Is Depression Interfering With Your Potential? This May Help.

http://xkcd.com/987/

I've bitched about a lot of things in this blog.  One of them is the feeling that my life has not turned out the way it was supposed to.  I'm a smart, talented person.  I coulda been somebody!  I coulda been a contender! 

This comic, from the inestimable xkcd, made me feel a bit better about that:

Weekly Gratitude: My Coping Skills, and Three Things I Like About Myself

I've decided to turn this week's Gratitude Post into an exercise from my Mood Action Plan.  Last August, my MCBT class was assigned to make a list of three things we like about ourselves.  Things that we probably forget when we get depressed. 


This post feels awkward to write in some ways.  Depression is inextricably twined with negative self-image -- that's the whole point of this exercise -- but the way we're brought up makes it even harder.  Naming what we like about ourselves feels so much like bragging, like arrogance; and every six year old knows that nobody likes a bragger.

Women especially are socialized to play down their own abilities and give credit to others.  We're much better at telling other people they're awesome than appreciating our own awesomeness.  But, again, that's the whole point of doing this.  To remember that we're awesome, even when we don't feel awesome.  To hang on to three things we like about ourselves, no matter how hard our illness tries makes use forget them.

In my case, the problem is not really that I forget that I have traits that I like. I just get to feeling like they don't (and will never) do me a damn bit of good.  So I decided to change the terms of the assignment: I would look at how these traits do me plenty of good, because they're the ones that I use to cope with my mental illness.

I am grateful for my sense of humor, my creativity, and my curiosity. 

Lamictal 300 mgs: Dark Thoughts

Several months ago, I wrote about why I didn't realize my depression was worsening: because I was nowhere near The Pit.  Like a lot of depressives, when I get depressed I feel like I'm falling, as if I'm circling a dark pit, as if I'm falling into it.  Or at least I used to.  Before my psychotic episode I had no such feeling, and it didn't occur to me that I was headed for trouble.

I've been at a loss to describe what did happen to me last year.  But last night I had just a brief glimpse of it.  This horrible feeling welled up for a few minutes, kind of like what happened last year but nowhere near as serious ... it felt like ... like ...

It felt like I was being engulfed by a wave of devouring darkness.  It's not falling into The Pit.  Trust me, they're totally different.  Believe me, the devouring darkness is worse.  But this being me and all, I felt better immediately when I could assign a dramatic metaphor to what I was feeling.

And yes.  If it happens again, or lasts more than five minutes, I'll be calling my shrink.

Inappropriate Humor for the Depressed

A few years ago a friend got me turned onto the British comedy duo Mitchell and Webb.  They're smart, they're surreal, they're hilarious.

I find this sketch to be one of the funniest things they've ever done.  The premise (which I haven't included because the vid isn't as funny) is that the creator of Cheesoid had left a career in robotics to make soup.  He was punched in the nose in the course of a mugging, and lost his sense of smell ... enter Cheesoid, the Robot That Smells:

 

I can relate to Cheesoid.  He just can't get it right ... but he can't help the way he's made!