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Comforting depression

17:56 / 20.11.02

I know it sounds like a contradiction. But does anybody else experience this sort of feeling? It's probably not depression it's just a state of temporary enlightenment and a realisation of how good the good things in the world are. I just want to know how important people feel this sort of state of mind is. I apoligise if what im trying to describe isn't terribly clear but i'm not great with words. I personally would like to live my life in this state but doubht thats possible. I think i may be loosing the capacity for this state. Thanks people.

18:30 / 20.11.02

it's just a state of temporary enlightenment and a realisation of how good the good things in the world are

Apart from the temporary bit, your state of mind sounds more like coming out of a very low spell. I was depressed as a teenager and have been very low for spells at other times and the experience you describe of being newly aware again of the good, beautiful and happy things that we ordinarily take for granted fits with my feelings on hitting the gradual up curve out of the Slough of Despond.

It is comforting. Also because my memory of that "enlightenment" has stayed with me for thirty years and, when I've felt low, the knowledge that it will eventually come again has, of itself, been enough to perk me up when in the doldrums.

Unfortunately there are also comforting behaviours which we often indulge in when we feel down, like avoiding people or work or unwelcome obligations, punishing ourselves in some self-flagellatory way, disrupting sleep patterns, blaming other people for all the bad stuff and minimising our own part (or vice versa), spending or drinking or drugging too much, and the rest.

Those are the things I have to be wary of because I've thrust myself into that downward spiral more than a few times and, while it is comforting at first, it just gets harder and harder to break out of the pattern. Hang onto those moments when you describe as "enlightenment" and remember them.

18:48 / 20.11.02

A close cousin of nostalgia, maybe (which, after all, is a kind of pain - algia).

07:45 / 05.01.03

freud says depression is always a matter of unconcious guilt. in a way then you are satisfying the need of that hiden affect. without depression or some other substitute the need goes unsatisfied, so it is satifying, which means also sexual. a libidinal cathexis? also of interest might be that this is an operation of the death drive. a thousand applogies for the theoretical vagueries, unavoidable though they are. reading freud is an occupation i dont deny but if you find the above unsatisfying thats all i can recommend. see freuds introductory lectures, and his essay 'mourning and melancholia'.

15:55 / 07.01.03

Perhaps what you're getting at is melancholy? The sort of pleasurable depression--the kind one drinks a glass of wine to, in front of the fire? The joy in the fragile beauty of the world knowing that it's fragile, and that its very fleeting-ness is what gives it beauty. Like a stained glass window towering over crazy people throwing stones--the window is gorgeous and powerful in a way that the ugly people are not, and its power and beauty is somehow heightened by the fact that one mis-thrown stone and it all comes crashing down?

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold" etc.?

alas.

05:09 / 27.01.03

The psychologist Abraham Maslow called that feeling-good-about-everything, a "Peak Experience."

11:17 / 05.04.03

i definitely feel good when i'm depressed. i draw this to the ego, which is comfortable in familiar situations/emotions, even if the end results are quite negative.

http://www.deoxy.org/egofalse.htm

15:05 / 05.04.03

i definitely feel good when i'm depressed.

Nah, that's not depression then. Good old gothic gloom probably, which can indeed be curiously uplifting.

19:14 / 06.04.03

I find the whole idea very very strange. I can understand getting out of depression to be a good experience (as someone said, realising how good some things are as if it were the first time you saw them).

But then again, i get this kind of feeling when i have flu. You feel like shit, but seem to enjoy it on some level. Though i assume it may be something to so with having a lemsip, being wrapped up in a blanket in front of the TV, with Ricki Lake on. Aaahh...

bliss. Almost.

21:45 / 06.04.03

The strange thing about this feeling is, if I'm coming out of a period of depression and I feel like this for a while(a week maybe) once I stop feeling like it I'm depressed again because I feel like I've lost apprecitation to the world and I'm numb again. I suppose the best way to describe it would be that I feel unhappy because I realise the world is full of bad things and people but, I'm glad to be able to see this and not just think that everything is normal. I'm probably just a depressive but it's still intresting to hear peoples ideas so thanks for all the replies.

lord nuneaton savage

11:44 / 08.04.03

Thats not flu gingerbop, thats a cold. The flu is the one where you can't see Riki Lake 'cos you can't see anything, you can't sleep, every breath is agony and you want to die as a break from the wretched misery. Which is bit like watching Riki Lake anyway really. b-boom.

lord nuneaton savage

11:47 / 08.04.03

Is'nt it a bit like listening to a really sad record and crying and everything but still being overwhelmed by a warm feeling of utter BEAUTY?

16:54 / 08.04.03

Yeah Lord nuneaton it is, but on a much larger scale. When you listen to a piece of music you can stop listening to it and put on Britany Spears or whatever and not be sad(or maybe become sadder). However with this it's the world and it's all there is as far as I know, so I can't stop it and because of this it feels much more intense.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

02:22 / 09.04.03

Depression is the hardest mental illness to treat, IMHO, because the people with it have so much trouble letting go of it. Depression becomes a friend, in that you have no idea what it is like not to be depressed, and being without it can be scary.

I have been told by people from time to time that I may have some depression issues...and I don't want the meds for it because I am scared that without the mild depression, I would become someone I don't know...and maybe don't like.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:46 / 09.04.03

If nobody objects, I'm goign to move that this be sent to the Conversation - people seem primarily to be talking about their own feelings of and reaction to depression, which I think more people could join in on if this were a conversation thread...

21:36 / 09.04.03

"freud says depression is always a matter of unconcious guilt. in a way then you are satisfying the need of that hiden affect. without depression or some other substitute the need goes unsatisfied, so it is satifying, which means also sexual. a libidinal cathexis? also of interest might be that this is an operation of the death drive. a thousand applogies for the theoretical vagueries, unavoidable though they are. reading freud is an occupation i dont deny but if you find the above unsatisfying thats all i can recommend. see freuds introductory lectures, and his essay 'mourning and melancholia'. "

freud's unconscious guilt you speak of arises from the want to do bad things from the id, the libidinal side (divided into two parts: Eros - the sexual drive and Death - the death drive), but the super-ego (the authoritarian side) steps in to make the conscious mind feel bad about their unacted desires. remorse is when you go so far as to actually do something deemed "bad" and hence, feel bad about it. while, i'll say it could be right, i personally think its more abstract than that. i think it's a lack of love, not just on the basic sexual pleasure principle freud describes, but a lack of union. you feel alienated, generally due to a cycle in which you alienate yourself further in the process. when you have a feeling of connection, care, and acceptance of the world around you, i think it's difficult to remain in a depressed state. everyone has thoughts, maybe it's the freudian id, depression is a state of mind, a perspective. by freud's theories, he makes depression seem inescapable, embedded into your sunconscious by society.

but that's just my two cents...

21:53 / 09.04.03

Solitaire Rose: I would disagree; depression, as a clinical entity, is a relatively straightforward illness to treat. Unhappiness, on the other hand, is an enduring element of the human condition and, as such, largely unresponsive to the ministrations of doctors.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

03:27 / 10.04.03

I can see what you are saying, Ganesh, but in all my time working in the mental health field, depressives are the ones most likely not to take their meds, and the ones most likely to quit taking them once they are out of treatment.

I actually think that medicating depression is a good start, but unless there is also talk-therapy and active help in the person's life, they just become dependent upon medication.

But that's just an opinion.

Unhappiness? That's a different animal, and I tend to think that it's good for a person to be unhappy from time to time. Makes the good times seem like that they matter.

07:20 / 10.04.03

Nobody likes taking medication, particularly psychotropic medication. I'd say the prize for Least Likely To Comply goes not to depressives but to anorexics, who generally don't want anything past their lips. Or insightless psychotic individuals who don't believe they're ill and see no reason on this Earth why they should take medication. Or those dependent on alcohol or illicit substances, who (broadly speaking) are notoriously dishonest about what they are and aren't taking.

Then there're all those conditions for which no 'medication' exists.

We've discussed the treatments for depression - pharmacological and otherwise - many times here, Rose, and we could do so again if you like. My point, however, is that depression is not, from a psychiatrist's viewpoint, the hardest illness to treat - because a) there are effective preparations available, and b) insight is usually preserved (ie. the individual is generally able, at least in part, to accept that they are ill and that resolving that illness is a desirable end). I'm not claiming the treatment of depression is easy but compared with the treatment of almost anything else in psychiatry, it's relatively straightforward.

14:32 / 10.04.03

The most straight forward 'cure' for simple depression is drinking [water you fools!!

]. Dehydration leads to minor depression and most folks today are dehydrated (note: it needs to be water and ONLY water - squash, beer, caffiene, juice or whatever are in no way as effective).