It sucks when you live alone as well. No one to check on you, no one to make sure it doesn’t last too long or become more dangerous than it already is.
I like this idea to cancel all appointments, I never thought of doing that. I hate doing anything or going anywhere when I feel really bad. I know it’s not a solution, but what is?? It sounds like a pretty good coping mechanism though.
Progress, is when d second pic, could have d person taking more constructive steps to Cope, as opposed to running n hiding from life! We wr designed to manage our emotions, NOT have dem manage us!
I very respectfully agree, Ms. Rattansingh doesn’t understand the difference between true depression and “feeling blue”. Unfortunately, she seems to be in the majority, even though I hoped beyond hope that this ideology went out with true scientific knowledge. Just yesterday, my Mom told me that I should “snap out of it”. Oh gee, such advice, why didn’t I think of that!?!?! (My comment is not a personal attack to Ms. Rattansingh at all, I wish her the best and know she is truly lucky to be able to “manage her emotions”, but I hope she can understand that is beyond most of our control, especially when suffering from severe depression).
My Mum prefers “pull yourself together” and that great oldie “well I had to look after you children so of course I couldn’t give in to anxiety like you get to” (I am the childless single elder daughter; my younger sis has a lovely husband, fancy house and child, so the family ‘success’ order is already QUITE clear). And “you’re worrying your father, dear” (which really does NOT HELP – I probably inherited my tendencies from him both genetically and through the childhood issues that come from having a depressed parent who had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t cope with his noisy, clumsy, well meaning daughter being around when he was most ill).
SIGH. I know they mean well, care, and all the rest of it, but I WISH depression/anxiety came along with something like a virulent rash so everyone could see you were ill, not ‘being a wimp’.
We are not designed to manage our emotions, that is not the evolutionary purpose of them. Emotions are involuntary, and it takes great effort, self-control, and/or training to manage them. That is why programs like CBT are difficult and are more effective when combined with pharmaceuticals.
Exactly @ yr last 2 sentences! Determination n consistent positivity, trumps circumstances everytime!! It ain’t easy but just like building muscles in d gym, only d most disciplined n determined gets it done 😉 no matter how excruciatingly difficult, frustrating, painful or unfair, or how many times dey fall 🙂
Can you tell me what your 2nd pic would look like? That is, exactly what “constructive steps to cope” you would take (assuming you suffer from clinical depression)?
Marissa-sue Rattansingh the first sentence is true because not everyone has a mental illness. That’s the point about this site, is for people who deal with mental illness. If you don’t have one, stop belittling the problems of those who do.
FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, if you are so super duper mentally healthy, will you please talk like a grown-up? You sound like a giggling tween discussing whoever ousted Bieber. You do know that you are posting on a site for people who have a potentially lethal chronic illness…right?
I get your point. You think that major depression goes away simply by willing it. That alone tells me you don’t understand what major depression is, because the basic symptoms of depression just don’t allow that to happen.
So by ignoring what the symptoms of depression are and saying that it’s our fault for not having the “willpower and determination”, to overcome our illness, you are belittling us at worst, just plain ignorant at best.
You’re just another one of those people who think depression can be cured with “positive thinking” as if no one ever thought of that before before they had to develop therapies and medication. As if none of us ever wanted a cure THAT SIMPLE. Those that understand depression, which you are not, would know that this is like asking a man with a broken leg to fix it by walking on it. It isn’t going to happen that way.
Ok, b4 dis degenerates even further, imma agree to disagree, Again! Enjoy coddling yr symptoms n encouraging others in living a defeated life. As long as ur happy. Mebbe 1 day u will learn hw to understand n appreciate short hand English 2. I don’t belittle others f non-issues like dis but mebbe u need figure out y my points offend u so much. Peace out n b happy 🙂 I’m out n not gonna get into a non-productive, defensive vicious cycle convo like dis. Best wishes!
Clay man. . . what the fuck? Why is this bitch still here? I find myself wondering if this is a troll even.
Marissa your “English” launches me into a blind rage. You don’t belong here. There is nothing to appreciate about short hand English. It’s irritating, and confusing. Also, “coddling y r symptoms”? You haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about, do you? You’ve openly admitted you don’t know jack shit about psychology. Here’s another thing while I’m at it, you aren’t offending people here. You’re patronizing and insulting us. Offending someone often has the chance of teaching them something new, once they reflect on it and look at it from a different perspective. YOU on the other hand, are just plain wrong. Grow up, start communicating like an adult and educate yourself before you continue to parade your ignorance around like a badge of pride.
“Enjoy coddling yr symptoms n encouraging others in living a defeated life. As long as ur happy.”
You just don’t get it, do you? Being depressed means that you cannot be happy. There is no joy in life, no pleasure, and no hope. The world is bleak, empty, and uncaring. Every action you take is a complete waste of time. You see other people smiling and having fun, and you dimly remember what that felt like, but deep down you know that you will never experience it again.
It’s almost impossible to get over depression without help. Blaming the victim only makes it worse.
WTF is she even saying? I don’t mean the underlying message, I mean, plain English??? This is not a site for the hopelessly illiterate, PLEASE learn how to communicate with those people who have taken the time to learn basic language skills. If you don’t understand these, I suggest Community College as a good place to start, or even an on-line English course. This isn’t my blog and I actually don’t really have the right to say this, and I normally wouldn’t put my nose in where I don’t think it belongs, but seriously, not everyone desires to be “ghetto” and speak or write like a fool.
How patronizing. As a teacher, I don’t appreciate “short hand English”, it makes communication more difficult and makes it sound like you aren’t taking the receiver seriously. No one is saying stay unhappy here, you are putting words in people’s mouths. But good riddance to you, hopefully one day you’ll learn something called empathy. Goodbye.
you know, I actually think that I’m just seeking help because I can see in posts like this and communities like this that it’s not easy for lots of other people, and it’s not a sign of weakness to seek for help, and it won’t be easy to step out of the bad thoughts and the bad feelings about self-hurting. Even if the comics are really sad, they are, in their utmost essence, true, this is what we think and feel, portraying someone stepping out of sadness in an easy, cheerful and positive way so easily in just three panels would actually made me feel worse because would reinforce the feeling that it’s easy and quick to get over a depressive feeling.
YES. I can predict my window of ability almost to the minute. I run down the checklist and it’s like preparing to shelter in place during a natural disaster. The kids know the checklist by now and they have their own routine. (I’m a recently minted migraineuse, on top of everything else. So welcome me to the club, I guess. Whee.)
life keeps going, you don’t have a choice, no one’s going to wait for you… this happens again and again until people give up on you and realize you’re completely expendable and just don’t mind if you’re not there to fulfill your “duties”…. but it’s not as if it was easy to just “turn off” this storms….
This. I’m starting to feel that I PISS OFF people with my depression and fear, because I can’t leave the house and they wanna go out and do things.. and I just can’t.
I occasionally will share my feelings about my depression and anxiety with people outside my main circle, but I feel if I share too much they will start to get annoyed with my “negativity” – even though I’m not trying to be negative, I’m just trying to be honest and work through all of these thoughts and feelings in a constructive way rather than bottling it up. It’s just easier to keep friends by not bothering them with this stuff.
yes, that’s why I want to look for a psycologist or a specific professional, but even knowing that I need medical attention is really, really hard to know that some people you really like to chat or be around just feel annoyed by ANY kind of sadness demonstration or they just say things like “oh that’s nothing, you need to be strong and things will get better” . the worse about depression and feeling depressed is that people just can’t realize that just because you can’t SEE the problem/symptoms , it doesn’t mean they’re not there… sorry if it sound rubbish and sorry about my english as well . It’s just that it’s good to be able to talk about that without the fear of bothering or eye-rolling….
It doesn’t sound rubbish, it sounds perfectly reasonable (I mean for you to feel how you feel and describe it like you do), and the only thing I can notice that’s wrong with your English is the occasional non-capitalisation. My parents used to tell me “no, you’re not feeling sick” at the beginning of pretty much every infection I caught, before there were demonstrable symptoms to prove myself with, and sometimes even when there were. I even got “stop making a scene, nothing’s happened to you” from the evening when my sister kicked me in the leg from behind until the next afternoon while I was lying on the floor in the middle of the living room unable to get up. Only after those twenty hours or so it occured them that I might conceivably be actually injured. Treatment was for months and my knee never fully stopped hurting ever since. So know that when you get the same bullshit regarding depression, it’s the exact same bullshit as that. (Funny thing, I don’t, not very much. Not since I moved out, anyway.)
This is so true. People do move on, and they do get annoyed. Not a lot you can do about it except push hard to LOOK cheerful even though you’re not. Meds, therapy.
When it’s depression, not migraine, I rehearse and rehearse and rehearse when I feel a low spell coming on, so that I have a script to follow when I cannot brain. It sometimes helps.
I think the hardest part in recovery (rehabilitation?) has been to learn to differentiate, when it is wise to refrain and indeed cancel things that feel overwhelming and when it actually is better to keep on pushing and doing things. You can take an x-ray on a broken ankle to know, if it is ok to take the cast away and continue the physiotherapy with gradually loading on the foot, but I’d very much like to have an “x-ray” for mental resources as well…
It’ll probably be a life long journey to learn to notice, when I’m running from or towards an emotion I don’t want or want to experience and when I’m taking care of myself and my ability to cope with the inevitable feelings (or The Fog). (It would of course help, like Becca and Felis said, if I knew, when The Fog is approaching. :/ ) These two latest strips make an excellent pair in introducing the difference between flexible behavior patterns and too rigid reactions.
I was reading the Marissa-sue Rattansingh trolling talk and… well, people, it is a troll, you know that are a troll because you feel the need to prove that they are wrong, that kind of person knows that they are wrong and will keep trolling as a “blind small mind writer”, worse in each post (bad writing, non logical arguments, because everyone hate this).
Don’t feed the trolls, ignore asap. You can even write a answer but don’t feed the troll with that answer.
I wrote that because I don’t have depression, and I’m not a doctor, and always come here to understand the point of view on it through this very nice material (the comics, the comments), and I really care about people in Internet, even more with a troll in scene, even more when we can find a lot of people that don’t need a scumbag. Maybe I’m being one now ><, sorry anyway.
I wish I could do that when I know depression is coming, and that my family would just leave me alone some times to figure things out. Because it always makes the situation worse when I can feel myself becoming more down and people want me to just get up and move around and work. :/
Jay , that was me yesterday. I even have repositioned the furniture in my room.
I had a day like that yesterday, too. Put fighting a cold on top of it, and oh, boy, good times.
What sucks is when you live with people and have no privacy at all
It sucks when you live alone as well. No one to check on you, no one to make sure it doesn’t last too long or become more dangerous than it already is.
I like this idea to cancel all appointments, I never thought of doing that. I hate doing anything or going anywhere when I feel really bad. I know it’s not a solution, but what is?? It sounds like a pretty good coping mechanism though.
I wish I had warnings like this so I could prepare
Totally agree.
212 http://t.co/M3XQMIAIi4 via @depressioncomix
Marissa-sue
Just had this happen today no warning and now at work
Progress, is when d second pic, could have d person taking more constructive steps to Cope, as opposed to running n hiding from life!
We wr designed to manage our emotions, NOT have dem manage us!
You know very little about psychology then.
I very respectfully agree, Ms. Rattansingh doesn’t understand the difference between true depression and “feeling blue”. Unfortunately, she seems to be in the majority, even though I hoped beyond hope that this ideology went out with true scientific knowledge. Just yesterday, my Mom told me that I should “snap out of it”. Oh gee, such advice, why didn’t I think of that!?!?! (My comment is not a personal attack to Ms. Rattansingh at all, I wish her the best and know she is truly lucky to be able to “manage her emotions”, but I hope she can understand that is beyond most of our control, especially when suffering from severe depression).
My Mum prefers “pull yourself together” and that great oldie “well I had to look after you children so of course I couldn’t give in to anxiety like you get to” (I am the childless single elder daughter; my younger sis has a lovely husband, fancy house and child, so the family ‘success’ order is already QUITE clear). And “you’re worrying your father, dear” (which really does NOT HELP – I probably inherited my tendencies from him both genetically and through the childhood issues that come from having a depressed parent who had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t cope with his noisy, clumsy, well meaning daughter being around when he was most ill).
SIGH. I know they mean well, care, and all the rest of it, but I WISH depression/anxiety came along with something like a virulent rash so everyone could see you were ill, not ‘being a wimp’.
Fully agreed to disagree.
Don’t even know which branch of psych, doesn’t encourage cbt.
We are not designed to manage our emotions, that is not the evolutionary purpose of them. Emotions are involuntary, and it takes great effort, self-control, and/or training to manage them. That is why programs like CBT are difficult and are more effective when combined with pharmaceuticals.
Exactly @ yr last 2 sentences!
Determination n consistent positivity, trumps circumstances everytime!!
It ain’t easy but just like building muscles in d gym, only d most disciplined n determined gets it done 😉 no matter how excruciatingly difficult, frustrating, painful or unfair, or how many times dey fall 🙂
If yr first sentence is true, then I guess all those emotionally healthy n functioning adults, r freaks of nature!
Well dats my aim then 😉
Can you tell me what your 2nd pic would look like? That is, exactly what “constructive steps to cope” you would take (assuming you suffer from clinical depression)?
Marissa-sue Rattansingh the first sentence is true because not everyone has a mental illness. That’s the point about this site, is for people who deal with mental illness. If you don’t have one, stop belittling the problems of those who do.
Not belittling at all!!
Plz read bk my words n get my point b4 such statements plzzzzzzzzzzz
Not belittling at all!!
Plz read bk my words n get my point b4 such statements plzzzzzzzzzzz
I can do better than n actually give u examples 😉
I can do better than n actually give u examples 😉
FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, if you are so super duper mentally healthy, will you please talk like a grown-up? You sound like a giggling tween discussing whoever ousted Bieber. You do know that you are posting on a site for people who have a potentially lethal chronic illness…right?
Also: Here. Educate yourself.
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html
For a person who types like their keyboard is broken, you are unusually confident that people can understand your message.
I get your point. You think that major depression goes away simply by willing it. That alone tells me you don’t understand what major depression is, because the basic symptoms of depression just don’t allow that to happen.
So by ignoring what the symptoms of depression are and saying that it’s our fault for not having the “willpower and determination”, to overcome our illness, you are belittling us at worst, just plain ignorant at best.
You’re just another one of those people who think depression can be cured with “positive thinking” as if no one ever thought of that before before they had to develop therapies and medication. As if none of us ever wanted a cure THAT SIMPLE. Those that understand depression, which you are not, would know that this is like asking a man with a broken leg to fix it by walking on it. It isn’t going to happen that way.
Ok, b4 dis degenerates even further, imma agree to disagree, Again! Enjoy coddling yr symptoms n encouraging others in living a defeated life. As long as ur happy. Mebbe 1 day u will learn hw to understand n appreciate short hand English 2. I don’t belittle others f non-issues like dis but mebbe u need figure out y my points offend u so much. Peace out n b happy 🙂
I’m out n not gonna get into a non-productive, defensive vicious cycle convo like dis. Best wishes!
Clay man. . . what the fuck? Why is this bitch still here? I find myself wondering if this is a troll even.
Marissa your “English” launches me into a blind rage. You don’t belong here. There is nothing to appreciate about short hand English. It’s irritating, and confusing. Also, “coddling y r symptoms”? You haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about, do you? You’ve openly admitted you don’t know jack shit about psychology. Here’s another thing while I’m at it, you aren’t offending people here. You’re patronizing and insulting us. Offending someone often has the chance of teaching them something new, once they reflect on it and look at it from a different perspective. YOU on the other hand, are just plain wrong. Grow up, start communicating like an adult and educate yourself before you continue to parade your ignorance around like a badge of pride.
“Enjoy coddling yr symptoms n encouraging others in living a defeated life. As long as ur happy.”
You just don’t get it, do you? Being depressed means that you cannot be happy. There is no joy in life, no pleasure, and no hope. The world is bleak, empty, and uncaring. Every action you take is a complete waste of time. You see other people smiling and having fun, and you dimly remember what that felt like, but deep down you know that you will never experience it again.
It’s almost impossible to get over depression without help. Blaming the victim only makes it worse.
Michelle Bhoolai plz doh tag me anymore in dese counter-productive posts. While I get n appreciate d humor behind dem, I don’t agree wt d mindset.
WTF is she even saying? I don’t mean the underlying message, I mean, plain English??? This is not a site for the hopelessly illiterate, PLEASE learn how to communicate with those people who have taken the time to learn basic language skills. If you don’t understand these, I suggest Community College as a good place to start, or even an on-line English course. This isn’t my blog and I actually don’t really have the right to say this, and I normally wouldn’t put my nose in where I don’t think it belongs, but seriously, not everyone desires to be “ghetto” and speak or write like a fool.
How patronizing. As a teacher, I don’t appreciate “short hand English”, it makes communication more difficult and makes it sound like you aren’t taking the receiver seriously. No one is saying stay unhappy here, you are putting words in people’s mouths. But good riddance to you, hopefully one day you’ll learn something called empathy. Goodbye.
you know, I actually think that I’m just seeking help because I can see in posts like this and communities like this that it’s not easy for lots of other people, and it’s not a sign of weakness to seek for help, and it won’t be easy to step out of the bad thoughts and the bad feelings about self-hurting. Even if the comics are really sad, they are, in their utmost essence, true, this is what we think and feel, portraying someone stepping out of sadness in an easy, cheerful and positive way so easily in just three panels would actually made me feel worse because would reinforce the feeling that it’s easy and quick to get over a depressive feeling.
Hey Clay – can Marissa-sue be the new face of “society” in your strip? 🙂
Bj Mattson
I feel like that when my migraine headache is coming and I can feel it starting. But I can’t imagine feeling like that comix stripe.:(
YES. I can predict my window of ability almost to the minute. I run down the checklist and it’s like preparing to shelter in place during a natural disaster. The kids know the checklist by now and they have their own routine. (I’m a recently minted migraineuse, on top of everything else. So welcome me to the club, I guess. Whee.)
I remember some times …
Been there…. :/
[reader] 212:
http://t.co/zZS1oTbqwG
212 http://t.co/neadKlZVeO via @depressioncomix
Just went through one of these this week. It sucks. 🙁
life keeps going, you don’t have a choice, no one’s going to wait for you… this happens again and again until people give up on you and realize you’re completely expendable and just don’t mind if you’re not there to fulfill your “duties”…. but it’s not as if it was easy to just “turn off” this storms….
This. I’m starting to feel that I PISS OFF people with my depression and
fear, because I can’t leave the house and they wanna go out and do
things.. and I just can’t.
I occasionally will share my feelings about my depression and anxiety with people outside my main circle, but I feel if I share too much they will start to get annoyed with my “negativity” – even though I’m not trying to be negative, I’m just trying to be honest and work through all of these thoughts and feelings in a constructive way rather than bottling it up. It’s just easier to keep friends by not bothering them with this stuff.
yes, that’s why I want to look for a psycologist or a specific professional, but even knowing that I need medical attention is really, really hard to know that some people you really like to chat or be around just feel annoyed by ANY kind of sadness demonstration or they just say things like “oh that’s nothing, you need to be strong and things will get better” . the worse about depression and feeling depressed is that people just can’t realize that just because you can’t SEE the problem/symptoms , it doesn’t mean they’re not there… sorry if it sound rubbish and sorry about my english as well . It’s just that it’s good to be able to talk about that without the fear of bothering or eye-rolling….
It doesn’t sound rubbish, it sounds perfectly reasonable (I mean for you to feel how you feel and describe it like you do), and the only thing I can notice that’s wrong with your English is the occasional non-capitalisation.
My parents used to tell me “no, you’re not feeling sick” at the beginning of pretty much every infection I caught, before there were demonstrable symptoms to prove myself with, and sometimes even when there were. I even got “stop making a scene, nothing’s happened to you” from the evening when my sister kicked me in the leg from behind until the next afternoon while I was lying on the floor in the middle of the living room unable to get up. Only after those twenty hours or so it occured them that I might conceivably be actually injured. Treatment was for months and my knee never fully stopped hurting ever since.
So know that when you get the same bullshit regarding depression, it’s the exact same bullshit as that.
(Funny thing, I don’t, not very much. Not since I moved out, anyway.)
I eventually drive everyone away with my ‘difficult nature.’ Eventually it won’t be a problem.
This is so true. People do move on, and they do get annoyed. Not a lot you can do about it except push hard to LOOK cheerful even though you’re not. Meds, therapy.
“212” Me right now **finds slanket** http://t.co/btSV2Lj7ZD
I wish I could escape like this
I can’t get away from myself because I have my wife and kids to worry about.
When it’s depression, not migraine, I rehearse and rehearse and rehearse when I feel a low spell coming on, so that I have a script to follow when I cannot brain. It sometimes helps.
Yup http://t.co/AhYJHUS9k9
Today – Darkness at Noon. Strength to everyone.
I think the hardest part in recovery (rehabilitation?) has been to learn to differentiate, when it is wise to refrain and indeed cancel things that feel overwhelming and when it actually is better to keep on pushing and doing things. You can take an x-ray on a broken ankle to know, if it is ok to take the cast away and continue the physiotherapy with gradually loading on the foot, but I’d very much like to have an “x-ray” for mental resources as well…
It’ll probably be a life long journey to learn to notice, when I’m running from or towards an emotion I don’t want or want to experience and when I’m taking care of myself and my ability to cope with the inevitable feelings (or The Fog). (It would of course help, like Becca and Felis said, if I knew, when The Fog is approaching. :/ ) These two latest strips make an excellent pair in introducing the difference between flexible behavior patterns and too rigid reactions.
I hope that everyone had a non-painful and if possible pleasant Thanksgiving. I had a great time in spite of a migraine (spit).
I can relate to this being manic depressive. Its nice to see art expressing the illness.
I was reading the Marissa-sue Rattansingh trolling talk and… well, people, it is a troll, you know that are a troll because you feel the need to prove that they are wrong, that kind of person knows that they are wrong and will keep trolling as a “blind small mind writer”, worse in each post (bad writing, non logical arguments, because everyone hate this).
Don’t feed the trolls, ignore asap. You can even write a answer but don’t feed the troll with that answer.
I wrote that because I don’t have depression, and I’m not a doctor, and always come here to understand the point of view on it through this very nice material (the comics, the comments), and I really care about people in Internet, even more with a troll in scene, even more when we can find a lot of people that don’t need a scumbag. Maybe I’m being one now ><, sorry anyway.
The best for all S2.
212 http://t.co/o4HnJzq6uT via @depressioncomix
shit this is so accurate…… http://t.co/Ls9wzNRPbm
212 http://t.co/jiTOinpgXU
I wish I could do that when I know depression is coming, and that my family would just leave me alone some times to figure things out. Because it always makes the situation worse when I can feel myself becoming more down and people want me to just get up and move around and work. :/
Caoilfhionn Kirby thanks for weathering out the storm with me tonight