Accepting I wont ever "recover".

I am currently off medication. Which has made it evident to me that I worked far too hard over the last years to create false positivity for myself rather than creating proper safety plans, how to manage my depression properly, etc.

I wont ever recover.

I think, after suffering with major depressive disorder for 18 years (nearly my whole life, I am 23), I am able to say with agency that I wont ever be "cured" or "recovered". I need to stop filling myself with these ideas that one morning all will be well, and I will forget all the horrors this disease has done to me.

It is not healthy for me to assume there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I am never going to make it to the end of the tunnel. And instead of looking for the end of this metaphorical tunnel, I need to start carrying matches with me and deal with the onset of darkness rather than fooling myself into believing I will reach the light one day.

Focusing on that "one day" has ruined so many years.

I am not going to recover. And I need to start being okay with that if I am ever going to reach a level of functionality.

Ironically, by taking this approach you may help yourself and accomplish much more than if you were to base your decisions on "expected" recovery.

More power to those who can recover. More power to us for whom hope is less useful.

Being Bipolar II, the best I can hope for is few highs along the way, but I have given up on ever being normal. I've just had it too long and the negativity that goes with it. I accept depression to be part of my life forever. There will be a few good days but most are going to be in some depth of depression. Hope is something I gave up a long time ago.

I totally understand you. And it is actually a healthy outlook you achieving. It means you are accepting your disease which is very difficult. I have had to accept that I have a chronic long term disease that is very treatment resistant and I have to learn to manage it and live with it. That is just the reality for some of us. Many people have long term chronic physical diseases and it is not easy for them. Or some one who loses both their legs in the Boston bombing....not easy to accept and learn to live with. What choice do we have though. I guess we could continue to live on false hope just to be slammed over and over.

However our depression or bi polar cannot be cured or fully recovered but it can be treated. I am 50 and have had major depression since the 7th grade and like I said I have very treatment resistant depression. It has gotten much worse in recent years for a number of reasons. There have really only been a couple of times that I totally gave up on trying to treat it. I have been on every med and combo of meds. Most of the time they haven't worked or quit working or I dunno, I have a long complicate life story and my depression is complicated and I don't want to tell the whole story here.

Most recently was a year and a half ago. I was in the longest worst darkest depression I had ever had. I had given up all hope that anything could ever be done. I thought about suicide every day.

But here I sit today two months after starting new meds that I have never been on before and I am fully out of depression. The meds are working better then anything I have ever tried everything including all the therapies and everything else beside meds. I don't know how long it will last and there is no sense thinking about that.

We have been arguing in the med section over what level of treatment and recovery is acceptable to you. On a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being 100% happy all the time. What number would you accept for your overall life and be happy with that. SR said in Britain they try to get you to an overall 7 and be happy with that. I would be thrilled with a 7. Hell I would be thrilled with a 5. One girl said she is like a 9 all the time and won't accept anything less. I guess hers has been very successfully treated.

Don't give up on treatment. I would say don't even give up on meds, you have not tried everything out there. You are young and they are learning new things all the time. You don't know what the future holds. Hell maybe in two months you will be getting nasal applied ketamine and it will be a miracle....already happening. Or a new gene test comes out and they design a specific drug for you....no to far off. There are already a couple of gene tests out.

If you don't mind me asking what meds are working so well for you?

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Who me? They are in my sig but.

Switched from abilify to Lamictal - 100 mg, mood stabilizer used for depression now. Lifted my mood a lot but didn't help my other symptoms.

A month later switched from Effexor to Fetzima 40 mg. Huge huge difference. The depression is totally gone and if you have read any of my posts you may know how bad it has been for me.

Klonopin - .5 mg twice a day. Anxiety is totally knew to me in the last five years. I don't know why I never had it before and do now. It was unbearable. I didn't want to go on a benzo but those are the only things that work and I could not handle the anxiety and paranoia. Klonopin has totally knocked it out. Think long and hard and read a lot on benzo's before deciding to go that route for anxiety.

Remeron - It is an AD but in a class by itself. i use it only for sleep and it works great. and since I am taking klonopin anyway one of those doses is at night to help sleep.

I know it is a lot of meds but it is working beautifully for me right now. No telling how long it will last because I cycle in and out of them but it may prevent my next cycle. I am going to ride it out.

Thank you all... for some reason, I thought this was a retraction in accepting my illness (I know, it makes no sense). I feel like to people who aren't mentally ill, that if we say "I'm not going to heal" they will tell us "yes you will! smile!". It's bollocks, honestly. It ruined so much for me.

I am physically disabled + chronically ill, so I see that when I have a bad day physically, people typically understand to their best ability. When I have a bad mental day, people tell me to smile and get over it, etc etc, we've all heard it before.