How You Can Survive When They're Depressed - (2004-04-06, 10:56 a.m.)


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I haven't heard back from Hubby yet as to whether or not he has made an appointment for counseling. If he doesn't go through with it, I'm going to feel absolutely used and horrible about myself for being so stupid. I love him, why in the world would I not have done what he asked me to?

I am reading a book that Claire recommended to me, and it's one of those things that I wish that I had found a year ago, before my life became the mess that it is right now.

All together now...fuuuuuuuuuck.

It's made me cry, reading it. I can't help it, because it's so incredibly ME and all the things that I've been doing and relating to my "support person" which was Hubby. He is the one closest to me, so he was the one that took all the shit that I was dishing out. But if you would have told me that at the time I would have called you a liar.

Here are some exceprts from the book. I want to repeat them here so that I have them for future reference...

"I believe that I'm not worth much of anything and that I am something of a fraud, just sufficiently clever to keep others from seeing it--that I don't desere love and happiness and success." That was me, so much that I had to read it three or four times and just sat there and sobbed. How could someone else know what was in my head but I never had the words to express? That is the author's description of what it's like to be depressed. I couldn't have said it better myself. It's so good to know that I'm not alone in this, that I'm not crazy or all the other stereotypical things that others think of someone that is depressed.

The five stages of depression fallout (someone who loves a depressive):

Confusion

Self-Doubt

Demoralization

Anger

The Desire to Escape (is Hubby here?)

The following is a description of ME that is so complete. I don't know why I never was told this before!!!

Atypical depressives overeat (with a particular penchant for carbohydrates) and tend to sleep a great deal. Lack of attention gets them down terribly, an any kind of rejection, which they often infer where it doesn't exist, is for them like being ko'd in the boxing ring. Although the downs vastly previal, they can have a good time if, for instance, someone persuades them to go to a party, or shows them sympathetic attention and interest, but then they sink back in to apathy.

So when I felt that I was being ignored by Hubby, it may or may not have been the case, and it was my ILLNESS NOT ME that was making me feel awful and alone all the time. God, I just feel like punching myself in the stomach when I read this...if only I had known then what I know now. I'm crying as I write this, because I was THERE, so blissfully ignorant of my problem that was tearing the most important relationship in my life apart at the seams.

The next excerpt is symptoms that the author's group has come up with that are almost always present in a depressive:

- self absorbed, selfish and unaware or unconcerned about the needs of others, demanding. Check.

-unresponsive, uncommunicative, aloof. Check. Also disasterous as Hubby isn't that great of a communicator either.

-querulous, quarrelsome, contrary; finding fault with everything. Definite check.

-changeable and unpredictable; illogical and unreasonable

-manipulative. Check.

-mean, belitting and critical. One of Hubby's cheif complaints. I'm such a fuck up.

-makes inexplicable and sudden references to separation and divorce. Oh yes. Check. God I wish I could take it back.

Who would have known that a disease could make someone act like this? I can't believe that ...still having a hard time believing it. But if the shoe fits, unfortunately I have no choice but to admit it to myself and own up to what I did. Why, why didn't I know this before???

And the very hardest one, the most painful one of all, is on page 61.

Love has been the salvation of many depressives. While those with the illness are abysmally poor givers of love, and are adept at killing it in those who offer it to them they respond to it's presence and are acutely aware of it's absence.

Yeah, I think I killed it. In summation of more reading further on into the book, it suggests that depressives are hardest on those that they love the most and end up driving them away if they are not able to find a doctor that will give them the right medication and combination of talk therapy. I finally have that now, but I think it's to late.

It doesn't help that it seems that there is a lot that my parents want to tell him, but I don't know that they will until it's to late for me. I have little hope right now, but I think that Mom knows some things that she's not telling me, and that's fine. The converstations between her and Hubby have always been confidential, but right now I have to admit...well, they're not my feelings to be sharing, and I know the one person that probably reads here (Hi Denise), I'll just tell her next time we talk.

One solution that Anne Sheffield discusses for coping with a depressive is the ability to separate the disease (the IT) from the person that has the disease. It's hard for me to grasp, but just like my Dad who is diabetic, I have a disease too. Only it's affected the way that I act and think rather than my blood sugar.

I just wish that I could make Hubby understand that it wasn't ME that was doing these things. It was my disease. It's typical of people that have my specific type of depression to go into a downward spiral until they have jepordized the person they care about the most.

I can't believe that I didn't find this book before. I could have saved my relationship with Hubby and saved so many hurt feelings. Including my own.

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