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So hard to escape for good

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Hi Vincenza

We are talking of fear. My old and loyal companion.

Fear.

Fear of?

Everything can be a source of fear, no matter how we may characterise it.

It's just there, I can name it, but divining its source is beyond me.

Words stretch and creak and die attempting to capture it.

Success. Failure.

This man does not expect to succeed. He hates to fail, even as failure is familiar and comfortable. He fears success, it is alien, it brings attention and expectation, he has tasted it so rarely that he has little idea of how it feels.

This man possesses an unfortunate combination of qualities. He is a perfectionist, so his family and therapists have told him, yet he is lazy and incompetent. He believes in honesty and integrity, yet he thinks nothing of lying, he hides and shirks. He is afraid of pain, yet hurts himself.

Pull this way, pull that way, shatter into shards that become as knives and turn back inwards.

This man is angry with himself because he cannot abandon these notions.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1853

Pete,

Fear is definitely the worst motivator. It keeps us from living our full potential.

Of course, each of us have unique fears which often leads to self-doubt and overshadows our confidence.

The question is how to regain hope and overcome the fear?

It sounds like you put unreasonable pressure on yourself to succeed.

I'm wondering what triggers your fear of failure? What do you imagine as the worst that can happen if you were to face your fear, for example write new stories, have them published and even praised?

What is the best that could happen to you?

Thank you for sharing your personal story with us and being so candid with your feelings and struggles.

We are always to listen, contemplate and support.

Vincenza, Health Educator

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Hi Rowsie

Thanks for the support.

Yes, it is weird, the way that 'good' things can set off an episode of depression. Maybe - and I'm guessing here because I'm ignorant - the chemicals released or the neural processes that happen when an opportunity opens up or something important is happening are similar or the same as what goes on when there is stress or something goes wrong. So, perhaps those of us who are depressive and/or prone to stress feel it in that way. Just conjecture. I know that, with my writing, I felt a momentary elation when my tutor first praised my work so fulsomely, but then I felt fear. It was like 'How can I write now, knowing that what I write is expected to be of a high standard'. Which led to the conviction that I don't know what I'm doing when I write - that when I write well I do so by accident.

Every opportunity, every opening-up, however longed-for and outwardly positive, carries with it a risk of failure and a raising of the stakes. So my reaction tends to be to back out, to escape. Then I carry the regrets of lost potential. I have lost count of the number of times I have had an interview for a new job and chosen not to attend at the last moment. Part of this is my social anxiety, but it is mostly fear of putting myself out there and taking opportunities. In my darker moments, I berate myself as a coward and a fool for this kind of behaviour. To be more rational, I suppose it is just a manifestation of my depression and lack of confidence.

Anyway, I must go now. I'm at work and should do some of what I'm paid for, I suppose.

Take care of yourself

Pete

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 3043

Hi Pete,

Let me just take a moment and commend you for being able to face things. It takes a strong person to admit that things are sliding. Also, you have a very powerful way with words. I can see why your tutor praised you.

I know where you're coming from about the positive reinforcement. I am very good at my job and my boss agrees. In January, I told him that I wanted to train for the next level and he agreed that it would be a good step for me. It took him awhile but he came up with a plan for me on paper which pretty much said for me to keep doing what I was doing. What happened to me? One of the biggest downward spirals I have ever experienced in a lifetime of depression. Here was my boss telling me I was good enough to move to the next level and I sunk. I didn't realize it when I joined up here but it was the start of this depressive episode. I stopped visiting the other stores I was in charge of and even started to call in sick because I couldn't handle setting foot in the place. My doctor told me that sometimes downward spirals can be caused by good things as well as bad. I am living proof. On April 24th, I had to take time off work to finally deal with my depression. I'm still off. I know this doesn't look good to my boss or the other people in my company. It's like I sabotaged 11 years of work. But that's the depression talking not me. Like Stuart Smalley says, "I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And, dog gone it, people like me."

Pete, you are not alone.

Rowsie

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Hi Ashley,

You're a comforting and calming influence, for sure. Thank you for that.

You ask me a big question - who am I, and what do I value? Wow......

To start off prosaic, I'm 50 years old, live in a city in England in a small, run-down house with my long-term (female) partner and two of my three sons (the eldest is away at University). My sons are 14,17 and 20. I work as a librarian, but my work to me is purely and only how I make a living. As a result of that, I've not had a glittering career. That's only important to me insomuch as it means I don't earn very much (hence the small run-down house).

My family is very important to me. I do not have friends (that's not a self-pitying exaggeration, I really do not have friends) and have a social phobia, so my family are the only warm human contact I have. I'm very proud of my sons, though I feel they've grown up so well despite me, rather than because of me. It's their mother who has done the great job there. I have let my partner down on occasion, have 'strayed' whilst in the grip of this reckless abandon when nothing seems to matter, have sought comfort, anonymity and a kind of oblivion in the arms of strangers. So I'm no angel, and feel neither proud nor ashamed of that.

Aside from my family, what else is important to me? As you'll have gathered from my previous post, I value creativity greatly. I'd love to be a musician above all, and I do play the guitar, but I have no illusions about that - I do it just for my own entertainment, but have no real talent in that direction. And I write (well, I did up until a day or two ago). Now that's all gone. Will I resume? Maybe, when I'm back on an upswing, but not now. Apparently I'm quite good at that, but I can't keep it in proportion and I'm too much of a perfectionist.

What do I value in other people? Consideration, generosity, honesty, humour. I have pretty high standards and feel hostile towards people, including myself, when they fall short. Also, I am terrible at bearing grudges. I don't forgive easily.

I don't have any religious faith. I was brought up Christian, and was for a few years a Buddhist, but I lapsed, though parts of Buddhist thought and philosophy have stayed with me and shape my worldview even now.

Maybe, as you say, the depression is talking and thinking for me now. If it is, it has a strong, seductive and convincing voice. There is a kind of perverse comfort in giving in to it. It's familiar, predictable....and doesn't it make me narcissistic too?

Thanks for listening, if you are still awake. You see, I have no great dramas in my life, and much to be thankful for, which adds a layer of guilt to the way I am feeling at the moment.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 11226

Hi Pete,

No problem, vent here as often as you want. That is what we are here for. It is clear you hold on to a lot of guilt and negative core beliefs. I can hear a lot of pain in what you wrote. I can also hear throughout your whole post that it is the depression talking and not you. I want to be clear, the way you are thinking now is not you, it is the depression. You recognize thoughts you don't like and even feel guilty about having them, this tells me the thoughts you are having are conflicting with values you do have. Values of tolerance, strength, honesty and creativity. Are these values of yours? If so, it makes even more sense how hard it is for you to be thinking these thoughts that are in such conflict with who you are, and who you want to be.

While we are on this line of thought Pete just for discussion sake, and for motivations sake, who do you want to be and what do you value? In other words, if depression was not an issue, who are you and what's important to you?

Members, feel free to jump in to offer your perspective and experiences.

Ashley, Health Educator

Here to help :)

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

I think I'm rather pretentious, so please forgive me that, but writing is very important to me. So important that I destroyed it all!

I just do not understand why I behave the way I do sometimes. Why being praised by a professional writer should freak me out the way it did is beyond me. Wasn't that what I wanted? To be told I had some talent?

I'm off the point, sorry. How to get through this episode? That's the question. I have to aim to stay in some control, not to give in to these petty, destructive impulses that attempt to own me. I'm too much of a coward to harm myself physically, but I do lacerate myself mentally, over and over again. Sometimes, in contradiction to my depressed, flat state, I feel full of energy. But it is energy borne of bitterness and hatred. It is an energy that wants to tear down. I listen to my internal dialogue and I cannot believe how nasty and hateful I am about fellow human beings, how bitter and intolerant. I feel so ashamed of myself at these times. If only my children and my wife could hear my thoughts they would be so disgusted with me. I'm somehow dirty, furtive and just plain wrong......

I know, these are 'negative self-beliefs' as my psychologist put it. But try as I might, and I've tried plenty of CBT in the last couple of years, I cannot have any conviction that these things are not true. I'm the one inside my head, I know what goes on and the person I really am.

Apologies. I wasn't going to rant this time, but it came anyway. If this is just a temporary relapse and will help me heal in the long run, then okay, I can tough it out. I just fear that this will be a pattern for all the rest of my life (I'm 50). I find that prospect hard to face.

That was a bit incoherent, sorry.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 11226

Hi Pete,

First of all, I have to say that relapses like these are normal with depression and are actually part of the healing process. I know right now you probably don't to hear that but it's true. How do you want to use this time? Remember you may not have a choice about how you feel right now but you have a choice about how you can get through it.

I am very impressed to hear about you writing but saddened to hear you deleted all your work. It is the depression talking when you say, "I just wish I was a good enough writer to get that across..." You are a good enough writing, actually more then good enough. How would things be different if the pressure wasn't there? Moving forward, where does writing fit?

Ashley, Health Educator

Here to help :)

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Hi Samantha

There's been no terrible happening in my life to set me back again, just a slow, growing feeling of being overwhelmed by life. What has been keeping my head above the depression these last few months? Staying busy, I suppose, but for me that can easily spill over into too much stress, too much going on in my head. And even amongst the activity, the being busy, I've had moments that I call my 'drop-away' moments. That's when whatever I'm doing reveals itself as pointless surface activity, chattering trivia, and drops away to show the realities of life. When this happens, it is a physical as well as mental sensation, it's like vertigo. I'm poised, stopped dead, on the edge of a great fall, everything is black and windswept and without reason. I can drop away at any time, in the midst of any activity. This has been happening more frequently again, and when I am in that state more often than not, that's when I know the old 'black dog' is back and hungry.

So....ahh, I've come through this before, so I figure I can come through it again. But I frighten myself, as I can be so destructive and bitter when I'm in the throes of depression. Reckless, lashing out at myself. And I did it again yesterday. I love to write, and I've been taking a creative writing class the last few months. I've written a few stories and the class tutor has told me (sorry to be big headed here) that he reckons I have a genuine gift for story writing, and that some of my work is of a high enough standard for publication. Hey, great! Hmmmm......I wished he hadn't said that, because it's more pressure, now every new thing I write has a standard to live up to. My confidence has not been increased by this, but decreased. How screwed is that? So, anyways, yesterday. I took all my writing, slowly and deliberately shredded every paper copy, then methodically permanently deleted all the digital copies, even going to the 'sent' folder of my email account where I had sent them to my tutor for feedback. So now it's all gone. Writing, that was to be my salvation, destroyed. It had become too important to me, and had to go.

Why? I don't know, but I had the irresistible urge to do it. How do I feel about it as I type now? Empty. Why am I telling all this? I had to tell somebody.

How does this experience really feel? I just wish I was a good enough writer to get that across.....

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 2606

Hi Pete,

It is nice to hear you although I wish it were on a higher note. I am sorry to hear that you are in a rough place again, we are here to help and wish you the very best. I hope that coming back to the depression center will assist you with this "relapse" and help you taking the steps forward you need to get back on track. Revisit the program, read through the forums, post often. Ultimately know that you are not alone, we are here to support you.

What may have lead to this relapse? What did you do last time to improve? What goals do you need to work towards?

Samantha, Health Educator

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So hard to escape for good