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Yep, im one of those rare freaks blessed with dysthymia.

While its not the horrible debilitating problem that major depression is, its a much more subtle and subversive illness. It creeps into every facet of your being and totally subverts your personality to the point that being depressed is a normal state of being for you. Over the years it will grind you down and debilitate you in the same way a-typical unipolar depression does only dysthymia doesnt ever go away. Its like a horrible roomate you'll never get rid of and makes every day grey and bleak.

Its like this dialog from the movie office space,

Peter: So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.

Dr. Swanson: What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?

Peter: Yeah...

Dr. Dwanson: Wow, that's messed up.

This post has been edited by Lupus: Jun 23 2006, 06:11 PM

i have dd .. is that why i try to hide my bad days.. i dont know why but i dont want anyone to see me crying and i dont want to have to explain what i am cryng about.. i dont even know..stress realy u know stresses me out..i have been on different medicines for 15 years and am still not better..my dr said we well now double up.. i am tired of trying i want to get better now... i want a life.. cant work..cant do my art ..no friends , cant cope with people. have a great life other than dd..i am 60 years old and i feel like i have lost so many years... life is getting shorter and i want to be part of it NOW...

I've been dysthmic for 11 years or more.

So hmm. I've kind of always been a wee bit down, from time to time, just sometimes it was worse.. The last couple of years have been no picnic as I've had some rough times which only intensified the existing condition. Drugs didn't help either, looking back they just made me worse. I've just found out that I've been diagnosed, labeled, if you will, with this condition of Dysthymia. As well as generalized anxiety... and while I don't vocalise much of my worry to people around me and my partner seems to think he worries much more than I do, I think my doctor might be right. I bottle things up, and don't talk about what I'm really worried about... I mean, I go through life each day thinking negatively, the last thing I want is to start dwelling on it... but coming to think more of that... not verbalising it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist... I should know this all too well... ooops sorry for rambling.

Yeah that sounds exactly like what I have been going through the past 11 years. I just wish that I had medical insurance so I could do something about it.

I have always had dysthmia. The onset of mild autism when I was little kept me alone during the critical years of socialization. Now that I am 24, I still suffer dysthmia. I am starting to feel quite a bit better but that is because I am also transgendered and I am finally being myself and succeeding very well at it. I am also in therapy but it has never really helped.

The only thing making me very depressed and now suicidal is my horrible job. Should I start wellbutrin or some sort of antidepressents? I have a degree and I am stuck in retail, hoping to teach or go to grad school yet I have no enerngy to study or apply.

Ummm any recommendations?

I've had Dysinthia for the last 5 years but strangely enough I have grown so accustomed to havig it that I don't want it to go. I can function normally in day to day life etc but behin the talking, laughing, joking etc the dysinthia hangs in the background and it only needs a small trigger to bring it boe the surface once more. I remember yesterday when I was watching Blackadder, though I lughed at the jokes, momentarily I looked grave fromtime totime so I think I understand now what one of my friends meant by saying that you can read it in someone's eye.

I'm DD too! We ought to have jackets made for our club, but what would the crest look like? I have been DD positive for the past 17 years, give or take a year. I only found out that I was so messed up this past February. Since then I've started medication (not medicating myself mind you, well maybe a little bit) and talking to a therapist. I got to say that in this past 6 or 8 weeks, things have started to coalesced for the better, and for the first time in recent memory (oh, say 17 years, give or take a year) I've had many a positive feeling about my life. I'm excited about my life and my future, and this has been a sustained thing for many weeks now. I used to have a battle mentality that life was something that was endured, and/or beaten into submission. Thank God I don't feel that way anymore.

Keep on keepin' on,

K

I have had DD for over 20 yrs and experience an avg of 1-3 major depressions per year. As a child and early teens I was more numb, kind of flatlining. At adolescensce it turned into deep sadness and the occasional 'week of tears'. Even though did well in school and was popular I was hurting deeply inside. I was ashamed of my sadness, 'What is wrong with me, I have no reason for this!'. I kept it all in and I didn't get any help until my mid 20s, when I was finding it increasingly hard to hide from my closer friends and colleagues. I've finally accepted it was a real illness and have stopped being so hard on myself. I am learning to be as gentle on myself as I would be to a loved one. It's has helped me feel ok with me even when I am a bit 'messy'.

I still have to fight the desire to be stay in. Maintaining our relationships with friends and family is so important in life. But there are times I just need to be at home. After so yrs of putting on the 'happy face', I'm so drained and can't do it as well as I once did. I don't care so much about appeasing anyone. Some friends/family still take it personally when I hibernate. So be it. They are not the ones living in my skin. And how can we really expect someone to truly understand if they have never lived with a serious depressive disorder. Besides, my true friends are always there when I return. I try to stay true and kind, and to do what's best for me, and sometimes it's going easy and taking a break. I just need to keep in mind that I need to do the things that are good for my well-being when I am alone. Today I am going to force myself to workout even though I am teary and want to sleep all day.

Best to All:)

Ah, Dysthymia.....the monster that slowly and steadily robs me of life experiences every day.

I'm 35 now, was diagnosed at 30, but looking back can see that this developed in my early 20's. I can certainly identify with those of you who have posted above me in this thread.

I've accepted that it's quite well likely that I will need to be on medication for the rest of my life, but I never seem to be able to release my frustration and resentment toward this "beast". It's throws a big heavy blob of grey over my naturally creative and exuberant personality, and makes life look greyscale instead of vibrant colour. And, it's always back there.....behind me.....tapping me on the shoulder every now and then to remind me that it's there and waiting for it's next opportunity to take the lead.

Anyone who is of the misunderstanding that this is not as severe as depression needs to pay attention to this thread!

So.. I'm new here and it sucks I have to make a minimum number of posts in order to chat with people because I'm only here because I'm feeling pretty ****ing desperate.

I've expressed already that I've never been on meds and I haven't really been diagnosed. I know I'm depressed but I'm not sure which "type" I am. I feel like I might be DD? My depression has been really bad since I've entered my undergraduate studies three years ago. The relationship i'm in has made it even worse, especially in the past year. However, I remember being 13 years old in middle school and thinking to myself "Wow, I'm a loser. I have no friends, I'm not going to have any ever." I was the the middle of a cultural and personal identity crisis. And then I thought "Oh well, I'm just going to be the perfect daughter that my parents want me to be." I'm in my early twenties now, and I pretty much feel the same except now I'm faking being the perfect daughter because my dad doesn't really know me that well and I can't tell my mother how depressed I am.

I had a few years that were ok. Good friends. As of now, those are the only friends I have, and even so I rarely see them anymore.

So here I am, in my dorm room, typing away, hoping someone will at least agree with me that life sucks. I'm trying to keep down the sounds of my sniffling but its not easy. When I lived alone this summer I would cry for hours. When I'm alone I still do the same thing. At the end of the day I literally feel like I've been swimming all day.


Another thing- I've recently started bleeding in between my period for a week now. I went to my docs a few days ago but he said it was normal because I missed a pill. I know its not cus I missed 1 pill. Possible it might be stress-related?

Hey IG,

I feel your pain. I'm sure that everyone with DD can remember an event or specific point in their lives when they felt what you described. I look back at some times during high school where it was like I was out of my body, but still looking through my eyes and thinking about how inane all my friends were, and how I couldn't wait to be rid of them. Now when I think of that moment, and many others, I think that should have been a sign, but who do you tell? Hard to tell your parents 'cause they might just dismiss your complaint as a growing pain of a teenager, when it is in fact something really wrong. And then you spend 17 years of your life thinking that life sucks, and happiness is fleeting. That is DD for you.

I remember distinctly just a year ago walking home from work on a beautiful day with a the sun on my back and not a cloud in the sky, but I was completely miserable. I would ask myself why I couldn't be happy, when I had so much to be happy about. Then a February diagnosis seal the deal that I've got DD. That was a blessing and a curse as my personal life was falling apart, but at least my mental torment now had a name, and could be fought with medication and therapy. Now I'm doing much better, but have resigned myself to the possibility that I'll be medicated for the rest of my life. But that is better than being depressed for the rest of my life.

Fight for the help that you need. I know it can be very difficult, but get a handle on your depression now, regardless of what type it is. The sooner you know what you are dealing with, the sooner you can hopefully get on the road to recovery.

Keep hope alive,

K

Greets to everyone! Stay strong, invisiblegirl. I can really relate to your pain. It can seem like a curse to be a univ student and come to the realization that you have DD or some form of d. The unfairness of it all seems incredible. I remember I would sit there in my room much like you are doing, and, driven to my wits end, I would read up on the condition, where I'd learn things like it is common for d to have its onset during late adolescence / early adulthood, i.e., exactly the age of myself and my peers at school; I would rage, "that's impossible, everybody but me seems so well-adjusted and happy and motivated blablabla" and nothing added up, nothing made sense, I really isolated myself. I was really stubborn and fought with my parents over going to the univ counseling/psych services. If i could change any one thing about my time at univ, I would have checked out those facilities WAY earlier. Some schools unfortunately limit the number of sessions; but some do not. (what does suck is that often the waitlists can get ungodly. There were more people out there suffering than I ever imagined, but unfortunately there was a waitlist of several MONTHS. By that time, I had already dropped out of school and could no longer access the facilities; please don't let this happen to you!) When I eventually returned to school, I still didn't learn my lesson; I stubbornly refused to seek help. Now that I'm living with my parents and trying to do everything to "hide" my "condition," the idea of a confidential, walk-in sort of resource such as they had at univ, is inconceivable. (I get a kind of horrible regret-filled nostalgia; or nostalgia-filled regret, if you will, about my years in the "enlightened college town" hahaha.)
DD needs more research done on it I think. Thank you to the person who posted that article in the FAQ! JUst because DD is oft referred to as "mild depression" doesn't make it any less insidious. In fact, after years of "chronic low mood," it's hard to call it "mild" by any stretch. I'd say one of the worst things about it is that you GET USED to it somehow, it's "mild" only in that you somehow manage to live with it, and you come to think it's a normal part of life; (your life, at least,) and that this is now "who/how you are;" being moody, pessimistic, hateful, lethargic, unmotivated etc is just part of your "personality." K gave a good description above. Once you get accustomed to not enjoying life, then it can seem impossible to get out of that mindset, because you've never known any other way of thinking. In my case, the DD was fueled by questionable attitudes like "school sucks" and "work sucks" and "people suck" and that nothing I did mattered; I would never find myself doing anything that mattered with my life. Consequently, I feel like I'm not interested in anything and it's extraordinarily difficult to set goals, and it seems impossible to be passionate or care about anything. This comes out in my extreme laziness and apathy; I'm just mooching off my parents and occaisionally/unenthusiastically sending out a resume/application (not suprising I've gotten no response!) and watching TV all day. Yeah things could be a lot worse.
I've been reading "overcoming depression" by p.gilbert, and it makes the interesting case that d activates our "fight-or-flight" systems. For me, this ties in to the sense of being overwhelmed, and of a desperate sense of wanting to escape your immediate environment, and, of assuming the worst about people, i.e., they want to deceive you so you'd better protect yourself. Does anyone else get the feeling of "wanting to escape", i.e., particular feelings tied to particular environments -- you feel you "Sort of belong" in place A but you don't "belong" at all in place B?
Also, thanks to whoever mentioned thich nhat hanh, i've got some new reading material that looks quite interesting.
PEACE to all