Wishing I could go back a year

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Depression has ruined my life more than it ever has before for the last few months and I would gladly go back to how I was a year ago. I didn’t know when I was lucky. I still suffered emotionally but at least I still had people in my life who cared for me. That number has significantly dropped and my attempts to make amends are unwanted. I fear this is how the rest of my life will go. I don’t know what else to do but say how I feel and hope someone will see what I post.

You still have people who care for you.

I know but the number is dropping and that’s what scares me.

I'd rather go back a year and four months, and try to avoid catching COVID >_<

Depression is a temporary state of affairs. It isn't necessarily caused by anything, sometimes it just IS.

You will recover from this and come out stronger than you were before. That includes finding new people to be friends with. It might take a while, but it will happen.

Over-analysing everything is a classis symptom of anxiety and depression and it will not help you. Concentrate on being nice to yourself, rather than giving yourself a guilt-trip, or fixating on "what-iffery".

I have to disagree that depression is temporary. I’ve suffered my particular case since I was 17 and the causes were an unrequited love spell as well as realizing nothing was going the way I hoped it would go.

Sometimes people both care about you and get frustrated with how you act.

It may or may not be fair, they're not in the same state you are when the behaviour occurs. It's hard to relate to how people feel sometimes and that makes it hard to empathize with what might motivate someone to act a certain way.

You seem needy and in need of approval and I can tell some people get frustrated because they don't want to have to hold your hand and fight your battles. Obviously the weight of knowing people aren't on your side and feelings of doubt over if people are both really get to you. I don't know how to relate to that because my coping mechanism has been to adopt a f**k those people attitude. I struggle to relate to needing approval because I've never needed it.

It hurts knowing I can't just inoculate you against those feelings because I'm a miserable, insecure, wounded person myself who doesn't always have the energy to help you even when I want to. I mask feeling like that more so I don't blame people for not noticing but there are times I feel resentful when I realize I spend effort comforting someone who I don't believe would reciprocate. Of course, that's when I'm bitter and paranoid, in the same way you probably feel more hurt and abandoned when you're already down.

It's not always that people don't like you, sometimes it's just that they're tired of investing because so often you express feeling defeated and seem anxious for approval. They're saving their energy because they have their own problems to cope with that make them feel just as bad as you feel. It's not really fair, but they'd absolutely reevaluate you if somehow you got your s**t together. Not that I'm judging, my s**t is most certainly not all together.

Just like everyone else you've been dealt a hand that includes unique challenges. Sometimes other people struggle to relate to the specific aspects. It doesn't mean they're automatically detractors or against you, sometimes they just cringe because they don't get it. Sometimes they're too busy to get invested, sometimes they're exhausted from their own struggles. They're not all against you even if at times it might feel like it. Most people don't care enough to be against others, even the people they don't really care for.

Part of how depression ruins your life is how it tricks you into believing your life has already been ruined and that sorrow and suffering are inevitable. If I thought I could impose a path out of that feeling upon you I would, but... that's not actually an option. If it was I'd ask you to do the same. It's like a black hole that draws one towards self-destruction and failure to strive. Once one accepts that things can never be better one no longer considers the toxic patterns that keep them there. Specifically in this community a lot of us struggle with similar problems that you (and I) do, but when you get really down on yourself and champion those mindsets it tends to hurt other people who are struggling against the same stuff. It's not like it's malicious, so they don't act out against you but they just stop investing to protect themselves.

For what it's worth I tend to try to distract myself with helping other people when I feel like s**t. It helps because it distracts from my own issues and it feels rewarding because I hope it helps. It might be worth trying.

Did you catch it too?

I got sorta sick 13 months ago but I've felt exhausted, short of breath and depressed ever since. I hope getting vaccinated helps otherwise I might decide I've had enough of dealing with this s**t.

They are not reasons for depression. Things happen, sometimes good sometimes bad, and most people bounce back.

If you cannot bounce back, you have depression. Depression isn't logical.

The way out involves accepting things that can't be fixed, acknowledging that depression is an artificial state of mind, and then moving on.

Do not dwell on things that can't be changed, or attempt to fix things that can't be fixed. Accepting problems is more important than curing them. Knowing that you've been through problems and survived, and gained some skills in the process, is a learning curve you'll eventually grow to appreciate.

I'm in my mid-40s now. Life is still precarious but every time there's a crisis I look back and go, "well, things have been this rubbish before, but I handled it". That's better than wishing for a world where everything goes your way, because trust me that'll never happen.

No, these reasons are indeed why I became depressed. I didn’t just become depressed out of nowhere. I remember them clearly making me fall into despair. I was despondent no girl loved me and the things I wanted in life were not happening despite my desires and efforts.

I don’t find life more manageable. My ability to deal with my emotions has gone from bad to worse with every passing year. I sometimes wish I could close my eyes and never wake up again.

Yep, it's been waves of feeling crappy for the past year. I've been hearing good things about Vitamin B1 megadosing, so I'm (hopefully) going to get a bottle tomorrow and try it out.

I haven't been depressed, AFAIK, but for about a month, I did have the WORST...I guess maybe depression? But it was more like this overwhelming sense of the deepest dread. It was awful.

I've felt a lot like that. It's not quite normal depression or anxiety although it resembles both of them. It's an overwhelming sense of dread that manifests both mentally and physically in my chest.

I disagree. Sadness is a perfectly reasonable response to a number of situations. Grief, too. And yes in some circumstances (for example the death of a loved one) they never fully go away, but they do become an accepted and acceptable part of who you are, over time. You can remember the person you miss without grinding to a halt, as you did at first.

If that's not the case then you have depression, and depression doesn't follow normal conventions. It becomes a force in its own right, defying logic in the process.

If everyone who ever got turned down by a girl just gave up in a sea of despondency, I doubt many humans would live beyond the age of 20. And yet the vast majority of us do. Ergo, being upset for good reason (at a particular moment in time) isn't unnatural, but holding onto that feeling permanently is. If the doom and gloom does stick around or even worsen over the longer term, you've got clinical depression and that's an independent and irrational thing.

The way out of that situation is to recognise the depression for what it is. And to stop obsessing with things from the past like they were totally responsible for it, because they're not. Everyone has problems, if you don't encounter difficulties every so often you're not really living, because you're not taking any risks. So be kind to yourself, instead of going over your regrets on repeat. What are you good at? What are your strengths? What do you enjoy? How can you gain some satisfaction from life, and reward yourself with nice things just for being you?

Yeah, I don't know, but it was awful.
BTW, so far, I think the B1 might be working. About 30 minutes after taking it, I started to feel...I don't know...just GOOD. Just this big wave of "oh nice" washed over me. And kind of tingly, in a good way. I need to make sure I keep drinking water. I still feel a little unsteady on my feet, and still having some histamine issues, but other than that, I feel a lot more alive and alert. Possibly a coincidence, but even my hand stopped hurting: I was using a screwdriver yesterday, and it caused so much pain that I couldn't close my fist.

It was pointed out that a lot of Long Covid symptoms are the same as Thiamine Deficiency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine_deficiency
And this is the study that they're basing it on: https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2013/ ... -interest/

Honestly Marknis, the content of your posts has become increasingly worrying. And your thinking process is clearly irrational because of depression. I've been there, and I recognize that same voice in some of your posts. I've read quite a lot of your posts, and don't say anything a lot of the time because I just don't know how to help. While this depression dominates your thought processes, it's very difficult to give you advice or support. And there's no evidence that a girlfriend is magically going to resolve all of that. A girlfriend is not there to save you, she is a person with her own wants and needs. I honestly think that if you were to meet someone, you would immediately struggle with an uneven dynamic where she has to perform lots of emotional labor trying to deal with your issues on your behalf.

I had been dealing with a sort of depression since i was about 13, and then my parents divorced. I spent all day in my room, only occasionally going out for food, and even then I was wasting away and lost a lot of weight. I spent entire days in bed and dropped out of college. And my unresolved resentment with my own dating issues (I'm a 23 year old kiss-less virgin, for now) lead to me having loads of anxiety and resentment for women. All this pain you have right now is going to make relationships hard to form and hard to keep. You need to focus on helping yourself. Try therapy, if you've tried therapy and it didn't work, try another therapist. Try medication, exercise, diet changes, hobbies anything that will help you pick yourself back up. Anything that will help you feel good in your own skin, girlfriend or no girlfriend.

I thought all through my teenage years and onward that a girlfriend would magically solve my self-worth issues, loneliness, bad habits, etc. I still don't have a girlfriend, and I'm not perfect. Sometimes I have bad days, but I am better. I put in the work, I went to therapy and took it seriously, I started working and learning how to socialize in general. I've been going through a lot lately, working very busy days for nearly 60 hour work weeks. A couple years ago I wouldn't have been able to handle it. But you know what? I'm not suicidal these days, I can keep myself together. And it's comforting knowing that I can handle some things that I couldn't before. I want the same for you. Focus on yourself and getting well, please.