When all the knowledge doesn’t help.

There is an internet meme that floats around every once in a while about how crying doesn’t mean you are not strong but instead it means how you have been strong for too long. I’ve struggled with depression. I’ve been in therapy for years to learn how to manage it. But I still struggle. Sometimes a lot. I’m on meds, but the meds only take the edge off. They are not like flipping a switch where suddenly hey I never feel depressed again. The years of therapy have given me tools to use to help to fight the depression, tools to keep me moving when I am depressed and but sometimes I still just need to separate myself from everybody and just hide for a bit.

So this post started because I’ve gone through another depressive state. it was a little over two weeks in length. I want to blame some specific stuff that may be talked about in another post but it didn’t matter that I have the tools that I have. I was tired of using them. I needed a break from the social life I’m building. So that is what I did. I got addicted to a TV show on crackle.com binged on it. spent too much time playing browser games and barely had the energy and time to follow through on a few job postings and interviews, some of which probably had to do with a horrible diet.

The other day I was with a friend who was approaching this stage herself, and it really struck me. I never would have thought of her as being somebody who needed to do that. She has always appeared to the be a person who could endlessly socialize. She later told me that it happens to her every once in awhile and she just needs to find a corner to hide in and paint her toe nails or read some poetry. She has been dealing with this a lot longer than I have and can recognize it better than I can so she appears to be able to curb it before it gets to the point of disappearing for a week.

It’s not that the knowledge doesn’t help it’s that this is another tool that needs to be thought about and used. A person, every person needs alone time. I suddenly don’t know why this feels like a new idea to me. I ques it is just the relationship between the ideas of I’ve tried everything I can think of and I’m just going to choose a few unhealthy activities to get me through. The problem for me is often the unhealthy activities I choose end up resulting in a deeper and longer lasting depressed period. So, I need to develop better or more controllable escapes, and possibly need to schedule them.  Did something like this happen in may?

 

In The Moment.

I have a friend. She is always busy, she works full-time, plays multiple instruments, has a social life to be envied and still has time to look for and regularly apply for her dream job. I don’t know how she does it and when I’m with her she usually pulls me along in such a way that I forget to ask until I’m home alone and worried about whether that job is going to call me back, oh yeah she also started sending me job posting to help me look…

Part of my problem is that I subscribe to both Hulu and Netflix, so I spend an average of an hour or two a day watching stuff I frequently see a waste of time, but I can’t cut it out. The times I have my life gets so stressful I end up in a deep depression and can’t move from my bed except to take my dog outside, not for a walk, just outside because around the block is too hard. Another friend mentioned to me that he used to escape his stress in a similar way but he learned to manage it. I’ve research and experimented with the concept but never read or heard of something that really works.

How does one stay in the moment? How does one find the kind of motivation to do all those really great things? How does one learn to manage their stress vs escaping it? I would love to learn to play piano, I have keyboard and could learn but I get stuck on a series on Hulu and feel I can’t escape it because trying will lead to a deep depression and the giving up of everything.