The Cure For Depression: Just Be Positive!

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Your conclusion is at best simplistic and at worst childish; and I assume you don't know what I've been through, the agony of paranoid schizophrenia to the point of tears.


Whatever...

I don't know anything about paranoid schizophrenia; I know a little bit about paranoia and a little bit about psychosis. I know a lot about depression.


Seriously...
You wrote:



If you have not been depressed than why are you offering input about it.

Depression is not a choice. It is a dangerous illness. Telling someone to choose to feel happy when they are depressed is akin to telling someone in pain to choose not to feel it.

I think having a loving companion would be the biggest help against depression. You read all these success stories about how a person says they'd never have gotten through on their own but their partner never gave up on them, but you know you will never mean a damn thing to anybody, so when people tell you to be positive all you can think is "why even bother?"

Pet rats sound fun though.

It's tough, 'just be positive' is just a person's way of saying they don't relate/can't help/don't want to hear it which just makes me and I'm sure most other people with depression just feel worse. It makes me hesitant to even share how I feel with people, I'm a guy so it's already kind of drilled into me that I am not supposed to have feelings and that I am supposed to be strong so it's emasculating on top of it all too.

I've been trying to do little things I enjoy doing to cheer myself up, keep myself distracted(which I am with school but that stresses me out too), it's just a battle every day. All I do is try to better myself, I don't think I can ever be happy as I am now.

It could be worse. There are still people that will tell you that mental illness does NOT exist.

It's depression caused by grief, added to the depression caused by years of child abuse. Time was healing a lot of it, but with this new tragedy I'm back where I started. I am not ignoring it. I am doing everything I can to stay on top of school and not to become apathetic. But healing is a slow process, and some if it is natural grief. Actually, since posting this thread I've had one too many mental breakdowns and I am in fact seriously considering medication.

I have a group of close friends who were also close friends with my friend who died. Maybe I should open up to them since they would know how I'm feeling more than my grandmother who has only seen my friend once or twice.

If I could choose to be happy, I would not have this problem. Why would I want to be miserable?

If you had my family as yours, they're ably happy when they're making you miserable.

(Story of my life. My parents and brothers were only happy when they were making my life miserable.)

It doesn't matter what caused the depression, once you are depressed you need help from a doctor. For example, if you were to fall and break your leg, would you let time heal it or would you seek treatment? My point being that it doesn't matter how you fell, you now have a broken leg and you need help to fix it.
Again, talk to your doctor.

I said that it's not a mere choice. I can't expect good results within 5 minutes or so. What I mean is this: if I feel e.g. inclined to be resentful, and I'm aware of this behavior, then I may decide to gradually change it through one or other method. In this way I've already decided to make myself healthy again. I just need to work on it.

I haven't gone through the same hardships you've mentioned. One particular bad experience (besides psychosis) I went through a few years ago was anxiety attacks. I had frequent intrusive thoughts, which induced guilt feelings together with feelings that I had to cut myself. Every time, I felt forced to rationalize these thoughts just to avoid these feelings. As I was sitting one day, I just gave up on resisting/rationalizing the thoughts. So the thoughts began creeping slowly, making my condition ever more threatening. Then my body started to shake slightly and sweat. I felt cold sweat. I felt also defenseless against those thoughts. I was at the point of losing control, when all of the sudden all of them disappeared and never came back. Much later I explained this to my psychiatric nurse, who told me that it was a panic attack I had experienced when my body shaked.

Basically, I strongly (I mean it, strongly) disagree from the depth of my soul with the premise: "life is not worth living".

Even the little moments of happiness alone are enough to justify existence.

Good for you.

The therapists around here are useless, and I talked about it with Mom and I don't think medication would help. I don't want to take the chance of becoming suicidal. I don't go to a doctor for every little thing either. If I have a cold, I don't need to take medication. I need to rest and eat chicken soup. I've dealt with depression before so I know what helps, but I need to allow myself to grieve as well. Mental breakdowns are not natural or healthy, but the answer isn't to just take meds. I can't be sure how long I'll need to be on them, and I don't want to become dependent or have side effects that make things worse. Which means the next step someone might suggest would be checking myself into a mental hospital, but I don't think that's the answer either because they'd probably force me to go on meds, and also I value my freedom.

Now I'm just rambling.

I think I might have PTSD, not just depression. Things weren't adding up so I did some research and I have most of the symptoms. I apologize for this mess of a post.

rats_and_cats, you are making a lot of assumptions with not a lot of facts. No offense, but your Mom is not a doctor. And, yes, mental health professionals are mostly stumbling in the dark. Not enough is known about mental illness for them to be fully effective. But, at the same time, they are the only game in town. And sometimes they do stumble into being helpful.
I don't know if you need medication. Neither do you or your Mom. This is why it may be good to talk to someone with some training.
From your posts I sense fear that your freedom will be taken away by medication or even hospitalization. I've been hospitalized, for 2 weeks back in the early 90s. It was one of the more positive experiences in my life. But I went there by choice.
I know what you mean about being dependent on a chemicals to function. I am dependent on several medications and it does suck. But if I didn't take them I would kill myself. So I take them. I think I am in worse shape than you are though. I am assuming you have no suicidal ideation, which is good.
I think you are making too big a deal of going to the doctor about this. Depression is not the common cold, but it's not terminal cancer either.