Depression rant

[Gob]

Im so confused and frustrated with myself at the moment. When I reflect and see what my social life is I just feel like I'm just the biggest jerk to ever live ,a real pain of a person.im just so shitty and selfish to everyone and I really hate myself for it ,im just struggling to hold on to life and when I see how I treat the ones I love because of what I'm going through I just can't believe  myself .but im trying im not making excuses I know I need to do better and not loose myself to this be better for others my family and friends bit I also feel so tired and I just have nothing.i have nothing to give them and im in a shit mood a lot and I feel awful I put them through that and I worry how they can still love me.do they ? Things have been said and im trying but it just inst enough .its like people what me to be better and I want to be better have good healthy relationships and win this but im trying to run with a broken leg .I just feel im drowning in constant self hatred and seeing the second side of me who is so ugly and awful and I dont understand what I see .I want to but it really is like there's another person there ,is that just the depression? I don't know.though I have realized I have to take what I think with a grain of salt I know my mind is not my friend. Then I feel its hard for me to see what is real at the moment .its hard to convince myself that I can cut myself some slack .can't I? I've moved forward somedays  and others I'm so so close .so close .this is just exhausting I just want to scream and destroy everything.

[therising]

Hi Gob

The self hatred can definitely be one of the most brutal parts of depression. Add to that the self questioning, exhaustion, sense of grief and so much more. It can become such an overwhelming and hopeless experience and I feel for you so much as you face it, with such a strong feeling of desperation to get out of it.

If I had to describe depression, I'd say it's like some horrible nasty little creature that sits perched upon your shoulder, whispering far from sweet nothings in your ear. It all becomes completely believable, stuff like 'You're a horrible person. No one likes you, they just tolerate you. Why are you even here? You make life unbearable for everyone around you...' and on and on it goes. It's like it holds some long dark cloak around your neck, with a whole stack of labels pinned to it, such as 'Hopeless', 'Mean', 'Angry', 'Pathetic', 'Weak' etc etc etc. And you wear that, day in and day out, believing the cloak describes you perfectly. I can remember the day I suddenly came out of more than a decade in depression and what that felt like was that nasty little creature suddenly disintegrating and the cloak falling to the ground. There you are naked, free of all labels, like the day you were born, before anything or anyone defined you. When you asked whether it's you or the depression, the thing that triggered me to come out of depression involved a whiteboard within group therapy. When asked how we all would describe our self, the list was long but every single one of us could relate to what was on that list. I had come to believe that I was everything on that list...angry, a control freak, sad, difficult, moody and so on. Suddenly it hit, 'This can't be coincidence. Oh my god, these are not my traits, these are the traits of depression. If they're not my traits, then who am I?'. To tell you the truth, I had absolutely no idea who I was, as I'd lived so long with that 'nasty little creature' called depression. What really triggered the quest for greater self understanding was the question 'If I had come to believe I was depression, what other belief systems were false or contrived?'. I found there was a whole stack of them. The process of waking up to what can lead us down into depression is, I think, a life long process of gradually 'waking up' through revelations. One revelation after another becomes the goal. Not all of them are simple or joyful or easy to manage, far from it at times. On the way up and out of depression, we can often meet with the same things we came across on the way down (the things that led us down). Some of those things can be painful to face again, as we consciously make sense of them for the first time.

I should add, I've found that periods in depression (beyond long term) can often be about the challenge to find another new revelation or set of them in a depressing situation. Having some solid support and guidance, with someone who can shed light on a dark part of the path, is a fast tracking strategy. Good guides can definitely be hard to find at times.