Quote:
Originally Posted by My Paper Heart
I strongly, strongly, strongly disagree with the idea that depression is self-centered. Depression is a perspective on life. I've equated it -- accurately so, according to doctors and others suffering from it -- with looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, only instead of it being rose-colored the glasses are darkened. Rather than label it with a specific color, since it varies from day to day and from person to person, I refer to it as looking at the world through depression glasses.
I've been dealing with depression for a good 18 years and it was created by the combination of the situations in my life -- I was parentified after my father's death (which in itself set me up for failure); my mother was so focused on my brother that nothing I did was ever good enough to get her attention; and I was suffering with recurring painful migraines, often accompanied by vertigo, that I could only get relief from by sleeping.
The above colored the way I look at life, it changed my perspective on things, but in no which way do I see me being self-centered in any of that. In reality, I'm as far from self-centered as can be. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to put myself first, even to my own detriment. It's very OCPD of me, since I saw it as a rule and no one ever told me the rule no longer applied until it was too ingrained in my personality, but I took on my role as a parentified child and extended it from caring for my brother to caring for others. I didn't even realize it wasn't normal to put others' needs so far before my own until I was in college, when my RA found out about my living situation and forced me to change dorms because my "living situation [was] a hazard to [my] health." (I was caring for a mentally ill roommate by locking up sharp objects, doling out her medication, hiding the alcohol, and following her around when I was told {i.e., lied to} that she was released from being Baker Acted into my care).
So again, I cannot disagree strongly enough with the idea that depression is a self-centered disease.
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I should have clarified that statement. In the depths of depression I felt evil; that I did somethingt horrible to reach this state of darkness. My thoughts were mine alone, not to be shared because I had no explanations for my delusions, hallucinations, etc. Nor my depths of depression.
I should not have said self centered, but, maybe, so absorbed in self in a place that others can’t reach… a withdrawal into self to the exclusion of, well, everyone. Self-absorbed withdrawal? That was my experience. Nothing mattered except the great sorrow, the depths of self-hatred, the overwhelming sadness within. I’ve never been the rose-colored glasses type — always a skeptic. I think that my experience was common with other long-term depressives in the State hospital (3+ years) and I can only say that I was, because of the ‘disease,’ self-absorbed and too introspective, not caring about life or living. But not
selfish. In the dark abyss, I was alone and more involved with the ego/I/self than with any others’ or anything. My 1+ years of mutism demonstrated the depth of my depression and how involved with self, wrapped up in shrouds, greater than any grief I’d experienced previously.
So, I think that I can say that my experience with depression was that I was centered on ego/I/self because I felt it necessary to hide within my self, in the dark, dank hole. But I didn’t stop practicing my innate altruism, I guess, because at almost two years in confinement my shrinks told me that I had been so very kind to others, even when I was not talking.
I can’t give reasons for my depression. I began taking antidepressants in 1986 (or 1985, or 1987 — I don’t recall!) and I’m close to being pharmaceutically resistant (except when I was in hospital and one of the shrinks gave me Nardil… I felt so good; but it was killing me, blood pressure in stroke range) to antidepressants. Because my depression fulfilled the MDD/psychotic/severe criteria yet my ‘episodes’ were persistent and that presented a conundrum: I did not meet the criteria of persistent depressive disorder (DSM5) and the longevity was bundled with my schizoaffective diagnosis.
Does this clarify my position?