What they see and what they don’t

Someone with moderately functioning depression.

What others see:

  • You usually seem ok at work (and otherwise socially), but anyone with a keen sense of awareness will notice an underlying sadness
  • Tendency to withdraw for awhile when something goes wrong
  • A reasonable presentation of self, but with little pieces here and there that indicate a lack of caring enough about life
  • A general lack of sharp focus (not severe, but noticeable) surrounding you
  • Someone who they’d never know is dangerously close to going over the edge
  • A person who fluctuates being seeming normal and slightly broken

What others DON’T see:

  • Living your life in a lot of darkness (both literally and figuratively)
  • The wretched condition of your place since you just don’t care enough to clean
  • How that condition of your place makes you turn others away even more than you otherwise would
  • Breaking down into tears by yourself occasionally
  • How you’re hiding as much of your newly excess belly as you can (because of how you’re not strong enough to change your poor diet habits, and you’ve lost the desire to be active physically)
  • How you wish that you could have (and wanted) the balanced, healthy life that some around you do
  • You living too much in the past, rarely enjoying the present, and doubtful about improving your future
  • One of your few fears: never escaping the life summarized above. Until the day you die.

The web of complex addiction from my chosen path

I’ve spent the last 20 years experiencing plenty of success and failure in my career. Most of that time has been spent self-employed (trading in the financial markets and advantage gambling for a living). At this point, my knowledge in those areas is quite vast and I’ve learned extensively about the right paths to take and pitfalls to avoid. Despite that, I have destroyed myself financially too often lately. Why?

These endeavors require many other factors to succeed, and two of the most important are opportunity and discipline. I have always struggled with the latter, but ample opportunities usually kept things going well overall for a long time. But once those dried up a good bit in recent years, my faults started to trump my strengths (and that virtually guarantees failure in these fields).

The main reasons for my work (and life) discipline issues can mostly be traced to my continuous depressive tendencies. I’m not manic or bipolar, but I am damaged enough to usually stay behind the 8-ball about keeping life in order. I also have strong addictive tendencies, and those have created quite the regular conundrums with my work.

How does this happen? I don’t always trade and gamble for the right (i.e. profitable/financially healthy) reasons. Too often, I give in to the need for a gambling “high” and take any number of self-sabotaging risks (crippling mistakes that stem from depression, unhappiness, being uneasy about life, impatience, and lately, the longing to regain my past success before it’s too late).

As you can imagine, this has created the aforementioned confusion in my last blog about my situation, especially with possible therapy. How often have you really heard of an addiction that you need to fight without stopping the underlying activity that supports you? I thought I’d found a parallel once with Overeaters Anonymous and even went to one of their meetings, but my explanation for my presence was met by those “you have three heads on your shoulder” looks.

It’s quite maddening, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever find the answers. But I’ll never stop trying to, and I’m hoping that a step of new progress was made today. I went out this afternoon with the hopes that a certain opportunity was still available at the local casino. When I got there and saw that someone else had already gotten it, the reaction was mild exasperation and (yet again) the urge to throw caution to the wind and do the wrong things. However, I was able to gather myself, spend a short time making some of the right choices there, and then leave without digging into my destructive habits.

Mind you, this was far from a new revelation overall; my pattern has always been to disruptively bounce back and forth between those right and wrong choices. BUT, this was one of the very few times that I ever felt the wrong urges, stopped, and had the willpower to change gears that day. And I’m glad to say that the thought of writing this blog was a part of finding that strength that I usually don’t.

What can I say. Hopefully it’s a start.

Therapy. Three strikes and…

Most people who seek out therapy likely feel that their stories and issues are fairly unique (only to find that their therapist can quickly trace their issues to some common life speed bumps.) In my three attempts to test out therapy in the last 15 years, suffice it to say that I have not gotten that reaction.

Attempt 1 (late 20s): Spent about half a dozen sessions in a local therapist’s office. She listened, listened, and listened. Finally I eventually asked “What do you think of everything I’ve told you? Any ideas on how to tackle my issues?” She stared at me blankly, mumbled something about “maybe control issues” and then (thankfully) time was about to run out for the day. As you might guess, that was my last visit there.

Attempt 2 (early 30s): Chose someone who seemed to have a very keen insights about people (especially family). First session went ok. Got homework. Came back with the homework. While barely beginning to explain the content of the homework, got quickly barked at and told off for “interrupting like your mother would do”, which I’d barely even really done (at minimum, it didn’t warrant anywhere near such an emotional reaction from her). Clearly she was more focused on being offended and (speaking of control issues) her own, rather than actually helping a patient.

Attempt 3 (two years ago/early 40s): Scoured the entire city for the best cognitive behavioral therapist around (as I’d realized that such a results-oriented approach should’ve always been the focus for my situation). After nearly an hour of first learning about me, was told “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I can always pinpoint in the first session if I can help someone and am the right fit. With you, I honestly have no idea if I can. I don’t even want to charge you for the session.”

So……now you can see why I’m at the point of self-therapy. Why has my career/past/present/strengths/weaknesses seemed so unusual? Next time

The root of things…

My depressive issues began around my junior year in college. This was around the time that one factor started to really weigh on me: the fact that I was still a virgin (and hadn’t even had a real kiss yet). These things could have happened plenty of times during my college life, but I was a late bloomer (never experienced much of life as a teen) and I just never pulled the trigger when the opportunities came up. But unfortunately, as many 18-21 year olds do, I inaccurately blamed these failures on factors other than my naivety and started to feel highly undesirable. It felt like everyone else was having all of that fun, and I was always the one on the wall.

When these experiences finally happened soon after college, that hurt was gone for good and I’ve been emotionally healthy about dating and sex since. However….the damage done during those 5 years was severe and many of the symptoms/depressive roots remained. Granted there is a history of depression with some of my family (especially with my mother), but I doubt any tendencies toward it would’ve ever been as deep w/o going through that period.

Anyway, that is how the path to my adulthood began. And as anyone who’s gone through plenty of this can relate to, it ends up defining a lot of your life from that point on (and often not in the best ways). I’ll get into those details next.

Exciting introductions

I’m a guy in his mid 40s who has dealt with depression throughout his adult life. Given that I’ve never found the willpower to make the numerous changes necessary in life, I’ve decided to blog for the first time (with the hope that writing about these issues may somehow provide more motivation and focus to attack them).

This will stay anonymous, and I don’t know if anyone will even really see it (which is fine since it’s just an attempt at some self-therapy). I plan on including not just the details of my struggles, but also other random thoughts about my NSH opinions about life in general and (especially) people. Might write once a day, once a month, or anywhere in between…..whenever the mood strikes. Stay tuned