Depression's allure

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Being in a sad funk hurts, but then you get that hit of self-pity that makes you feel like a noble, tragic figure, thus "legitimizing" your depression. It's a vicious cycle. And the only way to break it is to argue against all the "I should be sad" commands your brain keeps sending out. Say "No, I shouldn't, actually!", and be adamant about it! If necessary, keep demanding that and reasoning out why you shouldn't mope around until the clouds finally give way, and lift. This is a lifelong, recurrent depressive speaking. I know that "unbreakable" sadness all too well. There's a difference between being depressed, and giving into depression. Giving into it is where you become an active participant in your own sadness, recyling yourself back toward it every time you start to escape. It's like you're telling yourself, "No, no, no, where do you think you're going? You can't get out that easy." Whereas, simply "being depressed" happens to everybody in at least brief periods, and it is not wrong.

But I'm guilty of something -- and I have a friend who also is -- that's more than that. As an outside, objective observer, it's easier for me to report on my friend's condition than myself, even though we both struggle with it. He resists positive incoming information whenever possible. All of it. If he senses someone is threatening his depression, he will rally around to protect it! He doesn't want you to remove his sadness, and you'd better not try -- he may even lash out and insult you if he senses a ray of sunshine breaking through his gloom. (Again, I've often been guilty of this condition without being fully aware of it, so I'm talking about myself here every bit as much as him.)

But, are you like this, or do you know people like this? People who are protective of their own misery, and who even take steps to regenerate it? Who seem to draw some small, and also illusive sense of security from it? "Misery loves company", the expression goes. Often, it's the happy person who is demanded by others to give an explanation for why he's so damn cheerful. I live in a city where people scowl at me when I smile. Therefore, I've even felt guilty for being happy! People like to guilt-down your lighter moods. They don't want you to be any happier than they are, while they're embracing and even stoking their own misery with a sick sort of emotional masochism. It can even make them feel heroic! "Oh, you cruel world... look at me, suffering so at your hands! Oh, woe is me! [lifts back of hand to brow]".
Grade-A bull.

Last edited by Ragtime on 04 Jan 2008, 3:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think that if someone is really hurting, they are really hurting.

I understand your point, but it is an intellectual solution ("thinking differently") to an emotional problem. Intellectualization has never worked for me. But it could work for some.

I never want to "hold on" to my sadness. The main things that get rid of it are grieving, or doing something physical, or writing, to express myself. Then, it is lifted.

The danger in intellectualization is to make the depressed person feel even worse: not only are they depressed, but now, they are told that everything is their fault. This kind of thinking has always made me feel worse.

That's true. The pain is real. But some of it is often unknowingly (or, sometimes, knowingly) re-generated by one's own negative thinking which could be positive thinking if one chooses to break the "momentum" of depression. And depression definitely has momentum to it.

When I'm depressed, I'd swear I don't want to hold onto my sadness either, but then I find myself reflexively thinking thoughts that start the whole depression cycle all over again just as it is lifting.

I've been misinterpreted. I wrote carefully to try and avoid misinterpretation, but no, I'm smarter than to think or say that one can "think oneself out of" depression. After all, I'm a lifetime member. I'm talking about a small part of depression, which is the lack of will to change anything. Sometimes all the positive thinking in the world won't pull you out of a depression, but it gives one a chance of escaping it. Whereas, unknowlingly dedicated full-time negative thinking will ensure one stays sad. People like my friend and I don't realize the ways in which we're perpetuating our sadness, even though we are. I'm talking about learning about those knee-jerk reactions most of us have that keep us from thinking positively when we have an opportunity to do so.

There's a difference between lingering sadness and depression. Depression is when you've given up. If you haven't given up, you're not depressed, you're simply sad. Sadness is usually valid. The danger in validating depression, however, is that it can make one "feel good enough to stay depressed", in a sense. It's weird, I know.

Last edited by Ragtime on 04 Jan 2008, 2:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Great point. I see what you're saying. Sometimes it takes someone saying, "Hey, what about doing such-and-such?" and you're right, that could lead you onto a path that lifts you up.

Sorry I misinterpreted you.

No problem! Ya, sometimes depression just slowly evaporates while you're distracted by something else. You don't remember exactly when it lifted, it just did. It's often from the tiniest, most happenstance stimuli that I "forget" about my depression, and "forget to be depressed."

I too have known the allure of depression. When I am happy, the last thing I want to be is depressed, but when I am depressed I do think negatively which makes a vicious circle, making me more depressed. And to a certain extent I enjoy the depression - I even find it relaxing to imagine myself as more depressed than I am and sometimes thinking about suicide can actually make me feel better if I am feeling really bad, even though I dont reach the stage of actually wanting to do that.

But I dont think its possible to think oneself out of this state. If I am really depressed then positive thinking is not only unhelpful but seems ridiculous. Sometimes it is so bad that only external things can change it, like antidepressants which can break the cycle of negative thinking by changing brain chemicals

My best friend once called me a misery junkie. That made me think.
For years I lived in a very stressful situation, constant bad crap going on. But it makes you feel something, and when it's gone it's like you can't really feel anymore.

Life's changed, I've learned to be happy. I like it better.

Oh yes, I have often found I prefer being depressed than being 'nothing'. To feel nothing is worse than anything except extremely severe anguish. Although isnt feeling nothing just another sort of depression?

I get that at times - I don't believe that they really mean anything positive that they say about me.

Sometimes I think that I should be worrying about the things that depress me, and that forces me back into a sad state.

When you have long term depression, sadness becomes part of your identity, like it or not. So anyone criticizing your depression by encouraging happiness seems to be criticizing you. Also, it feels like they are telling you there is nothing actually wrong (there may or may not be).  Sometimes there actually is something wrong, so when people would say, you are just depressed I'd get annoyed because I would think, hey there is a real problem, and you think it's all just in my head.I recently got over a bad cycle of self pity. The problem is that I realised thats what it was and wanted to change it, but couldn't, becuase I was just so isolated the thoughts kepts snowballing, since I had nothing to distract myself from them.

You know, I think that any person with self pity DESERVES to be pitied----but pitied for being in that hole of self pity, not for the thing they feel bad about. Therefore, I want to help those people. Tell those people what I wished someone else had told me when I felt sorry for myself----that there is a way out, how identities and sadness etc. operate.----rather than being judgemental towards them----which only contributes to the victim mentality.

So now I have an advantage in helping people, because I will be able to help those people who need help in such a unique way, those sucked into the slavery of self. So many people look at them and act judgemental-----perhaps rightly-----but that is not the way to help them. They need compassion, just in a different way than you think.


Self pity is harm against someone. But this time the victim and the criminal are the same person. People want to help victims but seldom criminals. But that person commiting crime against themself is also a victim. So he deserves help. But you must lead the victim away from the crime being commited against himself.

Last edited by Juggernaut on 04 Jan 2008, 11:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, I hate when that happens. We NEED occasional distractions, absolutely. That's what life is. We often think that our lives are the things we plan and do, but life is mostly everything else -- both things outside of what we plan, and things that disrupt our plans. If nothing ever, ever disrupted your plans, you'd find misery pretty quickly. Look at wealthy people -- inside, they're as bored as humans can get, because they've achieved just about the maximum personal power they can, or at least care to, and there are no real challenges left, making them and their lives obsolete, so long as their life's goal remains acquisition of power and personal security.

Yeah, it was a pretty startling observation in myself to see I was protecting my depressions sometimes. I think at the heart of it, for me, is, I get in a zone, a zone I know, it's predictable. I was in them, that depressed comfort zone and to move out of it was just down right scary at times. Afraid of what the new would or might bring. There are or were (still are, just less then before) degree's of depression with me. There is one that sets off big alarm bells and I know to get my ass moving to a doc to get a med changed or adjusted or try something else. There are subtle ones too and I don't see those coming, but for the most part I know the signs pretty well before they slam me. I think some people get caught up in this comfort zone of pity and I feel bad when they come around, but I won't support their habit, it isn't healthy for either of us. I'll listen and I'll suggest if asked to, but I won't support the game. I suppose that might come off as being callous, but it isn't my intent, quite the opposite.

There is a music called the Blues, they talk of hard times and troubles and they are pleasing to listen to. I don't listen to the Blues a lot, I have to be in the mood. The great Blues artists don't even need to sing the words, their instruments say them, the notes talk to me. Yeah, the Blues can be nice, but I have to be in the mood. Put a rock beat to the Blues and I'll listen all day and feel really good, funny twist isn't it. But it's the truth, the Blues can feel good.

EXACTLY! That's how I feel... as if no one believes that I am actually feeling badly... which makes it SO much worse.


I agree--compassion is the answer.


You're right. And I think this is probably common with people who have AS.

As someone with AS, a very disheartening thing is to be feeling badly, and then on top of it, having no one in your world to tell, or no one who will believe you. That is hell.

YOU ARE BRILLIANT! Thank you.

having had extended periods of depression... i think mine are more tied to people, specifically relationships... im not sure i'd qualify as borderline-dependant (hell, i only think im AS anyway)... but i identify a lot with it. when im not in a relationship by my own choice... i am a pretty even person (as much as i ever am)... yet when im in a relationship and things start to go wrong beyond what most would consider repairable... i can't seem to extract myself in a healthy way... and even if im technically out of the relationship... i never seem to get out of my funk until i can physically move away and just have this person erased from my life.

I oscillate between beautiful euphoria and unpleasant depression. In transition I have great inertia. If I can come out of a depression without an environmental trigger, this trivializes my mood. My pain was insignificant, unreal, and unjustified. Sustaining the mood therefore validates its existence, and likewise its opportunity cost.

After my little stint in the ward for a bout of Major Depression, I got a therapist who was really able to help me. He described my depression as being a result of tunnel vision, in that the reason I had such bad depression was that I was only looking at the bad things that were going on in front of me which made me depressed which lead me to look more closely at the bad things in a never ending circle.

We also discovered that sleep deprivation was a big contributing factor with my depression, when I get depressed, I don't really sleep as much as I should and the sleep I get is not restful sleep. My RLS would get much worse and I would ache the next day which feed into my depression. My sleep deprivation stemmed from two things, not being able to stop thinking and worrying about stuff and a melatonin imbalance. It also contributed to anxiety and some paranoia.

He helped me learn some relaxation techniques...to go to a happy safe place in my mind and daydream about stuff. I also take melatonin to help with the imbalance, especially in winter.

He also helped me with escaping the tunnel vision of my mind. I learned how to see with more of a wide angle outlook on life. I no longer saw only the bad thing that had happened to me, but the possibilities that were out there that I never saw before because I was depressed.

I still get depressed on occasion, but now my bouts are measured in hours and days, not weeks and months. They are also not as severe.