depression success stories?

[RevDrucifer]

It just seems like a reasonably common thing for people to say things like "I tried therapy and it didn't work" or "my therapist told me that I'm actually perfectly healthy and don't need them", etc. Whenever I hear that, I can't help but wonder if someone during that interaction missed the point of therapy.

Agreed.

The flipside of this is that when I first started therapy a few years back, I had a therapist I was NOT connecting with on any level whatsoever and because of my lack of experience in getting therapy, I stuck with him longer than I should have, thinking “Well, I’m here because I don’t have the answers I’m looking for, so I shouldn’t assume I know what I’m talking about”

Turns out by hunch was correct, it just wasn’t a good match and I found a great one after, but it definitely made me curious as to how many are getting therapy from a therapist that sucks at their job.

That said, I personally used therapy as a springboard for how I was treating myself during that period of my life. It wasn’t so much “I’m looking for answers” as it was “I’m pretty sure I know the answers, I just need you to let me know if I’m getting to them the right way with what I’m doing” , which still required discussion and drilling down into those things because while the intent behind the actions may be positive, it may not be effective.

 

[Xetplion]

I was quite depressed in my early/mid 30s. Really had given myself an anxiety disorder from drinking too much. Had been a smoker for 10+ years at that point so was in terrible physical conditioning. It was during the financial crisis and was unemployed. No sex life at all. No goals.

Thinking back now, there is no other way I really could have been other than depressed.

There is enormous variance in therapists. One said they don't believe in medication. One was just obviously a moron. One though was brilliant and diagnosed me with seasonal affective disorder in about 5 minutes and got me on a SSRI. I think it is a fine balancing act with finding the right therapist because you can certainly fall into a trap of changing therapist too often.

I think this is also when SSRIs get a bad name. SSRIs helped me to start getting in shape, quit smoking, quit drinking, get a job, get a girlfriend but I am sure they would not have helped me be happy if I had stayed a sexless, out of shape, unemployed, alcoholic, cigarette smoker. For me it took a complete rebuild.

 

[soliloquy]

the gym is my temple.
I may not eat the best, and thus, i'm not exactly looking to get the Greek god's body.

but the gym is such a beautiful place where I can disassociate with the outside world for 30 mins to hour and a half.
There is no work. There is no family stress. There is no relationship stress. There is no climate change. There is nothing other than me, headphones/music and a self-imposed challenge of weights/sweat/distance/heart rate etc.

Its the perfect 'me' place for me.

I started with just 2 days in the gym at the second week of January. Right now i'm at 4 days a week in the gym, and I'm trying to push it to 6 days a week. The goal is to just keep moving. Even if i'm not pushing myself to my limits, so long as i'm moving, i'm happy.

and by 'happy' i mean its something i'm looking forward to all day, and looking forward to whenever i'm outside of the gym. Just that temporary escape.


though i also understand that my gym is rather unique and fits 'me' perfectly. I've tried other gyms and something always felt 'wrong' with them. Either too crowded, or gym etiquette is not up to my standard, or bad lighting, or equipment or whatever....


I hope you all can find that perfect 'me' time. Be it playing guitar every day, or driving, or video gaming or whatever it is that you need to give yourself the time you think you deserve.

 

[Fenriswolf]

Definitely glad to see that becoming a thing more and more with younger people, healthy coping mechanisms are so damn important and there’s not a lot of advice/info or education on that at all.

In my case, it wasn’t so much “teenage years” depression, childhood was rather fucked up and I experienced a lot of the worst human behaviors imaginable and I’m quite fortunate that life isn’t hell as a result of all that. Had I not addressed that stuff when I did, I wouldn’t be here now and it was almost too late when I did address it.

There’s definitely some emotional resilience born from all that, but really the meditation stuff is what allowed me to slow my thoughts down and to not react before I‘ve decided how I want to react. That was absolutely HUGE for me and has paid off in so many different ways because it stopped all my knee-jerk reactions to everything, conversations, issues, plans, etc.

I’m far from being flawless with it, sometimes I get too much on my plate and there’s just no mental space to allow for that quick time-out, I might get snippy with my staff or my boss for a second, but that’s mostly my own fault because I‘m the last person to say “Hold up, I don’t have time for that right now”

Same, I won't go into detail because I don't want anyone to think I either want sympathy or I'm trying to one up them, but my mom put me in therapy because I wasn't a trophy son after 14 years of abuse, and just the stuff I could tell the therapist with her in the room was enough for him to say I'd gone through more trauma in my life than anyone he's ever talked to. And that was 18 years ago. I'm working on it, nowhere near fucking close to being okay, but I'm at the point where I can say I don't have a problem with depression, but depression has a problem with me.

1. Alcohol. Yup, number one thing. Medicating myself with alcohol never ever made me feel better. I obviously can't speak for everyone, but this is one that I'd say might be the most universal.

That's one of the problems I have with talking about my depression. My post history on here shows how bad my drinking problem is, but I know myself. There was a handful of suicide attempts when I realized I was only a bargaining piece in my parents divorce, after that, every single one was when I tried antidepressants. I've talked people out of suicide, I have helped people with depression, I've had people thank me because thanks to me they're so many years sober. I'm glad I've been able to help people like that, but at this point I feel like Red Skull


I just want some fucking peace.

 

[RevDrucifer]

Same, I won't go into detail because I don't want anyone to think I either want sympathy or I'm trying to one up them, but my mom put me in therapy because I wasn't a trophy son after 14 years of abuse, and just the stuff I could tell the therapist with her in the room was enough for him to say I'd gone through more trauma in my life than anyone he's ever talked to. And that was 18 years ago. I'm working on it, nowhere near fucking close to being okay, but I'm at the point where I can say I don't have a problem with depression, but depression has a problem with me.


That's one of the problems I have with talking about my depression. My post history on here shows how bad my drinking problem is, but I know myself. There was a handful of suicide attempts when I realized I was only a bargaining piece in my parents divorce, after that, every single one was when I tried antidepressants. I've talked people out of suicide, I have helped people with depression, I've had people thank me because thanks to me they're so many years sober. I'm glad I've been able to help people like that, but at this point I feel like Red Skull
View attachment 137927

I just want some fucking peace.

I hear ya, man. That was me for a very long time.

FWIW, the addressing the childhood stuff was a multi-tiered thing for me. There was the initial admitting of the issue and discussing it with the people involved to find some closure, in some ways I got it, in others I didn’t and had to figure out how to resolve that on my own. (9x out of 10, the answer to that is ‘they didn’t know any better then, they don’t know any better now and you won’t make ‘em understand’)

The end result of that first tier was letting myself off the hook for what I had experienced. That almost always comes along with this deep rooted idea that we deserved what we experienced, regardless of how much we know we didn’t. Sometimes this is phrased as “forgiving yourself” because that’s essentially the mechanism that needs to occur to move past it.

Any time you’re telling yourself “This is the way it is”, “That’s just how it is”, “This is my role”, “I’ve come to terms with the fact this is the way life is and will be”, anything like that, you’re confirming and maintaining that you deserved what you experienced.

For me, “This is how it is” was an adage stated over and over in childhood, something all the adults would say when they failed at something and couldn’t just admit “I fucked up and I continuously fuck up by not doing better“ and was well engrained in me. Whether that was the poverty or abuse that came as a result of their decisions/choices.

Figuring out how to rid myself of that when it was instilled since birth was a doozy.

The second tier, which has taken me around 15 years to flush out, was the myriad ways that carrying that blame/guilt/idea I was at fault intertwined with all my actions, thoughts and way I carried myself.

Almost by default, it leaves you open to the idea that circumstances just happen to you. For me, it made me focus my defenses on those who actually had no ill intent while keeping myself defenseless to those who did.

I had to reverse my thinking in a lot of ways. I cannot overstate the importance of dropping cynicism here. The assumption that everything would be a failure or that every person I met had no interest in me or was only interested to get something from me for a short period of time. Lordy did that run deep.

Even when I was no longer feeling depressed and life was moving forward in a positive direction, I was still guilty of assuming the worst. It’s shitting in one hand and wishing in the other, often times leading to some wonderful self-sabotage.

And I won’t harp on ya about the drinking, but as someone who used to drown themselves in booze for more than a 1/4 of my life, I had no idea what that shit was doing to me until I had gone about a year without drinking regularly. Like once I had gone from 5-6 days a week to 5-6x in an entire year.

Good luck, man! My PM box is always open if you want to shoot the shit!

 

[AwakenTheSkies]

I'd like to see a therapist because I feel pretty messed up but I'm a bit discouraged.
I saw many therapists as a kid because of bad behaviour and I can't remember any of them being helpful. A bit later I felt so bad that I paid a few sessions with a therapist with my own money and that was useless too.

I'm terrified of brain medication especially long term ones. I have a friend who's been on meds for a while and the side effects have been pretty bad and to top it off it hasn't helped him much. I'm even more scared now that I have tinnitus since these types of medications are known to cause it or make it worse. My impression is that you're supposed to take these meds as you work on your problem with your therapist, not become dependent on them and when you drop them your problems become x100 worse.

Then there's the whole "finding your therapist" thing. How many sessions do you need to know that this doesn't work? I'm pretty broke. Wasting 500 bucks on a therapist just to find out that you need to find someone else and do that until you find the right one...well I can't afford to do that.

 

[soliloquy]

I'd like to see a therapist because I feel pretty messed up but I'm a bit discouraged.
I saw many therapists as a kid because of bad behaviour and I can't remember any of them being helpful. A bit later I felt so bad that I paid a few sessions with a therapist with my own money and that was useless too.

I'm terrified of brain medication especially long term ones. I have a friend who's been on meds for a while and the side effects have been pretty bad and to top it off it hasn't helped him much. I'm even more scared now that I have tinnitus since these types of medications are known to cause it or make it worse. My impression is that you're supposed to take these meds as you work on your problem with your therapist, not become dependent on them and when you drop them your problems become x100 worse.

Then there's the whole "finding your therapist" thing. How many sessions do you need to know that this doesn't work? I'm pretty broke. Wasting 500 bucks on a therapist just to find out that you need to find someone else and do that until you find the right one...well I can't afford to do that.

check through your work insurance, and also your benefits. They may have their own free therapists.

and i'm not pointing fingers here, but one thing to note is that even if you have a magical therapist that works out for all your quirks, ultimately it is you, the person, that has to do the work. Kind of like the 'take the horse to water' thing?

coming to a therapist with a handful of problems may help, but, in my experience, it helps more if you come to a therapist saying 'this is what i'm struggling with. This is what i need to do, but i'm not sure how'. Now you have a direction, a goal to aim towards.

In another way, ever tried the 'yes/no' question game? or the 'closed ended vs open ended' question game?

 

[AwakenTheSkies]

In another way, ever tried the 'yes/no' question game? or the 'closed ended vs open ended' question game?

No...

check through your work insurance, and also your benefits. They may have their own free therapists.

I work summer jobs as a hotel receptionist through temp agencies so I don't get any of that. Here in Spain they have free public healthcare and "in theory" you can get a free therapist. But they don't have a very good reputation and there might be a long waiting list.. so it's not ideal. It's better to get a private, specialized person.

and i'm not pointing fingers here, but one thing to note is that even if you have a magical therapist that works out for all your quirks, ultimately it is you, the person, that has to do the work. Kind of like the 'take the horse to water' thing?

coming to a therapist with a handful of problems may help, but, in my experience, it helps more if you come to a therapist saying 'this is what i'm struggling with. This is what i need to do, but i'm not sure how'. Now you have a direction, a goal to aim towards.

I agree. I'm really fucking stubborn, might be hard to get through sometimes. But the times I've been to a therapist I felt like I was just talking, explaining my past, my problems, doing some conversation. Never really walked out feeling better or with a clearer idea of what to do.

 

[Fenriswolf]

Good luck, man! My PM box is always open if you want to shoot the shit!

I appreciate the offer bud, but I have another mental thing going on that makes it hard to talk about, so I'll pass.