[LelouchLamperouge]

I basically feel like the whole day was a waste and I spent all this time and energy for nothing. I'm always told one of the things to help with our mental illnesses is to keep ourselves busy, etc but this often happens to me where I try to do something but it just ends up making me depressed because I either take way too long to do it, make a mistake, or fail at doing it/having to redo it all over. I spent the whole day today trying to fix my brother's dog and my dog's kennel with some wiring. I put a lot of effort and time into it but my dog just ends up managing to mess it up again to get through it after like 30 minutes. She is really smart too... I think I spent like around 6 hours doing this. What a failure. After that, I start spraying flea spray around our yard and house. I think I spent like 2-3 hours doing this. When I finished, I realized that I think the flea spray I was using is probably broken because it looks like it's only spraying water and the flea yard spray bottle still feels like it didn't get used much if at all. (it's a container with a sprayer that attaches to the garden hose and mixes/dilutes with water as you spray it. Now I have to respray everything again tomorrow and probably have to think of something to do for the kennel. I'm so tired. I spent all this time and energy today and my body is sore too. It just makes it more depressing because this often happens to me...messing up/redoing something, taking forever to do something compared to someone else. I think it would take someone else probably like 2-3 hours to literally do exactly what I did in 8-9 hours. Same thing goes for when I do assignments and homework...this is just so frustrating. I'm not sure how much ADHD comes into play here...

[Marla500]

You are absolutely not a failure. Here is something that helps me (not sure where I first saw it, it may have been here on this site): Fall down seven times, stand up eight. At the end of the day you know you made a good effort. That's all anyone can expect of themselves.

Hey Lelouch. Yes, keeping ourselves busy serves as a distraction. Which mean that while you are engaged and occupied with other activities, you literally spend less time ruminating about depressive or negative content. The more time we spend on depressive cognitions, the more negative our mood will be, which in turn affect our behavior and how we respond to the environment (most probably in a negative way). Then, the behavior outcomes which is negative again affects cognition, and so we see a vicious circle developing. Eventually, as people become gradually depressed over time, they develop what is referred to as the cognitive triad: negative view of the world, negative view of one's expectations and future, and 3rdly, negative view of the self. Everything that I've explained up till now, can and will occur becomes of what is referred to as a depressogenic schema or dysfunctional beliefs and assumptions that you may have internalized in your earlier years. So these underlying dysfunctional assumptions actually cause you to develop a vulnerability (diatheses) for depressive symptoms. However this can only happen in the presence of a relevant and severe enough stressor or life event. I'm sure this makes sense to you. Take your text or thread for instance, its clear tht dysfunctional assumptions are present. To further understand this please read up on fallacious or faulty information processing. Examples of this is dichatomous thinking, selective abstraction, labeling and mislabeling, magnification and minimization, arbitrary inferences, etc ...i hope I recalled these examples of faulty information processing correctly. Nonetheless, do search the internet more on information processing and possible examples of each, so that you can have a good understanding. All that I have explained is called Aaron Beck's cognitive model of depression. So, correct your underlying dysfunctional assumptions and beliefs, and you don't become prone to depressive affect.

[Fizzyo]

Hey Lelouch,

It's discouraging when we don't live up to our standards. Maybe you want to give yourself some leeway because you can't function at your best when you're very low.

I'm finding my concentration is so poor when I try to sing or play an instrument so I don't read the notes correctly. (This is usually my best therapy). I get frustrated, but I try to praise myself for trying and not worry too much about being up to standard.
Self praise is a helpful tool for me.

When I go shopping for food I forget things, even when they are on my list. However, the fact I went back into the shop after crying and being 'away with the varies' last time I was there is a major achievement, and I can either do without or go back another day.
I try to tell myself I did good to get around the shop, forgetting is just a symptom of my illness which will improve when my depression improves.

I'm not claiming it's easy, but it does help my self esteem to praise myself for the tiny things, even when I think it's a given that I should do it anyway, like a therapist said to me,

Possible trigger:

Self praise, even for just avoiding self harm for 15 minutes.

Praising myself may feel stupid for such a small thing, but it helps me tackle the next 15 minutes.

Our struggles are all different. Best wishes as you wrestle with yours.
I'm not trying to preach, just offer some ideas which I strive to keep to myself.

grouphug: