[Onward2wards]

*** Text wall warning, brevity is not my forte. This should have been the very first post I made on PC. So ... Hi, my name is Onwards, and I am new around here ... better late than never ... ***

I can imagine a life in which I (theoretically) wouldn't be all that depressed (life as I am currently living it, and life as I have often lived it, does not often resemble these circumstances very much!).

I can imagine (using plain common sense logic and observations I've made over the years) the daily thought patterns and habitual behaviors that would (again, theoretically) make creating such a set of circumstances easier (not guaranteed of course, but I'd have a much better chance).

So if I can imagine it, and it seems to make plain common sense ... why in the blue blazes am I not doing it!? Why do I have to keep stopping myself and think it through?

My brain's usual responses to that question: "Well you tried before and it didn't work for you, so therefore you must be an idiot, and other people are just smarter/better/luckier somehow" ... "Yeah, like THAT's gonna happen!" ... "Guess you're just unlucky, sucker ... so doomed!" ... "Maybe the world is actually a lot darker than you really think?" and so forth. A mixed bag of defeatist attitudes, worry, nonexistent self-worth, pessimism, fear, despair, and extremely awkward self-consciousness. The "usual suspects"!

The funny thing is, when I examine these thoughts and feelings, I keep getting a sense of intense deja-vu and start thinking of times wayyyy in my past when things didn't go well and I didn't have as much social support as I would have liked. Basically, those times earlier in your life when some hope appeared dashed or there was an inescapable stressor and the temporarily uncomfortable appeared permanent. It's like my brain now thinks "that's just the way life is I guess ... oh well, sucks to be you. Idiot." and it all gets retriggered extremely easily. I seem to be reliving the darkest days of my past over and over and over again, without flashbacks however, and pasting that fearful, negative, defeatist mentality on everything that happens in the here and now. Attempting to disbelieve in the worries and catastrophizing is like convincing myself that gravity doesn't exist. Yes, it's that challenging.

I know I wasn't always like this. I recall being a happy, well-adjusted, average child (about a million years ago, subjectively). Yes, I remember being slightly shy at times and occasionally being a worrier, so the genetic predisposition may have always been there, but nothing like the level of difficulty I have as an adult. I feel like the "pause" button keeps getting pushed on my mind ... and that's when anxiety and depression symptoms flare up. They never really go away fully, and I'm tired of it. There is something very "Pavlovian" about this. I need to be deprogrammed from the negativity I guess. It rules my daily life. Now I have to live with the logical consequences ... boredom, frustration, loneliness, overwhelm, accidental self-sabotage, social withdrawal, etc. etc.

I feel like I've said this "a million times before to so many people", and nothing really changes. Stupid fears, go away! If I can rationalize and imagine what I need to do in order to be well, how come I have such ridiculous difficulty just doing it?

Signed, a neurotic personality leading a neurotic lifestyle. At least I can laugh about it. Sometimes.

[Rohag]

Roughly when did the "happy, well-adjusted child" become someone who "needs to be deprogrammed from negativity?" Was it sudden or gradual? (Feel free to ignore the questions; I ask similar questions of my own history.)

[Fizzyo]

❤️

[Onward2wards]

Originally Posted by Rohag

Roughly when did the "happy, well-adjusted child" become someone who "needs to be deprogrammed from negativity?" Was it sudden or gradual? (Feel free to ignore the questions; I ask similar questions of my own history.)

Gradual, in bits and pieces. I can see some of my issues with nervousness and shyness going back a long, long way - but obviously awkward, depressive and fatalistic took some time to really kick in. My first bona fide depressive episode was about age 17, and it felt quite different from what I would call "depressed" today, which is now for me more a mix of anxiety, depression and apathy at the same time.