Being better at accepting depression

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This topic has 541 replies, 15 voices, and was last updated 3 months, 1 week ago by anita.

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August 3, 2018 at 8:27 am #220125

Monica
Participant

Dear noname

I read your original post on this thread sobbing because i could relate so completely. After reading the whole thread i realize it has become a personal exchange between you and Anita (who’s amazing support and replies i was also glued to). But i just wanted to say thank you for letting me see someone else feels exactly the same things. After years of self development, counseling and spiritual work, i am also afraid i will just always be unhappy and lonely. I often wonder if i just keep going will i one day at least not feel pain every day? will i slip into a hollow acceptance? or just be OK with the pain?

Anyway i guess i just wanted to say thank you, reading this honest and open thread has at least made me realize i’m not crazy, because i can see so clearly what a good person you are and yet have all the same crippling feelings/thoughts as me. I hope we both one day get to look back and realize this was a chapter in our lives and our story has a very happy outcome.

I hope it gives you some sense of hope to know someone else feels the very same way and is still trying each day. (Well most days) I guess for me this thread has made me feel a little less alone.

Thank You

Monica

August 3, 2018 at 8:32 am #220193

Anonymous
Guest

Dear noname:

Between my last post to you and now, I experienced heavy duty fear, fear that you will harm yourself.

I can suggest a healing plan for you. Number #1 item in it is that you choose life. That you will no longer suggest cutting your life short, not to me, anyway. Can you do that, here on your thread, here in our communication?

anita

August 3, 2018 at 8:47 am #220195
noname
Participant
Yes Anita absolutely,

I won’t ever commit suicide. Doesn’t mean I don’t have the thoughts. But i won’t ever do that. I intentionally dont have the means around anymore. Thank you for your compassion. I don’t mean to scare anyone. But for this same reason is why i dont share with people anywhere else really. I don’t want to scare anyone.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by noname.
August 3, 2018 at 8:57 am #220209

noname
Participant

Monica thank you for taking the time to read through this thread, I know we’re not alone in feeling this way. Some people just choose not to deal with it and stay miserable or pretend to be okay, but all the pain eventually comes out. My therapist told me something yesterday he said “I can guarantee you will have good times in your future and watched times as well” I just have difficulty coping in those hard times. But i know good times will come again. Problem is in the Buddhist sense I attach too strongly to both leaving my mind and spirit in chaos if that makes sense.

Anita

I made a promise to myself never to commit suicide 2 years ago. And I’ve cut once this year and before that it had been over a year. I’m getting better at accepting the acute pain is going to pass. It’s just the lingering depressive type pain that I struggle with most

August 3, 2018 at 9:12 am #220211

Anonymous
Guest

Dear noname:

Good. Item 1 on my healing plan for you is to no longer mention suicidal ideation to me. None. You are welcome to find comfort in the reality that indeed your death will take place sometime, and when that happens, there will be no more you, and no more pain experienced by the non-existent you. It is a relief that our pain is not eternal. It will not last forever, guaranteed. But keep such thoughts and such comfort to yourself. It is counter productive to healing to threaten suicide, be it directly or indirectly. So no more of that.

Item 2, endure suffering and plan to continue to endure it, only to endure it successfully, from now on, there is no other way. There will be way less suffering for you in the future, but between now and then, there will be lots of it. You will have to successfully endure it, that is, to suffer and yet, as you suffer, to continue your healing process, to not step off the healing path. It takes a major commitment. Can you make such a commitment?

* I might be away from the computer for a while, maybe for as long as the next eighteen hours or so. Will be back to read if you post and reply then, continue with the healing plan, if you want.

anita

August 3, 2018 at 9:13 am #220215

Anonymous
Guest

* didn’t read your most recent post before posting the above. Read more from you when I am back, in about 18 hours.

anita

August 3, 2018 at 9:17 am #220217

noname
Participant

Thank you Anita,

I’m more motivated to endure the pain knowing someone is bearing witness now. And I understand how suicidal ideation is counterproductive for myself. That makes perfect sense and no one has really ever co fronted me about the subtle ways I suggest it either until now. So again thank you.

August 3, 2018 at 9:36 am #220221

Monica
Participant

Dear noname

You attaching to stronly really does make sense. I have never thought about it like that before.

Iamy sure I attach to pain to strongly, but only because I am so afraid of it. I have recently taken to stopping myself when my thoughts run dark….and saying that’s not me. It’s fear or past hurts or learned past behavioursome to distress. It sometimes helps me detach a bit from the dark.

I do believe sometimes that there is a chance and hope to be happy . But it’s just hard work. Anita’s last words to you about dipping in and out of healing have resonated with me too. I’m going to consider that today and come up with a plan. This time holding firm I hope.

August 3, 2018 at 10:57 am #220223

Forevermaddy
Participant

You are not alone, there is always a great deal of help and guidance in the world. We just have to grab on to strength to change ourselves to achieve all that we need and want of life! I send everyone a virtual hug, I too have dealt with depression but i chose to live a happier and healthier life, because God chose me to still be alive in this here world. So i have to be grateful of that!

August 3, 2018 at 11:13 am #220229
noname
Participant
Maddy and Monica

Thank you both, again i know I’m not alone in feeling shame, guilt, and inadequacy. I tend to blame society too much, but we have been taught not be vulnerable with others which is really how we can feel connected and loved and less lonely. But when you think about it it serves lots of Interest groups for us to be depressed and hate ourselves (prevention of political change, pharmaceutical companies, cosmetics etc.) I do have hope for myself and kind of get stuck in my lows sometimes because it feels safe and familiar that’s the attachment piece I’m talking about. Instead of letting go or accepting it. Anita really gave me the kick in the ass I needed this morning to help me detatch from the lows by telling me to choose life or don’t post on here. A small step in the right direction, because choosing life is not familiar for me, though I have done it before I’ve never done it for me, always for others.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by noname.
August 3, 2018 at 12:11 pm #220233

noname
Participant

I think I’m going to close this thread. I don’t want to put too much burden on Anita. I recognize there’s no way for you to assess and report for suicidality over the internet so this has become an unsafe situation for us. If I can’t communicate openly I don’t really see the point. I don’t want you to think I’m not deeply grateful however. It just seems this is isn’t the right place. Thanks so much you have made such a difference in my life.

August 3, 2018 at 12:57 pm #220235

Monica
Participant

Dear noname

I hope you will keep the thread open as you and Anita were going to work on a plan. Which could be your new start. And I hope my replying hasn’t interrupted or put you off the thread.

I so wish you well and will start a thread of my own now. everyone here is so kind.

Best wishes

Monica

August 3, 2018 at 1:26 pm #220237

noname
Participant

Thank you Monica, the reality is I share the same fear that Anita has that I might harm myself. I just don’t always know whether I have enough strength to carry on. The way I look at it though for example when I go to therapy is that I don’t share the suicidal thoughts because I can’t afford to go to the hospital (no health insurance) and I can’t afford to miss any school either. So I don’t share the thoughts at all, even though I know their just thoughts, and I’ve only had intent twice in my life, the fact is someone else doesn’t know the difference. So I’m at a point where I won’t share them at all unless I have intent which I don’t right now in this moment, but I can’t realistically guarantee that I won’t ever, it kind of puts me in a spot where getting help is difficult. I suppose I could treat this thread the same way I do my therapist by not sharing unless I have intent. But over the internet it’s even harder to evaluate. However the lack of meaning in my life and suicidal thoughts go hand in hand. If I could find some meaning I wouldn’t have the need to think suicidal. I guess if I can figure out some meaning I might return. Right now I can’t see the meaning in my suffering

August 4, 2018 at 4:56 am #220263

Anonymous
Guest

Dear noname:

I hope you are reading my post and I do hope you continue this thread/ our communication.

First a couple of comments regarding what you shared yesterday and then, regarding sharing suicidal thoughts and desired.

Yesterday you wrote: “I struggle with feeling safe vs. Feeling loved the two feelings have never been simultaneously present within me”- the feeling of safety is an integral part of the feeling of love, therefore what you wrote is one more indication that you were not loved as a child.

You wrote: “I just think I can make it through some more pain I’ll eventually grow out of it”- there is a belief here that is not true to reality and it is therefore in the way of your healing: a person doesn’t grow out of this kind of pain. There was an ongoing injury done to you as a child and you keep feeling the pain. The injury needs to be healed best possible. There is no healing in the experience and re-experience of the pain itself, none whatsoever.

Regarding the other topic, you wrote yesterday that I “really gave (you) the kick in the ass I needed this morning to help me detach from the lows by telling me to choose life or don’t post on here”- well, I didn’t suggest that you don’t post here or anywhere, no such suggestion made or meant by me. And then, I didn’t suggest that you “detach from the lows” either. Nor did I give you a kick in the ass. I suppose you felt that kick… and you got angry at me and decided to close this thread.

Yesterday you wrote: “I just don’t think I can keep up dragging along like this too much longer before I do something drastic”. That was the end of a post. You mentioned suicide thoughts before, so it wasn’t a stretch for me reading your sentence quoted that “something drastic” means suicide. What happens when you write a line like this, is that the one reading it, the one communicating with you, thinks: oh, oh, I must not say the wrong thing or I must say just the right thing so that he doesn’t do that! Or maybe I already said the wrong thing, and so on. It interrupts my honest flow of communication with you. And it scared me yesterday (like you, I slept very little the night before yesterday and am under the weather so the fear was more intense).

So I wrote to you, no more suicide threats, direct or indirect (the quote above, “before I do something drastic” is the indirect kind). I then extended it to no more suicidal thoughts in your communication with me, as part of item 1 in my on-the-spot healing plan for you.

I think you started feeling angry at me and you want to withdraw. Is that true?

anita

August 4, 2018 at 7:00 am #220281
noname
Participant
I’m not angry with you. I’m more ashamed of myself for continuing to have those thoughts. Also seeking attention through them in the way that I wrote. It has to do with me believing I’m bad. I feel bad because I worried you. If I ever do anything self harm it would not be because of anything anyone says, it is a belief within me.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by noname.
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