[joesbucks]

I've been scanning through the comments in the thread Freeper Obit. TrappedInLiberalHell. I was surprised by the number of people that admitted they suffered through bouts of depression and how many themselves have gone so far as to ponder taking a gun to themselves or even getting the gun in the position of taking their life. Again, I was very surprised.

I will make some observations that are mine, and admittedly may be very wrong or amplified through my own personal experiences. This vanity was created to begin a general discussion as to why there seems to be such an epidemic of this type of condition or illness and why it's showing in what appears to be more frequently than I ever envisioned.

This site seems to be populated by mostly conservative who believe in inner self strength, accountability, self reliance and other character traits that demonstrate individualism. There generally is a leaning toward Judeo-Christian values. These values generally teach that the solution is found in faith and faith alone. Faith will sustain and solve the problems. Self inflicting death is wrong. (Please understand, this is my understanding. I tried to put this in a delicate wording as possible, yet it still appears to be harsh and judgemental.)

Again this purpose of this is to exchange ideas on the subject, which seems to amplify as the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays approach.

I too seem to suffer from very dark days, although I've never been in the situation where I seriously comtemplated taking my life. I will admit to having felt that life had no true meaning, but never have I entertained taking my life.

I'm interested in what others have experienced, what got them out of their "funk" and are you ever really cured of these conditions. Many will suggest turning to God, Christ or some other form of faith. I have. I try to surround myself with not only ideals based on faith, but anything generally positive. Yet, just the other day I felt for a few moments a horrible despair.

Again, this is for discussion and sources of solution.

Hope your Christmas holiday and New Year are filled with joy, peace, happiness and prosperity.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

When admitting a past struggle with depression, my pastor's wife cautioned me not to express this openly with them members of my country church.

Her reasoning was that sometimes people will accuse others of having a weak faith, while their human condition leads them into darkness.

I have found that all goodness comes through the Lord. And if God should lead a sufferer of depression to a doctor, for counseling and even medication for treatment, then this too can be a blessing.

And lastly, a chemical imbalance is not the fault of the person who suffers from depression. We do not chastize those who take heart medication, why would we chastize someone whose brain chemistry is out of balance?

[EagleMamaMT]

I'm going to open up a little bit here, in the interests of perhaps helping others with my own experiences with depression. This is long and I apologize for it, but I hope it will help someone who might be depressed and feeling worthless or helpless:

I was depressed for a lot of years. I remember little of my high school years, beyond attending class and then coming home and climbing into my bed in my dark room. I was able to perform at school, but it was very difficult because I always felt worthless, lonely and scared. Coming home and just getting into bed and sleeping was the way I coped. My parents just thought I was being a difficult teenager and that I would outgrow it. And, for periods of time, I did. This pattern of depressive behavior would wax and wane through my college years and early 20s.

In my 20s, I met a man and I fell totally, deeply in love with him. I was like many young women are, though. I was a total fool for this man. I believed I was so worthless and so insignificant I deserved his cheating and lying and that if I just waited for him long enough, he would one day love me and we'd be happy together. That didn't happen. I became pregnant, and when he found out, he refused to have anything to do with me or our child. This caused me to have a breakdown and I was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital for a couple of weeks, when I was about 3 months pregnant, to keep me from harming myself or someone else.

I'll be honest. The counseling in the psychiatric hospital didn't help me one bit. The peace and tranquility of the psychiatric hospital, however, helped me to quiet my burned-out mind and to turn back to Jesus for his forgiveness for my sins and to experience His peace and calmness in my mind and soul.

When I left the hospital, I was stronger spiritually and mentally than I ever was in my life. I vowed to work to take care of myself and the baby I was carrying and to put this man out of my mind and my heart. This helped me to withstand some very serious personal blows during my pregnancy - alienation of much of my family over my pregnancy, and very dire financial circumstances being two of those personal blows.

I worked two jobs all during my pregnancy and until my son was almost two years old to provide for us. I never asked my son's father for a dime because of threats he made against our baby's life, while I was pregnant, if I tried to take him to court for child support. I decided I would scratch with the chickens for a living before I took a dime from a monster who would threaten the life of his own baby.

At any rate, I worked very hard for that period of time - only sleeping three or four hours a night and seeing very little of my baby, who was being cared for by my first cousin's wife - a wonderful girl who loved my baby like her own. I thank God every day for LouAnn and what she did for me and my son.

I guess because I was so tired and emotionally burned out, I began to take my eyes off Jesus and how He was wonderfully providing for me and my child, and I began to let depression back into my mind and soul, a little at a time. Finally, one Sunday night, I just couldn't face another day, I thought, and I took a handful of muscle relaxants. I went to bed, not caring - I believed - that I would never wake up. But the Lord cared. My baby began to cry and it was like the curtain of depression was ripped from my mind. I knew I couldn't die and leave him. I was all he had. I was horrified at what I had done and I asked the Lord to help me get help and not die and leave my baby.

I spent a couple of days in the hospital recuperating and crying and praying, and I finally took a long look at myself and my life. I had believed I was doing the right thing by working all the time to provide for my son, but the Lord showed me that I wasn't trusting Him to provide for us beyond what I was physically able to do. By trying to meet all our needs myself, this led to physical exhaustion, which led to escalating depression. I also realized that I WAS worth something. I was a good mother and a good person, not the total screw-up I had always considered myself to be. When I got out of the hospital, I quit one of my jobs and put our future in the Lord's hands.

While I was lying in that hospital, I began to see that depression is a lie. "Depression" is believing the lies you're telling yourself - "I'm worthless, I can't do anything right, I'm never going to climb out of this pit I'm in". If you've ever been depressed, you know all those lies because you've repeated them to yourself a million times.

From that time forward, once I really came to see depression for what it was - a lie I was telling myself - I have never been depressed again.

It's been 15 years, now, since I was hospitalized for that suicide attempt. Since that time, the Lord has given me a perfect, blessed husband and three more sons. He's taken away the self-hatred I used to have and given me a sense of worth - not for who or what I am - but because He loved me so much that He died for me, and He was there to lift me up and protect me when I wasn't capable of seeing any goodness or worth in myself.

If I could say anything to depressed people it's this: Quit lying to yourself and reinforcing your depressive feelings. You're NOT worthless. You're NOT useless. Don't even let those thoughts enter your mind. You have wonderfully and fearfully made, in the image of God. You were bought at a price by Jesus and He will be faithful to you if you'll only ask Him. He can take a depressed troubled mind and make it new and peaceful.

God bless you all. I'm sorry I've written so much here, but I just wanted to tell you all what I've learned at Jesus's mercy seat.

[irgbar-man]

Five to seven years ago, about this time of year, a troubled Christian man of about 40 from my church took his own life. He had his own business in a construction trade. We had played softball together a few years before, which I gave up when my knee blew out the first time. My first child was a year old then, and this man was single.

He and I saw less of each other as the years went by, but I knew he was around. He loved little children, of which I had a second and a then a third. He got engaged to a woman just a few years younger than himself and appeared very happy ... for a year or so.

Then very suddenly he darkened. I don't know if he had business trouble, debts, hidden substance abuse issues or "just" brain chemistry imbalances. We didn't talk stuff like that. My wife heard after this man's suicide that he wanted children right away and his fiancée did not want them at all. He may have abused her physically, and surely did so psychologically, laying the blame on her in his final dark days.

While we may share associations with people through work, clubs and even family or church, we may not be close. We may not have the kind of accountability and commitment to each other that allows us to share our weaknesses in confidence and hold one another's hands up, so to speak. If any of you FReepers don't find that kind of support here, then please make it a resolution to find it somewhere. The world is indeed swirling into deeper darkness, but the light of God is shining brighter and reaching farther still.

I went through my own episode in the year 2000. I was never suicidal. It was situational depression over a job loss in late '98. I got a new job almost immediately, but at a 1/3 cut in pay. My attempts to retool with IT skills seemed futile, as businesses began hiring freezes and experienced IT workers scrambled to fill slots ahead of me. I was working hard, studying harder, eating and sleeping like cr@p. On top of that was the tension of the pending election --or would Xlinton suspend transition?

I had been praying for some time for my father to be saved, specifically in my moments of anxiety about my career. And God granted this petition in September of 2000. I had a chance to visit him on a hastily arranged trip in early November. I left work early, voted absentee on Friday 11/3, and spent election week with my dad, mending some fences and getting to know him all over again. That trip set a lot of healing in motion for me.

Building accountability into my life has kept me more stable, though I have certainly not arrived.

1 Corinthians 10:13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

[jigsaw]

A note to all non-depressives reading this thread:

Regardless of how you view depression, if you know someone who is or may be
clinically depressed, love them unconditionally.

Absolutely, positively, 100% of the time.   No exceptions.

As a depressive, I have never met a non-depressive who can really understand
depression's hell.   Depression can be extremely difficult to escape and your
unqualified love may be a significant part of a depressive's lifeline.

Also, I believe that those left behind by someone who passes on by his own hand
should not blame themselves. Depression can be brutally powerful and often
near-impossible to recognize.

My sincere prayers to TILH and his family.   May TILH rest in peace.

[Freedom2specul8]

Bookmarked to read later.... Thanks for starting this thread...

[Cacique]

bttfl

[x]

And yet, it's at Christmastime when so many people are most depressed. That may have much to do with all the secular-commercial-consumerist hype or the Winter solstice and the relative absence of light, but it does seem like religious sources of good news and solace don't always do the job in relieving depression.

I don't disagree with what you say about the power of faith or belief, but it does look as though the message of salvation or deliverance doesn't always heal. It would be interesting to see if the association of holidays with depression holds up in other countries.

It's doubtful that Christmas-New Year's was widely regarded as a sad and overwhelming time of year before all the media-commercial build-up. Perhaps the "true meaning" of Christmas wouldn't cause sorrow, but it does seem like the conviction that one must be happy and part of a happy family at a particular time of year can make unhappiness worse.

I don't disagree with you that one needs a source of inner strength and that it can be found in the Bible. But I do remember how college kids who were chronically happy, whether for temperamental, evangelical, or pharmaceutical reasons, drove their normal or moderately depressed roommates up the wall.

[spodefly]

It is hard for me to factor that someone could actually go through with plans to off themselves. As my Dad has said, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Plus, even if we live to be 100, that is a tiny speck of time in the big picture.

I suppose this means that I have never actually been clinically depressed, even though I have certainly had dark periods in my life.

If someone is feeling down, even suicidal, and it is related to some event (or events) that have recently occurred, that is natural, and one has to stick it out and get thru to the better days. If depression appears randomly, or doesn't subside after a time, then getting professional help seems to be the only answer. If there truly is a chemical imbalance in your brain, you cannot will it, pray it, or exercise it away.

The most depressed I ever got was about 10 years ago when in a period of a week I was laid-off from the job that I had moved to a new city for, my girlfriend (and her child that I had become incredibly attached to) left me, and my Mom was diagnosed with aplastic anemia and given a short time to live. I had to sell my car, move to a small apartment, and was running out of money and living in a town where I knew no one. My mornings would begin with me leaning against the wall in the shower and sobbing uncontrolably and not get a whole lot better from there.

This lasted for a couple of months, and only started to subside after I began vigorously riding my mountain bike for hours at a time and working out every other day to exhaustion. Within a couple of months I was in the best shape of my life at 32 years old, started taking project related jobs that were fun, and started to date again.

During the worst of that time, I did cast a glance or two at the gun cabinet knowing that I could make the pain stop any time I really wanted to. But even at that time I recognized that particular "solution" was an incredibly pathetic indulgence, and I never took it beyond that point.

I think I would have little advice to offer someone who was truly clinically depressed other than to go to a doctor and get help. To someone who is responding to events that have turned their life upside down, I would say, excercise, keep your mind right, and get the hell over it as soon as possible.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

The Rat socialist ideology is designed to break the individual. As this ideology advances, individuals are oppressed. We live in depressing ideological times in our country. I get depressed when I remember how much freer we used to be.

Medication and reconditioning is not the answer. Restoring our freedom is.

As individuals of a certain profile, who love freedom, we are under constant attack and marginalization. There is a WAR going on in this culture. The Mental health of individuals who oppose the current trends is naturally at risk.

If you read his posts, he felt this oppression, and it was real. As a society, we are so screwed up, that sometimes being above it all is painful.

[Publius6961]

Interesting thread.
I agree that this all seems to be more common today than in previous generations. I believe it's not a simple subject. I myself can explain it by a life-altering experience I had about 10 years ago. I, like CS Lewis, am still not ready to reconcile the events with a merciful God, so am still in the Cosmic sadist stage.
But other factors have an influence here. Doublespeak, Brave New World, the hopelessness of seeing half the country embracing nanny government in a most serious way; a citizenry that actually believes that nothing is worth fighting for --- ever. The trigger for hopelessness is certainly there.

I survive with the certain knowlege that no matter how much the dummies screw up my world, my experience education and knowlege keeps me better equiped to deal with the consequences. Small comfort.

[Old Professer]

Killing yourself to solve your problems only creates problems for everyone else about you.

Living is easy if you just remember to quit taking yourself so seriously.

[christie]

From my experience, if you just mention depression, friends and family run for the hills. I'm not sure I believe the ones who say, "If I'd only known." If you really looked, you did know. Just the other day I had a friend tell me that when she told her husband just how depressed she had been for years, he said, "Yeah, I know." What did he do about it? This summer when I was going through hell, I tried to tell my sister and after getting absolutely no response from her, I hung up and we did not talk for months. She never called to see how I was doing. I've learned how to hide depression because not only do I know I won't find support, but I know I will be shunned.

At a very low point, I checked out the suicide hotline on the internet and found this essay. For some reason, it helped me: http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/

If you are thinking about suicide . . . read this first

If you are feeling suicidal now, please stop long enough to read this. It will only take about five minutes. I do not want to talk you out of your bad feelings. I am not a therapist or other mental health professional - only someone who knows what it is like to be in pain.

I don't know who you are, or why you are reading this page. I only know that for the moment, you're reading it, and that is good. I can assume that you are here because you are troubled and considering ending your life. If it were possible, I would prefer to be there with you at this moment, to sit with you and talk, face to face and heart to heart. But since that is not possible, we will have to make do with this.

I have known a lot of people who have wanted to kill themselves, so I have some small idea of what you might be feeling. I know that you might not be up to reading a long book, so I am going to keep this short. While we are together here for the next five minutes, I have five simple, practical things I would like to share with you. I won't argue with you about whether you should kill yourself. But I assume that if you are thinking about it, you feel pretty bad.

Well, you're still reading, and that's very good. I'd like to ask you to stay with me for the rest of this page. I hope it means that you're at least a tiny bit unsure, somewhere deep inside, about whether or not you really will end your life. Often people feel that, even in the deepest darkness of despair. Being unsure about dying is okay and normal. The fact that you are still alive at this minute means you are still a little bit unsure. It means that even while you want to die, at the same time some part of you still wants to live. So let's hang on to that, and keep going for a few more minutes.

Start by considering this statement:

"Suicide is not chosen; it happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain."

That's all it's about. You are not a bad person, or crazy, or weak, or flawed, because you feel suicidal. It doesn't even mean that you really want to die - it only means that you have more pain than you can cope with right now. If I start piling weights on your shoulders, you will eventually collapse if I add enough weights . . . .no matter how much you want to remain standing. Willpower has nothing to do with it. Of course you would cheer yourself up, if you could.

Don't accept it if someone tells you, "that's not enough to be suicidal about." There are many kinds of pain that may lead to suicide. Whether or not the pain is bearable may differ from person to person. What might be bearable to someone else, may not be bearable to you. The point at which the pain becomes unbearable depends on what kinds of coping resources you have. Individuals vary greatly in their capacity to withstand pain.

When pain exceeds pain-coping resources, suicidal feelings are the result. Suicide is neither wrong nor right; it is not a defect of character; it is morally neutral. It is simply an imbalance of pain versus coping resources.

[LadyDoc]

Depression and despair are part of "normal" life, but like any "normal" human trait, they can become severe, and then we call this "mental illness".

Depression is often biochemical: it can run in families, and beccome worse with stress, hormone changes (e.g. pregnancy, menopause) and with medical illnesses (anemia, hypothyroidism).

What we doctors call biochemical depression is not the same as existential despair, although it might include this. We mean the lack of energy, sleep disturbances, lack of pleasure in life, and a way of thinking that sees only the negative things around us.

Anti Depressants treat biochemical depression by increasing the energy level, decreasing negative thoughts, and improving sleep.

But unless the "problem" is purely hormones/ biochemical (such as menopause), medications only improve the symptoms, not the problem.

Independent people who forget that God, not they, are in charge are prone to depression/despair.

Church people who think they cannot be mad at God are very prone to severe depression, since they turn their anger inward. For example, I had a lady who was not better on anti depressants. We brought up church, and she was a believer. Then I asked her what else was going on ,and she mentioned her mom had died of cancer, a terrible death; she was very angry about it, but being a stiff upper lip type christian, she was not allowed to mourn, and she thought that her anger against God allowing her mother to suffer made her a bad person...(this was not true, of course, but she was brought up that way)...

Depression is a terrible thing...to those who never were depressed, I always think of the poem..."The mind has cliffs...cliffs of fall...hold them cheap, you who ne'er hung there"...

Christians consider suicide as a terrible sin, but nowadays the churches recognize that, except for a few die hard "I refuse to suffer" types, most suicides are not truely chosen, since the person is not able to think correctly. Often a suicide just simply cannot recognize the love of those around him or her...our hope is that at the moment of death, they see the Divine Mercy of the lord and reach out to him...

[Tax Government]

I thank God that I have a master plan for creating success in life. Because without that, life would be hell and I'd be very depressed.

[tiki]

I think depression is inherited and I don't think it is really mental. I don't know how you fight it for reals because those in my family who opt for treatment haven't done so well and those who tough it out don't do so well so I think there is not a real solution.

Once I was depressed for 3 years and I didn't even know it! You're so involved in your life and your misery that you don't recognize it as an illness. I never told a soul how I was feeling I kept it all to myself. I used to think of painless ways to kill myself but I was too chicken to do anything. As I got better I just prayed that God would let me die and as I got really better I thanked God for sparing me. I have never gotten that bad again and I hope I never do but I think I might realize what was happening if it did.

I can usually spot a depressed person a mile away and I know that most would be offended if I told them there was something wrong with them. You recognize their coping mechanisms and their body language. You see the tiredness and the weakness and you wish you could say something to them.

3 years ago, my niece sent me an e-mail and it was just about coming to visit and maybe staying awhile but there was so much between the lines. I wrote back and told her that she could come anytime but I thought she should see a doctor first because I thought she was in a deep depression and she was, they hospitalized her. I grew up with a bi-polar mother and you never knew what to expect but I grew up to be pretty flexible and spontaneous:-} We didn't know any of this stuff then and we just coped. As I said, I don't know if you are better off with treatment or just toughing it out but it exists and isn't any different than any other PHYSICAL disease. It isn't because you're weak or stupid or emotional, I think is is chemical and I don't think the medical community really knows enough yet. Some of the drugs they prescribe are as harmful as the depression and make you feel physically worse.

[185JHP]

One thing you can do that will change your perspective, is to read the entire Bible. Start with Genesis, and read the whole thing. It won't be easy, because there will be opposition. The phone will ring, you'll get a headache, get sleepy, and other things will happen. There is a powerful being who doesn't want you to read it - especially the whole thing. You can read 1 Book a day - that'll take 66 days. Total reading time required is about 70 hours. You'll find out the benefit, if you do it.

[mamaduck]

My take is rather simplistic: Depressive thoughts are the devil trying to distract us from our God-given assignment, which is to live our lives to the best Good possible. I used to allow, and even pursue, thoughts that made me unhappy. Now I simply realize that they are the devil trying to steal my energy from the good that I could be doing; "Get thee behind me Satan", and get on with God's business: doing the best I can with the life God has given me.

[octobersky]

bttt

[Revolting cat!]

What to do? Modern medicine has failed us, with its emphasis on chemical imbalance diagnoses and chemical cures (read the sad story of rocker Del Shannon's death for one of the most famous medical success stories in this area), Freudianism is a joke if not one of the causes of last century's catastrophes along with Marxism and Darwinism. We still have in this country our Dale Carnegies and health food store urban myth cures. I'm getting depressed just writing, no, typing, sorry Truman Capote, this rant. And yes, I've been there, done that! What to do?

[Revolting cat!]

Let's end this thread on a positive note (don't reply, this is The End!), and say after James Darren and some nameless grunge rocker:

Goodbye Cruel World, Life Sucks!