[Triggering] For people having recovered from depression

lateralus wrote:...I started realizing that I had no reason to hate myself objectively and it was all inaccurate to think these things.

I can't even imagine that. Everything seems very logical to me. Don't get me wrong, I do try to take myself with a heavy grain of salt, but it really makes sense to me that I'm ... pointless. So is most of life. The whole damn comedy it seems to me. Call it a crisis of faith I suppose. I just don't see the point of it all, especially when any sense of peace/happiness is so very far away. Keep in mind this is me medicated or not. Although I suppose certain medications just zonk me out, but even then if I think about things it always comes back to, "What's the point?" There are certain circumstances that would make life more enjoyable that I don't enjoy right now and I suppose if they were in place it would make more sense to well, enjoy them. As it stands I just don't know why I stick around other than some kind of Darwinian instinct.

It is a very hard thing to change, I just had to keep on suffering until it finally lessened seemingly by itself. I didn't think I would live until now and hoped I wouldn't. In some ways I wish I hadn't, but at least the intense depression I used to have 24/7 is gone, and circumstances have changed enough that at least I don't feel like jumping in front of a train every single day. I also never believed anyone who tried to persuade me I wasn't a bad person or wasn't pathetic and didn't deserve to die. Something I think is a good way of seeing the difference between a depressed person and a happy person is this. If you think about the morons, jerks and idiots in life, you find that a lot or almost all of them are happy, because they just don't care or spend any time whatsoever thinking things like "am I a good person?", "do people value me?", "am I alone?". They just don't care. Whereas the depressed person is almost always a very good person and intelligent, but due to lower self esteem or negative experiences are always wondering precisely these things, "am I good enough?", "why do people even like me?", "am I worth anything?" etc.. I know what you mean about certain circumstances that would make life much more worth living. Just like I am trying to do with my anxiety now, is to ignore these thoughts and to try to ignore the anxiety as if it isn't there or doesn't exist. It feels insane and like the exact opposite thing I should do, but its because the anxiety or depressed thoughts are the very thing we have become used to thinking as normal, so to ignore or avoid thinking them seems so unnatural and wrong. But I find ignoring or trying to ignore these thoughts and actions has helped. It feels and sounds totally wrong to do it, but ultimately we have nothing to lose, so experimenting with it is worth trying. I get really anxious around anything remotely social, so I've been trying to deliberately not to think the usual things like worries before events that would make me anxious, instead just focusing on trying to stay blank or pretend as if there is nothing to worry about. It is hard and feels unnatural at first but it does help. I think this is the general premise behind therapy like CBT too, to experiment and test the thoughts and worries we take for granted, but never truly test.