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From Anne's book, "How You Can Survive When They're Depressed", page 199, she talks about divorce-speak.

For a depressed person:
"...divorce-speak comes out of bravura, and is not the product of thoughtful deliberation."

For a non-depressed person:
"In the absence of depression, an unhappy or disaffected spouse might be expected to leave a trail of bread crumbs to mark his or her gradual progress toward the decision to separate or to divorce: signs of unhappiness, discussion, arguments, and attempts to improve or at least define the dissonance in the relationship."

For a depressed person:
"...no such trail is laid; the gauntlet is simply tossed, without warning or preamble, more often than not into a mundane exchange such as what to have for dinner or you, the partner, have done wrong that day."

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Ann Sheffield's introduction

Quote:

BEING DEPRESSED Understanding what being depressed is like when you've never been depressed ... that's extremely difficult to do. Insights such as those expressed from time to time by board members and visitors who suffer from depression are valuable because they help bridge the gap.

There are many different depressed "modes." Some people with depression are withdrawn and can't look anyone in the eye. They say, "Go to the party without me . . . you'll never have a good time if I come." Others are pretty aggressive and critical, and make it clear that everything that's wrong is your fault. Some swing from one mode to the other and back again.

People with bipolar disorder have extremely deep downs in which they remember the appalling things they did and said while in their manic phase, and writhe with guilt. While many depressed people talk about leaving, never having loved you, love you but only as a friend, etc., some act and sound regretful and a bit tender while others, even though they may feel guilty and sad, can't express it and so they come across as just plain hurtful.



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So this is where the cooties effect comes from:-

by a poster on the site

Quote:

flinching when touched Can you tell me why a depressive flinches when a non-depressed partner attempts to give a slight hug or a slight tap on the shoulder? Before I knew anything about depression I actually thought my DH had a "touch of autism", that perhaps the change in the brain chemistry created this sensitivity to touch. I had seen a young child afflicted with a certain type of autism react in the same way, he was horrified and recoiled at a slightest tap on the shoulder.

The recoiling didn't happen all the time, just when my DH was clearly withdrawn from whatever activity we were doing and clearly did not want to be there.



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From a thread about self medicating behaviour

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a few explanations to what a person with Depression receives by self-medicating. Examples of self-medicating behavior are drinking, online addictions of varying sorts, affairs, etc. The theories I have heard so far are :

1) It numbs the symptoms of depression. It doesn't mean they feel good but it does mean they temporarily don't feel depressed.

2) It actually makes them feel good. If this is the case, can someone explain this to me better.

3) D people get a self-esteem boost (especially via other relationships).





---------------------------------------------------

Quote:

Example:
retail therapy: spending money is control, power. spending it on something you want is self indulgent. It is a distraction to the depression...as are most ways to self medicate. They distract us from how bad we are feeling about our lives, ourselves.

A lot of depression has to do with boundaries we had when we were children which were crossed repeatedly. By having some control over something or someone we feel 'in charge' the opposite of the way we usually feel.



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Want to know what depression is like?

I’m not always down emotionally. It is more like a mathematical sine wave with it highs and lows. I slip in out of what is a normal state and what is a depressive state. I would say I weave in and out of a depressive state three or four times a month with each episode typically lasting between one and four days, seven at most. When I’m in a normal state, past depression episodes seem imaginary. This leads to me believe I do not have a depression problem. It also leads me to believe that I will not slip into a depression again. Oddly enough though, I will see depression lurking around the next corner and I will try my best to not go in that direction. Some times I will out run it but most times it catches me.

When I’m depressed I have the classic descriptors of most depressed people, life drained of joy, hopelessness and sadness. I’m sure everybody’s depression is different but for me colors drain from objects where black and white takes their place. It is the black and white as in the un-color cinema photography from the early twentieth century. Similar to black and white reruns of yester year’s television shows. The colors are there but they are muted and they have no meaning.

Another part of depression for me is cyclical-ness. Nothing changes. It is all non linear. It is the same thing over and over in day to day and year to year routines. Feelings and moods are recycled. Thoughts and ideas are recycled. All the books, movies, newspapers, magazines and any other media seem unoriginal and reused from what has already been said and done, very post modern. This all turns into a perpetual state of boredom.

Boredom is its own hell where sadness fills the void. The sadness is full of despair, a deep welling up inside and wanting to cry. That is all that I seem to feel, sadness. The sadness is dark. The sadness is lonely. The sadness rattles my confidence. Otherwise I’m emotion less, uncaring and unworthy of love. I do not want to touch nor be touched. If I’m able to at all to go through the physical act of making love, I feel nothing, no sensation and no release. I become very anti-social. I go to great lengths to avoid interaction with people. I fear those interactions with vast amounts of internal panic.

Depression is cruel in that it takes the one thing I cherish the most, concentration. I have a passion to read, to analyze and to learn. New insights that help me see life in a different perspective give me a zest for life. I love to broaden my horizons. That is all elusive now. Even listening is a challenge that I can not meet, whether it be in conversation, talk radio or television. I have been reduced to twenty second sound bites. I also become forgetful, missing details where I prided myself of having mastery of. Nothing is of interest. Sleep becomes erratic and irritability levels rise. I’m on edge. I’m anxious. Anger seeps below the surface.

I’ve learned depression is anger directed inward. I know when I’m not depressed, I’m usually angry. When I’m depressed, anger will chase it away. Anger makes me feel like I’m in a normal state. Anger seems to be my default emotion. Such power and fury the anger flows forward. Verbal abuse streams forth. Terrible things are said. Curse words are intertwined. Nothing is held back. Words and sentences I do not even mean lash out toward my target. I am in a stance of fight or flight. Either option is not certain until it is chosen. Afterwards I’m always sorrowful. Afterwards it all seems imaginary.

I cannot see beyond a depressive episode. When I am in it, life seems forever it will be that way. I try and try but I can not follow another clique and “just snap out of it”. Depression has a life of its own. I am at its mercy. I have no control no matter how hard I try. Experience has taught me to hold on for the ride. This is a ride where depression teases with me with the desire for death.

Thoughts of not living, wishing to die becomes more frequent. Cowardliness motivates me to think of painless methods of suicide but I dream of more dramatic exits. Cowardliness keeps me from acting. I want to feel something other than sadness. I restrict food severely in an attempt to express the destruction that is occurring inside of me. This is a safer, covert action. My weight begins to drop. Still this is not enough. I have desires to cut the under sides of my forearms, to slash my wrists. This is not to commit suicide but to feel something, to relieve the welling tension inside. The cuts need not be deep. No need to bleed. Mere scratches are all that is needed to inflame the skin outward resulting in a stinging pain. The scratches can be long or short, it does not matter. The stinging will continue for some time afterwards. The stinging interrupts the usual flow of depression. Certainly the heated targeted areas quit warming.

I can recognize when I come out of a deep depressive state. It breaks up in bits and pieces much like a fog. I drift in and out and back again. Sometimes these fluctuations are gradual and other times they are abrupt. Always, once out of depression, it all seemed imaginary. This fools me into thinking this point forward I will be okay. Being okay will only last for a while and then I find myself trying to out run depression again.

There are various depths to my depression. What I have explained so far is mostly a deep depressive state. There also exists a longer lasting but a much shallower state. This state is more of an interspersed form of what is described above but is similar to that of a low grade fever. It hovers over me as an omnipresent cloud draping me in fatigue. My vision is not clear. I can not perceive optimism. I find it difficult discerning my likes and dislikes. I become very indecisive. Motivation becomes lacking. I’m functional but with a haunted sense of dread. I want to be alone. My only desire is to do nothing and to stare off into a pessimistic view of myself

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How has depression affected my relationship with my wife?

Interaction:
My relationship with my wife has unfortunately been molded around my depression. To interact with me is also to interact with the many forms it takes on. The forms come in anger, irritability, sadness, tiredness, my desire for isolation and my desire to not live.

The thing with depression is that we do not always know when it is occurring and at what level. So interaction with each other becomes distorted. All the small mannerisms of affection that occur within a relationship begin to wane for us. This is interpreted into not feeling loved. This turns into a vicious cycle with each of us reciprocating accordingly to the loss of affection that they perceive. The reciprocation is usually negative thus the spiral begins.

There are plenty of times my wife argues with the depression at forthright. Sometimes she does this out of frustration with the depression. Other times she does not realize that she is interacting with the depression. Sometimes she just wants to be heard. The sad part about arguing with the depression is that it is a no win situation. What I say may hurt her but I am not conscious of it. If I am conscious of it I cannot internalize it to understand its impact. It becomes “all about me” so I just don’t care.

My depression takes on a destructive quality. I do not particularly take aim to extend that destruction to my wife. It is just that she is the one person that is around me the most. We know each other too well, whether through facts, shared past experiences or intimacy. That gives me inside knowledge to wield out pain. Disrespect rises to an all time high. Any moments of joy will be tainted. Again the only explanation for this is the hurt inside of me and the unfortunate-ness of her proximity to me in every day living.

Her response is less time engaged in me, more time engaged in my daughter and in activities away from me. We become alienated to one another. My depression continues to grow, feeding on the isolation thus alienating us even more. This makes the reconnect to one another more intense. The reconnect consumes large amounts of time. Time that should have been spent more wisely making wonderful memories.


Memories:
Certainly past memories of good times are obliterated. I just can’t find them in my mind. I was amazed one night, while a depressive episode was occurring, I stumbled across a few old photo albums of our past. There were so many moments of two lives shared. I had completely forgotten them. All those memories, each cementing a love together, flooded back to me that night, reminding me of a love I knew like no other. The irony though, is that a week later I begin to tell my wife I don’t love her and that I may have never loved her. The night I strolled down “memory lane”, let alone the wonderful memories themselves, are all but forgotten.


Sex:
What sex? Sex is not desired. As a depressed person I do not want to have sex. And I can not imagine why someone would want to have sex with a depressed person. So it does not happen thus intimacy is obscured even further. She will then not feel wanted. The depression just found a new tool, this negative feeling, to perpetuate its destruction toward her. The lost of contact hurts her as well as me. The depression saves no one.


Cover-up:
To mask my depression, I have used drinking. It must have been rotten for her to have some one smelling like alcohol every night. To have someone that would only smile when tipsy. To have to deal with someone who has consumed too much and knowing why.

I’ve also used obsessive compulsiveness to distract from the depression. If things were not just right then all hell could break loose. This would require more tip toeing. I would micromanage to the very nth degree to the very nth detail. I always had to have things just right. That is really tough. Trying to meet my standards during this masking was all but failure for her.


Partner in Life:
I would think that my wife is most affected by the depression in that she has an unequal partner. That she has an unstable partner. That she has an absent partner. She never knows what mood will be forth coming from me. She tip toes around me trying to decipher how to interact with me. She tries not to agitate me. After all she does not want experience the out bursts of anger that have previously occurred, both in private and in public. Both which can happen without a moment’s notice. Hence she is not at ease.

The dance she does around me makes her the care giver whether she wants that role or not. She is all giving and is receiving little in return. I want to drop out of life. She is trying to live a life. She does not want to just sit at home and stare at the walls, which could occupy my time from here to eternity.

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Alcohol and the depressive do not mix.

I’m not talking about getting drunk or even tipsy. I’m talking about in the smallest amounts.

My choice of drink is wine, particularly red wine in the $20.00 - $30.00 range. Red wine that is big and full bodied. Red wine that is either dry or juicy. Wine that originated close by or from foreign lands. Wine that peaks my intellectual interest. I love wine where I could taste all its nuances, the soil it was grown in, its growing season and the wine maker’s production techniques. I was always proud of the wine I had stocked in my cellar, an accomplishment that told of the work involved in acquiring. I was always happy to share and plenty of I did.

So instead of masking my depression with the alcohol I decide to stay with small amounts. After all wine packs a lot of flavor in just a sip. My strategy is set, no more than a glass and half of wine at one sitting and only on weekends. Oh how wrong could I be!

I followed this strategy four times in the last six or seven weeks. Each time was followed by a depressive episode, much like a hang over. It usually took the entire next day to recover, the entire next day of being in a depressive state at unforetelling lows. The entire next day would be sprinkled with hopelessness and sadness. The entire next day I would be on the verge of tears. It was only until the day after the hangover could I feel the antidepressants as work again.

Surprised I was! Now it makes sense why I felt so lousy all these years. All these years of masking where I thought I was self-medicating I was actually creating my very own form of a hangover, depression.

Epilogue – Relationship Horror:
Imagine your umpteen wedding anniversary is occurring. Imagine that your depressed spouse gives you a gift, a gift of insight that you did not think they possessed. Imagine that insight is their most inner thoughts on how depression has affected you and your relationship with this spouse. Imagine that you thought it was the best gift in a long, long time. After all you thought your relationship was headed for divorce. Imagine with this gift your hope increased that all will be all right.

Imagine you and your depressed spouse decided to keep the anniversary simple by going to a quaint, neighborhood restaurant with unpretentious prices. Your reserved table is sprinkled with silver colored star glitter. The food is well prepared. All is right, even the wine. Now imagine the next day your depressed spouse, full of sorrow, can not even sit at the dinner table. Imagine that your depressed spouse is crying in your arms by night, afraid of the hopelessness and wanting to die.

Realize that this is the most horrific hang over you ever witnessed.

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Wow, Simon, Did you ask my STBX to write all of this for our insight and edification? 'Cause it sure sounds to me like he wrote it...

This point was interesting:

"For a depressed person:
...no such trail is laid; the gauntlet is simply tossed, without warning or preamble, more often than not into a mundane exchange such as what to have for dinner or you, the partner, have done wrong that day."

I have told a few people who asked me what happened when STBX dropped the bomb, that I often wonder if I had never asked, "Are you feeling OK?" and instead simply gotten up and gone to bed that night, if we would have ever even had the conversation. That's how out of the blue it was.

Marriage, career, professional and personal reputation all in the crapper, and yet he succeeded in convincing his physician, hey, no depression going on here folks.

Thanks, Simon,
BA

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Why hurt the one they love the most

My best guess :-
1. Be it a chemical imbalance - Be it an event - The emotional part of the brain has clearly become stressed - Answers are required from the rational part - The rational part cannot explain a chemical imbalance - It cannot reason a tragedy - Eventually the whole brain runs out of processing power - To keep going it draws on other resources - Eventually these resources run out - Just as the brain of a diabetic in a crisis will draw sugar from other parts of the body prior to a hypo - The brain has to shut it's emotional part down to stop the mayhem - Chemical production stops - Just as the brain of a diabetic will shut down

2. Now the rational part of the brain needs to make a decision as to what's caused it's demise - It is defending itself to all comers - It cannot differentiate between friend and foe as it's emotional part is shut down - It knows someone is to blame - It depends on who it relates to when making decisions - If it hasn't anyone special, all will be foes - If it shares all it's principal decision making with one other person - It will surmise that this person has caused it's demise - They will be given ALL the blame and totally rejected - A diabetic with a slight hypo is emotionally shut down - They will rationally not be able to differentiate friend from foe - They will not risk asking for help - If the hypo deepens and a partner tries to give sugar - The diabetic will ask why it is needed - The diabetic may even fight off any attempt to administer it.
- In post natal DP both the child and the father can suffer fallout - The child cannot speak so it has to be eye contact - Have you noticed your DP sometimes may not recognise you

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Me-70, D37,S36
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I liked this one. My WH is depressed and medicated. Hard to know what to do since reasoning is not likely to be received accurately. The lighthouse story is my touchstone and I wish for opportunities for connection.


Me54 WH48
S18 D16
M 22 T 24
EA-PA-EA 2011-2015
Separated 10/14 - 06/15
BD1 02/14
BD2 05/16
BD3 08/21/16 and began drinking again
Working on me and liking me again


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