This illness manifests different ways in different people. Lost of appetite, disinterest in many activities (Including necessaryones), tiredness, constant sleeping,or trouble sleeping, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness and many other symptoms. Here is a website that discusses it more thoroughly.
It's important to take steps before the state of mind becomes chronic. The easiest things to do at the outset are:
1. Keep regular hours and eat regularly.
2. Exercise every day to the point that one feels 'puffed'. (This means increasing the exercise slowly but steadily.)
3. Maintain positive contacts with other people. (That means it's okay to avoid people who are themselves depressed.) Isolation is harmful at this point.
4. Do at least one thing each day that makes you feel good about yourself: help someone out.
But not by listening to their troubles; something concrete. Walk a pensioner's dog; buy a bag lunch for a homeless person; babysit for a single parent.
Or get rid of a small guilt: Write a long-overdue letter to a friend. Clean a closet. Pack yourself a healthy lunch.
Posts: 6553 | Location: British Columbia, Canada | Registered: 06-11-02
Just see your doctor. S/he knows the right questions to ask to make sure that is what you have. It may be something entirely different. Sometimes fatigue may be mistaken for depression, and vice versa. Perhaps it's situational, who knows? Your doctor knows.
Catty
Posts: 3826 | Location: Olympia, WA, USA | Registered: 06-04-02
You know, babthrower, sometimes I read the things you say, you know, what to avoid because they at this time would be harmful. But I think to myself, then I should do the things that would harm me. Now I'm thinking, what, do I want to do harm to myself? Do I just want to feel bad? What would one do then?
I would think that the desire to harm oneself is always a sign of depression.
There are two ways to go when one thinks one has s sign of depression or other emotional problem:
1. If it is a 'minor' problem (e.g. you want to make a tiny cut in the skin on your arm) you are right to do what you are doing now: to ask yourself why.
Would the pain distract you from emotional pain? Would the scar be something you could show your friends, who also cut and scar themselves? Would the cut prove to your parents that you have serious issues in your life?
If you can answer your own questions, you have enough self-control to also take steps to handle the problem: If you're horribly bored and frustrated with your life, then do something to change things: get a job after school, or learn to play a musical instrument, or take up jogging, whatever you like, best would be something you could turn to and do any time you feel awful.
2. If it's not a minor problem; if you get very scared, even panicky, sometimes about what you might do, and if you really have no clue why you do it, then the behavior is both destructive and compulsive and you should probably talk to someone.
Try to find the name of someone who has really helped someone else. Not all counselors are worth the time and money it takes to see them.
Posts: 6553 | Location: British Columbia, Canada | Registered: 06-11-02
