Fixing a depressed mind pt.1

• 1) Being stuck on young life, and feeling discouraged by the expectations of adulthood:

I felt really depressed about this. I looked at peoples Facebook's, television shows, and how my peers seemed to be during social interactions and it gave me the impression that others were still happy and having fun just like when we were young, while I was becoming depressed and getting down about feeling overwhelmed with new responsibilities. It looked like they were having fun and working harder while I was working harder and having less fun. Not only that, but I wasn’t consistently handling my responsibilities so I felt little success, lots of loneliness, and little satisfaction. Being an adult meant working harder, and allocating resources like time and money to responsibilities rather than fun. It was a slap in the face. I thought it was unfair, and to see people on TV, and on Facebook, and at work still having fun(or so it seemed) made me feel like I was too lazy to, both, work hard and have fun. The truth is that Facebook, TV, and work conversations exaggerate happiness, and glorify only the positive nature someone's lifestyle and personality, so don't defeat yourself because you think you aren’t as happy as a person who is smiling in all of his or her Facebook pictures. People put on a front now more than ever, and you can’t get caught up in what is advertised around you. There is always more going on under the surface. This doesn’t mean that everyone is unhappy and life sucks and we are all fakers trying to keep our public image as shiny as possible. Instead, we are coping with the changes. More than ever, life becomes mind over matter, and to succeed we have to redefine and condition ourselves to do what we must do and be positive about it. This is hard because it is very different than ignoring what we didn’t like in life and doing what made us happy. That was youth and young adulthood, when we had parents to pick up the slack,But this is different, and in this very fundamental way we must go from child to adult. For me, I now feel emotions, think thoughts, and feel urges all day every day that steer me away from improvement. I do my best to resist in favor of doing something productive. The easiest example is cleaning instead of watching television in the morning. If I clean i'm productive and I can watch afterward, but if I watch TV, I won't even have to like the program because I'm avoiding the cleaning. That makes me want to keep watching TV and it makes me see the cleaning as taking me from a pleasurable activity to a painful one. It also doesn't help that what is on TV is usually trashy and suggests that the mind focus on the wrong things. Fact, watching trashy daytime TV doesn't teach you anything that is good for your daily functioning in reality. Because of this, I I constantly remind myself that doing things to improve will be worth it in the long run because It will lead to noticeable positive changes in myself, as well as in the short run because I am not absorbing an unhealthy amount of garbage stimulus that will mislead me into focusing on things in life that are going to have a negative effect on my self-esteem and priorities. When I use the internet, I try to avoid celebrity news, or looking at other peoples Facebook. instead, I study things, like Google maps because I used to have no sense of direction and got lost all the time. Now I know North, South, East, West, and am pleasantly surprised when I can use my mental map, which took me a month to make.I've even begun a little bit of studying the basics of car knowledge. Even though I have no natural interest in cars, I see that my lack of knowledge makes buying one, owning one, and fixing one super scary. If I don't change this, I foresee unpleasant experiences in life. With Bipolar disorder, I'm finally accepting that I have it, and I know that It will make me feel better to continue to learn and problem solve the pitfalls that it has created for me and others. With that said, I think being Bipolar makes it so one has to be careful how he/she interprets emotions and allows them to effect his/her thought process. I have made some really detrimental changes to my life and perception because of Mania and depression. That is why I try to decide what to do based upon what I need to improve on rather than what will keep my attention satisfied and feels good or bad emotionally. It’s difficult because the things that are going to lead to improvement don’t give you instant gratification like activities that are for serving your desire for pleasure in the moment. To bring everything full circle, adulthood REQUIRES more patience, more effort, more self-control, more denial of emotional satisfaction, and more courage. People always say to do what feels right, but that can be very bad advice when you have not spent enough time developing a healthy mind with disciplined emotions. At first I think a person should use the morals you were taught when you were young as a guide rather than what feels right, and try to affirm those morals with your actions and your conscious thoughts, even if your emotions and automatic thoughts are convincing you of the opposite. Don’t be scared that you aren’t being true to yourself when you are doing the best you can to be a responsible adult and it doesn’t feel good. It is more about taking your conscious mental resources and using them to make as many decisions based on logic, morals, and improvement, instead of fear, instant gratification, and past failure. Maybe you are like me, and the part of your mind that pushes for inaction, and acceptance of failure will go to great ends to scare the rest of you into thinking that you are "trying" wrong, and it will lead to further damage. I'm telling you this is total #######4. You might think by doing what I'm suggesting that you will come to ignore your emotions and focus only on the archetypical vision of success which will not fulfill you because it is not you. That's #######4. You’re not going to become an adult robot who is a slave to responsibility. You are going to avoid becoming a slave to pleasure, bad decisions, selfishness, loneliness, anxiety. To me, it does seem like choosing the lesser of two evils sometimes, but believe me when you start to really pay attention to how your emotions work from a disconnected point of view, you realize that feeling good is not the same as feeling happy. You realize that successfully accomplishing things that you have to in spite of the discomfort it creates, in spite the fact that you don’t feel happy while you do it, gives you a great sense of control. Have you ever heard that you are going to have to do a lot of things you don’t want to? It’s true. It’s up to you to focus and use your resources to affect the experience you have and how you feel about it. Naturally, all of us want to give in to our emotions and play along and justify how we are feeling and use negativity to label the activity as the problem rather than our perception. Next time you find yourself in a situation where your emotions are going to lead to action or inaction that is not good for you or your future, Don’t play dumb, don’t lie to yourself, or blame the situation in order to feel better. Instead, use your most valuable asset, your conscious mind, and defy what is emotionally immature in you. Defy it because it is holding you back and killing you softly and slowly, convincing you to wait, ignore, neglect and damage yourself. It takes a lot of time, and there are all sorts of distractions, but I have made great progress with my sleeping habits, exercise habits, work attitude, anxiety, social skills, and most importantly, my patience which has helped me avoid making destructive emotional decisions even when I have to endure negative emotions while at work or otherwise. As far as a relapse is concerned, I respect the implications of it and consciously do things to ensure that it doesn’t happen. It is getting easier to do things and when it isn’t, I’m still doing them because I have Bi-polar, and that means I should put a huge priority on functioning consistently through changing intrinsic conditions. That also means when I’m at work and I’m feeling really good I don’t dive into that feeling and enjoy it to the fullest. I’m Bipolar, doing that has led to some of the worst decisions in my life. Instead I treat all emotions much like weather. I can’t control it, but I know how it affects me. I can do what I have to in order to make it so it doesn’t impede my progress. People often compare happiness to a sunny day, but doesn’t a person get sun burnt if they spend too much time indulging in a sunny day? I want to feel better but not at the expense of being able to feel better tomorrow. So I would say, feel the good and the bad emotions, but be separate from those things, so you can see how they affect your thoughts so that you can continue cultivating positive thoughts in any situation, instead of just when you are feeling good. Being bipolar creates such a different emotional dynamic. I’ve spent a long time lamenting about my damaged emotional spectrum because of the deceptive nature of the thoughts produced in manic states and depressed states. In fact, something that I challenge myself to do often is think about what I have learned from my manic experiences and my depressed experiences. I look for logical fallacies that used the emotional intensity of the depression, and mania to re-enforce values that hurt my self image and ability to develop and grow. Then I slowly challenge them. I think the most important thing is make slow consistent progress because making drastic changes all at once often require one to look forward to how much better things will be when they achieve what they are going for. It can be exhilarating to reach a goal, but maintaining is not as fun as striving because you were gaining something that would make you happy, when you achieve your goal, you are trying not to lose something that may or may not feel worth it as a reality instead of a dream. I know this isn't super uplifting. That is on purpose. I am trying to disenchant recovery because I'm sick of thinking everything will be all duckies and bunnies if I think happy thoughts. I think I should be adapting, evolving, working, and coping. I will be putting up posts similar to this in the near future I hope you all find something you appreciate in it. We are all different though so don't be put off if you disagree with my thoughts or feel discouraged.

I can remember having similar thoughts at some stage. Most genuine happy moments are not put on facebook, because the people involved were in the moment and not thinking that such and such a photograph would look good on facebook. In fact the opposite is true; people put things on facebook when they are bored or unhappy and want some attention. Or, they've just had an important moment, like a wedding, where they were in the spotlight, but it's over so they go back over and over that happy time.

People are not particularly dynamic and productive either. Few people get through the daily grind without something to tide them over, whether it be a TV show, a beer, or a chocolate bar. People waste time, hide and cover up what they should have done but didn't.

I think we can have these ideals, and that's ok to strive for them but don't beat yourself up for not reaching them. When I get manic, I think I'm capable of so much more than average. Over-idealising is a big trigger.

I do think you speak a lot of sense here about what ppl are like in general and what are good and better ways to live our lives. One thing I have learnt from BP is to stop so much with all the expectations. I dont mean totally as it is good to have goals and things you need to achieve but more to cut myself a little slack when I dont do everything that I should. I think it is a balance between aspiring to live well and being kind to yourself when that does not go so well. For sure you are speaking a lot of wisdom about how to live well with BP but be kind to yourself if you can achieve it all. We are all human and therefore fallible. I think it is really good how you are using the internet to learn tho - so many ppl, myself definitely use it far too much to post stuff on FB and look for pictures of cats...

Hugs

Cracked

thanks for the feedback. after reading your responses, I realize I kinda put a good or bad sort of label on things that some people use as a relaxing escape from their grind. I wrote this from my perspective, and one of my things is that I get carried away with wasting time very quickly. I'm sure I will get better at it as time goes on, but right now I'm focusing on avoiding the pitfalls of having fragile will power. The thing I forgot to mention is that I assume taking this mentality into every day for a long time will begin to make things stick. Make my self realize that I've been overdosing on free time, and that working more playing less will lead to me enjoying my free time more rather than feeling like I need as much of it as I can get. I'm not trying to pound the lazy irresponsible side of me into submission, I'm trying to get more self control of myself so that I can take care of responsibilities early, and really enjoy the time I have to relax and to be social, guilt free, and distraction free. As it is, being undisciplined makes me want to have fun while I'm working, and makes me feel like I should be working while I'm having fun. That makes everything seem bittersweet, and it also negatively effects my quality of work, and my social functioning because I'm not giving my whole self to each activity.

Keep going, you will find your way.

Hugs

Cracked