Depression Blindsided

[Penguin1220]

I know a lot of people in this group have their fair share of personal issues, and I appreciate anyone who has taken the time in their day to stop and read this.

I'm 22 years old and depression hit me like a truck. Throughout my teenage years, I had been seen as the "happy non-depressed friend". Because I chose to not show people my depression I was overlooked, not even I knew my actions behind the scenes were signs of depression. They call it "High-functioning depression".

But now I am 22 and I was not prepared to emotionally handle adulthood. I speak with a therapist regularly to help me process emotions and situations I come across. But the worst part about it all has been the way I feel alone. My school friends have gone, I have very little family, and work friends never make it outside of work no matter how hard I try.

Friendship is so important, to be there for someone no matter what. I came on here looking for someone or something that can help me get there. Being a young adult and searching for a sense of purpose, while being blindsided by depression has made finding a connection with someone nearly impossible.

I just wonder if any other young adults are on here struggling with the same.

[Hidden]

Hi, I am 21, and having no purpose struck me last summer in May. I was battling my own mind for 2 years prior to last summer, with intrusive thoughts and anxiety which destroyed my confidence and happiness. I was never diagnosed with depression but you could say I was very low in life. There is no place lonelier than the internal conflict one has with themselves.

Like you, I hid the trauma during my teenage years when I went to school because my home was very hostile environment. I covered the distress during those two years before summer because I did not want anyone to be afraid of me or view me in a negative way. University is lonely in itself and I was not ready to be independent. My college friends are no longer friends because we have different interests. I am focused on self-improvement and adult life while they like to enjoy the stereotypical young adult life. I'd say I only truly have two friends who I appreciate a lot. It is the quality that overrides quantity.

May 2023 was when I hit my lowest point. No purpose. No drive to do anything. A very pessimistic mind and questioning whether life is worth continuing. But it is important to note a few reasons for being in that position along with the internal conflict. I did not look after myself during university as I didn't eat well, exercise or give time to myself. It was all about completing university work. So when I finished university, my whole identity of being someone who worked on university work had finished. There was nothing about me anymore.

So where I am today is far greater than the downfall I experienced in May. It was a tough journey getting out of it but trust me it was worth the effort. There is always hope and I am happy to share with you the methods I implemented to reach a position where you feel purpose, happiness and satisfaction with what you are doing and where you are going. But first I wanted to let you know that I can relate to your situation.

[Penguin1220 in reply to Hidden]

Thank you for sharing your story with me. It's really refreshing especially when I've felt alone in all this.

I relate to what you said about being afraid of someone viewing you in a negative way. This has kept me from speaking to any friends I've had in the past about my anxiety and depression. Even though I knew they were going through hard times, I for some reason did not want them to see me in that way. I felt as if I did they would see me as pathetic.

I think in this point I am hitting my lowest, like you said. I am always having this battle with myself, in my head because of my anxiety and my childhood trauma, I can never trust my thoughts. I think it has worn me out and made me feel so very exhausted with life. This has made me lose touch with life, no motivation.

I just wonder how you made it past it all, what kinds of effort you put forth to get through it. I feel like I have tried everything I can. There have been baby steps, but there is always a step backwards that makes me crash right back to where I start.

[Hidden in reply to Penguin1220]

I understand completely the point you made about not showing your friends you are suffering even though they are too with their own problems. You can be there for them but you don't show you need help too. They say often it is the person who seems happy and helps everyone, who is actually in trouble. When you find that one person to let everything go and know they won't judge you, it is very relieving. For me that was nobody really, and so I relied on myself to reflect through journaling.

Journaling was my first step. I wrote everything about my situation in detail - how I felt, what I was going through - the negatives in my life. This way I could have everything in front of me and take off some pressure of thinking about it all. The next is writing about all the positives in your life which is hard to do when you have been down for a long time, but they are there. Now you see life is good but there are certain obstacles in the way of giving you a positive experience. Each obstacle needs a strategy to overcome them and you'd be surprised at how targeting one could resolve a few others at the same time

My problems at the time were: not eating, not exercising, not being happy, intrusive thoughts which I discovered was OCD in May, not having purpose, isolating myself, pessimistic outlook on life; just to name a few. I first tackled the not eating right because diet plays an important role in physical and mental health. But it only was made possible by exercising to increase my hunger. Exercise makes you feel happier afterwards and a balanced diet is important for mental and physical wellbeing so it lifted me up quite a lot. I then spent time with my parents more now that I was back home from university. Arranged to meet with my friends. The biggest concern however was intrusive thoughts and destructive thoughts. It took the whole summer to understand OCD and my thoughts and to implement therapy tools into my daily routine. The daily routine was important to keep me on track with waking up on time, exercising, completing jobs around the house and time for research on my issues and practice with techniques.

It's normal to not have motivation in a dull state of mind and I didn't have any either. I didn't want to get up and do the work almost as if I didn't want to help myself. So then it was discipline and being uncomfortable for the first few weeks that got me out of this hole. I hated it at the begining but on the other side of struggle is always greatness. It took me a month to be outside more and have a routine and it took 5 months daily practice to get rid of the intrusive thoughts and OCD cycles.

Perspective is very important. I can relate to the feeling of trying and failing, then believing you are back at level 0. But it's crucial that you change this view and tell yourself that you have put the effort in. That it's a step back but with every step back there's opportunity to take two forward - one for recovering from the step back and the other for learning about it and moving on. Progress is never a straight line. I've changed my perspective to view mistakes and difficulties as life lessons and so I appreciate them actually rather than generate internal hate.

Meditate even just for a minute a day. This is really useful to practice being in the present moment and away from your thoughts. The more you practice the more your mind trains itself to allow thoughts to pass through without engaging them or giving too much value to them so we stop overthinking all the time. Reality is not as it seems when we are struggling. There is a good quote by Seneca which states: "We often suffer more in imagination that in reality."

The more I see that doubt and the worries I have turn out to be rubbish when the event comes and produces an outcome better than I thought, I realise that quote is right. Recently I've been afraid of being intimate with my new partner because of past experience of performance anxiety and the embarrassment of not being present in the occasion with a previous partner. And now my mind goes back to that because the mind can only use what is in the past, to try and predict the future. We can't predict the future it's just the fear of uncertainty that the mind tries preparing us for but it's not helpful and we just get anxiety and start overthinking. So now my mind tells me it's going to happen again and you will lose this girl but I've understood the situation well and what mistakes I've made so that I won't repeat them or at least try not to. Luckily she is patient but it's turns out the worries were false when we do have moments together and are present in the moment. So you are then reminded that all those worries and efforts to try and find certainty in my mind was pointless. This is the same thing with any aspect I've come to realise and that's why I got rid of those OCD themes and previous anxieties by just letting go.

Easier said than done I know.

[Penguin1220 in reply to Hidden]

I admire you so much, your journey is really inspiring. I guess this is what I was hoping to find on here, was something to show me that I am not alone and I'm able.

Everything you said I can completely relate to, and now I believe I might have been doing my journaling wrong lol. I have been personally journaling since I was just 13, and I've pretty much kept up with it since. My therapist really likes to push it, but I have only ever wrote down things in my life that is upsetting, and writing about my bad feelings. I guess I forgot that I could write about the good things in my life, when I feel so down I skip over that good feelings are worth something.

I can say that my diet is the best thing going for me right now, I love food and I love to eat. I guess the hardest thing I am trying to get over is putting myself in those uncomfortable positions you talked about. My anxiety loves to take over, and my overthinking locks me in my bed telling me that if I go outside or do anything, it won't be good. So it's like you said, the motivation is not there and I get stuck in the cycle and I wasn't helping myself once I fell down the hole. It's almost like a heavy paralysis, and when I really reflect on it I notice a lot of distractions I use. Once I get those bad thoughts just scrolling on my phone or watching a show makes me even more stuck.

I really like that you focus on overthinking, I think my generation likes to take these words that people actually struggle with and turn it into jokes. For so long I didn't think the way I processed thoughts was overthinking, until I read some good mental health books and realized overthinking was my biggest problem. And I have read so much about it, I just never got to the point to help me through those thoughts that make me spiral. So meditation never struck my interest because I thought that my brain was too hyperactive for it.

Then it comes to having a romantic relationship with someone. I have been with someone for over 2 years now, and he is so supportive but we definitely have our bad areas and I blame myself every time. We have fights and I know thats normal, but I constantly have to fight myself at the same time. My brain, due to my trauma, tells me that he doesn't love me. So every second I have to fight those thoughts and look at the facts, it becomes really exhausting and I start putting myself down. Especially when I start the fight because of my anxious attachment, and I start hating myself for acting like that towards him and putting him in those positions that he doesn't deserve.

I don't know how you got to the point of just letting go of those thoughts, but the fact that you did makes me hopeful. A week ago I was feeling really worthless and feeling like I could never get through these thoughts that disease my brain. But today, because of you and everyone on here sharing their stories, I really don't feel that alone anymore. Which is making me feel really emotional as I write this, haha. I would like to hear more about your meditation journey, and your journaling style. I know you said easier said than done, but I think I now want to fight to get where you are.

[Hidden in reply to Penguin1220]

I'm glad you have found relief now that you can have someone to relate too. There are many people in this position and you won't be able to know as the battle is hidden in our minds.

You can go from someone who once said "they are suffering" to an individual who says "I was suffering and now I am in a better position." That was my objective and I wanted to identify as this new person. It's a lesson from the book 'Atomic Habits' to first identify as the new individual and then act in the way that ideal version of you would behave in. Instead of trying to force new habits in the old identity you have. New year's resolutions do not work for this very reason. A broad goal with no time frame and old habits makes people give up as they don't truly know where they are going.

My journaling style is to write in it whenever I feel like it or when I have something to note down and record an experience. You don't have to do it every day because it will feel like a chore after a while that way. In self reflection tasks I will write what I appreciate, the mistakes I've made and the strategy for next week to overcome mistakes or upcoming events like university deadlines. When I want to let go of overthinking or worried I set myself a rule that once worries or doubts are on paper and I've written everything I need to write about it, I will avoid thinking about it again. The thoughts will come but I must let them pass without analysing them. It's all on the paper now and so I don't need to use space in my mind to think about it. Because after you've practiced meditation and you researched and understood anxiety, doubts and thoughts you know deep down the strategy is to ignore and not label them or investigate them. It's that point again that we can't answer uncertainty in our minds, the outcome is only discovered when the moment comes. And you must enter every moment confidently to have a chance of getting your full potential out there, even if you have never done it before. Being present is essential and so I'll get onto meditation now.

I am not perfect at meditation and remaining in the present, there is still much to learn and practice but it has helped significantly. What I do is I start the morning with 5 minutes of meditation. I then try meditating while doing tasks meaning I will only want to focus on the task such as eating or walking. I focus on deep breathing. Long and controlled exhalation lowers your heart beat. You can try it now actually - breathe in and you can feel your heart beat increase because there is pressure on the heart. Breathe out and it decreases your heart beat. When we panic we are shallow breathing rapidly - inhaling sharply and that increases the heart beat and induces anxiety. While you breathe deeply, engage with your senses: what can you hear, how do you feel, how does your body move when you take in a breath. Then you will notice thoughts appear now and again. Do not force them away because it will make them come back stronger. Instead you observe them without judgement and then return your focus back onto present senses. The thoughts will come again and again and you will get better at ignoring them and being present. Ignoring them should be done gently. Accept they are there and invite them really. Don't see them as something that bothers you because you aren't defined by your thoughts. You are defined by how you act on them. After practicing meditation for a few days you notice your mind is better at letting them go even when you aren't meditating. You are just focused on your task and again the thoughts will come while you draw for example. But you want to focus on drawing so you let them pass and continue drawing. Reduce their influence and power by not giving attention. They aren't worth your time and they are welcome to try get your attention but you want to be present.

[Hippiedeb5150]

I'm not young anymore-63-but I do understand your situation. I'm glad you found this group. Very supportive & people are genuine & nonjudgmental. Helping each other is part of our healing process & knowing I can always come to this group to find support. I prayed for a friend to be placed in your path. Until then-ill be happy to be your friend Penguin1220!!! Glad you found us.

[Penguin1220]

You are so kind, thank you for praying for me. I have an amazing Aunt who is around the same age as you are and we are very close, although she lives pretty far from me. I am so happy that I found this group and decided to post something. I am just so grateful, and appreciative.

[Bekindtoyou]

My daughter who has ASD (high functioning) with some ADHD is in the same boat. In her mid 20s with social communication difficulties she too finds being an adult difficult. Relationships outside of work just don't happen - probably due to the ignorance of those she works with that don't understand her difficulties with socialisation beyond the workplace. I would suggest that if work colleagues are not interested in engaging with you outside of work then they are not your friends, just the people you get on with at work. Try attending a social group - a book club perhaps or other hobby group you may be interested in. This will help to broaden your social circle and you may find you get on with these people better.I know its hard not only to read when you are suffering with depression but to socialise too but that little bit of an effort may just prove to be the outlet you need.