My brother ordered me out of his hospital room.

I like what hvert said. Unless staying in bed or on a couch causes you to neglect your pets or children or some other incapacitated human beings, there really is no “should”. I grew up in a family where being 24/7 busy is an expectation. I perpetually feel guilty if I don’t do something all hours of the day. But if for how many days you need to be in pajamas on a couch, well maybe give yourself a break. It will get back to normal as it always does.

My pdoc (and he was VERY good) used to say to me "I don't care if you don't speak to anyone but I want you to go to a park, a store, a mall, and be around people. You WILL feel better" and he was right. Do it once and then after that try to do it once a week, then a few times a week.

Would it help to visualize others sitting on their couches and being unable to do anything? Depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide. A quote from NIH:

"Depression, the common psychological disorder, affects about 121 million people worldwide. World Health Organization (WHO) states that depression is the leading cause of disability as measured by Years Lived with Disability (YLDs) and the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease."

Sometimes I just give myself that break & enjoy the time doing nothing. I have personally found it doesn't last that long & sometimes after taking that break I need to give myself a kick in the rear to get started again which can take a few days more but then I am back functioning like normal & I actually feel better giving myself the down time I needed

These are all good points. And you might actually talk to someone even if exchange few casual phrases: people in line, barista, cashier, somebody next to you at the table etc

Thank you all for the posts above. I hope everyone had a good Christmas. I'm still not back to normal. I'll have to push myself soon. I did give up trying to fight the urge to stay on the couch most of the day. That's all I did today. I did go to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. I'm glad I did that. I'll try to get out of the house again tomorrow. If I could just get back to feeling normal.

We all wants our Rose to feel better

I do so many things that get me out of the housr but I totally veg between them except dog walking & playing around my farm several times a day. With my camera & explore the little things & funny things I find. I did an exciting play last night & splurged for VIP ticket to meet the actors/actresses before the play. It was called the Christmas Carol Experience & it was a little interactive as the play moved from room to room in one of our town's old historical homes. It was a wonderful exciting experience. I reward myself with fun things like that to enjoy.

Today I'm back on the couch. Yesterday was a better day. I pretty much wasted today. Yesterday I got some housework done, which made my surroundings nicer. That always helps me a lot.

@eskielover - that Christmas play sounds charming. I would love something like that. I need to find out what's going on around me. Where I live has lots of things happening. I have to pay some attention and find things.

When I had a dog, it did get me out of the house a lot. I've thought of getting another dog. I like dogs a lot. They tend to like me too. It's a big responsibility. In 2022, I was hospitalized 3 times. I realized I would have had no one to care for a dog of mine in an emergency like I had with those hospitalizations. I can't afford to hire a house/dog sitter. Boarding dogs is expensive. Even those solutions are very hard on a dog, who doesn't understand what's going on. It's nice to have close family around who can step in. I just don't have that. I heard that, in an emergency, the city animal welfare dept will step in and take a pet and board it, while the owner is in the hospital. I wonder if that's really true.

There are other, less problematic ways to make my life fuller. I just need to do it.

I'm not managing to recover. This has gone on too long. I appreciate all the suggestions that I give myself permission to take it easy. Sometimes that's what you need to do. At this point, me taking it easy on the couch in front of the TV is only bringing me further down in the depressive spiral. My place is such a mess. No dishes washed in days. Seeing the mess around me makes me more depressed. If I got going and made my apartment look nice, I'ld feel better.

All I did today was take a shower. It was hard to get through that. I barely had the strength to do that. I get so short of breath.

I'm not asking for more ideas of healthy things I could be doing. You've all made good suggestions. I'm going to hire someone to help me with straightening up my place. Believe me, I get by on a small income. It's not easy to manipulate my finances, so I can hire help.

Three and a half years ago, after my sig. other passed away, I got very depressed and had a huge mess on my hands. I had to empty out my boyfriend's apartment, which meant piles and piles of stuff from his place brought to my house. I was in a mess. I hired a home cleaner to attack the bathroom and kitchen, which greatly helped, but still there were mountains of stuff to sort through. I decided to hire a professional organizer. The results were amazing. They don't come cheap. In my area, they charge $60 per hour. A professional organizer comes for a 3 hour "session." I find 2 days, with a 3 hr session each day, radically transforms the environment I'm living in. With my environment made orderly, my state of mind greatly improves. I get unstuck.

I have also been thinking about asking my PCP to refer me to psych services. I feel I'm in a slow rolling crisis. I think often about suicide. I'm not in any danger of self-harm tonight, or tomorrow, or next week. But I will find a way out of this state of mind, one way or another. Fortunately, I feel I have things to try first before giving in to despair.

I'm pinning most of my hope on hiring the organizer to whip my apartment into shape. It's a nice, cozy, comfortable place, when things are in order. That might be all I need. At times in the past, I've been helped by getting professional psych help. Maybe I would benefit from that again. Just to have someone recognize what I'm going through.

Everyone has felt depressed at one time or another. That leads people to think they know about serious depression. Chronically recurring depression is not like what most people know about. Clinical depression is not like what most people have experienced. So, please, if you have not ever been diagnosed with clinical depression, please don't judge me. If you have never had to cope with depression, while being totally alone, please don't judge. I believe there are others, here at MSF, who do know what this is like. I'm sure there are members of MSF who've been thru worse, even much worse than what I'm going thru. I don't deserve a pity party. But I do deserve some mental health care.

That brings me to a longstanding problem I've had. I clean up good. I "present" well. At first glance, mental health professionals tend to think there is nothing much wrong with me. I don't get taken seriously. My PCP prescribes my antidepressant. That means she has an obligation and a responsibility to assess how I'm doing. She never, ever asks me how I'm doing with managing my chronically recurring depression. Once a year, an M.A. reads off questions from a depression assessment. She types in my answers, while looking at the computer monitor. The questions come with multiple choice options for answers. It is the most perfunctory approach imaginable. My PCP obviously does not take seriously how much I struggle. I need someone to believe me. Even if they can't do a dang thing to speed up my recovery, it would help me just to be believed.

So I keep thinking that, if I ask for psychiatric help, it will backfire on me. I fear that my PCP might cancel my prescription for Vicodin. Every month I pick up my refill of 60 tablets. That's probably enough to be lethal, if taken all at once. So I'm afraid to speak candidly with my PCP. She's a physician's assistant. She told me in the past that she would not increase my psych med (amitriptyline) by more than a slight amount. She said that any major change could only be made by a psychiatrist.

I would never take an overdose of drugs. That is too unreliable with an unpredictable outcome. A person doing that could wake up - still alive, but with major organ damage. Years ago, I researched methods. There really isn't any ideal way. Even physician-assisted euthanasia can have a horrifying result, with some patients taking 48 hours to succumb to barbituate overdose. (Seconal is what is usually ordered in USA.)
That's why, in Holland, they have mostly switched to using an I/V barbituate, which is the only truly humane way to terminate a human life. As a nurse, I've care for failed suicide victims. Some of the failed attempts produced horrendous outcomes, where the individuals survived, but with severe brain damage. So I'm in no hurry to do something drastic. I know how badly that can go.

I feel there are still things I can do to make life seem more worthwhile. We discussed some of those things above. I don't seem to be making any progress. That's what has me considering asking for a psych referral. Just some contact with someone who understands depression would possibly help me. Often professionals don't understand, especially with someone who comes across as functioning pretty well. I don't seem to be dangerously depressed. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I just feel too sorry for myself.

I think what's driving this, right now, is that I got no phone call over the holidays from my family. One of my sisters texted that she had COVID. My other sister has simply "ghosted" me for the past 2 years. This is very hurtful, and I don't fully understand it. A year ago, I tried to talk with this sister. I got nowhere. So her being so cold to me, on top of my brother being the way he was, leaves me with such a sense of loss. I was a pretty good sister to both of them. People can be awful mean. I need to shift my focus away from them and put it on what human connections I can make here where I live. I thought that sister was my best friend. It was a delusion. I have to wake up from being deluded. If my boyfriend were still here, I wouldn't care so much. But my siblings were all I had left, after he died. They're thousands of miles distant from me. But believing they cared was something to hold onto. I never bothered them or sought for much attention from them. One sister does keep in touch with texts, but doesn't like phone calls. The other sister just offers nothing. On New Year's Day, she sent me a "gif" that was a graphic, saying Happy New Year. No text with it. Just a gif. I take that as her passive-aggressive way of punishing me. I do not deserve that. I need to give up on her.

Is it possible for them to say the same thing that they didn’t get anything from you on Christmas (no phone call or text or card?)

Rose I understand and all I have to offer is to sit with you. I understand major depression too well. Its soul killing. I had similar family issues until both parents passed away and I told my sibling I never wanted to see his face again. It really hurts but now one thing I don't have to face is his constant gas lighting and abuse. Please don't judge yourself., but it wouldn't hurt to get some psych help. I care.

No.

If you think I must have deserved this treatment . . . . . . well . . . . . you can believe that, if you want.

Thank you. I have been judging myself. When depression leads to my place being a mess, I lose respect for myself.

Here's what discourages me: In the past, I've been tried on so many drugs in every category. They were pretty useless. When I've gone to therapists, they typically start off by saying, "So, what can I do for you?" I don't have an answer for that.

What???? Not at all. Where’s this coming from? Why would you deserve bad treatment?

I am just offering a perspective of them possibly saying the same thing? But if you do contact them and they don’t respond or respond in a nasty way, then you have your answer. Maybe you shared before what happens if you contact them on holidays (they don’t respond or get nasty or what not), then I apologize if that was already discussed.

If you're just trying to hold me accountable for what I have or haven't done, this is really not the time or place for that. I'm in very bad shape. I know you're a practical problem solver, so this thread may seem pointless to you.

I suppose I could give you a synopsis of my efforts to keep in contact with my family . . . . but I don't think I will.

Ok. No I don’t think it’s pointless. But I don’t want to be unhelpful or make things worse so I won’t bother you. Best wishes to you.

In Post # 50 above, I explained I'm in a lot of pain, and I asked not to be judged. I've been pretty badly hurt.

Did I deserve to be treated better? I think so. But that's just me saying so. There's an old saying: "Self praise is no praise." What I'm here to say is that I'm having a hard time managing feeling very depressed. If anyone suspects that maybe I'm just getting what I deserve, then please feel free to not waste your empathy on this thread.

Hiring the cleaners sounds like a great plan. You know that having a clean apartment makes you feel better. Maybe that's what you need to get the ball rolling the other way.