Hi ambrly

  I'm sorry that you are going through this and I hope you can hold on to the belief that you don't deserve this sickness and you can somehow get well. I'm sending you healing thoughts.

I have some ideas, things that help me when I'm face down at the bottom as it sounds you are right now. First realize that this is an illness and it is making you feel this way and think this way but it is not the real you! The real you is buried under the painful and miserable symptoms but the real you is beautiful and unique and deserves to be free. Try as best as you can to remember you are not the person that depression makes you you are so so so much more.  

I don't know if it means much because we don't know each other but we do know what it is like to live under this- I want you to know that I believe in you. I believe that you can get through this and claim your real self away from this nasty illness that wants to drag you down and convince you that you cant do it. Don't let it win. 

  Somewhere deep inside you is the answer and the hope and the way to survive but it is true hell trying to find it I cant deny that because it has been hell for me to find it. It took years but I have finally come to a place where I can live with it and wake up more days of the year feeling alive and hopeful than dead and hopeless. 

    Something I think a lot of people miss out on is actual therapy. I thought medicine would be enough but for me it never was. I had to get a good therapist and dig around in all the darkness in my heart that depression had manifested in me. All those years of thinking so darkly and believing the horrible things depression made me believe did not go away with a pill.

It is a disease that infects your very heart and mind and turns it dark and tangled. A pill cant undo the damage. It's like a cancer eating away at all the light and positive feelings and thoughts. It takes more than medicine to heal the damage and to learn how to change those thoughts and feelings that are such a habit and so destructive.

 It is a thinking disease and the mind of a long time depressed person like us needs to be carefully untangled and rewired to be healthy again. I recommend therapy with someone you really trust. Shop around. If you meet someone and they don't feel right don't stay with them, it's your money and your treatment so you have the power to make it the way you want it.

I tried 4 different therapists until I found the right one and when I found her I knew it 100% and I saw her once a week for a whole year just to get through and survive.

   She helped me save myself and she helped me understand the illness, the enemy that lives inside me and how to outsmart it. It's not cured, I still struggle sometimes, but now when it flares up I know I am stronger and that I will get ahold of it and be okay again soon.

   I wish you the best, never give up and try everything that can possibly help.

Willing

5/15/09 1:25pm

Hello there...

The words you wrote in response to Ambrly's pain were so encouraging!   I know that you intended for them to encourage her but if it's ok for me to borrow them and apply them to my own life, I would so appreciate it.  I am also in the middle of a major episode and I'm desperate for a rebound.  This disease "to me" is so dreadful and potentially debilitating...  I feel like the majority of my 34 years of life have been robbed by it and at times I feel like it has stolen precious "life" from my husband and children.  Being sandwiched between thoughts of wanting to leave life and set my family free from me...and wanting to stay here to spare them the pain/disappointment of losing me frustrate me the most I think.  I have never wanted to be a burden on anyone and I have felt like the biggest disabler to them at times.  My biggest fear is that it will rub off on my children--that they wont dare to dream and have the courage to pursue a life of possibilities.  I believe these thoughts are part of the stress that helps drive this depression thing. But like you said, this is a disease, right? It's not who we really are.  We were created with purpose and destiny--and the nature of the disease is to trick us into believing that we were not.  With therapy, support, and modern medicine we can tap into our will to live.  But we have to be willing to seek help and get past the shame and isolation of being afflicted by this disease though.  It's less lonely to know that there are others that struggle with this "thing."  My prayer is that each of us will refuse to succumb to it and that we will find what we need to conquer it. I hope that everyone who reads this will find the will to continue on in this life and embrace the words..."This disease is not who I am."

 

Thank you for your post