Inside the mind of someone with major depression and anxiety

[Matthew_]

I feel like the outside world doesn’t understand depression or even most mental illnesses. I wrote out my thoughts yesterday in my notes app and I feel like if I publish them on this people can sort of get an idea of being inside the mine of a depressed person (I also have super bad anxiety, but I haven’t really spoken completely truthfully about it with my mental health therapist, and I’m a 16 year old guy from Texas) anyways, here my thought, and one last thing, I wrote all of these off the top of my head in like 15 minutes.

- What if mental disorders are really a good thing and not a bad thing, it’s hard for people with anxiety to explain there thoughts because there are too many of them to remember so therapist’s just think it’s all in their head, but in reality the things that people worry about are real life things and real problems that are being solved

- What if the reason why I feel so different from everyone is because I’m actually a super genius, and everyone else is normal, I can’t find anyone who thinks even somewhat similar to me, not depressed people, not people with some of the worst anxiety, no one, i once solved world hunger and poverty in my head, but no one believes me because I can’t remember, the thought came and went I try to explain, but people think I’m just lying, so I don’t tell people what I’m really thinking

- I can’t explain to people what my crazy ideas are, and when I say crazy I mean “thoughts that is such a different level of thinking no one could possibly understand, and it’s such a different level of thinking the English language can’t even describe it, other people physically CAN NOT understand

- My meaning of the word “thoughts” is so different from other people’s meaning, because my thoughts are so different, so people will hear when I say the word “thoughts” and in their mind they will think I’m just talking about regular everyday thoughts, but there version or perception of the word “thought” is “normal” so when I tell a therapist about my thoughts she will get the wrong idea, and I can’t explain what my thoughts are

- Sometimes I’ll think of a “visual story” but the visual is a made up story of real problems and things in life, and I use that to predict what people do, I study people to see how they are and the more I learn the more I can predict, but people are always changing, so you can’t

- It seems like nobody can figure out how mental disorders came about, people have been studying the human brain for lifetimes and they still can’t figure out what it’s capable of, so how do they know depression exists, all they know is what it looks like and sounds like, not what is actually going on in the brain, how do they know it’s not the brain expanding into a new level of thinking other brains can’t even understand it, that’s why doctors will never figure it out, cause they truly don’t even know what the diagnosis they’re diagnosing is.

- I seem to realize things other people wouldn’t even think about or ever would, then when they ask “why do you think about that” I could hit you back with “why don’t you”

- I’m looking for the big picture, the biggest of all pictures, the meaning of life, and with that search, and searching asking questions that scare people

- The reality of it is, life is a perception, everyone has there own look at it, but what are you gonna do about it, my life goal is to figure what other people are truly thinking about, get past everything and just know, the fact of not knowing kills me on the inside, there is so much shit that people don’t know, and the problem is people don’t know what they don’t even know so that can l

- If you think about it, a man could live his entire life not knowing what people really think about them,

- People only care about what you do not what your going through in your head

- My thoughts are so fast and crazy I can’t even type it out or spend enough time trying to find the words to describe the visual I forget what I was even writing about

- I’ll have a feeling and I’ll figure something out about me, but it will be in literally 10 seconds and it will be in my head, and then another thought will come and the last one is gone and I try to remember a thought, and even if I had the thought again

- I can’t visual something made up in the same effect I did the first time

- Bottomline, you don’t understand what I’m thinking or what I’m going through, anybody going through what I’m going through would be nicer, but it’s more than just being “nicer” I hate using these basic ass words to describe it, if i ever read or heard somebody who thinks like me, my whole world would blow up,

- Therapist says I’m depressed, but I’m not sad, I’m not someone who thinks, “what is the point of life, there isn’t, so I should just kill myself” I want to know,

- Think about the dinosaurs

- I want to write out my thoughts, but it wouldn’t make sense to anyone else if someone ever read this

- I’ll think about what I was thinking about, why I was thinking that, then I’ll think why am I thinking about thinking about thinking about that, and it’s so real for me, but then when I try to think back to that whole thought I can’t, is it because that wasn’t even a real thing that happened, it was just what I was thinking, but it was real, it happened, sometimes I’ll get emotionally attached to a song, because the only thing that can bring back that feeling, is the song

- If you remind me of an event, I will usually remember it, except when it’s from a long time ago,

- The sound of my voice is distracting me, that’s why I can have a perfect conversation in my head, I can even mouth it by just barely moving my lips, but once I start speaking I almost instants blank

- What if my religion was fake, what if there was somebody from the past who had the same kind of brain as me and they wanted to make a true difference in the world, they saw how fucked up the world was, and they wanted to change it, but people can’t change, they will always be selfish, “we’re all gonna die someday, so just do whatever you want”... If somehow the entire

- Where does the Bible talk about dinosaurs

- But then why would there be fossils buried in the ground, did somehow from the pas

- What if something in my life sparked a malfunction in my brain, and I’ve had all these emotions that only somehow who has lived should be able to feel and think, what if mentally I am an 87 year old man, but I’m not, I am a 16 year old boy

- I need to record my entire life for the future of humankind

That’s the end of my thoughts, it’s super weird for me doing this, I have no idea if this is going to help anyone but fuck it. Please ask questions

[quitter333]

1. you are 16 ... like this is about the time you grow up, have tons of hormones in your body. It's shitty times, feels weird. Just remember - it ends quickly, but this is beautiful time in your life as you can do almost anything and noone wil really blame you if you fail. Seriously.

2. "things that people worry about are real life things and real problems that are being solve". No, it is only our subjective interpretation. Universe/material world does not care what we think about it and how we perceive it. We only understand each other because we are all humans, we kind of have the same brains (well, if you travel more, you'll see that different environment makes people waaay different thatn you are used to. But we all still have similar very basic morals. Like - don't be rude and asshole, be honest and you can talk with Western billionaire, South america drug lord, siberian nomad and african shaman)

3. You are talking a lot about a) visualisation b) running thoughts.

Ok, I can address this from my experience, since I also grew up intelligent and have strong visual thinking and experienced some randomness in head (back then I did not combat randomness, I embraced it and was a supermultitasking machine - realized it was waste of my time, but it was not like a scar in my mentality. I simply reformed my thinking a big).

So -

visualisation is great. It is an attribute of intelligent people. Most great people could vizualize things before communciating them verbally. Schwarzenegger, Picasso, Tesla and so on.

Visualize a vision/ goal. In details. do not concern yourself with meaningless details such as "whether I need it". Only - I want it + vizualize it. It is absolutely best strategy to achieve any goal.

b) for running thoughts - well, before jumping to conclusions - focusing your attention to one thing is great. I don't mean that you need to focus on something one the WHOLE day. no. You need only some periods, where you focus for an hour or two. You must learn mental discipline that no matter how random your thoughts, when it is time to focus, you focus.

My best option was gym. Like doing it seriously. It MAKES you concentrate on muscles and health and growth for solid 2-3 hours, as you need to prepare, warm up, complete your routines, cool down, take a shower. It's very Zen experience, you can do every other day.

Comes with benefits - yo get focused, you get strong, you get sexy, you get healthier (better bloodflow). Thank me when you are 25 and buff muscle hunk with two girls on each hand

[Matthew_ in reply to quitter333]

Wow, thank you for everything you wrote, I will seriously take that advice to heart. This has and is going to help me in so many different ways

[ananxiousgirl]

Hi Matthew,

This does sound difficult to feel like no one feels the same or can understand.

I personally definitely have experience with racing thoughts. Sometimes it helps to write those down and then focus on something else to the best of my ability like working out or watching TV even.

Hope you feel better!

[Matthew_ in reply to ananxiousgirl]

Thank you, it helps knowing other people have experienced what I’m going through and can relate

[AZ1970]

Matthew, you have a lot of questions that I had as a teen. Based on what you wrote, it sounds like you have racing thoughts and perhaps some delusions. You could mention these terms to your therapist and see what she thinks. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.

[Matthew_]

Well, I know all of these thoughts aren’t real, but I still can’t stop myself from having these thoughts, and I feel sometimes I confuse reality with them