Like so many, I experience depression in various forms, yet each in its own way knocks out the decision control center in my mind. At times, I scramble in anxiety and can’t focus enough to pick out one among many possibilities. At other times, I don’t care about choosing – or anything else for that matter – and I let the alternatives fall where they may. Or I make all kinds of decisions, even life changing ones, but none of them seems like a choice. Each one is do-or-die. If I fail to do it, I’ll go right over the edge.
Varieties of Indecision
Depression isn’t one thing but a series of moods along a continuum from mild to severe. I used to move regularly with this perverse flow toward desperation. At the mild end, I might wake up knowing that something is wrong, feeling at once that everything is a bit off. I want and need to get a lot done, but I’ve lost my sense of where to begin and what’s most important. Then I get anxious.
There’s a steady snowfall of tasks, floating free of deadlines and priorities. I feel the anxiety and tension about getting them all done, so I pick one out of the air – yes, I’ve got to do that! Then I realize after a few minutes of continuing worry that I’ve got to do that other one in a hurry too. So I grab that and start working. And then another and another. It’s like picking snow flakes out of the air, each melting at once, a drop of moisture in my hand. I’ve got to get everything done, but I’m going crazy because I can’t grab hold of anything.
Then there are those times when I’ve felt nothing and could care less about making decisions. That’s happened most often when I’ve been on the antidepressants targeting serotonin, like Prozac. I think I’m fine because I don’t feel depressed, but then everything else, including close relationships, seemed far away and empty. I could drop them in a minute, and that might well seem to be the logical thing to do. The thinking brain can still function but cut loose from any tie to feeling. Decisions based on logic and indifference can be the most dangerous of all.
But on the other end of the spectrum, where major depression waits, there is plenty of feeling, but it’s all desperation. My survival is at stake. I have to be alone and shut the door on everyone I know. I have to quit this job, or it’ll destroy my life. Seeing this therapist makes me sicker, and I’ll go off the deep end if I don’t quit. This relationship is a trap that’s ruining my life. There are only relentless drives here, and everything I do or desperately feel I need to do simply has to happen. I have no power of choice. It’s easy to argue that a decision has been made. But I can’t see it that way, any more than I would say that someone under torture makes a choice to confess and stop the unbearable pain.
What Does It Take to Decide?
The psychologist James Hillman wrote a book called Kinds of Power
Cut away the extraneous possibilities and narrow down to specific action that will accomplish something: here’s what to do, now do it. Choices must be made to keep life and mind moving. But to do that, I need a clear vision of what I want, confidence that I can do it and belief that I can improve my life by acting in this way. When depressed, those are exactly the qualities I know I don’t have.
Depression brings the whole world inside me. I look at people and everything around me, and I’m not seeing anything but evidence of how bad I am. I’m dancing with my own nightmares. Even if I’m only mildly depressed and feel suspended amid a thousand possibilities, no one of which I can choose, I’m assuming that whichever I might pick will not take me anywhere. I’ll move in an endless circle.
Or else I’ll feel nothing, and there is no point in wanting anything. I put on a good show, pass for happily adjusted to life but only see blankness ahead – if I take the trouble to look. And in the most desperate state of severe depression, I’m running for my life. The idea of choosing a different path doesn’t enter my mind.
What’s common to all those ways of being depressed is an all-or-nothing thinking. Nothing good can result from what I do, and so there is no vision that I can choose of my own will. Everyone else is better than I am, and each seems a powerful presence that only makes me smaller still. Whatever I do will not work and only confirms the worst. All the creative possibilities I might see when I’m healthy become so many triggers of obsessive thinking.
When I began to recover some years ago, I started with a single decision. I can’t explain how it happened when I was so close to believing that I should do the world a favor and just disappear. But something snapped. All I could hear in my mind, louder than any sound I knew, was NO, I won’t go there, and YES, I’m getting out of this. I will do it. It was more than a survival instinct, or fear of where I was headed. I had to push hard against the current that was forcing me in the wrong direction, and suddenly the strength and purpose were there. I felt in my bones that I did have a choice, and I’d better make the right one.
Most people don’t have to make a decision like that. They can take self-respect for granted and get on with living. I guess people with severe depression have to work harder to master the most basic dimensions of life, to keep going and to kill of the impulse to stop.
How are you doing at deciding things these days?
Image: Some Rights Reserved by AMagill at Flickr
Whenever it comes to deciding I usually choose “I don’t know.” And I try to go on from there. Often times I really don’t know what to choose. Especially if it’s something small, like choosing to eat between two of my favorite restaurants. Part of my indecisiveness has to do with “having a time limit.” I often feel the need to hurry up and choose, but in the end I panic, and in said situation, I choose not to eat overall. Though, generically I end up choosing whatever because I get sick and tired of thinking logically.
I need help and do not even know how to get help anymore.
My belief is that single decision to try and escape the paralysis of depression comes out of anger. Anger is the original feeling and depression is that anger suppressed. Anger is dangerous, destructive and highly risky which is why people try and control it. However if that control leads to something at least as bad – depression – then relearning how to express a bit of anger might be helpful, energising and able to lead to that decision to escape depression. This is true in my case. I suffer from chronic depression and have done since I was an adolescent at least. I find that acting on the anger that underlies my depression has been a much more rewarding strategy than trying to be rational and sensible and not take risks with the anger driven motivation to anything to escape depression.
Anger is most for Biopolar people. Depression is nothing to feel,even fear.
Thank you so much for this. I don’t use the words loosely, so I mean it when I say the words have really ‘driven-home.’ I have had depression for most of my life; since I was six-years-old. I have recently gone-through a break-up with the love of my life. We had been together for over 10 years, no kids, but realised later that he had been controlling me through a series of manipulations. I am now trying to get my life on-track, but it is so difficult. My depression in the past year has been the worst it has ever been. The two sentences that hit home for me, were, “Cut away the extraneous possibilities and narrow down to specific action that will accomplish something: here’s what to do, now do it. Choices must be made to keep life and mind moving.” and “All I could hear in my mind, louder than any sound I knew, was NO, I won’t go there, and YES, I’m getting out of this. I will do it. It was more than a survival instinct, or fear of where I was headed. I had to push hard against the current that was forcing me in the wrong direction, and suddenly the strength and purpose were there. I felt in my bones that I did have a choice, and I’d better make the right one.” Those are the two fundamental things those with depression have to keep with them. More than anything. To live a clear, progressive Life. There is only one way. No alternatives. No backing-down. And there is no way that anyone else is controlling my Life. I’m not living or leading my Life for anybody else. Time to get on it.
Wow this is so good. Thank you for sharing your experience. No one has explained to me that indecision is tied to depression- not articulated this well, anyway! This is me. I feel like I can hardly move because every little decision seems daunting. I feel crazy because no one, not even my doctor has been able to help me navigate and explain the level of dysfunction I feel everyday. This gives me hope. Thank you.
Thank YOU Mika for sharing your feelings. I feel this SO much, “I feel like I can hardly move because every little decision seems daunting.” This paralysis of avoiding things, especially work related things that is just so hard to break through. It’s so hard to describe to anyone who doesn’t go through this. It’s so hard to fathom why simple decisions are just so hard, near impossible to overcome.
But we’re working through it. Whew.
I write on occasion. I never write when Im depressed. I can never put sentences together when I feel like this. But I never felt as I do now. This is a new low for me. So I wrote:
I pray for death, I can not fight.
No more……
No strength, no hop on the horizon.
With years I haven’t gotten wiser.
I cry, with reason and without.
It’s pain….
That’s what it’s all about.
I live….For what?
For mere existence.
The chase, the game, the rush.
Persistence.
The numbness sounds so appealing.
Eternal peace?
Well, that’s a feeling.
The beauty of this world has dissipated.
The future of my soul has slowly faded.
I can’t find reasons to hold on.
To pain? To suffering?
The laughter, smiles…All have gone.
The drugs no longer do their job.
I’m scared of nights, I’m scared of light.
My thoughts are poison to my heart.
The loneliness is all I’ve got.
My friend, my only confidant.
The chaos is engulfing me.
The life I dreamed is just a dream.
The sun, the moon, the stars.
And darkness………..
It’s like,I wrote this,
I have a poem in my google drive but I don’t know how to post it here. I know how you feel and its hard every moment.
Thats exactly how I feel
I’m here as well and it is a horrible existence.
I’ve struggled with depression before I even knew what depression was. I was a happy person, but over the years, that happiness world became a globe of darkness, despair and a lack of purpose. I have acquired several degrees, and still no success. I’ve worked myself into the grave, attempting to make achieve any form of success, but nothing has paid off. All of those years were in vain.
Walking day to day in this cloud, I’ve seen I have no control over anything. Every choice or path I’ve made or taken, has led to the same result, failure. No life changing results. Blessings, like magic, come with a price. They’ve always turned out to be blursings(blessings that turn out to be curses).I was having a “good” period where I felt like things were really changing, the veil had been lifted, but then just as soon as the sunlight seemed to be breaking through, the darkness grabbed me back down into pit, consuming all the light.
I’ve been to doctors, taken pills, you name it, still no hope. This life would be much better served in death.
Please don’t give up. There will be light at the end of the tunnel. 🙂
If you have degrees, you could teach..you would surely get satisfaction onehundredfold in knowing that your lessons will have positively influenced your pupils? This does happen, I taught 20 years ago and ex pupils still stop me to thank me. ????
I used to be very decisive and now being undeceive and second-guessing myself is a change. I’m getting better but still have a ways to go. This article helped me a lot. And I loved his description and his challenging ideas.
I have just completed my schooling I am thinking from last 2 month what should i do, now i am unable to decide what should i do. All options are looking tough down the line. Can you please help me out.
Hello, my name is Arooj. ‘Making Decision when Depressed’ sound so much like me at the moment. i have to take a decision but i happened to cant take one. I dont know what i want. Due to my past failures and bad decisions i am unable to take any decision now.
i have been moving alot in life from one country to another. it created problems for my studies. I took bad decisions. Till o levels I did fairly well though at that time i was quite unhappy with my results. But after that my life became full of bad decisions. i always wanted to do something in Maths. because i have always enjoyed solving problems in maths. But in my A levels Maths i ended up with a bad grade. i lost hope in maths and chose a different career that i never thought I would do it. i failed the first year of it. and now i am here in the same situation want to do something different again and this time it involves maths . but i am too scared to take that step because of the uncertainty
This article and the one about depression in the workplace hit home hard. I’m a registered nurse who only has an associate’s degree, doing a job that I’m told I’m lucky to have since they couldn’t find anyone with a bachelor’s degree to work with Core Measures. I ran to this job drone floor nursing because I felt dread at being a floor nurse, and having an abusive manager who kept us after our shift to scold us for the most minor things,(ie recording a blood sugar in a different part of the health record than was desired) and keep us there for hours even though we had to work the next day! This core measures job unbeknownst to me has had several people quit due to another abusers manager who has no problem calling you worthless and screaming at you I front of everyone. I can’t seem to relax even when I get home as I continue to get nasty emails well after my workday is done! I compulsively have to check the or I can’t relax, but I often find myself wishing I would have not checked to begin with. I made a career decision to become a nurse because it was always pounded in my head to pick a career that was steady and always in need….this was when he was sober….I never knew if I was going to get beats or congratulated about something. I have been depressed even before I knew what that meant. I have a habit of life having to extracte me out of situations I’ve been in for way too long! It’s not that I don’t thing about planning, I just start thinking of making changes in my life like a career change, then I start looking for other careers, then a few minutes later I panic and start looking on the Internet for hobbiessince I don’t have any hobbies….then an few minutes later in another panic imagine myself being stuck where I am…then I start pacing. After that I start crying , then repeat that cycle until I fall asleep, then often I wake up and start again, but this time with a great deal of guilt from wasting my time from spinning my wheels! I carry guilt that we live in a house my mother in law owns and we pay no rent, but we still manage to have a bunch of debt. This thought races through my head and then I feel guilty for not getting my wife and kid out of this god forsaken town where we have no ties but the fear of leaving a free house which is falling apart! I am almost 47 and I have never owned anything worth more than a few thousand dollars as the thought of loosing it starts the mad cycle all over again! I cry every morning and I stay up late so it doesn’t seem like the night speeds buy like it does while you’re sleeping! Rinse and repeat! I started to take step like getting HR invoked at work and seeing a counselor after years of stigma, and I have tried to pray but then I feel guilty that I only seem to talk to God when I’m in trouble and need something….I am a hot mess and I need some help and advice!
Hi Kevin.
What an honest open account of how life is getting on top of you. Your clear description of where things are getting to you are a great start to getting better I think.
Yep making decisions is really hard, but maybe instead of looking at so many issues at once, just accept life is all over the place and take tiny steps towards one thing you can change. Massive changes are really overwhelming. I get completely frozen with decision making when I have really high expectations of what I need to get done. If things are awful you always have a simple choice to make…You can accept the awful situation, and just get on with life..thinking things like”Ok. So I’m stuck right now in a house I hate can’t change that so will not worry about it any more” or you can refuse to accept it and take tiny steps to fix it. …Secret here is tiny…one tiny thing is much less overwhelming. Even just writing out possible tiny steps.
I have an interesting analogy for how to make a decision that Wayne Dyer once told.
If you need to walk into a theatre and sit down to watch a movie, you just automatically know how to do it. You walk towards your seat, no hesitation no second guessing and you sit.
You don’t um and ahh.. you don’t wonder which is the best way you just know and you trust yourself. Well, that’s how I try approach all decisions that are bugging me. Just go there. Don’t second guess yourself. This helps alot when there’s a clear decision to be made.
When you have heaps of decisions to make its awful. I now choor only one or two per day. ( of the major worries) to work on, I do a bit of work on it then get back to living…exercise, housework…kids etc. Otherwise I’d fo NOTHING, of either.
I hope you’re feeling better Kevin. My heart goes out to you.
you described exactly how i feel and the way my life is .my girlfriend gets mad and says its a pity thing stop feel sorry for yourself so i just seclude myself and it starts a fight because i ignore her
Please can you give me some advice. I’m currently suffering with anxiety and depression over a choice I HAVE to make, not necessarily right now but in the near future. I’m from England and my boyfriend lives in Mexico, the decision I have to make is whether to leave my family and friends for a life in Mexico or finish with my boyfriend, who I love very much. It would be difficult for him to move to England because he would struggle to find work. This is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life and either option causes me anxiety. I’m so lost, I just don’t know what to do. I know I don’t need to decide right now but I feel like I can’t relax and I’m scared of making the wrong decision. Please help.
Hi Elizabeth
When in love you feel like leaving everything else and just choose love. Sounds a bit old fashioned but true.
You boyfriend could be a very nice person but always think what is right for you England or Mexico. What about your family like parents brothers or sisters? Do they live in England? If yes take their help.
Always remember if something happens in Mexico will you be able to cope with that and stand up on your feet?
If yes and you are a strong woman go for it.
Oh my god. I actually feel like I could have written this, word for word. Minus the recovery part since I’m not there yet… But everything else, every other word. Wow. I can’t even make a decision to go away this weekend with friends! It’s so stupid. I’m a freelance writer with a big deadline for my book and I have interviews this weekend which I could technically do while I’m away (as long as I have Internet) but will I? Plus there’s the uncertain finances rn. I don’t know. I should go cuz I’ve been avoiding people like the plague and not wanting to leave the house, yet I’m going crazy here and I want to leave but I don’t want anyone to see me. It’s insane.
But really, it’s a simple decision: yes or no? And I can’t make it!!! It’s driving me crazy. :/
Thank you for writing and sharing this. You hit the head on the nail with this:
“Depression brings the whole world inside me. I look at people and everything around me, and I’m not seeing anything but evidence of how bad I am. I’m dancing with my own nightmares. Even if I’m only mildly depressed and feel suspended amid a thousand possibilities, no one of which I can choose, I’m assuming that whichever I might pick will not take me anywhere. I’ll move in an endless circle.”
Life Decision
I have a huge life decision to make. I have been seeing my boyfriend for a year and a half . We live 3 hours and a 2 hour ferry ride from each other and in different countries. We spend only 2 weekends a month together and once in a while a week. We are excellent for each other, the same age, enjoy each others’ sense of humour and are very interested in conversations and love spending time together. He wants to get married and move here where he would easily find a job. I deathly afraid that once together, I will change my mind. Then here is something else . My sister and her husband are selling their beautiful condo for a cheap price. I love it . It’s near the river and running trails and I can have a my dog there. I know it sounds silly. House versus ever lasting love.
My therapist said spend a summer with him and see. I guess I have to give up the condo but I’ve been doubting my wanting to be with him since shortly after starting to seeing him yet I love being with him. That, I don’t understand. I wonder if I should just walk away from the relationship if that comes to mind . But then I take an anti anxiety pill and I’m fine. I was all for buying the condo today and then after taking a few days’ break from my boyfriend, I was depressed and phoned him and felt good again. I am also so prone to other peoples’ judgement. I pick up vibes. He is super nice but a little different. He will be over nice sometimes, that kind of thing. Also he is very knowledgeable and over shares what he knows on topics. Hmmm, is that what drives me and others away; insecurity. I was drawn to my ex husband for his confidence but he turned out to be so confident that he thought he was always right and I everything that went wrong in the house was my fault (27 years of this) . Help!!!
Hello John Folk-Williams (OP)
Your article/post/blog etc has very powerful insights, and well written. Thank you so much. When you are depressed, never forget the power you have to help other people. You have helped me at a critical time when I’m very desperate and looking for some ray of light out of the darkness.
You have given me that. Thank you. You probably saved a life.
Its not easy to see yourself when depressed but to know yourself and understand your daily pattern of living is more important.
Thank you for sharing so boldly and honestly…this is EXACTLY how it is. If I’m not on medication, life overwhelms me to the point that I can’t move. On meds, I’m numb and want to cut all ties to everything and seem capable of making decisions which are nothing but bad for me and painful for others. Hoping this will get better with time and as I learn coping strategies, but it’s so hard to let others in when it’s all so…intense. So…all or nothing.
hi everyone,
i am having problem in making decisions, for example if i am working on one thing, suddenly some one tells about some thing new then my mind will get attracted to it and i cannot concentrate on the work i am doing. because of this i am confused which one is my goal. and in which field i want to start my career. so can anyone help me how to decide which one is my goal….
I’m posting in order to subscribe to followup comments.
I’m 12 years into my recovery process and treatment for depression. I envy people who have loved ones willing to wait for them; I was very young (22) when I had my meltdown, and my ex-fiancée did not wait for me. I had left her for someone else in a desperate attempt to stop my pain; by the time I was clear-minded enough to realize what I had done, my ex had started seeing someone else and hated me. I’m still struggling to figure out how I let that happen.
Hoping says in an earlier post that you have to realize you’re depressed. I definitely didn’t. I felt like me; it turns out I’ve had dysthymia probably since birth, so the major depressive episode just felt like I was more intensely me, if that makes any sense. I didn’t realize that life wasn’t like that for everyone. Every decision I made felt like a life or death matter that had to be dealt with immediately. I feel like I’ll never stop paying ythe price.
Fred
Hello Fred, I was one of them people who was willing to wait for my depressed Ex, She left me for another man in her desperate attempt to stop her pain. Waiting it hard when you know the one you love is ill and they dont!..and the damage they do can be bad. We in the end have to move on to protect our hearts. Like most of us here we fight that battle hopelessly trying to get the people we love to see they aren’t themselves and we all fail. I dont hate my ex i love her dearly always will, but i will never forget how worthless she made me feel. And i hope she finds the courage to find hersefls again. And im sorry you to had to suffer from this awful illness.
Hoping, thank you for your response, and thank you for trying to hold on. I think my former fiancée would have waited longer, but her parents were very much involved in her life and I believe tbey manipulated her via finances to give up on me. She was still financially dependent on them, so they had a trump card. That in no way alleviates my guilt.
I wish she had known I was sick. I really do think she simply thought of me as an asshole who had wasted five years of her life. I loved her, desperately so, but my sickness made her feel a million miles away. When she repeated that her parents said I was “dragging her down with me”, it was over for me. They confirmed my worst fears.
I wish her a happy life filled with love, but I wish it had been with me, or at least that we could have parted on happier terms.
Whats so hard when your trying to hold on is that from the outside it can look like a normal break up, but its far from it..your blind sided when someone with depression ends things. And it takes a long to to feel normal again. I know my ex lost her connection to me..but she turned on me was cold and indifferent. Now im not sure if i want to every see that stranger again. How long did it take you to become clear? And did you see everything for how it really was? Or was it still a skewed version of you reality? Again im sorry this illness ruins good things.
Hi Fred, I’ve spent the last year in limbo waiting for my husband to realise he has depression (or some other illness). After 15 years together he suddenly ended our marriage and asked me to leave. We were so happy together and close and it came completely out of the blue (after he’d been in a very stressful job). It’s like he’s a different person now. Everything I read about depression fits with his behaviour, but I took him to a psychologist and doctor and neither diagnosed him. They said he’s going through something but he is not opening up about his real feelings and that until he’s ready to open up there’s nothing they can do. Only six months after he asked me to leave, he started seeing someone else. Everyone is telling me to move on. But I know the man I married, I know he is a good person and that his behaviour is a result of depression. He has expressed sadness, worthlessness over and over again to me but not to anyone else. So I know the right thing to do is to wait. But how long for? Fred, I’m interested to hear how you felt and any insights you can offer.
Mas,
My answer has probably changed dramatically from what it would have been a year ago. My significant other of 5 years walked out on me in August, saying that my depression was too much for her handle. I think there were issues of her own that were more responsible, but I’ll likely never know.
The biggest factor in my change of perspective was reading Healing the Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw. I’m an atheist and had to struggle through parts of the book when Bradshaw evangelized or bore witness, but the vast majority of the book was earth shattering for me. I’d been eating myself alive with guilt for 13 years over the way I cheated on and left my fiancée, and finally I’m able to understand and forgive myself.
At the time I was consumed with shame and felt that I didn’t measure up, a feeling that I now realize was ingrained in me from childhood. I have a much better understanding of not only why I am who I am and why I did what I did, but why my parents did as well. I went through a period of hating my parents for putting me through such turmoil, and the book allowed me to forgive.
There’s a quote from the book Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold that I often read and think over: “I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.”
Obviously you’re in immense pain rather than annoyed, but the book by Bradshaw and the quote by Bujold point in the same direction: your husband is in immense pain, and in my perspective is looking for a cure in the form of another person, something that he will never find.
I can’t answer how long to wait. It took me 36 years to find the Bradshaw book, after 13 years of acute suffering. I had to learn the hard way that the problem was in me, not in my surroundings or in my partner. Your husband might have to do the same, I don’t know. I wish I could give you a better answer, or any answer at all, really, but I can’t. I offer you my sympathy and thoughts and hopes that you can find your way out of your pain.
You can’t fix him. You can’t force him to fix himself. There’s likely no words you can say that will make him see the light. Until he sees and accepts that he’s sick, his healing can’t even begin.
Fred
Fred, thank you so much for your reply. Everything I’ve gone through over the past year confirms the truth of what you say. He has to come to a realisation on his own. If I can trouble you further for some insight on how you felt when you left your fiancée and what you felt with the new person.
I guess I’m trying to understand this – my husband said he doesn’t love me anymore and I said ‘it feels like you don’t love anyone right now’. He agreed and said only his mum, who passed away 12 years before (she suffered from schizophrenia and committed suicide). I can understand how depression makes you not feel love. But then when he started a new relationship (with a much older lady, a colleague who was working with him at the time) I wondered how he could feel those feelings towards someone else. Maybe not love, but attraction etc. He went away on an overseas holiday with her, sharing a room. This was only a short time after they got together. When a friend questioned him about his new relationship, he’d said this lady is very active, goes hiking, socialising etc. All things he was down on himself about (he said he’s a slob, he’s too fat, watches too much tv). So I wondered if she represents something he’s aspiring to be.
But I thought depression takes away your sex drive, your motivation to do things. How is a depressed person able to do all the things associated with dating? I suppose I’m trying to gain insights in to how he must be feeling so that I can be there to support him when he hits a low. We’ve been together since we were 20 (35 now) and have had the most loving relationship, we share values etc too. I can’t walk away from him when I know he is going through something. I remember the person he was and I love that person intensely. Now he is selfish, inward looking. I get that that is part of the illness. But I want to understand more about how a depressed person can seem to be enjoying life, and how they really feel inside. Thank you in advance!
Mas,
Sorry for the delay in responding – I’ve had a pretty bad week.
At the time I felt like I was drowning. My first attempt to feel better was to drop out of graduate school after about a month and a half, and for a little while I did feel relieved. And then the panic returned. Well, if the problem wasn’t grad school, it must be the person I was in a relationship with. The woman I left for was about as big a mess as I was, so I felt needed, like she needed to be rescued. Thanks to my upbringing in a dysfunctional home, I’m a codependent. I thrive on being needed,and the other woman seemed to need me, whereas my fiancée didn’t. I felt like a complete failure, so feeling needed was a bright spot for me.
I didn’t understand codependency at the time and I’ve only recognized it’s significance in my life and been seeking recovery since my partner walked out on me. As I said before, unrecognized shame has controlled my life, and I’ve always looked to other people to complete me or to make me feel okay. I now realize I left my fiancée because she wasn’t providing me with what I needed, but the thing is, no one could have. My codependency led me to believe that finding the right person would fix me. I now know better.
Have you ever seen the movie The Prestige? Depression makes me feel like a completely different person from day to day. Take my former partner for instance: on a good day I was filled with love for her and could feel it. On a bad day I was in such pain that although I intellectually knew I loved her, I couldn’t feel it. That was one of the few good things to come out of my earlier experience: that just because I couldn’t feel the love at that moment didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Thank you for your sympathy. I struggle to understand that my partner had her own issues, but damn it, I would have loved to have been of assistance to her, but she doesn’t like showing vulnerability to anyone, not even to someone she was supposedly going to spend her life with. My therapist also says that the right person wouldn’t leave because of my depression, but of course my depression prevents me from believing her, especially given that my biggest supporter went from supporting and loving me one day to not being in love with me the next (I realize nothing happens that quickly, but that’s how it seemed to me – she didn’t clue me in on what she was going through).
Sorry Fred, I wanted to add, I’m really sorry about what you’re going through with your partner leaving you. Five years is a long time. With no understanding of depression, I have the perhaps naive view that the right person can understand you and share your life. I take hope from what John on this website writes about, how his marriage survives. Thank you for sharing your thoughts even though you’re going through something difficult yourself.
Hi Fred,
Thanks so much for sharing what you went through. It is heartening to hear that you’ve come to understand some of the things that’s causing your pain. I’m sure it doesn’t always help but it would be so good to have some clarity. I’ve talked to my husband a great deal about depression and that I really think he’s going through something like that. But he keeps saying he’s fine and that he’s ‘not sad’. He has changed everything in his life and is trying to find happiness. I feel like I need to leave it alone for a little while and let him realise that the pain or flatness is coming from within and that changing his life will not help. But maybe it will help for a little while. And meanwhile I’m in limbo! And maybe he will never realise. It’s such a horrible situation.
Whoever is reading this, I’m sure for most people it is a desperate hope to find an answer to what you are going through. I think this description of depression is the best I have found. I myself this morning was trapped in my own mind, which lead me here. These thoughts I describe are what I have decided may improve my life after reading this page.
The biggest thing that has gone wrong is not the actual things that went wrong, although they were horrible to adjust to, but the loss of the ability to find happiness, hope and meaning. Or perhaps the ability to accept that what you do may no longer have a great deal of meaning, (for example your day job – or trying to find one if you are unemployed) but that is how your life is and when there is no practical alternative to try to believe that it is ok and that you need to be ok with yourself doing what seems like un-meaningful tasks.
When you have no cause, it is very easy for people to try to help by telling you to find one. Of course there are many causes you would like to feel you believe in but maybe you aren’t quite attached to one yet in order for it to make a difference to how you value your life. Whether it be a faith, charity, person you love or passion (this is quite rare to find in a depressed state) I think the problem is that I don’t believe it will find you. Somehow you have to find it, even if you can’t physically go out perhaps you could find it in a book, on TV, online, another person you have contact with. Then you have to make contact with that cause – do something to feel part of it, whether it’s just a phone call, a letter or something more practical. After having a major passion and losing it through a series of bad events it makes sense for me to try to find a few little causes rather than one big one – without over complicating my life in a way that I can’t deal with when anxiety attacks or spreading my time between so many things that I have no sense of belonging. For some people it might be better to find just one cause, or sometimes I think it might be better for me to find a new one cause realising that if that one becomes difficult I will find another one. Everyone’s cause is different – but it should be your own, and not somebody else’s. You may be alone in your own mind, but you may not always be if you can let something else in.
I hope this works. I’m off to find a cause for myself. Thanks to all the lovely people that have posted on this page.