I Feel Depresssed

If this is an emergency, Print Out This Help Sheet and call for help.

Are you feeling sad, lonely and depressed? Do you feel like a total failure? Does it seem like nothing in your life works? Do you feel unloved? Unneeded? Unwanted? Do you feel like you are so far gone that there is no redemption in your life? Are you currently suicidal or have suicidal thoughts? If so, you are not alone.

At some point in life, everyone suffers those feelings and negative thoughts. Most people are able to rise above them and return to a better frame of mind if given enough time. Then there are a fraction of the population dealing with various forms of an illness that include long term bouts of depression or sudden intense depression as well as low self-esteem. Most of this group are suffering from some form of a mental illness or personality disorder. It is a medical condition just as much as having cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. Many can be helped with medication and therapy.

If you are suffering from the milder form of depression that can last a few days, there are things you can do to try and get back to feeling better.

• Avoid alcohol and drugs
• Exercise
• Try and get some extra sleep
• Meditate
• Listen to soothing music
• Read a book
• Take a warm bath
• Pamper yourself
• Go someplace completely different
• Try doing something you have never done before
• Stop worrying over things you are not in a position to do anything about
• Actively work at doing things to solve your problems instead of complaining about them
• If you can't work out a problem by yourself, ask for help

However, there is a percentage of the population that suffer from a medical condition which pre-disposes themselves to these feelings on a long term basis - depression, bipolar disorder, a warped sense of their body image in the form of any variety of eating disorders or self injury, addiction, risky behavior and other problems associated with low self esteem.

Harming oneself physically may even make some people feel good temporarily. Sometimes it is easier to deal with physical pain than emotional. But this is only a temporary solution for dealing with the problems behind the feeling. To be quite honest, I do it myself.

The same can be said for those who abuse drugs and alcohol. It can help you escape the pain of daily life only temporary, but it causes a dependency which will end up feeling worse than the feelings you are hiding with drugs or alcohol.

By avoiding the feelings of pain, you create a hard wall that must be knocked down at some point in your life. The more you build up on this wall of resistance, the harder it is to tear down when you really need help. But it can be done if you want it.

You might be really depressed and thinking, "What do you know about how I feel? Why should I listen to you?"

I have been there in the bowels of darkness on many occasions. I understand what it is to feel like when it seems there is no hope. I can only write something like this when I am in my right mind and can assure you that although you feel really bad right now, it will not always be that way if you stick around. I suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and self-injury. I also suffer chronic pain of FMS; there is not a day when I am pain-free. There are some days when I think the only way out is to end it all and it takes a lot to just make it through the next day.

I also know of someone who did commit suicide. He attempted it once by jumping in front of a train. It made him cripple in a wheelchair in more pain than you can imagine. It took a few years, but he eventually did it again and ended his life.

I also know when you are in that frame of mind, you are not rational. You cannot see a ray of hope because you are in a funk of darkness and despair. It feels like it will never go away and you just want it to stop NOW!!!

If you are depressed and fed up with life, you have three options:

1. - You could commit suicide. This is a permanent solution for feeling the pain you are in, but not a guarantee. Suppose you attempt it and survive. You still have to deal with the pain, most likely in a psychiatric hospital if you are lucky. Or you could survive maimed and feeling worse. I won't bother scaring you with details about a supposed afterlife and I doubt there is a god that will judge you harshly if you are suffering from a mental illness and it is hard for you to comprehend what a suicide scene will do to those you love, but at least think one thing - almost every problem has a solution and given time it will be handled.

2. - You could do nothing. Just resign yourself to the fact that life sucks and you will one day die. If you continue in this frame of mind, chances are you are contributing to an early death anyway. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life feeling this bad?

3. - Do something. This is probably the most courageous thing you could do for yourself, but it is also a survival instinct inside of you. You just need to be ready to call it into action. If you are suicidal now, proof that you are here reading this shows you are courageous enough to stick around just long enough to try to survive. Print Out This Help Sheet, read it and hand it to someone nearby who cares. It will save you from having to talk about your problem, but get you in the right direction for help.

Just Remember

1. Long term depression is NOT your fault. Most people who suffer long term depressed feelings (over 3 weeks) or sudden intense depressed feelings have a mental illness that is no different than having any other disability. If you suffer from long term depression, medication and therapy will help.
2. Ignore well meaning people who make you feel worse. They may tell you to cheer up or get over it. Depression is not something you can turn on or off.
3. Do Something Now. The only way to deal with depression is to do something about it. You may feel too depressed to take the first move right now, but the sooner you get the courage to take that first step, the sooner you will start to get better. The first step is to ask for help. Give a copy of this to someone if you cannot express how you feel in words.
4. Bad News Can Be Depressing. If you have just suffered a traumatic event, lost a loved one, or been given some very stressful news, it is quite natural to become depressed. It is also normal that sometimes these situations can turn into long term depression if you do not have a support network to help you through the rough times. When this becomes too much to handle, reach out to others for help who will understand and not judge.
5. Talk When Ready, but be with people. With depression comes a feeling that you are alone, no one understands, and you are too depressed to talk, or that you would rather be isolated than see other people. The worst thing you can do is isolate yourself from others. You don't have to talk about it now, just do something with another person and maybe after awhile you might feel comfortable enough to talk about it later. If the person with you wants to help, let them know the best thing they can do is to just listen without judgment, but only when you are ready to talk.
6. What to do now? If you are feeling depressed right now, take simple steps: take a warm shower or bubble bath, pamper yourself, eat a light snack, go for a walk, go to the movie or rent a video of something fun, talk to a friend you haven't spoken to in awhile, find a neighbor in need and lend a hand, volunteer, start a hobby, do whatever it takes to get your mind off your current state of mind. Don't do too much either or try and conquer something too hard which may further shatter your self-esteem.
7. Feeling Suicidal? If you are currently suicidal and have a plan to take action - DO NOT ACT ON IT!! Call your local emergency police or fire department [911 US, 999 UK, 000 Australia, 111 New Zealand, 112 GSM cell phones, or just dial 0 if you are unsure.] Let them know who you are, where you are and what you are planning on doing and let them try to talk with you. Give them a chance to help you. They may be able to get you to a place where you can receive the medical attention you need that will get you better. If you are worried about paying for the help, let them know you don't have money or insurance and they can give you viable options for treatment.
8. Know this mood is only temporary. Even in bouts of long term depression, there are bright spots. What seems to be an insurmountable problem right now will seem like an annoying inconvenience in a few months down the road. Don't let the major crisis going on right now make you do something permanent. While it may seem too hard to deal with right now, it won't always be that way. Walk away from a problem you cannot handle right now. Don't be forced by anyone to give them answers you do not have right now. Tell people to back off because it is too much for you to handle. Take a time out until you feel you can handle what is going on in a better frame of mind.
9. Avoid alcohol or other depressants. It may make you feel sleepy and help you forget your problems for a short time, but it will alter the brain chemistry to make your depression worse.
10. Get Professional Help! If you have long term or overwhelming depression, you have a medical illness no different than if you had cancer, diabetes or heart disease. Don't let the stigma of mental illness keep you from getting the help you need. Your problem can be helped with medication and therapy.

Getting to this stage of depression where you feel so hopeless that you would consider suicide does not happen overnight. Feeling better will not be overnight either. It will take time, but it can be better.

First things first. Find a doctor! Tell your doctor all the things you are feeling and be honest. Don't hold back. If that doctor seems less than interested in helping you, get another one. If your doctor can help you with a prescription or therapy, it will do you a lot of good to follow through. If you are given medication, take them as prescribed and give it a few weeks. If it is doing nothing for you, insist on trying something different.

There is only so much medication will do for you. The meds can become a crutch to keep you from avoiding some of the triggers which keep you in that frame of mind. While some people may need to take such meds for life, most can be weaned from them and even those on the meds for life can have a better quality of life.

A Tall Order

The burden falls upon you. No one can live your life for you. No one can make you feel the way you do or change your feelings. It is up to you to get better.

If you ever want to feel better, you must decide right now that you will commit to do whatever it takes to feel better. Don't deflect your decision to kill yourself on someone else. No one is going to wave a wand and make your problems go away. They did not create your problems and are not obligated to solve them - THAT IS YOUR JOB! YOU CAN DO IT IF YOU WANT TO!!

If you want to live and if you want to be out of your pain, you have to be more brave now than you ever have your whole life. You have to decide NOW to live. And yes, this is a brave thing to do to live another day, so at least take some pride in that.

I know it sounds like a lot to ask of a depressed person to take on that kind of burden, but look at it this way - what are your other choices?

One Day At A Time

You are not going to attempt to make yourself a total success story in one day. FORGET THAT!! You will do it by taking it one day at a time. In Alcoholics Anonymous, they have it as part of their motto to take it one day at a time because like alcoholism, depression is something that is in the makeup of your brain and you can only live right now in this moment as there are no guarantees that the future you will behave one way or another.

You cannot change the past and you cannot change your brain chemistry without medication. Sometimes it is a mistake you made, bad decisions, or a serious of unfortunate events that brought you to a depressed situation. All you can do is accept what you have done in the past and get the help you need now. Learn from your mistakes. Don't keep giving yourself a hard time because you did the wrong things. Accept the fact that what's done is done. You will never change the past. All you can do is learn from the past and make amends where you can. You may not have the answers people demand you come up with now and you do not owe them the answers until you are ready to give it to them. Explain the situation to others around you and let them know you are at your wits end and don't know what to do about a problem and either they help come up with a workable solution or back off until you can clear your head.

You cannot control the future. There are many variable factors that can change the course of your life. Accept the fact that life is unpredictable and no matter how well you think you have your life planned, something may come along and change things. What was once a forecast of doom and gloom could be a bright paradise. What was once a great fortune could be abject poverty. Don't fret over what you think might happen - chances are it won't be as bad as you thought.

You cannot control other people. Forget trying. You may say you could be happy if only that other person would love you again or another person would give you a break or someone would stop being a jerk. All you can control is the way you react to other people. If someone is not nice, you can choose now if you want to accept their condemnation of yourself or laugh it off and put it back on them. If what they say about you is not true, why let it get to you?

All you can do is FOCUS ON BEING IN THE MOMENT of NOW. Sit still for a minute and don't think about your problems. Don't look at the computer screen. Don't plan, plot, worry or anything that involves thinking of a time other than you in your room right now. Use all of your senses during that minute. Feel, touch, taste, hear and see everything going on around you. Be aware that you are alive in THIS moment. Soak it up. Relax. Become aware of where you might have physical pain and take note of it. Relax that area and then move to your troubled mind. Imagine yourself being hugged by someone who loves you telling you it will get better and tell that person in your mind all your problems. Imagine them telling you things will get better, but now it is time for you to do something else and forget the problem right now. Then continue on and do something else.

Congratulations - You Are Still Here!

If you are very close to suicide and are reading this, you should be proud of yourself. I know I am proud of you. You could have gone ahead and killed yourself, but you didn't. You had something going on in your mind that was waiting for a lifeline of hope. You were looking for a reason to live. By seeking out this information says you actually don't want to die, you just want out of your pain.

There are some people with sociopathic disorders (a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience) who get to this point of suicidal feelings that need help just as much as those suffering from depression, but are harder to reach because their disorder makes it so it becomes a control factor, if they think they cannot control others, this may be their last resort to get the ultimate control on them. It's not necessarily that they want to die, but to have that edge of control, even if it is permanent, seems more compelling to hurt others than living to see another day.

Unless those in that group are given more compelling reasons to live another day, they will more than likely succeed in the act. Those involved in school or work related shooting sprees often fall into this category. They would rather go out in a blaze of glory on their own terms and/or want to make as many people suffer the same way they felt while they were alive. That is the ultimate control. Please do not confuse this group of sociopaths with those suffering from clinical depression.

There is a way out of all pain, but it will take work. Hang around for awhile and Print Out This Help Sheet. What have you got to lose for trying? You need to look within yourself and see if you really want to leave a legacy behind for your friends and family of you ending your life over something that really could be solved. Imagine yourself as someone who cares about you reviewing your life. What do you think they would think about you if you did not stick around just a few days longer when the key to all your problems was right there?

Life will always have problems, you just need to find better ways of dealing with those problems. If all of the ways you tried to solve your problems in the past didn't work, try a new approach to solving the problems.

You may think to yourself, "But I've tried everything." List everything you have actually done to correct your problems. Most likely you will see you actually haven't done that much to solve your problems. THERE IS ALWAYS A SOLUTION TO EVERY PROBLEM, you just need to seek the answer. Sometimes that answer is not readily available and other times it will be there when you ask around for help because sooner or later you will find someone with the answer you need.

What About Bullies and Difficult Situations?

It is an unfortunate situation of life. There are assholes in the world who don't care about YOUR feelings or hardships. They may seem to thrive on making your life harder and have some sick sense of enjoyment in bringing you down. As for those people who enjoy your pain; why give them what they want? They shouldn't be rewarded with the power over your life. Their opinions of you should not matter.

There are also difficult circumstances in life where we might not know what else to do. One might be homosexual in a family or religion that heavily forbids it. One might have a heavy gambling or other addiction they cannot beat. One might have a terminal illness or have chronic pain and cannot stand the suffering any longer. One might have lost a loved one and don't know how to cope without them. There are many difficult situations in life we go through from time to time and the thought of ending it all comes to mind. Sometimes there are no ends to these circumstances, but the only way to live with them is to come to acceptance of the situation and finding a way to live with it.

Suicide is not the answer to any problem, just a permanent end.

If You Just Can't Handle It

Call 911 NOW!! or your local emergency number. If you can't seem to get motivated enough to get the proper help you need and are very close to ending your life, make one last call to any emergency line or Print Out This Help Sheet, read it and hand it to someone nearby who cares. Call the police or the fire department or just yell out the window so a neighbor will hear you. Let someone know you are going to commit suicide, then allow them some time to attempt to get you to the proper place for help. If you are reading this far and still feel out of hope, try it!!! Your life is worth a lot more than you can see right now. This feeling WILL pass. The problems WILL eventually be resolved. You need to stick around and see that things WILL get better.

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