Do I Choose To Be Unhappy?

My T asked me today if I am swimming in my unhappiness or if I'm trying to get out? I don't really know, I just know I feel depressed. My T seems to think I choose to be this way, to be depressed and unhappy, that I can't look for happiness and keep it, I throw it out the door because I know it will not last. But why would I choose to be unhappy and depressed? I don't think I'm knowingly choosing it, but now if feel terrible because my T thinks I choose unhappy when I always have happy to chose from.

I would be so mad if I was asked that. Actually I had a counselor who claimed depression is always a choice. I should have walked out but I was so hurt I forgot I could do that.

Here is how I see it. Depression hurts you to the core. It is like mental pain. It is like someone is driving a nail into your mind. If someone came in after a work accident with a real nail through their arm, NO ONE would ask if they want it left there and if screaming in pain is the way they want life.

The problem with depression is not not wanting out, it is not knowing how. When someone is depressed, their thinking is often impaired so they simply cannot come up with solutions. Also when they are in a low state, they might also believe they will never get out, because the feelings tell them so.

A good therapist should address this. Reassure that you CAN get better and also GIVE you a way of getting better. If they cannot give you the tools, they are useless. That is their dang job!!!

Sometimes people who have had depression a long time can be unwilling to get better because they have forgotten how feeling good feels. So they think feeling better is feeling the way they do now, but also having more responsibility. They cannot remember when they did things with ease. Then it might be harder to want to be well, because they perceive being well as harder as being sick, when the opposite is true.

And also, some people think that being free of depression with deprive them of spiritual depth, they think they will be boring and shallow. Which is not the case. Met people who have been depressed and they didn't turn into mindless zombies. But I understand the fear.

But overall, MOST people WANT not be depressed, just like most people don't want to walk around with physical pain. Your therapist should not passively look at you "swimming". Say this was a real lake. And she saw you swimming around getting more and more tired. A normal reaction would be that you couldn't find land and jump in to save you. You don't stand on the shore wondering if the person tries to find land or not....

jimi is right on.
and it is not "like" mental pain, it IS mental/emotional pain.
i like the comparison to watching someone about to drown, it is very appropriate.

Hi Gencat,
I have a problem with the way your doc (and many others) think. Mostly Lacaanian psychoanalysts insist on this concept of "enjoyment" in suffering: you choose not to change situations that keep you in suffering because you have enjoyment when suffering and showing others you are suffering. They rush to conclude this. I find this simplistic and very fare away from the experience of real people. Psychoanalysts are used to interpreting our behaviors, but their theoretical framework has many holes, in my opinion

Maybe not... but does unhappiness breed unhappiness?

Well said, jimi.

So what if unhappiness *does* breed unhappiness? Would that make it more of a "choice"?

I would very likely have fired a therapist for asking such a question. How utterly inelegant a way to attempt a therapeutic intervention!

I've been in therapy for twenty years and counting, and have just begun to kind of see the possibility of a life without therapy at some point. There have been times when I was utterly paralyzed with depression. I spent a year and a half in bed once. Late last year I was in depression hell again.

It was entirely appropriate for my therapist to work with me to explore my thinking, and it was like pulling chickens' teeth for him, I am sure. All I could see was the PAIN. Depression is PAIN for me, physical and mental both. I needed a new psychiatrist and some medication tweaks. Voila, depression all but vanished once again. Thank God for better living through chemistry.

There are pretty much always things we can do to feel a bit better, even in the depths of a depression episode. For a lot of us, though, doing such feel-better things is like taking a pain medication for a problem that needs surgery to fix. It's not real pain relief, and it's certainly not a real treatment, to do such things. For me the fix is medication plus therapy plus a hell of a lot of self management work. But when all the pieces are in place, my life works.

One last thought, just popped into my head: Does "swimming in your pain" mean getting benefit from it? Dwelling in it? Or might it possibly mean that you are getting THROUGH it? Ambulating through it, so to speak? There is such a thing as swimming to get somewhere, as opposed to splashing happily around in a pool. Think of a Navy SEAL and the kind of swimming they have to do....super skilled, super endurance, able to engage in combat, able to save lives.

Maybe that might give you a snappy comeback for your therapist?

Hello, GenCat!
Some thoughts; feel free to discard if not useful: Numerous self-help books are built on the idea that anyone can choose happiness provided they 1) buy the book and 2) change their thinking. If I subscribed to that idea, why then would I resort to a therapist holding those same ideas who costs much more than the books?

If any part of depression involves an unconscious choice, then I would expect my therapist to help me discover the mechanisms of that unconscious choice and dismantle them. If the therapist cannot help me do that or won't help me because that idea is not part of their construct of depression, then I need a different therapist.

Your T is a nob, nobody wants to be unhappy in life, one way to feel better sack the shrink.

When she said "are you just swimming in it?" She meant it as if I want to stay without getting helped or helping myself... I assume she asked me so I would think about it. I know I don't want to be depressed but I sure as hell don't know a way out, hints why I'm in therapy, and I sure as hell hope I am not choosing to stay this way. Why would I? other than it is familiar to me and easier but I want to change, and I want to not be depressed!

Um, sorry, but sometimes happiness is not a choice. Granted there are people out there who get some benefit from wallowing in their misery but hopefully your T is skilled enough to spot the difference between a person who can't find their way out of depression vs. a person who is choosing to wallow because it does something for them.

The saying "You can choose to be happy" or any variation of it makes me want to scream.

I think I know what she is asking. It is that are you actively taking steps to better your depression or that you have just come to accept it and let it be part of your everyday life. I don't think anyone chooses to have depression. It is a mental illness. Saying you choose to be depressed is like saying a person with schizophrenia chooses to hear voices that aren't there.

However people do sometimes stick with what they know and not really realize how it is affecting them. I think back to last year and I was taking on way too much. 5 classes, full time job, trying to keep my spouse happy. I had goals I wanted to accomplish, but at the same time all of the overworking and stress was taking an emmotional toll on me. It got to a point where I felt like a zombie. I would sort of cycle between feeling depressed and feeling nothing.

I think there are some other examples like a spouse staying with an abusive partner because abuse is all they know. It just feels normal to them. Not that it is good or anything like that, but a person in that situation would be very depressed, but not really doing anything to solve their main issues for one reason or another.

The hard part is figuring out what those problems are. What makes you feel sad if anything. I think anyone at a given time has a list of things they don't like, or problems. Some of those may be the ones making you feel thatt way. Then for some people there doesn't have to be a cause or even a good excuse. Be it the theory of a chemical imbalance or a genetic suceptibilty to feeling depressed. Could also be diet, not recieving proper nutrients, sleep depravation, stress, past tramautic events, self esteem, illnesses.

Every moment we have choices. With things like habits, we're not always aware that there are choices. For example, I laugh at a friend because he started a story about having to go downstairs to answer the door one morning for a service worker, "before I had brushed my teeth". Horrors, one knows one can't go downstairs before one has brushed one's teeth! The world will come to an end. So anytime he's telling a story now about phone calls or things happening in the morning, I ask him "before or after you'd brushed your teeth?"

You are depressed. What actions go with that? What would happen if you did something else instead for one or more of those actions? What if you said to yourself, "I am going to choose to be happy!" and then thought about what would make you the happiest in the moment, what to try instead of automatically saying something like, "What's the use?" or, "It probably won't work". If you are not happy being unhappy, you have to do something else because acting unhappy isn't making you happy?

A lot of good answers here I think. I know I didnt choose many of the things in my life that led to depression. I know I didnt understand what the heck was happening to me or why I wasnt the same person I was before depression. I know Ive wanted out of depression every living minute Ive had to endure it.

I know there are a million little ways I defeat myself. Just resolving one or two of those ways wouldnt end my depression. I found out there were some choices I could make to change my overall outlook about life but that took many years to unravel and Im still depressed about things I have no control over. I dont choose the depression I feel now, I believe it is a normal response to some valid crappy situations. Ive done all I can mostly about my own situation but there are still situations Im made to wake to each day that are depressing and I have no control over them.

So, to a degree, for me, what I feel as depression is somewhat controllable but not completely. Sure, I could pretend to be happy but Ive always preferred self honesty to self deception. Just because I can smile now doesnt mean Im not sad about some things and I think that is whats considered normal sadness even though it hurts like hell at times.

I can NOT speak for the OP, but when I was at my sickest I couldn't reason well enough to understand the concept of choice, heck I couldn't even understand how to pay my bills. Also there were a bunch I couldn't do because it was too mentally or physically challenging. My whole system was exhausted. I couldn't just go do things. When I really needed a boost I stood in the ice cold shower for my body to work up some adrenaline then I could use that for like an hour then I was back into severe fatigue.

Depression isn't the same for everyone but there are few that are cured by thinking happy thoughts.

I must not be one of those few, because I cant see happiness anymore, because things in my life changed me and made me a different person, a person who knows happiness will never last and so I fought for it, but I lost and now I cant find the strength to find happiness again.

I don't know about anybody else, but I think the most condescending thing anyone can say to a depressed person is "just choose happiness"... if it were that easy to do, then no one would be depressed. I think, as jimi said, the concept of choice is lost when you are down. I can't even find my way out of a paper bag when I'm really depressed, forget about finding a way out of the depression...
I'm sorry your t made you feel like you are mired in it by your own fault. I think a lot of times they don't necessarily mean it that way, but it comes off that way. My T is constantly trying to get me to see the choices, and how I can change things by making different choices... I keep getting frustrated with him... but that's my own baggage from long ago... ((hugs))

Every now and again, I will become aware that I feel very happy -- very free of the everyday sadness -- very free of the weight of depression. And when these glimpses of "happy", come to me, I feel so much better, and I love that feeling -- I have experienced it -- I have savored it -- I want it more than anything else to stay -- it does not feel unnatural - it is a comfortable and content feeling -- but it leaves as quickly as it comes, and the sadness is back. Last Tuesday night, I was able to ask DocJohn about this, and he suggested it could like a mood disorder, and, to perhaps keep a journal of when this happens.

So, if someone asked me, if I am choosing to be unhappy, I would say no, for I have had little glimmers of "happy" now and again -- it comes and goes, on its own -- nothing in my day is different -- nothing has caused it to appear or disappear -- it just does -- out of my control-- it comes -- it leaves

Oh, how I wish I could experience these glimmers of happy, more often and for a longer period of time. I have experienced being happy, I know my brain is capable of accomplishing being happy, but it will not stay.

I do not feel I am choosing to be unhappy, and right now, and for most of my life, I have been working so hard to accomplish just the opposite

So, I say to my brain, "please find a way to make these "glimmers of happy", stick around". I would be so grateful -- I would be so happy!

GenCat, I hope you will find something again. I don't necessarily think one needs to be happy happy, but I hope you can be depression free. Treatment needs to be tailor made for the patient, see what is a problem and what is not and how to take small steps towards it and actually have someone seeing the small steps. Something in me feels bad when someone who is already suffering has a treatment provider making them feel worse not better.

This isn't going to go over well but I see his point. I'm not saying it definitely applies to you or to everyone who is unhappy. I know that I seem to do it at times... choose to be unhappy or depressed. It takes me off the hook for doing something I don't want to do or facing something I don't want to face. It isn't the major part of my depression but it's a part of it. I think there can be other reasons for choosing as well.
Maybe one thinks they don't deserve to be happy. I've been guilty of that too.
Maybe there is some twisted comfort or safety in being depressed.
I see so many women who were abused as children. They grow up and are attracted to abusers or choose relationships with abusers. Because it's what they know... what they feel comfortable with.
I don't think this generally applies to situational or clinical depression. I think it has it's own special little niche.

I would be upset if someone tell me happy or not can be chosen.
Because that's the case, then there would be NO DEPRESSION int he world,
and I wouldn't be stuck and drain into emotion.

This is a reason I don't like therapist or shrinks, they can destroy a person in seconds. You may have waited months to see this man or woman and when you do they may be having a bad day just when you need a lift the most , I remember a woman in this position , she sat down and the shrink said wow// you look better today see you in six months, when really she was at a crisis. They can lift you of course or nobody would see them . But if you have been waiting months to be shot down in 10 seconds it will and does destroys you.

TYPO: Because IF that's the case.....

I know T hasn't destroyed me, because I sure as hell will ask her next session, and then go from there. Worse case is she does think I choose to be unhappy. I know I don't and I will tell her I disagree, I don't feel that way. Best case scenario is that she didn't mean it like I took it, and will clarify for me. I admit I was and still am confused and mad at her, but I want to get the bottom of the remark and move on either way.

I'm always a bit shocked when people use their illness to get things. I have never done that. All I want is getting better health, that would be a much better reward than having to do something boring or unpleasant.