Tag: depression

twistedrunes:

I remember years ago listening to a doctor speak on the radio and something stuck with me ever since. I’m paraphrasing but the gist was this:

When someone who has been sad, distant, not themselves for a while suddenly starts going out of there way to see people, often giving them gifts or possessions don’t assume they got ‘better’. This is the time to really ask them if they are okay; to reach out and not simply accept the answer of ‘fine’ or ‘great’ or ‘never better’. Because for some people the relief of having made the decision to end their life can make them happy, euphoric even. 

He pointed out that often this change in the person is such a relief to their friends and family after having seeing someone they love suffer, they just don’t realise what has caused the change and frankly they don’t want to ‘rock the boat’ because they are just so happy to have the person they love ‘back’. But in reality, the person they love is saying goodbye. 

During the interview, he told the story of a colleague (back when he had a factory job before he became a doctor) who had been depressed for a long time. One day he came in and was really happy, people kept commenting on how good it was that he wasn’t sad and grumpy anymore. He gave people some of his things, took people to lunch. Went home and killed himself. 

He explained that when the police came to talk to people, they told him it was a common story they heard “but they were so much better.” 

So be there for your friends and family. Tell them what they mean to you. Let them talk to you without fear of judgement. LISTEN. Suggest people get help if you think they need it. 

Finally, let me add: The world will not be better off without you in it. You matter. You will be missed. Please don’t harm, hurt or kill yourself. 

nientedal:

mintedpotters:

justavpdthings:

justavpdthings:

I once said to my therapist after a particularly hard week, “I wish I could just fix all of my problems and move on to live a normal life”
And he looked at me and said, “There is no finish line”.

Those words felt like a stab in my heart, but they were words that I desperately needed to hear. There is no finish line to my problems. It’s not possible to get through a certain point in life and have my problems simply disappear. And it’s unhealthy to think that way. Up to that point in my life, that’s what I though recovery was. I thought it was like working your way forward until it seems like your problems never existed in the first place.

The finish line does not exist. Instead, everyone has a capacity for recovery. You may never completely rid yourself of whatever causes you pain, but you will move miles from where you started. Don’t set your expectations too high and create that theoretical finish line in your life, or you will only end up chasing it. Instead, focus on your own capacity for recovery, and be proud of yourself for every step you take.

Just saw Eighth Grade and reblogging the heck out of this bc wow it gets so much better if you just take it one step at a time

Okay but I cant help but hear “there is no finish line” and immediately respond with “then why am i running the race?” What is the point*? Where is the benefit of putting in the effort if its not going to ever end? If i am always going to battle I would rather just give up the fight.

*(Im not saying recovery is bad or whatever ppl wanna reach for, this is my personal view)

That’s the thing, though: it’s not a race. It’s a garden.

No matter what your garden looks like in the beginning, you have to weed it before it can grow into what you want it to be. And when your flowers are planted and growing, you still have to keep up with the weeding. You have to keep up with the weeding even after your flowers are tall. A garden can’t survive on its own. There will always be weeds.

But there will be flowers, too, if you give them space to grow. Give them room, give them time, and keep checking in to make sure the weeds don’t get too tall. You will always have weeds, but you will also have flowers.

And maybe your garden doesn’t look exactly like you imagined it would. Maybe you aren’t sure how to get rid of that one big thistle in the corner. Maybe you’ve got bindweed and nutgrass (which will always, always come back). Either way, you’ve got flowers now, and it’s a nice place to sit and look around, and it looks nicer than it did before, and it’s yours. Keep going with it. If you miss a few days, or months, or years, that’s okay. Pull up the weeds when you’re ready, uncover your old flowers and plant some new ones, and keep going.

Gardening is a process, not a project or a problem that can be solved. The same is true for your mental health. Weeds will grow, but you’ll get better and better at pulling them, and you’ll grow flowers, too.

boopifer:

eevee-nicks:

biglawbear:

eevee-nicks:

biglawbear:

This is so real, honestly I’m just trying to make it to play Kingdom Hearts III

Years ago when my PTSD/depression was really bad I always made sure I had some kind of cookie dough or cookie dough mix in the house. And then if it escalated and I got the impulse to kill myself, I’d start baking cookies instead. And then I couldn’t do it because the cookies were baking. And once the whole process of preparing the dough, preheating the oven, baking the cookies, and letting them cool was over usually at least half and hour had passed and my meds had kicked in and I’d be like “well I guess I have to live now because I have freshly baked delicious cookies.” And then I’d just snack on suicide cookies a little bit at a time for the rest of the week and weirdly enough it helped.

This is brilliant. I need to do this. I love baking so much. It’s one of my favorite hobbies. I should make a fuckton of cookie dough and freeze it. I also need a recipe for perfect freezable “suicide cookies” because that’s just the perfect dark millennial humor that tickles me.

I’m glad you like this idea because I always want to tell people about the concept of “suicide cookies” (or really any kind of physical self harm cookies) but not everyone has my fucked up sense of humor and I worry about offending people by accident.

College me was like this with cupcakes. I’d bake cupcakes. All the cupcakes. I’d have so many cupcakes I’d be giving them away, and it was always lovely to see how happy people were when I have them cupcakes, because something nice came out of some of my darkest moments. 

cornerof5thandvermouth:

c0ffeekitten:

strawberryspoons:

Interviewer: where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Me: I used escapist fantasies as a coping mechanism to get through years of trauma and therefore never learned how to plan for a real life future

Alternatively: I went through periods of depression so frequent and intense that I never considered that I’d actually make it to my 20s so now I’m kinda just making it up as I go

It gets even weirder when you hit 30.