How do depressed individuals support themselves?

There are likely many different answers to this question, but it is likely that most depressed people, like most addicts are functional. That is, they can take care of basic things, but don’t have much room in their life to do anything else but caretake their illness. In my experience, I would take care of some of those things to avoid burdening others or because some kind of societal expectation has greater pull in the moment than being depressed. Often it’s easier to treat external obligations, people and things better than one treats oneself.

I’ve also had the slack picked up for me. I’ve lived at home or gotten rent money from my parents or had friends take on more than their share of a thing because it wasn’t getting done otherwise. It works itself out.

Depression also comes and goes, so there are times when it’s not as bad and you can do some of the things you’ve put off doing.

My cousins grew up with a bipolar mother, and the older one, especially, started taking care of things herself.

You find ways to cope, you force yourself to put on a smile and get shit done. Sometimes you can’t though. I have BPD, and sometimes getting u in the morning takes a lot. However, if you want to pay for the treatment you need to work. Welfare isn’t going to cover rent, food, meds, counseling, and the myriad of other things you need to pay for.

It sucks to have to cover up the empty feeling inside just so people don’t notice and shove you away like a leper. Scars will do that for some people. More than once I’ve let my house fall into a pretty ugly state, soon you find yourself doing stuff just to keep yourself busy. Keeping busy helps.

I try to live a normal life, but it’s hard when you can’t find the fun in anything. Friends become everything to you, it hurts when they leave you out of stuff. When you are depressed you need to keep busy and try to keep moving on. Otherwise you get stuck and end up in a place you do not ant to be.

I have never been diagnosed with clinical depression or taken meds. But to some degree I experienced much of that drain.

I still went to work but called out more. Could be at work making people’s day while thinking about how I should commit suicide. Or have some downward mental spiral going on.

I would usually nap on my breaks. Maybe grab some food from the store call my bills in at work and clean very little.

I would sit for hours doing nothing. Berating myself for all the things I let go. All the things I had to do and everyone od them seemed giant. Just thinking about them would exhaust me. I frequently put off my friends or events or leave early.

But keys I found to pulling myself out of that. Eating healthy. Staying busy. Exercising. Meditating, though I resist it often. Music.

Getting involved in things having something to look forward to. Some of my depression might be linked to my illness the worse I feel and then hit some sort of bump the easier it is to upset my balance and I tumble. But since I know how to pick myself up and have done it many times before and I have put some distance between various traumas I have experienced it takes less time and I don’t let things go as far. Most of the time. I am also learning how to cry. It is still hard for me. But somehow it must be necessary.

For people who have truer cases of clinical depression I don’t know how they manage and cope. It is truly devastating.

I’ve known clinically depressed people who got up every day, took their meds, and went to work. They got through the day somehow. I think they perceived themselves as not having any choice. They kept going kind of like a little bug whose legs keep running even when you tip it over.

On the other hand, when I was struck down by depression as a young person, I couldn’t do much except sleep and carry out minimal tasks for personal maintenance. There were no meds for me then, though. They weren’t in the medical picture at that time. I don’t know what I would have done if my parents hadn’t been there to fall back on.

I have at one time or another been in the position of living with and supporting people who were too depressed and otherwise dysfunctional to manage on their own. Right now there are three of them.

On bad days, days like you have described, and believe me, those days exist, I rely on my boyfriend. He wakes me up in the morning, and gives me hope. Not a lot of hope, just a minute at a time.
I have spent days in bed in the past, not washed at all, just wishing sleep would come and properly let me sleep.
I do find that exercise helps me mentally, kind of takes the edge off on the not so bad days.

I have experienced that black pit of despair where no light shines. I have known the state mentioned in the OP where the smallest daily hygiene was impossible.

I am lucky. Before I developed mental illness, I had good paying jobs. One was high paying with a Fortune Top 10 company. The result is that when it came time, I applied and was granted Social Security Disability Insurance. I also applied for and waited 3 years to receive rental assistance. The result is that I have just enough to get by.

Having said that. I let bills slide at times. The mail piled up for literally months. I ruined my credit.

I had a lot of friends who helped me. I have had a series of good caseworkers who helped, too. I don’t live near family other than my minor children, who I don’t try to burden.

What did you do about your responsibilities? Did the presence of dependents help you? Do responsibilities keep you moving?
I am not depressed- never have been. I can’t imagine a life without having to get up and do something every day. If I have a day off from work I am doing something else. It is so rare that I can afford to stay home and do nothing, I just don’t understand the concept.
If I were to stop moving at least half a dozen people would sink with me. If figure I owe it to them to keep myself on track.
So… the next question becomes “Does responsibility help “cure” depression?”

No, just keeps you from thinking about it. I’m “happiest” when I’m busy because I don’t have time to feel.

“Does responsibility help “cure” depression?”

I think that is a very dangerous road to go down—it sure sounds like you are blaming people with depression for their disease, and for any fallout caused by being so sick.

Often people with depression aren’t able to take care of basic things and ends up creating a much worse situation. If the solution was to just get up and be more responsible, I have no doubt that people experiencing those depths of suffering would gladly do it.

@Mr_Paradox @Hawaii_Jake Doesn’t “being happiest when I am busy” help speed recovery? Imagine there was no support network and you had to keep moving or you and your family would end up out on the street . Would that hurt – or help?

As I was typing I saw @nikipedia‘s response. You guys know me better than that. I am not going there. (And niki you know me better than that too.) I just can’t imagine it and am trying to understand. I have so much pressure and so many responsibilities I can’t afford to just stop. I don’t know how others can afford to do it.

I know if I break my leg the quickest recovery is to get into physical therapy as soon as possible . Every day I slack off delays recovery by 2 days. I pushed myself after all 3 knee surgeries. When I had my prostate removed I did not tell anyone. I told no one I was wearing pee pads and was in pain and worrying about cancer. I went to work and pretended I was fine. I truly believe my recovery was hastened because of it.

Can responsibilities be considered therapy?

@LuckyGuy Don’t confuse “happier” with “get better”. You’ll also note, I put quotation marks around “happiest”. So, no. Responsibilities are not “therapy”. That’s like saying that pain meds are therapy for breaking your leg. It’s a stopgap, it keeps you from feeling worse because you are too busy to feel the crushing emptiness.

Very often, they don’t, if they don’t have a good support network.

@LuckyGuy Sadly, no, responsibilities don’t cure the disease nor are they therapy. They exacerbated my problems. I had to give up my responsibilities. I was for a very long time completely unemployable. I am only just now returning to the workforce on a very part-time basis and in a very low stress job.

Recovery for me took on the form of caring professionals including psychiatrists who prescribed good medicine. Unfortunately, the medicines don’t always work. Taking pills for mental illness is not like taking an aspirin for a headache. It’s a complex game of sorts of trying many different products until one or a certain combination works.

These professionals also helped me to ever so slowly regain hope that a better future lay ahead. Honestly, the process of regaining hope took the better part of 12 years. It took a lot of therapy. I exercised when I could. I got engaged in hobbies. Yet through it all, there were many false starts.

I never lost sight of the fact that I had to take responsibility for me. I had to get myself out of bed and brush my teeth and shower and shave. I had to pay my bills on time. And here, too, many times I gave up and hid.

Through the whole ordeal, I educated myself about my disease so I could talk constructively to my doctors, nurses, therapists, and caseworkers about my illness.

I learned to advocate for myself.

Most importantly, I surrounded myself with loving people. I have 2 loving daughters here and a son who loves me on the mainland. I have friends. I am respected now in the community theater circles here.

Mental illness is excruciating. Stigma is rampant against it mainly because it can’t be seen.

May I suggest you check out the site NAMI.org? Near the upper left, there is a button marked “mental illnesses,” and it has a lot of excellent information. There’s probably more than you want to know.

I’m not diagnosed with clinical depression, however I do suffer with bipolar disorder and anxiety. There are days that I am in a major depressed state and barely able to function. Those days I rely on support from loved ones to help me work through it.

I have lost many jobs due to the disorder. I would either call in sick too many times or quit suddenly because the pressure was too much. I’m not proud of it. And medicine never seemed to help.

To be honest, I don’t know what would motivate me enough to “get over” my disorder and just push on through the day as if nothing was holding me back. I suppose if my son and I were completely on our own and he relied on my income to support us and have a roof over our head, I’d do whatever it took at that point. But right now I have enough financial and emotional support from my boyfriend to have to worry about that.

There are times when I feel like I make too many excuses and I have too many enablers in my life. I wonder if all the people who support me through the bad days were to just pull the plug and leave me to deal with it on my own what I would do…I wonder if I would swim or if I would drown.

I do know someone who is diagnosed with depression and they still live at home with their parents, and haven’t had a job in over a year. He has no car, no valuable belongings of his own, nothing really going for himself. He sits in his room for days at a time with no shower, no food. I suppose I could be worse off. But again,he too has enablers in his life who support him and essentially allow and accept his behavior to the point that he feels no motivation to get better. He doesn’t have to. He has others to rely on.

The idea that a disease, an illness, can simply be got over disgusts me.

It is not the fault of the sufferer that they have an illness.

I can’t imagine going to bed without thinking of what time i have to wake up and what I must do tomorrow .
Today is supposed to be a day off but I got a reminder from “corporate” a few hours ago – “I believe you have another Qtrly report due, the re-submission of the prior reports, and the partnership return by 9/15.”
You know what I will be thinking of as I set the alarm to 5:30 and try to fall asleep.

@Mr_Paradox If the pain meds help reduce the pain so a person can exercise,.in a way they do help fix the broken leg – with the help of a cast. The muscles don’t have a chance to atrophy. If someone is on disability for along time, can they ever reenter the job market?

@Hawaii_Jake “It is not the fault of the sufferer that they have an illness.” Yep! That is exactly how I felt about my prostate cancer.

I love this discussion – and you guys! Thank you! Thank you! But I have to go to bed now. “Corporate” will be waiting for me at 7:30 tomorrow morning. I need to be at peak performance. Ugh!

Often you don’t, you lose everything.

I suffer from 3 diagnosed illnesses, and major depression is one of them. I can say that sometimes its just really hard to roll out of bed, much less be able to accomplish anything else. As for rent, I’m on SSI and have been homeless for a bit over a year. Somehow I manage to keep my bills payed on time, but sometimes both my house as well as myself is a wreck. Bad days come and go though.

Well I’ve suffered from severe panic disorder for many years, to the point where I wouldn’t leave my house except to go to work. I had depression too with the panic disorder. My anxiety likely has kept me from putting myself in a position where I could have dependents, so for the most part I only had to be concerned about taking care of myself.

I suppose that you find ways to survive, even in extreme situations. I can’t speak for those who’ve had an illness so bad to the point where they couldn’t perform basic functions, but I can tell you how I got by with my own disorder. Generally I would take low key jobs on odd shifts, only come out at night or in bad weather (less people), avoid relationships, avoid situations where I couldn’t ‘escape’ from social scenerios too easily, avoid friendships, etc. It was a lousy way to live, but it allowed me to get by regardless.

I’ve had panic my entire life, even as a young kid. At first I didn’t know anything was wrong with me, and I’d just assumed that I was just a nervous, shy kid, and so did others who knew me. It got very bad when I reached my early twenties. No counseling or self-help advice helped me to get over my panic, and in fact made it worst. After taking an array of SSRI’s I finally found the one that worked the best for me, Paxil. That drug helped me immensly despite the bad things others say about it. I tried to quit the Paxil when I felt better, thinking I didn’t need it anymore, but then my symptoms would come right back. Well, at least I can function now, but it appears that panic runs in my family after I did some digging.

@LuckyGuy, I know you are a good guy and your heart is in the right place. I am not saying this to attack you, just sharing what I know about depression.

You said:

I have so much pressure and so many responsibilities I can’t afford to just stop. I don’t know how others can afford to do it.

A lot of people with depression can’t afford to just stop, and they do anyway. They ruin their lives and find themselves deeply in debt, to friends, to family, to creditors, etc. I worked on a research project studying depression years ago and I interviewed hundreds of people whose lives had fallen apart. I talked to doctors, lawyers, and all kinds of successful people who couldn’t complete their daily tasks and whose lives spiraled out of control. That’s part of why suicide becomes an attractive option, because some people with depression find their responsibilities have gotten so beyond them that it would be better to just be dead. So no, I don’t think responsibilities cure depression.

I’m really glad for you that you don’t understand what it’s like, @LuckyGuy. It’s a really shitty experience, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. You’re just going to have to take our word for it, though…it’s not about whether we can ‘afford’ to stop. It’s about being unable to do anything else but stop. Your entire being is concerned with just surviving, for one more day. Hell, one more hour. Anything beyond that is beyond our capabilities at that time.

To try to put it in context for you, think about what it would feel like if you had to deal with the most excruciating physical pain known to man. Every tiny movement exacerbates the pain, causing you to cry or scream. This pain has been with you for a long period of time, and there is no end in sight. Death becomes more attractive to you than going on living in that situation. It’s not that you want to die, you just want the suffering to stop. Since you don’t want to die, you try to hold on to hope for a cure, but you can’t imagine it happening. Your entire world is filled with pain, and nothing but pain.

In such a condition, there would be no way for you to continue to meet your responsibilities. All the will power in the world can’t help you. All the responsibilities in the world can’t move you. In this condition, either you have support from family and friends, maybe the government, too…or you end up killing yourself. Sometimes, you kill yourself even if you do have that support. That’s what deep depression is like.

The first time I felt this way, I was five years old. It’s a fucking miracle that I’m still here to talk about it.

While this question kind of applies to me, it no longer really does, as I would say that for the most part I am happy now days.

However, back in my late teens and early twenties, I did have quite bad depression.

At first, I did not always pay my rent, because some days I would wake up and not go to work because I could not deal with getting out of bed. I would go and buy food, but it was normally chocolate cookies or something I should not be eating.

Eventually, I would find myself in a room in a house I could not pay for, with a tooth ache I could not afford to stop, and would eventually have to pull myself together, leave, find a new place, a new job, and then repeat the cycle.

I realized this would not do, and that I had to do something about it.

I have been criticized on here before for describing how I cured myself as “ignoring the depression” or “wishing the depression away”, but that is in essence what I did. And have been told that it does not work that way, etc. However that is just because of a gross simplification on my behalf.

The truth is it was a very long process. I embraced nihilism and a general don’t give a shit attitude, and basically denied and ignored the fact that I was depressed. I did this for a very long time.

From time to time, I would get depressed, and when I did, I would just snap myself out of it, by doing whatever I had to do, be it go for a walk, jerk off, or just get on a bus and go some place.

As years passed, I changed as a person, my values changed, and the things that caused me depression in the past were no longer a concern. The next time I looked, I was not depressed.

You guys are great! I will have to reply later.
In the meantime I will continue to live by the “Fake it till you make it.” rule.
‘Corporate’ awaits.

I agree with @augustlan… I’m glad you don’t get it.

When I was a young single mom with depression/PTSD… here’s what fell to the wayside:
– mail was not opened
– dishes were not washed. I rinsed them and kept them in a bin until I was overwhelmed by the amount and threw them away. We used disposable dishes.
– I set many alarms and mentally abused myself to get out of bed and get my kid ready for school. Can you even imagine the pain and agony that leads an adult to not jump out of bed to care for their child? And then the guilt and pain and agony for not doing so?
– no recycling. I remember years later the pride I felt when I put a full bin of recycling on the curb for collection. It was the symbol that I had my life back together.
– garbage was taken to the curb every week or two, when I could remember and motivate myself to take it. It was taken out of the house regularly, however.
– picking up was done in spurts; deep cleaning was not done
– no oil changes, no new windshield wipers
– I was late to work every day… but it was by a manageable amount, so I didn’t lose my job. I have been out on disability a few times for 6 weeks.
– I went into default on my student loan and a credit card. The gas/electric was shut off a handful of times. The phone was shut off a few times.
– pet frogs died. I wish to God that no one had given me their castaway frogs for my kid. I still carry so much guilt and shame over this.
– I saved my energy for evenings. I would scrape together a meal. At times it would be microwavable freezer meals. I would talk with my kid. I would help him with his homework. It brought me physical pain to just carry on a conversation.
– I would mow only the front lawn, or neighbors would beat me to it and do it themselves.
– I would park on the sidewalk or shovel two strips in the driveway to drive over in the winter.

This is such a painful and shame-filled time in my past.

I begged my mom to come over to my house and help me wash dishes and vacuum. She came over and sat in a chair and criticized me.

I had no supports. No other parent. No child support money. I had responsibilities. I could not get out of bed. Period.

@Cupcake Congratulations for getting out of bed and facing the world. You did it! :-)
I have a question for you.
If your mother had helped you wash the dishes and vacuum rather than sitting in a chair would that have speeded up, hindered, or have no effect on your recovery?

Who knows. I’d like to think that I would have felt loved and supported, but perhaps not. I don’t think it would have been “enabling”, as it was a one-time thing. Perhaps I was not capable of feeling loved or supported at the time.

@LuckyGuy I think there is a difference between severe depression where we could do with some help and just being lazy and unwilling to care for ourselves. @Cupcake I hear you, no one helped me either, I think if they had done and showed they cared my life might have turned around.

It’s the alienation that seems to compound it.

No one chooses loss, failure, despair and a never ending wheel of black clouds. No one chooses to lose their sense of self, their sense of power.

Prior to my own depression, I cared for three people financially and emotionally for an extended period (over eight years). Plus ran a very demanding job whereupon I cared for the needs of a group of staff I was managing.

This question kind of stuck in my mind. I found something today that I thought I’d share: an choose-your-own adventure style computer game called Depression Quest. I haven’t played it yet but the description in this “article”: makes it sound pretty accurate.

Whoops. This article.

@wildpotato thanks for the game. I tried to get the character kill himself but the game ended before I got that bad.