Thread: i am just sad, all of the time.

Exercise definitely helps. If you can motivate yourself to do it by thinking about how much better you'll feel afterwards, than do it. But don't expect exercise to magically cure your troubles completely.

You definitely sound like you're experiencing depression. In my case, the two sides of the coin are anxiety and depression. Anxiety is the dread and panic fear of what's going to happen to you, and depression is the feeling of irrevocable loss, of mourning over an internal deficiency or a lost future that can never be realized. Anxiety is terror, but depression is contemplative sadness over the void of your life. Loss of energy is a big sign. Another sign for males, if you've experienced it, is getting more easily angry than you would otherwise. Most all of what you said is extremely similar to what I've experienced as the depression face of the coin.

There's things you can do which don't require a shrink, but do require you to stick to them regularly and to get over feeling silly for doing them (it's a common reaction, not that I'd expect you in particular to react this way). One thing to write is a pride and gratitude journal. Seriously think about something you did that day which you're proud of and something that you're thankful for in your life that impacted you that day. It's not a huge step, but if you take doing this seriously and do it everyday, after a while it could make a difference.

Beyond this, you might want to learn about "cognitive distortions," which are ways in which our minds distort reality to make things seem worse than they really are. That can help you start rationally identifying in what ways your perceptions of your life are distorted, and writing down evidence against and for these distorted perceptions can also help.


(God... I've been doing this fuzzy affirmation therapy bullshit for too long.)

Originally Posted by gwahir

okay. does anyone have advice for getting a job -- in the circumstance that getting a job i DON'T like will make everything i'm feeling worse? (or so i'm afraid, anyway)

This is completely off topic, but sort of not, but there's a good chance that after years of being a PhD student I'm getting unceremoniously dismissed without a degree. Years where instead I could have been accumulating work experience.

So scootch over please, make room in your boat for one more.

At this point, things seem so bleak that I'm literally living from minute to minute. The funny thing is that I'm managing to enjoy some of my time doing absolutely unproductive stupid things like watching Zombieland to the end finally. Before whenever I procrastinated like this, there was a constant background thumping of dread. Now that all my fears seem to be unfolding, it's like when I'm dealing with things I'm full of utter and complete terror, humiliation and self-loathing, but when I'm doing something completely dumb and fun I can actually get into it more... or something.

Originally Posted by gwahir

heh, at least that's one fun little side effect, i suppose. still, your situation blows and i hope that an opportunity presents itself without much delay.

Well, I'm back to my old self.

And apparently I might graduate with a PhD after all. I have 6 months to do it.

I don't think I can do it. And if I can't, I don't know what'll happen to me.

how do people go through life in misery? i just don't know. when i was about 15 i had all those deep teenage epiphanies -- like, i don't believe in god, free will is an illusion either by way of physical determinism or quantum randomness, and most importantly that if death is oblivion then it's nothing to be feared. i don't know how long i'll have the stamina to keep on keepin' on when i know inside that checking out is a viable option.

yikes, emo alert

What I don't understand is how people can go through life period. It's hard for me to do the smallest day-to-day things that I just can't comprehend how people who have far more responsibilities and stresses on them than I handle it. I might be able to handle life if I had no responsibilities whatsoever, but then that'd just mean I'd have complete freedom to completely separate myself from reality which would be even worse.

As for "checking out" and death being oblivion, it could just be me, but I can't imagine oblivion, the idea of which I am certain is anathema to most people's imaginations. Yes, I agree that I am 100% a physical being and that death is the end of that physical being's operation. Still I suspect it's beyond most people's imaginations too, if they REALLY try and imagine what's after the that transition from life to (blank). It's one thing to be forced to go through this because of circumstances beyond one's control, but to willingly cross forces me consider what it means to arrive on the other side of this, which is something I cannot do.

Speaking of that transition, I've heard about accounts of the final hallucinations people experience while their bodies begin to shut down, as well as considered imagined fictional accounts of this. The closest I've ever experienced are sorts of half-waking dreams, and the idea that I'd have to cross this final barrier between life and nothing seems utterly exhausting.

The idea of simply not existing just seems so inconceivable that it makes me wonder how many, if any, really in their deepest of hearts want to end their life. I know that there are occasions when this is the case, but I am talking about the more typical situations of the people who attempt to do this. Even when they carefully plan out their attempt to make it as likely to work as possible with the least chance of rescue, they probably are only fooling themselves into thinking they really want to end their lives. It's men that typically plan things out to be as likely to succeed as possible, and I think that it's just the greater shame that men harbor of turning to suicide that makes them commit to it so much more.

That actually felt good to get off my chest, somehow