So depressed.

So I have been off my medications for awhile and just started on them again on Monday because I caught myself starting to cycle. I did not start out at the full strength I was on but instead slowly working my way back up under supervision of my Doc and my wife the psych nurse. Well I have felt a little sick to my stomach on Tuesday not bad and tolerable. Well I attended a Friday church program called Celebrate Recovery that is not just about drugs and alcohol but just about anything in general. Well I started to feel depressed before it was time to go I was going to skip tonight but decided to go cause it is a good group of people to talk about your feelings and good fellowship and I have had problems with isolation. Well it came my turn to talk and I cried in front of these guys now they have known me for a couple of years and they comforted me. I am not afraid to cry but I have only done it in front of my family. I do not feel bad about crying but hell before I started back on my meds I felt pretty happy but I knew or at least I think I was going to cycle again cause my temper was starting to come around again and same with small bouts of paranoia. This suck I am actually crying as I type this and I feel like I am going to cry myself to sleep tonight. I am just glad that I am not feeling suicidal. Thanks for letting me vent.

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Life is full of paradoxes. Manic-depression makes these only more extreme and apparent. It's basically just extreme living. Basically, if you can don't, if you can't try: that's my advice. But trying doesn't necessarily mean trying what you can't do. Try to do something like it but not it, somehow less of it. It sounds like rubbish, but it's just paradoxical, not illogical.

Much of how we respond to depression (or whatever underlies it) is good, too much of it very bad.

Isolating is good, too much of it bad, but if you can't socialise, don't: it'll hurt you more. Then try something else like it: just go to read a book in a park, watching people, for example. Or go to the cinema or go to a lecture somewhere. Or attend church, but don't interact (apart from polite niceties). Anything to release anxiety or excitement: interaction tends to increase anxiety or excitement, just observing some "chaos", interaction between other people or nature or a film, ideally rapidly changing, will lessen anxiety (or excitement).

You don't have to do anything, but you have to try and do something, but not something you "should" do. Try something like it, but easier.

Do the bare minimum, then a bit more and gradually more still.

It's surprisingly easy actually. Another paradox.

Edit:
And I am in the midst of a depression, so I really know that it doesn't feel like it. But if you realise that paradox it resolves: depression lifts. Like waves it can come and go. Makes you feel hopeless, almost like too much effort, but it's better than just severe depression, which makes you more hopeless still.

It's a puzzle, a game, at the very least a nice distraction.

Another:
But, paradoxically, severe depression only can be less severe: it ends quicker.

You can't win, but you can survive.