Current Events > So, anyone going through depression.

(+) Yeah! (+)

This past year has made me think about something.

I'm under the impression that one big cause of depression for a lot of people is not having enough time for themselves.

It's hard to describe. I think if you have a long period of time in which you spend every second of every day feeling like you have something that you have to do, then it's like if your body's natural defense against stress just get slowly depleted over time until you just crash.

If you take a few days off but you spend those days off feeling obligated to do something (like you get scolded by a family members for not doing chores around the house, or you have to go to that appointment with the doctor or this thing or that thing) that's not enough.

You need to have a few days in which your time just belongs completely 100% to yourself and you can just sit back and relax and take the time to plan out carefully what you want to do and just let the pressure cool off little by little.

Last year I was this close to a burnout from work (I was literally working 7 days a week during busy periods), and at some point my girlfriend and I took a week off for vacation.

The vacation literally made things worse for me.

So I take a week off work and then I have to drive for hours to get to the vacation place. Once we're there, every single day I'm under the pressure to "hey, we're on vacation let's take advantage of it!" This meant that we had to go somewhere every day, see the sights. Today the beach, tomorrow the go-kart racing, then golf, then this then that. There was always something to do.

When we got back home I was completely exhausted. Then the next day I had to go to work and everyone expected that I would be 100% rested and ready for an ever bigger workload.

That drove me right into a depression.

And then whenever it was like "phew, it's friday night and I don't have to go to work tomorrow" then it's a family member that needs something. My mom wants me to drive her to church because there's some kind of event. The girlfriend wants to go to that party or whats me to take her shopping.

How can you not end up completely depressed if you don't have any time in which you're the boss?

I told my gf I needed a break, and she didn't understand why I wanted that and broke up with me. Same thing happened at work.

Now I'm in between things and I feel more relaxed and happy than I've been for years. And also I feel like I have a plan.

I think a big problem in life is when you need a break and no one is willing to give it to you and no one is able to understand that you really do need a break. Then you sort of have to force yourself to have that break even if it means destroying friendships and relationships.

Sad, isn't it?
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It is rough.

Though I will say that for me, spending lots of time isolated is kinda where my depression comes from.

I'm not engaged in life enough.
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Ya, there's that too. I think the problem is to find the right balance.

I feel that people are usually either too isolated, or not isolated enough.
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Oh shut up.

We've spent years researching depression, trying to find the source, trying to find the cure, and yet one brief spell and you suddenly know everything about it?

Get a fucking grip.
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Also I think that the more introverted you are, the more you need to have time by yourself to regain your energy, while if you're more extroverted you get that energy from other people. I guess people's brains are wired differently
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DK9292 posted...

Oh shut up.

We've spent years researching depression, trying to find the source, trying to find the cure, and yet one brief spell and you suddenly know everything about it?

Get a fucking grip.

When did I say I know everything about anything? Re-read my post.
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I can see where you're coming from, TC. Sometimes people have to make their own breaks, even. Just have a day or so where you go, "No."
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I think a bit of it stems from me not getting enough sleep or something. I can never get myself to exercise during school times but last summer I was doing C25K and watching what I ate really well, until my sister ran away and my cousin and his fiance kept staying the night at my house (I'm really introverted and shy so I was uncomfortable going downstairs to exercise while they were around)

I'm really salty about the last bit because they broke off the engagement


I'm hoping I won't have any serious distractions like that this summer but my 21 y/o unmarried sister is five months pregnant and still lives in the house with my parents like me (I'm 16) and I swear to god if the bf starts living here
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joe40001 posted...

It is rough.

Though I will say that for me, spending lots of time isolated is kinda where my depression comes from.

I'm not engaged in life enough.

This. I'm so lonely, sometimes it feels like there's no hope to ever have a friend, a girlfriend, Lise my virginity, or have a family of my own. Then again I'm extremely introverted, and have bad social anxiety, just being near someone else is stressful. I don't think there's any way I can be happy.
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If you have depression you have to do things. My sister is real busy and will text me a question and then disappear, should she just say "take your time answering because I am busy"?
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I'm reading through this right now. It's very interesting:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Demystifying_Depression/The_Stress_System
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Conflict posted...

My source of depression is completely irrelevant to this post

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