Tag: depression
The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment. Everything there was to do seemed like too much work. I would come home and I would see the red light flashing on my answering machine, and instead of being thrilled to hear from my friends, I would think, “What a lot of people that is to have to call back.” Or I would decide I should have lunch, and then I would think, but I’d have to get the food out and put it on a plate and cut it up and chew it and swallow it, and it felt to me like the Stations of the Cross.
And one of the things that often gets lost in discussions of depression is that you know it’s ridiculous. You know it’s ridiculous while you’re experiencing it. You know that most people manage to listen to their messages and eat lunch and organize themselves to take a shower and go out the front door and that it’s not a big deal, and yet you are nonetheless in its grip and you are unable to figure out any way around it.
Andrew Solomon, Depression – The Secret We Share, TED talks (via feigenbaumsworld)
This is exactly it.
(via bisexualstilinski)
The thing with Anxiety and Depression
- You can feel really confident in yourself but when someone comments badly on you, you begin to crumble.
- You doubt yourself a lot.
- Your head begins to hurt when you over think.
- You forget to eat sometimes.
- You get quiet around friends.
- You break down more often
- isolation.
- You’re confused
- You don’t know why your confused because you’re over thinking all the bad decisions you’ve made in your in your life.
- You forget your value, You forget your worth.
Mental Illness is isolating in and of itself, but i’ve always felt further detached and embarrassingly “other” in the sense that I seem to experience my illness in far messier, more inconvenient ways than others I know struggling with similar diagnosis. Struggling with mental illness can make you feel disconnected from the general public in the sense that they don’t know what it is to face a large portion of your daily life, but it’s infinitely more disheartening to feel that you can’t relate to other people who are supposed to understand your struggle. My experience is exhausting and inconvenient, it is not a woman wrapped in a sweater staring out her window with a mug of tea in an anti-depressant commercial. My experience is sloppy and cumbersome, it seems too ugly to share with the world and too divergent from the experience of those close to me to share with my friends, so I keep it to myself. It occurs to me that perhaps the reasons I have kept the full extent of my illness so far away from the public eye is the reason I have no representations of illness to relate to, perhaps this is precisely how others around me feel about their struggle. It’s taken me most of adult life to realize that this struggle is not something that I asked for and not something to be ashamed of in the way that I have been. These self-portraits are an attempt to frankly and unashamedly represent the positions that my mental illness puts me in on a daily basis, easy to look at and otherwise.
These Photos Nail What It Feels Like To Have An Anxiety Disorder
Long-Term Depression May Boost Stroke Risk Long After Mood Improves
This is what it feels like to be depressed
Yes a Black woman speaking up about mental health!! Representation at its finest ✊🏾🙏🏾
lupus!!
SHOUT OUT TO EVERYONE WHO STILL TRIES TO GET BACK INTO THE SWING OF THINGS AFTER DEPRESSION HIT THEM HARD. THERE ISN’T ENOUGH RECOGNITION FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO KNOW THAT THEY’RE GOING TO LOSE INTEREST AND MOTIVATION AGAIN BUT PUSH THEMSELVES TO DO STUFF ANYWAYS. YOU ARE FIGHTING A DAILY BATTLE WITH YOUR OWN THOUGHTS AND YOU’RE STILL COMING OUT ON TOP, YOU’RE ALL BRAVE AS FUCK
Sometimes a friend with depression will say no to a lot of things and decline all or most of your invitations. This can make you feel like you’re overstepping boundaries and should immediately leave them alone until they reach out to you themselves. Pay attention to this feeling: it’s true that when people keep saying no to things you ask, it’s probably a good idea to stop asking. However, depression can also cause people to say no while wishing they could say yes.
The way to deal with this is not to assume, but to just ask directly: “You’ve said no the past few times I’ve invited you to do something. That’s okay, but I just wanted to check: would you like me to keep inviting you?” I’ve done this before with other people dealing with depression and found that they often respond that they do want me to keep asking, and they hope that one of these days they’ll be able to say yes.
You can be depressed and not feel sad or blue. Depression can also be a haze of sleepiness, distractedness/obsessiveness cycles, and a twinge of irritability that can be hard to recognize because you might already be a “fiery” person. It can feel like a lazy Sunday that keeps imposing itself for weeks or months.
Can we just… I’ll leave this here.
Holding the Bowl 