Depression: Anhedonia

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Hm, I don't know if this is also anhedonia, but when I'm depressed I feel like having "pain" in my chest who makes me sad and I have no reason to do something and distracts me.

Hard to explain.

There is nothing really that I found (other than medicine and waiting) that works aginst it.

the pain in your chest is your heart laboring under increased levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, which worked great back in the days when we had to run [or chase after and spear en masse] woolly mammoths, but is more akin nowadays to having to make a car move with feet mashed down on both the accelerator and the brakes.

Wow thanks for telling me, I didn't know.

when you get this feeling you might try taking a long walk outdoors, rain or shine [use an umbrella if necessary], this will help flush out the excess cortisol and oxygenate your blood and distract you long enough to where your body can cool down. remember to take a few deep breaths along the way.

It might help to find one experienced with autism. My current therapist is not really familiar with autism, but she is familiar with alexithymia, and so is fairly good at working with me on identifying emotional issues. She's also been working with me in other ways. Not ideal, though.

Thanks!
I'll try that.

I know it's a bit off-topic, but I was wondering if maybe for another issue there is also a biological explenation...
When I have a trauma or when I'm under shock, I can feel a veeeery high pitched pain in nearly every nerve of my body, especially my arms. And when I shrug together, I can feel it much more intense.



I'm pretty much in the same position, but in my area there is not really a shrink who has experience with ASD, just one and he is working in the psychiatry for children and teenagers.
But it is very important to find a shrink who can work with autistic ppl at all, the reason doesn't matter in that case. In my experience only approx. 10% of the shrinks can work with autistic ppl at all. In a lot of other cases even if they try, it sadly doesn't work out. A shrink needs to have the "feeling" for ASD and most of the time they have a least a certain "feeling" (doesn't need to be perfect ) from the beginning for ASD or they don't.

Thankfully most to all social service personal in New Zealand (such as police, doctors and therapists.) are trained to identify and work with ASD, so it shouldn't be too hard to find someone trained to work with Aspie's.

I do not disagree. My attempts to communicate certain issues to my current therapist, my previous therapist, and my case manager often get derailed by attempts on their part to reassure me when I do not need reassurance. I ran into a lot of trouble with my previous therapist because she would interrupt and reassure me when I was trying to work out why certain social situations would go a certain way.



That's good. Depression is a serious condition, and I do understand not wanting to find help for it (I spent a decade and a half not willing to get help for it). But I think that finding ways to mitigate the depression has been one of the better outcomes for me recently. The recurrence of the depression now is frustrating but I know what to do when things get bad.

I can relate. This is one aspect of depression that is really difficult for the outsiders to understand. I don't have any all-encompassing solution. For me there is a fine line to walk. You have to give yourself the right amount externally imposed responsibilities or structure. Too much imposed stress can trigger a complete meltdown and take away my ability to enjoy anything, but too much isolation and too little structure in my life I can easily get burned out on solitary special interests after a while.

I take a drug called provigil which seems to help some, but the effect has worn off lately. Self medicating with lots of caffeine also works for a while and then starts to suck. Sleep and moderate exercise help a little as well but I'm not always intrinsically motivated for those activities. I find them boring.

this is certainly the worst part of depression for me. the only way I have been able to manage it is an extensive combination of many things; meds, therapy, playing mind games with myself to cope with OCD, keeping regular sleep routine, keeping diet healthy, being mindful of sensory overload and dealing with it BEFORE it results in breakdown, keeping active on a daily basis if not strenuously exercising (walking), caffeine.

^^^^^

This is exactly my issue. I actually didn't meltdown, but I managed things enough to alleviate the depression a bit over the weekend, and then spent a good part of Sunday and Monday in shutdown. Now I'm back to depressed but not as depressed.



Yeah, I was self-medicating with Adderall which helped for a bit but then the side effects caused me too much pain to continue. TMJ pain + fibro = I feel flames on the side of my face.

This was posted in the general discussion forum and seems relevant:

http://www.aane.org/asperger_resources/ ... ssion.html

The bit that I thought was fairly insightful was about the need for social contact and to not live inside one's own head. I have some social contacts that have been really helpful this past week, as well as comments in this thread, but then I hit my limit and the depression is still an issue.

Also, this bit stood out to me, and it makes me wonder about how much therapy is helping me compared to what I thought:



MrStewart,

It is a lot to juggle at once, which makes it even more complicated with autism + ADHD + fibro + depression (for me). But it does help.

I find trying to maintain some routine helpful. Atleast an hour of light physical activity early in the morning like walking or yoga. I also practice self-hypnosis or meditating for a while. I so look forward to doing these everyday now because they refresh me. I do still find it tough to finish projects because of ADHD or losing interest halfway but aleast I am getting some things done which I never did when I was extremely depressed. The most important part of doing things for me is not forcing myself to do anything unwillingly.