What helps with "existential" kind of depression (or the upsides)

Yesterday in the chat the topic came what helps with the mental disorders....

For me, of course I have to eat well and get bit of excercise (coming, hopping on the bad side walks of Little Hanoi while carrying shopping bags IS excercise)... but it does not help with intrusive thoughts, my fears, feeling sometimes pressured by how meaningless life seems....

I need spirituality for that and it only helps so so. I still think we all are gonna die in a fire, but I feel somehow more accepting of it.

Which not sure is okay. One should not have pernament end of the world countdown in their head (or believing world already ended and we are just on some bad imprint dreamlike reality).

But maybe I am right and I just need to learn to handle the reality that bad thing might happen.

I don't know. Maybe I cannot be helped in this regard.

I always had this thing of being extremely interconnected with the world. Almost at all times.

And while i can help myself with issues I have control over... the ones that come from this connection... it's just always there. Worldwoe is my reality. Except it's not really trendy or cool these days, so there are so few to share it with.

I've had periods of my life where I could have related heavily.

For me, it turned out to be the case that in general (and pretty much since childhood) I felt like I had no control over very important things. Things like my safety, the safety of loved ones, my body, etc.

But shifting my focus to the world at large was much less personal and much less triggering. It also (in my mind) brought everyone else on earth into the fold with me, I wasn't alone in my lack of control and empowerment, we were all in it together. So not only was it less personal and less triggering, but it was also much less lonely (in that demented, self-soothing sort of way).

When I finally traced it all back in therapy, there turned out to be obvious connections most of the time.

(Possible Triggering Content)

While being sexually abused as a young teenager, I did not focus on it very much. Instead I focused on all of the sex slave trade worldwide, with constant intrusive thoughts about it, as well as all of the violence in general in the world. It constantly filled my mind and filled me with despair. But in truth it was a coping mechanism, because it was less personal and also took me from feeling like an isolated victim to being in a big family of victims across the world.

(End Possible Trigger)

Other times it was much more vague and metaphorical. Fears of my biological father gradually morphed by adulthood into paranoid fears about government conspiracies. We were all going to be rounded up in FEMA camps and executed. My real-life issues even flavored my paranoid psychosis episodes, with themes of all-powerful authority figures hellbent on hurting and controlling us all.

Some (not all, but some) of this went away after I made some progress in therapy.

I believe that for many people, any situations that create feelings of helplessness, doom and no control, can cause such metaphorical intrusive thoughts. Certainly mental illness can cause all three of those feelings on a regular basis, too.

I can relate to you on some level. As a teenager, I was a panthiest; now I'm a christian. The passion and desperation of both of the religions I have followed have been felt by both very intense manias and sometimes very intense despair. The intensity and increase of my bipolar symptoms have pulled me from the shadows of doubt and into the lightness of reality. My beliefs are the way and no one can compromise them when I am either in the depths of a mood or especially when crawling through psychosis. I have known far too many conspiracy theories when psychotic. Sometimes I have even know my deity on an unreasonably personal level and other times I believe I have solved all the world's problems.

I don't have many answers to your question, however. Medication, which I know you strongly oppose for yourself, has sometimes pulled me from this. Mostly though, it is just letting it run it's course. This for me can admittedly take months and months at a time. For me, bouncing my thoughts and beliefs off of someone else while I am still lucid can help stop the succession of madness.

Perhaps read (and contribute to) the existential thread that was recently started. You have some good thoughts here.

The reality is that this world is finite in its ability to sustain life. It is interesting that you imagine all perishing in a fire. Most likely the opposite will happen, because the universe is expanding out, our world we drift further and further away from the sun and lose its heat source.

We reflect the universe and the universe reflects back. While all kinds of things are happening on a large scale, mindfulness brings us back to the immediacy of the moment, which is all we really have.

Since I am doing a holistic healing path I don't have medication to blunt the edges of reality. On the other hand my senses are more sharpened and I can appreciate all the moments I am experiencing.

I don't know if this helps. When I am not grounded in the moment and making meaning out of my life moment to moment I can easily spin out of control mentally and emotionally and feel that the big picture is meaningless.

The only way I know to get back to some peace of mind is to first ground myself solidly in the moment, and to seek out meaningful social interaction. Love is a balm for the aching heart.

I really liked your post, your thoughts, and feelings. You seem like a really sensitive person. I hope you find relief, and that you report your findings back to PC so we might all benefit.

Hmmmm, Copperstar, you are onto something. Somebody once said we throw ourselves into the world affairs so we don't have to deal with our life so much.

Sadly for me, I feel I pulled myself into the outside trouble too much and there is now no way out.

It's just hard to be hopeful on the global scale. You all know that I am very optimistic about myself and individuals. Human strenght can do a lot. Will power and all. But will it get me through if thing go down?

Well, I experimented with herbals and while they uplift my general *mood* they do nothing for the intrusive thoughts. Neither does drinking to forget. I get even more philosophising and dwelling on the dark.

So not sure anything that is prescribed by doctor would be different. And would I really want it? "Oh, there's refugees getting drowned in the sea on their run for freedom, but I am on seroquel now, so I don't care?" or "There's war in Ukraine, but Prozac made me not think of that". Yeah, that sounds more scary (and makes me wonder if all the population is drugged up apathetic, because lately I been canvassing high and low for donations and most people are "meh, not my problem". Which then irritates my feeling of hopelessness and make me wonder if I could make it in a civil war and simmilar scary thoughts).

Maybe I just been born into place too geopolitically crazy and too inteligent, so I realize it (having MA in International relations does not help either).

I just need to focus on now, I guess and just face the future when it comes, instead of thinking too much. Problem is, it's hard to do.

Yeah, I definitelly need to enjoy the now. Because there are lot of things to enjoy. Thanks for this.

It's not hard to feel pretty low if you try to be connected to the world and exercise some level of intelligence. Sometimes the more I learn about the world, the more it looks to me like a live-action version of the Jerry Springer show, only with extra spite and stupidity. However, there's a lot of good in the world too, and that's what I try to remind myself of and be some small part of.

I find about the only thing that resists existential depression is to find something personally meaningful and significant, especially if it involves other people as well, and do more of that.

I'm making a "good people list" as part of my "life book" project.

I think I am doing that and it's a double edged sword. On one hand, I feel I found my place, do something meaningful, that at least I save my soul. But then I wake up in the middle of the night... in panic or deep deep gloom...