Persistent Depressive Disorder

[Outside observing]

Struggling again. Mostly with fatigue. A few weeks ago it was more the persistent thoughts about dying but now its just - i don't think i belong in this world. I don't have any energy either. I really had to force myself to visit my parents on Christmas day. I ended up being OK, but I had to push everything down. So I'm either surpressing everything or feeling like crap. I really just want to be normal. Just normal. Get up in the morning and be able to just smile and get on with my day. But everything is a drag, a long drawn out drag. I used to take anti-depressants but haven't for several months now. I have seemed like a normal person in the past and was able to fake it, but I've never really been a happy or sociable person. Anyone else here with a persistent depressive disorder? Do I have any hope?

[Outside observing]

Thankyou for getting back to me. I had an experience of a real low then, but I had a small realisation while responding to a post on reddit about what love was. Someone wrote 'respect, trust and reciprocity' and I thought also yes, this, and being seen. Being seen is the precursor to connection, being seen is the necessary precursor to love. 

[therising]

Hi Outside observing

That is so beautiful, being seen. So incredibly beautiful and so accurate. When I think of all the people I love in my life, I see them. I see who they naturally are and who they have the potential to be. I see them and see who they are beyond their self limiting beliefs, their pain, their fears and all else that holds them back.

With so much talk of love in life, I once felt compelled to define what love means to me, so that I could know why I love certain people the way I do and why I found it so hard to love myself for so much of my life. What came to mind is 'Love is found in evolution', literally and figuratively. To love someone to life means investing in their growth. To love each other means investing in each other's growth. To love one's self is about one's own growth or evolution. Of course to be invested means a person (self included) must first be seen, truly seen.

You offer a mind altering revelation, my favourite kind of revelation. I am deeply grateful to you for your insight. I only began to love myself when I began to see myself for who I truly am, beyond every depressing factor I had come to falsely believe in. The revelation you share has just helped me solve a significant problem in my life that has been bringing me down quite a lot lately. I cannot find the motivation to change my life (evolve beyond where I find myself). While desperately longing for energy and vision, you have led me to realise I have lost sight of myself in so many ways. Again, I am deeply grateful to you.

[therising]

Hi Outside observing

Having no energy is such a brutal thing in itself. If great energy is the thing that connects us to life, really connects us, through a seriously depressing lack of energy you can feel the disconnection. Being a mind/body/soul gal and very much a feeler, I can feel what this does to me mentally, physically and on a soulful level.

Mentally, it can mess with us something shocking, 'You're hopeless. All you do is sit around. What good are you to anyone? What's the point in you being here?' etc. Horrible stuff. Physically, it can completely disconnect you from really feeling life on so many levels. It can deprive you of physically achieving things, making the changes you can be so desperate to make etc. On a soulful level...well...it can just feel soul destroying, so incredibly heartbreaking.

Having managed the ins and outs of depression since my late teens, it's only in the last couple of years that I've decided to change the way I look at it. Now, at 52, the question typically becomes 'What's impacting my energy to the point where I feel deeply depressed?', as opposed to me asking 'Why am I depressed?'. This is partly based on me having experienced solely physical reasons behind periods of depression (sleep apnea, B12 deficiency, etc).

Do you ever feel while everyone seems to be looking for that light at the end of the tunnel, you're simply looking for a spark? It's that spark that's going to ignite what it is that gives us drive. Would be so much easier if we were a car. We could simply call in a mechanic and ask 'Is it a spark plug issue? Am I not functioning on all cylinders? Am I using the wrong fuel? Am I trying to function on a flat battery?' etc. I can imagine them saying 'You are not the car itself, you are the driver of the car. Now let's have a look at what the problem is with the vehicle you're trying to drive'. Perhaps sometimes it's a matter of destination. If the mechanic was to say 'Where are you going?' and my answer is 'Nowhere, nowhere in particular' (which is the case for me at the moment), I then imagine them saying 'I think we've found the problem. The key relates to the destination. Without the key there is no spark'. In this case, the question is 'What would the ideal road trip look like and who would be the ideal traveling companion, if not wanting to go it alone?'.