I'll share all I know about depression but I'm not a doctor

Recently I've received a comment from anonymous user who suffered from a loss of a loved one and asked for help. I answered but I would like to make it a separate post too for I think this is important. Several people who read my posts also asked me if I'm a doctor or a psychologist. The answer is no I am not.

I am a person who suffered depression for several years. Medical help was and is unavailable where I live so I had to deal with it by myself. I tried several medications which I managed to get without prescription which I do NOT recommend you to do because some meds have side-effects and other may not suit and even harm you. I was aware of this. I did suffer some side-effects. But I did it because we have a disaster of healthcare and we do not have any qualified professionals here who can even make a more or less accurate diagnosis say nothing of suitable treatment.

What is more important is that I did do some self-therapy. My inner voice was my patient and my doctor. I took time to sit and think and prosect my problems and my reactions and my thoughts. I cut my wounds open in order to see what causes the pain and how can I cure it. Now there is still lots of things to do. Some of my problems are solved but some wounds still cause lots and lots of pain and I still have to deal with them too. However I think I already have some experience and I know people may need it and this is why I started this blog - to share what I have learned. May be it'll help someone too.

But still. I am not a therapist. I am not a psychologist. I am a blogger. My posts may get you to the right idea or may make you think about something important, or even show you some way for your own self-help therapy. But if you realize you have a serious problem: you suffered abuse or loss of a loved one or whatever else. Please find some professional help. I do not want to take responsibility on treating you through the internet. Moreover I think it's ridiculous. I can give you an advice or tell you what is my opinion of your state or what I think you shall do. I can and will share all the experience that I have but to heal you I need to see you. To see your physical shape, to see your eyes and gestures when you talk. I need to have knowledge about meds that can be prescribed to some people and cannot to other ones. I would honestly like to help you because I know how it is to suffer depression but I am not the 1st and only person you should approach.

However if you my reader want to talk to me, to consider listening my opinion or knowing about my experience that you think might help you or you want me to listen to you - you may find my email in my profile. I publish it openly and I'm always there. Feel free to write.

Take care!

Personality Disorder Information

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Disorder:	Very High
Schizoid Disorder:	Moderate
Schizotypal Disorder:	Moderate
Antisocial Disorder:	High
Borderline Disorder:	Very High
Histrionic Disorder:	Moderate
Narcissistic Disorder:	Very High
Avoidant Disorder:	Low
Dependent Disorder:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Moderate
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! -- -- Personality Disorders --

An exceptionally good test. Although the results are never precise in any of such test because usually people tend to exaggerate or downgrade certain traits of theirs. Anyway what really drew my attention is the following brief personality disorder Information:

Paranoid
Paranoid personality disorder is characterized by a distrust of others and a constant suspicion that people around you have sinister motives. People with this disorder tend to have excessive trust in their own knowledge and abilities and usually avoid close relationships with others. They search for hidden meanings in everything and read hostile intentions into the actions of others. They are quick to challenge the loyalties of friends and loved ones and often appear cold and distant to others. They usually shift blame to others and tend to carry long grudges.

Schizoid
People with schizoid personality disorder avoid relationships and do not show much emotion. They genuinely prefer to be alone and do not secretly wish for popularity. They tend to seek jobs that require little social contact. Their social skills are often weak and they do not show a need for attention or acceptance. They are perceived as humorless and distant and often are termed "loners."

Schizotypal
Many believe that schizotypal personality disorder represents mild schizophrenia. The disorder is characterized by odd forms of thinking and perceiving, and individuals with this disorder often seek isolation from others. They sometimes believe to have extra sensory ability or that unrelated events relate to them in some important way. They generally engage in eccentric behavior and have difficulty concentrating for long periods of time. Their speech is often over elaborate and difficult to follow.

Antisocial
A common misconception is that antisocial personality disorder refers to people who have poor social skills. The opposite is often the case. Instead, antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a lack of conscience. People with this disorder are prone to criminal behavior, believing that their victims are weak and deserving of being taken advantage of. They tend to lie and steal. Often, they are careless with money and take action without thinking about consequences. They are often agressive and are much more concerned with their own needs than the needs of others.

Borderline
Borderline personality disorder is characterized by mood instability and poor self-image. People with this disorder are prone to constant mood swings and bouts of anger. Often, they will take their anger out on themselves, causing themselves injury. Suicidal threats and actions are not uncommon. They think in very black and white terms and often form intense, conflict-ridden relationships. They are quick to anger when their expectations are not met.

Histrionic
People with histrionic personality disorder are constant attention seekers. They need to be the center of attention all the time, often interrupting others in order to dominate the conversation. They use grandiose language to discribe everyday events and seek constant praise. They may dress provacatively or exaggerate illnesses in order to gain attention. They also tend to exaggerate friendships and relationships, believing that everyone loves them. They are often manipulative.

Narcissistic
Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by self-centeredness. Like histrionic disorder, people with this disorder seek attention and praise. They exaggerate their achievements, expecting others to recongize them as being superior. They tend to be choosy about picking friends, since they believe that not just anyone is worthy of being their friend. They tend to make good first impressions, yet have difficulty maintaining long-lasting relationships. They are generally uninterested in the feelings of others and may take advantage of them.

Avoidant
Avoidant personality disorder is characterized by extreme social anxiety. People with this disorder often feel inadequate, avoid social situations, and seek out jobs with little contact with others. They are fearful of being rejected and worry about embarassing themselves in front of others. They exaggerate the potential difficulties of new situations to rationalize avoiding them. Often, they will create fantasy worlds to substitute for the real one. Unlike schizoid personality disorder, avoidant people yearn for social relations yet feel they are unable to obtain them. They are frequently depressed and have low self-confidence.

Dependent
Dependent personality disorder is characterized by a need to be taken care of. People with this disorder tend to cling to people and fear losing them. They may become suicidal when a break-up is imminent. They tend to let others make important decisions for them and often jump from relationship to relationship. They often remain in abusive relationships. They are overly sensitive to disapproval. They often feel helpless and depressed.

Obsessive-Compulsive
Obsessive-Compulsive personality disorder is similar to obsessive-compulsive anxiety disorder. People with this disorder are overly focused on orderliness and perfection. Their need to do everything "right" often interferes with their productivity. They tend to get caught up in the details and miss the bigger picture. They set unreasonably high standards for themselves and others, and tend to be very critical of others when they do not live up to these high standards. They avoid working in teams, believing others to be too careless or incompetent. They avoid making decisions because they fear making mistakes and are rarely generous with their time or money. They often have difficulty expressing emotion.

Here's the source of this info and I hope you've found it interesting.

Get rid of disturbing thoughts and memories

Today I'd like to tell you about dreams and memories.

Dreaming the future

There is some exciting activity - dreaming. Dreaming of who you want to become, what you want from your work, partner, life. Dreams inspire, they give us hope and make our belief in good things stronger. Yet there is a thing - a villian of dreams and this is delusion.

When I was even younger than I'm now I used to live in future. I spent hours dreaming and planning what my life will be in the next years. I played movies of future events and future dialogues in my head thinking what I'll do in this or that situation. Not actualy thinking - playing the small comedies and tragedies in my mind. And when one day I woke up looked around and saw nothing of what I've dreamt of I was.. disappointed. My daydreams used to be so realistic and so were my plans that I couldn't believe they are not supposed to come true. And moreover what I did to make them come true actualy turned out into a disaster of my whole life. I got angry. Angry at my friends, I blamed everyone for my faults, everyone who I thought deceived me or didn't care enough of me. Finally I got angry at myself. That I was so stupid to believe in obvious lies, that I didn't make enough effords to achieve what I wanted, that I overdid some things.

The solution came shortly after I took pills to end the nightmare I placed myself in. To skip some time I sat to play one of my favorite computer games.. and it turned out to be much more exciting then death! Sounds ludicruous I know. Yet I'm here and I write these things so maybe it wasn't that stupid after all.

The lesson I took at that time was that dreaming is ok. Dreams add some spice into our life so to say. Delusions are another thing. Delusions is when you start living your dreams which leads to disappointement and pain in reality.

Recollecting the past

Sweet sweet memories of good things and wonderful people and important events... it is so nice to recollect them, to scroll the pages of a photoalbum or a scrap book or to watch home videos. Just don't forget that you can add even more impressions into your personal account. Even right now.

The dark side is bad memories.

This month I have finally solved one of the things that used to drive me crazy for almost half a year - internal dialogues, memories from the past that literally haunted me. Many times a day I caught myself playing some bad moments from my past in my mind over and over again. I changed some events, phrases, details making the events go in various scenarious. I told 'people' different things to 'change' the past to make things go in a different way. But I couldn't really change the past. I knew that but voices in my head kept playing nonetheless. I started thinking about something but in the end I found myself dreaming some awful moments from the past. These dreams exhausted me emotionaly and by the end of the day I was tired, annoyed and irritable. And the worst thing I couldn't stop it.

As undersood the fact that I cannot stop it with my will I made the first step which led to Soultion. I spoke to my husband and told him about all the things that disturbed me. I told him about the dialogues in my head and bad memories and felt easirer. Much easier. The dialogues stopped for about a week which was enough to make my mind.

Living here and now

You see the thoughts about both future and the past are just the different sides of the same coin. These are attempts to escape reality. Unfortunately they change nothing. The cure - 4 steps.

1. First of all speak your problems out. No matter if you share them with your best friend or a complete stranger. Find courage to accept the fact that you have a problem. Telling someone about it is not about complaining it is about telling yourself that you know your problem and not afraid to speak about it and relief your mind from being the only one who knows it.

2. Every time you catch yourself being overwhelmed with disturbing thoughts - don't stop it. Continue thinking about what you thought or dreamed about to the ending. This is again to show yourself that you're not afraid of such thoughts, that you don't run away from them.

3. Take some time to analyze the disturbing thoughts. They don't come from nowhere. Ask yourself why do you want to think about it again and again? Is there something left unsolved? Is there anything you can do about the situation that haunts you? And if so - do it! If there is nothing you can do now but could do when the event took place and you feel guilty about it - don't. Live here and now.

4. Actually tell yourself this phrase every time some bad thoughts approach you. Here and now. It helps. "Here and now I go up the street". "Here and now I make cookies". Think about what's going on here and now, what people surround you, what things are there, weather, sounds. You'll be surprised how many things are left unnoticed when you're occupied with some memories of the past. How many wonderful things are around you just now when you're dreaming about future!

Let the sunshine in

Good things come and go while bad ones tend to stick in a memory and sometimes even good things pass by unnoticed. This is why a depressed mind spend sleepless nights recollecting the worst events in one's life. This used to happen to me for a long time and only recently have I understood it (thanks to my husband a lot) and would like to change things into a positive way.

There are 3 things I'll keep doing until I achieve positive results:

1. Pause every time as I notice something good even a small thing and enjoy the moment. Not just pass by. My camera helped me a lot last year although I did not fully understand it. I captured wonderful treasures of nature and enjoyed every bit of them. I still recollect last spring and summer with a smile because these are memories of the best moments in my life.

2. Create good things for myself. There are so many pleasures in life: good meal, long bubble bath, nice books, colorful pictures, interesting movies. Self-indulgence is great if you add sense to it.

3. Find positive moments even in bad events. This one is the hardes one for me. See when depressed I usually become a paranoid downer who finds bad sides in almost any event. If something good happens sooner or later I'll have a thought that it'll finish soon and the next is obviously something drastic. Being very touchy I would react to a tiniest bad event as if it is a drama of my whole life. But since this time I will do my best to evaluate every event and make my mind clear.

I will let the sunshine in so it could warm me up these days and advice you to do the same. Here is a song which title I took for this post. Take care!

When you paint it black

"I was weak. That's why I needed you... needed someone to punish me for my sins... but that's all over now... I know the truth. Now it's time to end this. "

- James Sunderland, Silent Hill 2

In my When your colors fade to gray post I wrote tips on what to do when you want to do smth but too tired to do anything. Here is some piece of advice on what to do when you don't want to do anything at all.

So. You sit in your corner and all you want is to be left along. You don't want to do anything creative, you don't want to skip time reading or watching tv or playing some video game. Nothing is interesting. Everything is dull and unimportant. And you hate this state.

And you love it at the same time. No worries though. Let us start and you'll love a sense of relief too, I promise.

The best way to get over this numb state is to get yourself busy. This of course contradicts your very mood, yet ask yourself if you want to make things better or what? If your wish is to become happier and more creative, then you need to force yourself but only in the beginning.

1. Make a list of long-term projects and place it on your desk so that you can see it. This doesn't mean making a list of things you want to do right now (besides right now you seem to want to do nothing). Switch your emotions off and write the cool things that you dream to do one day: a story or a book to write, a site to create, a painting to draw, a set of flowers to bloom in your garden, some jewelry to make, some new pie to bake (or create a set of your own recipes maybe?), remake your house interior, write some cool program or create a new design model.

2. Divide each project into small pieces. Big projects always look almost impossible until you realize that they can be divided into several small and sweet steps. As you think about some big project chances are it overwhelms you and you put it on a shelf of cool-things-never-to-be-done, which you call a to-do-later stuff. Besides a set of small steps to perform will also keep your mind occupied for a long period of time and thus distract from sad thoughts which is the main goal.

3. Choose 1 project and start with the first step. You may need to force yourself into doing this step. Do it. Even if you don't feel like starting. Start with something.

When I created this blog I copypasted info from other sources which is [info] no doubt interesting and useful. Then I burned out. It wasn't my work that I pasted here so I considered blogging as a mechanical rather then creative activity. I abandoned it for several months. I complained that I couldn't write and did no attempt to actually start writing. I blamed other people, said surrounding conditions discourage me from doing anything. Finally I forced myself into the first step: write down any ideas or experiences to my notepad. Now this blog is based on those notes.

4. Keep away from perfectionism. Trying to make a masterpiece from the first sketch means to burn out soon and for long. Don't try to make a clean copy at once, rather make several drafts. Also don't consider drafts as failures. Only cartoon characters make millions copywrites to tear them to pieces one by one. You instead learn and improve with repetition. Thus it is good to keep a track of your attempts.

5. Be honest to yourself and stop creating extra demons. The problem is in your mind only. Be brave, stop running away from distractions. Be a master of your own universe. Correct your own mistakes instead of cancelling newborn projects just becuse you think they started in a wrong way. Take control ower your life and soon you'll succeed.

In the beginning of this post. James Sunderland - a protagonist from Silent Hill 2 video game saw a pyramid-headed monster spoil his life through the game. In the end, however, he understands that the monster is just a visualization of his own wish of self-torture. He makes a decision [a quote] and starts attaking pyramid head. He does not kill it - because it is not real. Instead the monster kills itself, which means James understood that there is no need to blame external powers and he is the one who controls his life and can improve it. His fear gone.

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A personal note here. Right now I experience a bad period of my life. I don't know what to do about sertain things. My emotions tend to play tricks on me and I don't always control them. Yet I won't give up. I know this. I have lots of projects in my mind and I will bring them into play one by one.