Hi dropsie. I’m sorry you have suffered.
I think part of the issue with treatment for me in the past is I think you have to have a little bit of faith in the process. I think the process turns me off so much that I don’t make the “leap” people are willing to make in order to allow therapy and medications to work.
I have a friend who I was hanging out with for awhile and she said she started celexa and I remember feeling differently about her after that, for one thing she didn’t seem to be the same person (there was less balance, everything was artificially awesome all the time) and I realized too that I have really strong feelings about this. I was also shocked to hear that my friends husband is on several antidepressants and anti anxiety meds. He’s no longer staying in bed all the time and now he goes to work, but he’s still just kind of a miserable person. Texts women all the time. Asks my friend constantly to move. Says he’s “never going to be happy in California” even though he has a teachers pension and salary. Um...California supports you, Dufus. I’m not seeing how any of his meds and therapy are doing anything, but I think he believes it does.
I don’t look at depression and sadness with the same pathological eye that western culture seems to want to imbue in it, that it will inevitably lead to suicide. Don’t you think that’s an interesting take on sadness, even protracted sadness due to a cause?
I think there is severe and persistent depression in which functionality is lost, a person is at risk or dying either by self neglect or actively by their own hand, and it’s time to intervene.
If I am functional: which I am...then I’d rather feel what I feel. That’s actually very important to me now after spending years trying to suppress every emotion that arises in a constant attempt to self medicate.
I see your point, but I’m just not likely to actually do it.
I mentioned in my original post that I do live for others, in fact that’s been the case for a very very long time. Others keep me going, and keep me alive.
Suicide would be destroy my children, which is the opposite of the driving force in my life: to be the person my family turns to, especially after years of destructive self medication. I have zero interest in ending things.
Gotta go...taking kid to school!!