lilou

Fatigue has been one of the most debilitating and difficult to treat symptoms for me. It manifests physically, but I suspect now that my body would be mostly fine if my *mental* energy reserves were not so depleted by depression and anxiety. I find that if I stumble into some activity that is relatively mindless yet physically demanding, I can do it reasonably well. Running, sweeping, or any task, even if physically demanding, can be done if it requires little concentration. So if that may be the case for you, you might try mindless physical activity to build your strength. Sedentary depression is different from the sort of depression where you're still functioning and doing school or work. It feels like if you just sleep a lot for a few days, weeks, even years, you'll finally stop feeling tired. Then (if you're like me) you try that and discover that you feel as worn out as ever because it wasn't your body that was exhausted; it was your mind. You try to return to more normal levels of activity, only you're as mentally drained as ever and now on top of that, your body is out of sync with your old physical routine and the physical weakness you feel is worse and more "real" than when it began. tl;dr version: If depression tells you that you just need to rest for a while, and revert to being much more sedentary than your baseline level of activity, depression is probably lying to you. Some people do burn out in a physical sense but I don't believe that's ordinarily the case with depression. Someone told me that the only treatment for this problem is to build back routine slowly, because doing what we do as a matter of routine is what makes it possible for us to complete relatively complex or demanding tasks. And because depression robs you of this benefit of routine, every single thing you do now requires more mental energy than when you were in the habit of doing it automatically. I believe that. Oh, and I've known people whose depression-fatigue was ameliorated by Wellbutrin, too.

Made the effort necessary to eat a meal. I didn't even cook it. Sounds like a joke accomplishment but it isn't!

She may be hiding out of shame? It can feel rather humiliating to involve others in your desire to end your life, and then have to live with that on top of failing to "follow through." Depression can convince you that you're a burden to people who care and that you must avoid them for your own sake. If she reached out to you and spoke to a therapist, I would not immediately conclude she isn't responsive because she went ahead with harming herself. There are a lot of reasons she could be incommunicado right now.

I don't know if it it is of any comfort, but almost no one alive would be regarded the same by others if their most deeply hidden thoughts or actions were to be made public. If your guilt were helping you overcome something or stopping you from doing something harmful, then it would be useful. Instead it seems to only keep you stuck and unable to live in the present or imagine a future that isn't warped by shame. Is it possible to imagine forgiving yourself? I don't mean achieving complete forgiveness in a day. But you wouldn't be any different from most people if you felt less and less guilt with the passage of time. Forgiving yourself gradually and feeling less shame can be done while still accepting responsibility. It wouldn't make you "worse" of a person. Unrelenting shame doesn't make anyone a "better" person. I say this knowing chipping away guilt and shame when you have OCD and intrusive thoughts can be Sisyphean work. I struggle often with scanning the past for minor embarrassments and then using them to shame myself.

When you've just joined, it seems too complicated to figure out which forum to post in when you're, you know, depressed.