Still struggling no matter how hard I try

miss_mel87 — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 21:47:14 GMT

I don’t know what to do anymore. I am so depressed. Nothing brings me joy, I feel flat and listless and apathetic all the time, I am extremely unmotivated to do anything, I don’t even want to talk to anyone. I recently discharged myself from a private mental health hospital where I was undergoing ECT treatment and I got about halfway through the full course and decided I wasnt going to get any better than I was so would discharge myself and go home to my family. But now I feel just as bad as before I went in in the first place. I don’t know if I should readmit and finish the course of ECT or just try to figure things out at home. My husband says my low mood and lack of interest in anything is obvious, despite me trying to cover it up and pretend I’m fine. How do you pretend, day in day out, that you’re fine when really you feel dead inside and wish you’d get hit by a bus?

Re: Still struggling no matter how hard I try

therising — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:48:48 GMT

Hi miss_mel87

My heart goes out to you so much as you face the challenges of feeling life in the ways you do and not knowing how to feel any differently.

I suppose there's only one way to know for sure whether a full course of the ECT would make any difference. It'll end up on either the list of what works or what doesn't work, when it comes to what makes a difference. From my own experience with depressions in the past, there's always going to be those 2 lists. I can relate to how finding what doesn't work can take us further down into the depression we're already in. To say the inner dialogue can become tough is an understatement.

As a 55yo gal who's faced the ins and outs of depressions since my late teens, it's become obvious to me why certain things just won't work. I've discovered the keys to unlocking the way forward can involve

Identifying exactly what's depressing. Being treated for the wrong thing/s will never work
Key strategies for managing the depressing element or elements involved. The wrong strategies will never work
Key guides/people when it comes to finding the best ways forward, while having those people continue to shed light on what's not always obvious. The wrong guides won't make a positive or constructive difference
A serious high level sense of wonder and intense curiosity, to the point where this creates a passion or a driving force that moves us to want to know 1)exactly why we're depressed and 2)everything that's going to raise us out of that depression. Zero passion does not create a driving force

Just a handful of many things I've found over the years. When a serious sense of wonder turns 'What's wrong with me?' into 'Am I facing the wrong diagnosis, the wrong treatments or strategies, the wrong guides (taking me south, instead of north) and the wrong feelings?', we can start tapping into the right answers. With that last one, the wrong feelings, I've found passion holds more energy than hopelessness. Great curiosity holds a higher energy than despair. Good intuition and self trust holds far more energy than self doubt.

Btw, with the 'pretending' factor, I stopped pretending a long time ago. I found it too depressing. If we're a natural born 'feeler' who's able to feel something depressing going on within us and/or around us, there's no point pretending we're not feeling it. Sometimes I can't help but wonder 'Why is no one else trying to get a better feel for what it could be?' or 'Why do some automatically just jump to the wrong conclusions, as opposed to the right ones (in regard to what's really depressing me)?'. I've learned over the years that a depression is not always that cut and dry. Having faced a depressing level of sleep apnea and B12 deficiency, it can be physically or chemically based. Having faced depressing belief systems, inner dialogue etc, it can be mentally or psychologically based. And while I currently face a deeply challenging and depressing 'dark night of the soul' experience (with a need to let go of so much of what can feel soul destroying), I've learned that there's more to feel in life beyond that which is psychological or physical. ❤️

❤️

topic Re: Still struggling no matter how hard I try in Depression

Still struggling no matter how hard I try

Re: Still struggling no matter how hard I try