[Jenny Harper]

I think it's back again. A little back story.

My family on my maternal side suffers hormone problems, therefore I have inherited it. It effects us more when Pregnant and after birth, meaning I could be prone to Post Natal Depression. However, this also effects daily life.

My mother had depression and took pills for it. I now have troubles. A year or so ago I had pills to help me, but they were awful and made me very sleepy and dulled everything about me. After a month I came off them. I know I'll always have these problems but get on with it.

I now fear it's back. I have no job nearly 2 months after I lost my seasonal one. I feel depressed a lot of times, but I worry I am just paranoid that I will get the suicide thoughts again. It's the same for a friend of mine. He was one weepy day and thinks the meds aren't working.

I want to start the pills, but I fear they'll stop me being...me if I take them. I'm trying to improve myself and I am getting better but I'd rather be fully better and in a job.

I need to keep active. This is why I haven't posted in a while, I've been on another site that needs a lot of attention to keep myself going.

Anything I can do? I'm just worried I'll go backwards again.

[Pocket]

Hey hun. I know how it is to be on depression meds and they not work. My think was they gave me a feeling that I was getting lock jaw every time I yawned and I felt jittery. No one ever saw the jitters but I sure felt them. So I stopped taking them so I never really got to the "no being me" stage but I was wondering if that would happen.

I go day by day hiding my depression. About a month ago it was really kicking my ass..its still there but not the way it was. Yesterday my hubby and I treated his mom and step dad to breakfast. We went to a place that my mom and grandparents (her mom and dad) went to alot. It brought back memories of me going with them and I almost wanted to start crying because I miss my mom so much. This July will be 2 years since she has passed away.

I try and not let people see the hurt but I think some do.. So I retreat on here..I find people that make me laugh/happy online when I have no idea how to convey my reasoning or thoughts across.

[Jenny Harper]

I used to hide it too but my lovely wife Taiania has shown me that I have to open up. So I cry a lot more but that's a good thing.

I think it's the being bored that does it. Not having a job brings you down.

[Pocket]

Ya.. I wish I could open up to my hubby like that..

[Jenny Harper]

I have to open up to Tai. She's always there for me. You should be able to open up to your hubby. :)

[Blitzkrieg]

I was on depression medication when I was younger. It made me feel unlike myself as well. In the end, the only way I got around that problem was convincing myself that I could cope with the depression on my own. Believing that medications are the only way to get around the problem might just make that assumption the case. However, with a good support system and a lot of effort, I think it's possible to cope without the medication. I tried putting myself into situations that would be challenging to my problems, controlled situations that I could get out of myself if it became too much to handle, and slowly became used to dealing with my problems in a natural way. I'm not sure about the specifics of your depression though, so I can't say it would work that way for sure. But I think it's possible to be able to take care of the problem while still being yourself and not having to use medication.

[Letiel]

I have dysthymic disorder. I will always be depressed and will never be free of suicidal tendencies and cognitive distortions. I know EXACTLY how you feel. My medicine makes me detached and tired as well but most importantly it makes me think clearer. I think that getting used to the tired and the detachment is better than constantly being in pain. I recommend you get back on medication

[Randomology]

. . . oookaay, I get depressed too. I'm married living with my wife's parents do to crushing debt and neither one of us have a job. It's 2 weeks left til the bills are due and it looks like we may have to sell some things again. Don't want to sell the bed, but...no, depression for me though has always just been a mind set. I say I'm depressed when really I'm just at a loss for reasonable thought (or is that the same thing?)..
I've cut...I've taken pain killer shots...I've vented. Nothing worked, aside from religion and good friends. It took me a long time to realize that happiness is overrated and that i didn't have to feel okay or happy to be okay or happy. expressing emotion is important. When you are angry you need to show it. For me I guess I was so numbed by society and their tolerance laws for emotions (always be happy. put a smile on. It's wrong to get angry) that I forgot I was human and that being angry or upset is natural. When you express yourself, deeply and truly, there's no need for depression. Hell, even that's expression! So stop meditating and petting invisible animals and belt out a scream off a hillside or something lol! No, don't let me put ideas in your head. Things in life get better. I don't know how but they do and being alive helps the process of getting there.

[Coda]

That's a gross misunderstanding of what clinical depression is. If you can trace how you're feeling to being a reaction to something that is a legitimate reason to be upset, THAT'S NOT CLINICAL DEPRESSION. Depression is a physiological issue caused by a neurotransmitter malfunction and no amount of wishful thinking or denying the problem will make it go away. There are techniques you can use to manage the symptoms without medication, but even with medication there is no cure. You can't just tell someone "cheer up", and you can't just will yourself through it, because the chemicals produced by the body interfere with your ability to control your own thought processes, and that's what the medication addresses: it gives you more power to control the part of your body that isn't working right.

Edit: That's not to say that everyone with depression should be on medication. You should always pursue the course of minimum effective treatment. If you are managing your symptoms acceptably well with non-medical techniques, don't demand prescription medication.

[Taiania]

Wow Coda. That was a little harshly worded @_@

[Jenny Harper]

Actually, Coda, depression can be triggered by bad events as well as being part of a biological reaction.

I think I have an idea what Clinical depression is. Watching my mother horf down pills like they were trail mix so she could die, because she had a shit family. So DO NOT come prancing in here to tell me what depression is or isn't.

You've changed my view of you Coda. Cheers.

[Coda]

First off, I'd like to apologize if I came off sounding harsh. This is a subject that hits really close to home for me, and it really upsets me to see people misunderstanding the issue. Seeing people saying that depression is just something that you can "get over" kinda sets me off.

Originally Posted by Jenny Harper

Actually, Coda, depression can be triggered by bad events as well as being part of a biological reaction.

I think I have an idea what Clinical depression is. Watching my mother horf down pills like they were trail mix so she could die, because she had a shit family. So DO NOT come prancing in here to tell me what depression is or isn't.

You've changed my view of you Coda. Cheers.

It's all about proportional magnitude. My point is that even a person without clinical depression can get depressed by something bad happening. The difference is that someone with the specific medical condition called "depression" will experience these symptoms out of proportion to the cause, and sometimes without a specific cause. If you have a sucky life and things REALLY ARE horrible, you can have many of the symptoms of clinical depression without having a biological problem, but counseling and positive thinking actually will address these symptoms. For someone with clinical depression -- which is a specific set of disorders -- counseling and positive thinking are, at best, treatment of symptoms.

I'm not going to put myself in a position to judge whether your mother had clinical depression or not. I'm not a doctor. I don't practice medicine. She might have had it, she might not have, and I'm not going to make that call. People with healthy neurotransmitter balances can still have problems. And awkwardly enough, people with healthy neurotransmitter balances will still see effects from antidepressant medications.

My entire point here is that clinical depression affects its sufferers in such a way that even if you took away everything bad in that person's life, if everything were happy, if nothing ever went wrong, the sufferer would still have depression and would still sometimes cry for no reason and would still have sleeping problems and muscle pain and the other physical side effects associated with the disorder.

So please, don't interpret me as saying that people don't get depressed. I'm only saying that there are people for whom non-medical techniques alone CANNOT help and it is HIGHLY offensive to suggest to such a person that they can just get over it.

[Jenny Harper]

Well if you want to fly off the handle take it off my thread. Simple as.

I cry for no reason all the time, but I take that as I think too much. With the pills last time I did, in essence, 'get over it'. I hated the pills therefore I made do. I just need a job, need to feel busy

Anyway... This thread was meant to make me feel better, not throttle people.

I've noticed my depression gets set off by being stuck at home, meaning I then don't want to go out and it spirals. I went for a walk today and it felt a little better. So I could have SAD, if I think about it. But that might just be it was a nice day.

Everyone else: I hope you all feel better. I find a lot of forum goers that are my best friends tend to be depressed somehow. Sadness breeds sadness and all that.

[Letiel]

My therapist described depression as the common cold of mental diseases. Everyone gets it but normally only for a couple days at a time. People with depression as we see it, with the imbalance need to be treated. These depressive episodes do come and go but for some people it lasts longer than others. Since there's no way to cure it, you just fight the symptoms with meds until the depression goes away.

I mean, I have friends with depressive episodes of roughly three weeks before they're fine. I've been in a depressive episode for 7 years. So it's very different between people.

Like Coda is saying in an episode you're going to be sad no matter what however, in my own experience I find that I don't breakdown without a trigger, an external event. I still am sad and hurt without the trigger but if I do come across one the whole world seems to end.

[Letiel]

Originally Posted by Jenny Harper

I've noticed my depression gets set off by being stuck at home, meaning I then don't want to go out and it spirals. I went for a walk today and it felt a little better. So I could have SAD, if I think about it. But that might just be it was a nice day.

OMG I totally understand. My friends and I call my spirals "death spirals" cause it starts out with something simple and quickly turns into being very suicidal and self-destructive

[Coda]

It occurs to me to mention that I made that first post in reply to Randomology's comment of "When you express yourself, deeply and truly, there's no need for depression." I wasn't even directing that post at you, Jenny, and I sincerely apologize if you thought I was upset at you.