poes thx for your further elaboration. i very much appreciate you input. i think i have to say .."i feel terrible, but i'm going to do something that i can do...i'm going to take a walk'...i have to read your stuff some more and think about it. i can see that i have to accept my limitations and my conditions and do the best i can under those circumstances and accept that this is what i can do...that is judge myself by my standards and not the standards of others. you mention religion, and i have tried getting into that zone, ocassionally i have felt i have connected with something in prayer and its sort of a meditative situation, but its hard to just click into that experience again. i think there is a lot of wisdom in the Bible, though it shouldn't be taken literally. its just another experience i have to explore. some people seem to suceed with religion in their lives. for example we should forgive others and we should forgive ourselves and ditto for love. i just went for a long walk in the woods, up some steep paths, in the morning fog, down to the water. got some great photos of the sun breaking through, highlighting the snowcapped mountains. i feel better. take care bob

Dear Bob, Actually, what you might put on your t-shirt is this: "I have forgiven myself, I am depressed". I think a major problem with depression is that most of us feel bad, quilty, ashamed for being depressed. We fight it!! Do not fight it, admit it and accept it. Yes, I am depressed, wonder how long it will take. What the rest of the world thinks about that.....well, you know.........who cares!! If they have a problem with that, it is theirs to own. Who says you SHOULD walk an hour every day, rain or shine?? How is this: I would like to walk a little every day, if I do it...well, good for me. If I don't....well good for me too, I made another decision. Not wrong, not right, just different. I got comments from Ladyblue and I think she is right in that. I did come across as incompassionate. However, I do believe that the will to get better had to be very, very, very strong. The kind of strenght that does not come from your mind, but from your soul. I think the soul is in a lot of pain when we are depressed, because of the negative things we say to ourselves, the need to be perfect, be better, do better. I am not at all religious, so it is not that I found God and now my depression is gone. But I did start by accepting what was. These days, I tackle my feelings before they control my life and I do not blame others anymore. Did my parents play a big role? Yes. Did my father's abuse make me an angry person? Yes and a sad one too and one that could not love herself, but I did realize that all of those feelings showed up inside of me. I can not change other people, but I could change the way I coped with my feelings. From time to time, sometimes daily, I still fall flat on my face. And it still hurts, but I allow myself the hurt. Once feelings get accepted instead of denied, they lose their power.

Dear Ladyblue, you are right!! Actually, the post already went through and when I read it back, I noticed my words did not come out the way they were supposed to be. I know it is a struggle, for many of you out there and still also for me. I did not mean to say that all of you are a bunch of whiners just not willing to work at it. I know that you are all trying very hard, very hard to make it through the day, and sometimes hour by hour. I do not mean to sound incompassionate. I also did not mean to say that now my life is one big great happy party. It is not. But I am coping with my disease, maybe that is a better way of putting it. I did not look in the mirror that one day, decided this is not for me and a fairy godmother came and turned my life around. But I did decide that what I saw was not who I wanted to be. I realized that I had to work harder to get better. Also, it is true that a lot of you are already talking bad about yourselves, blaming yourselfs, trying to talk yourself out of the depressions. Reads Bob's second story, how many times is the word 'should' in there. I should do this, I should not do that. What I am saying is that that is a big part of the problem, the negative selftalk, often started by our abusers and we are willing to keep doing that to ourselves the rest of our lives, the never-be-good-enough feeling. What I tried to bring across is that we ARE alright the way we are. Nothing is broken, nothing needs fixing. I was a person with a major depression. I lifted the depression, but the same person is still underneath. It is not that I am a better person now, it is just that my life is more manageable and I came to see that it is worth living. That I have a place in this world and therefore a right to be here. The negative selftalk will spiral you downward. Now, I do not mean to start thinking and feeling positive and all will be alright, I know it does not work that way. But if you start noticing how often we speak to ourselves in the language of our abusers, and than can see that what is being said is NOT true, we are a little step on our way out of the depression. I am sorry if I hurt you, that was not at all my intent. I was just trying to express that the answers are on the inside, not in the world around us.

ladyblue and poes thanks for your comments. hey i too finished my masters degree, about 20 years after i started it because of a specific initiative at my school to get a large number of students to complete their thesis. They made some good dollars on it too, incidently. this took a lot of effort for me. its didn't change my life, but i am glad i did it. i am diabetic and i have lost a lot of weight. i am accomplishing things, but i still feel rotten a lot of the time. at the moment i am struggling with an important project and i am just sort of frozen in the headlights, unable to make decisions. I think perhaps one must experiment by changing behaviour and thought patterns. this site is a small step in that direction for me. just being on here communicates to myself and my wife that there is a significant problem which i have recognized. my perception is that people see me as a normal dude, who screws up a lot, who is lazy, who is apathetic, who is a shy etc etc. i don't want to wear a tshirt saying "forgive me, i'm depressed". actually since i run a business public perception of me is somewhat important. of course my business suffered tremendously, running at a fraction of its potential also. I know its up to me...i went to a therapist years ago and i can't recall that i received any beneficial advice...i felt great while i was there, but nothing constructive happened afterwards. i have been in other group situations where i feel good also such as toastmasters and grief counselling groups, so i think actually its the supportive group setting that makes you feel good, not the specific function of the group. i enjoy writing on this site, documenting my feelings and analizing my history. also i appreciate feedback and the stories of others. Poes i will carefully ponder your response and see how i can apply it to myself. perhaps for example i should be much more rigourous about my physical exercise program, making sure i get a good hour of walking in every day, first thing in the morning, rain or shine. it seems that depression comes in various degrees for various individuals and therefore it seems somewhat difficult to generalize. poes and ladyblue thanks so much for your insights...now i have to stop procrastinating and get back to the t

Poes I am very happy for you and am glad that you were able to turn your life around. But to say that some of us who are still in the midst of depression really do not want to get better is a little unfair. I eat right, exercise regularly, as a diabetic I keep my blood sugar under fairly tight contorl, I have gone back to school to prepare for getting my master's degree, I make an effort to get out and be with friends etc. etc. etc. I also have been in regular therapy for over five years (with an excellent psychologist), take my medications conscientiously and have worked through some pretty painful memories of abuse. I do everything I'm supposed to do. But guess what? I still have my disease. If I look back over the last few years, I can see that I have made tremendous progress but I still have a ways to go. I do not come to this web site to whine about my situation. I want to offer encouragement to others who are dealing with mood disorders. Again, I am very happy for you. There are many people like me who already blame themselves for their illness, like if we were only stronger or better we could talk ourselves out of feeling the way we feel. For some of us, it is just a bit more complicated. Where I do agree with you is that it is work. You can't just sit around and wallow in your misery and expect to get better. That's my point, many of us cannot do it alone. If you did, then good for you! Seriously--good for you.

Yes Bob, there I great success stories out there. I am one. About one year ago I posted very regularly on this site. I stopped doing that, because I got the feeling that no one really, really, really wanted to heal themselves. That is okay too. It is good to let out all of the emotions. I have had various therapies, I have taken medication, but neither one is what got me out of my depression, although they might have helped. What got me out was a good, hard look in the mirror one day. Had I become the person I wanted to be? Is this the way I wanted to live the rest of my life? At that point my depression was at the lowest low. See, if my answer had been 'yes', I would have ended it. The answer was 'no', I did not want to live my life like that, I did not like the person I had become and I also did not want to die. Not really anyway. I wanted to live if that meant having a much better life. I stepped out of my self-pitty, I stepped out of my complaining, I stepped out of blaming others and I stepped into the thing I called my life, I realized it was up to me and only me. I also stopped blaming myself. I looked at the mess and decided it was time to clean it up. And I did. I worked through all the anger (and I believe depression is self-expression and anger turned inward), every self-esteem issue, I dealt with my childhood, the disappointment, the sadness. It was, still is and will always be a day-to-day process. It takes a lot of hard work, but if you are really, really, really willing to look and clean up the messes inside and out, there is a way out of depression. Now at 38, I am 50 pounds lighter (exercise is great for the mind!!!! So is healthy, whole food), I finshed my bachelor's degree and working on my master's, I look the way I want to look and I am the person, mother, wife, friend I want to be. It is all about non-judgement, about starting to like yourself as you are, not any different, about being you own best friend. It is also about loving yourself enough that you are willing to be true to yourself at all times, even if the answers you get are painful. It is all about dealing with feelings, especially the ones you have been avoiding for most of your life. Life on the other side of depression is a great one. I wish it for everyone out there!!

are there any great success stories out there? someone hit just the right medication and the world is wonderful...or they went to a group or a therapist and their whole world changed dramatically? bob