Mark250

Any body see the new Dr Who episode?

Cardio exercise, such as jogging really helps with falling asleep faster and better. Reading before bedtime instead of watching TV helps.

Hi there. I have a lot of trouble with job interviews, too. Be well-prepared for the interview in advance, like doing your homework on the company and planning your route getting there. This is unorthodox I know, but I usually down something like a whisky & coke before heading out to settle my nerves and make me more chatty as I have a tendency to clam up, and avoid caffeine completely. Remember your breathing -- lots of deep breathes. Chewing on gum before going in can help sometimes. Get as much sleep as possible the night before -- this is perhaps my weakest area. Hope this helps. Do you have an interview coming up?

Child worship. Brexit mania. Drivers who don't bother indicating. The extortionate price of my train tickets that are clearly not being invested in improvements. My local town; a desolate dump of charity shops, betting shops, take-aways and empty units.

Many of the big banks using sickly sweet, family-orientated TV ads to try and repair their tarnished reputations and to try and make ordinary people forget how atrociously they behaved.

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. It's a little schizophrenic to read, but I'm mostly enjoying it.

I haven't seen that documentary, but it sounds both horrifying and plausible. I also live alone in a flat and if I were to die at home, I imagine it would be a long time until anybody noticed my demise. I've been doing volunteer stuff in an attempt to try and get out more and meet new people, but it's not making much difference. It becomes tougher to make new friends when everybody your age is marrying up and having all their spare time taken up by work and child-rearing.

Bit of an odd one, perhaps. I was wondering if anybody else had trouble reaching out to their neighbours' or knocking on their doors. I live in a block of apartments and have done for ages now, but don't really know any of my neighbours'. Is this just me or some kind of phenomenon? I sometimes have an urge to knock on somebody's door, but always just dismiss it away. None of them knock on my door, either. Except to complain about something. It's true that I'm reserved and reticent and sometimes aloof, but this is something that's frequently mistaken for rudeness. With the exception of one, I've never had altercations or run-ins with the neighbours'. The man in the apartment opposite to my own has been my neighbour since I moved in in 2003, and I still don't even know what his first name is. This seems so weird and unnatural to me, but I've never been the kind of person to strike up impromptu conversation with strangers. I tend to communicate more confidently in writing than socialising. Some of my neighbours' are vulnerable pensioners and I often feel guilty about not showing more interest in them. Any similar situations out there or advice?

All over the place. Started cold, now humid.

Hi Vicious cycle. You sound like you're doing all the right things. Just being there for somebody going through depression is one of the subtlest but most effective approaches. Not everything has to be so pro-active or practical. Men have a tendency to self-isolate and withdraw when depressed. I've always thought depression is rougher on males, as women mature faster emotionally and psychologically and have much better support networks, but maybe I've trodden on some toes here. I only understand depression from the male perspective. In males, depression almost always amplifies anger and aggression, so watch out for that. In regards to mmoose, don't presume all withdrawers are not angry -- I'm a 'withdrawer' myself, but suffer with a lot of anger, I'm just good at keeping a lid on it through years of practice. Not the best method, I know.

Apologies to the original poster, I realise I'm off-topic here. @Sophy I don't like or use the word 'trigger' in regards to depression as it is something that has only recently entered the vocabulary of depression and mental illness in general. So for this reason the word 'trigger' doesn't resonate or mean much to me as it wasn't there at the start of my own depression. For this reason, I've simply decided not to incorporate the phraseology 'triggered' into my own usage. I reject it, and refuse to use it just because it has become some new mental illness buzzword. My own experience of depression and its origin was that it was caused, not triggered. The depression is simply always there; consistent. I don't deny that there are certain things that agitate and exacerbate it, and perhaps these are better words to use. When I first saw the usage of the phrase 'triggered depression', my interpretation of this was that the person was claiming that their depression completely goes away until something triggers it, at which point, it completely comes rushing back again. Since this has never been my experience of depression, it seems to me a wrong-headed and confused phrase that I simply don't recognise, and therefore, dismiss. I understand depression certainly discourages a person/sufferer from wanting to socialise, but I find that actual social interaction has little effect on depression one way or the other.

Because like it says, depression is not triggered. I'm talking about the more regular kind of depression rather than bi-polar, for example. Anxiety is vulnerable to social triggers, but depression isn't. Depression is very complicated and difficult to understand, so confused misinformation isn't going to help anybody.

You read his book? (12 Rules) I didn't like it much. Really verbose. Could have expressed everything in half as many pages, but that's just my take. Did you see his now notorious Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman? That I did like.

Thanks for making this thread Tungsten. Presently my own issue in regards to work and poor mental health is knowing if it's a good idea to disclose that I suffer with depression and anxiety in the application process. Any thoughts and advice will be appreciated.

I recommend Kurzgesagt, anything by documentary maker Adam Curtis and recently discovered Jordan Peterson who seems to know what he's talking about.