And I'm not even on depression meds
Apr. 24th, 2026 07:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seapicklesupremacy Good news, my depressive episodes are not long, drawn-out days where I cry in bed all day anymore! :D
Bad news, they've been replaced by days of complete emotional bluntness. So instead of feeling things very deeply and letting them eat me up from the inside out, I feel nothing at all. Improvement...?
The problem is that the latter isn't nearly as obvious which means I come off as harsh or unfeeling, which rubs people the wrong way and makes me awkward to interact with. When someone has tears in their eyes and can articulate why they're openly sobbing, weirdly enough that makes them easier to work with because then at least you can provide some comforting words or hugs. But when someone is staring blankly at you like this 😐 and can provide no explanation to why than "just tired ig", you'll want to avoid them because what else is there to do? Being around them sucks, they have no energy to play into jokes or make their own, they're just boring to be around.
So that's my predicament, I'm not openly depressed anymore but the depression hasn't gone away, it's only adopted a more subtle, insidious form.
In a similar vein, F and I recently had a conversation relating to my numbness. He's spoken openly to me about how he dislikes when I'm in one of these slumps because I become something akin to a zombie and when he looks at me, he doesn't see "me". I get it, I feel like I'm puppeting my own body around behind a screen when I'm like that too, but knowing that others can see through the blank smiles makes me uneasy. You're not meant to be back here.
But what else am I supposed to do? I don't know why I slip into the slumps. It genuinely feels like absolutely nothing is going on in my chest or mind. I'm not sad, and the place in my chest where I usually feel things is just a blank space. It feels like the only options are either fake some peppiness or pretend to feel sad. Both of which are non-ideal, I'm not a big fan of faking emotions I'm not actually feeling, but I feel trapped. If my emotions could be graphed, I'm on the centre line of apathy, but others want me to swing further up or down.
Which actually handily leads me onto the topic of F and I's conversation earlier. To keep it short, my emotions fluctuate between super high energy and super low energy very fast, and F can't keep up. He made a small diagram that will haunt me for the rest of my memory-having days. He says he wants to be able to match my emotions, but the emotional whiplash of me jumping from high to low is exhausting for him. God, when he told me that, the guilt nearly took me off my feet. I told him not to shift his mood on my account, that if I'm sad he need not follow me into the pits of hell, but he insisted so I told him to wait for me outside the gates at least. I don't want other people to be affected by my emotions. I'm exhausted by my mood swings too, so why on Earth would I want to inflict that on the people around me? Save yourselves, don't bother getting close or else you'll get whipped.
Reading back now, it's quite funny seeing the two paragraphs back to back simply because of how contradictory they sound. I'm simultaneously a blank slate with nothing going on internally, and a emotional wreck that zips between manic happiness (though I haven't been like that in a good while) and crushing sadness. F doesn't like it when I switch on a dime (fair) and he also doesn't like it when I don't feel anything at all (less fair), so you can imagine how confused and frustrated I am. You said you don't like the rapid, massive changes but also you don't like the stability of numbness?? What do you want from me??? What he wants from me is to find a middle ground with my emotions instead of letting them consume me, or not feeling them at all. Brother. If I knew how to regulate them to something more palatable, I would've done so already.
The issue is extremes. I'm terrible with finding a middle ground with my feelings. Ever since I was a little kid, I would feel things very strongly and very fast, and to me that was to my benefit because I didn't linger on anything too long. If I lost a toy, I would sob hysterically for about 30secs to a minute, but then the tears would dry and I would feel nothing. I didn't care about it anymore and I went along my merry way. To me, that was fucking great. No need to be slightly sad for extended periods of time, just speedrun that shit, feel it all in one go and get it out of the way, I don't have time for that crap. But ApPaReNtLy this is not a healthy way of dealing with emotions 🙄 But it's efficient and you can't argue with results.
I told F the best way to help me during days of the epic highs and lows of my mood is to just...not acknowledge it. Like a kid throwing a tantrum, don't feed into it and let me tucker myself out. If you don't play along and continue as you are, it's 1. More comfortable for me because familiarity is stability and 2. Maybe it'll subconsciously teach me that "No one is coming, Get Up." There's a reason why you don't engage with a toddler throwing a tantrum, you don't want to encourage that kind of behavior. To be fair, no one ever came when I was a kid and genuinely sad, so if it didn't work then, I'm not sure on its efficacy now.
Thank god I went to my GP and he referred me to a psychiatrist for my depression. We're going to see what's wrong with me psychologically yeaaaaa
Bad news, they've been replaced by days of complete emotional bluntness. So instead of feeling things very deeply and letting them eat me up from the inside out, I feel nothing at all. Improvement...?
The problem is that the latter isn't nearly as obvious which means I come off as harsh or unfeeling, which rubs people the wrong way and makes me awkward to interact with. When someone has tears in their eyes and can articulate why they're openly sobbing, weirdly enough that makes them easier to work with because then at least you can provide some comforting words or hugs. But when someone is staring blankly at you like this 😐 and can provide no explanation to why than "just tired ig", you'll want to avoid them because what else is there to do? Being around them sucks, they have no energy to play into jokes or make their own, they're just boring to be around.
So that's my predicament, I'm not openly depressed anymore but the depression hasn't gone away, it's only adopted a more subtle, insidious form.
In a similar vein, F and I recently had a conversation relating to my numbness. He's spoken openly to me about how he dislikes when I'm in one of these slumps because I become something akin to a zombie and when he looks at me, he doesn't see "me". I get it, I feel like I'm puppeting my own body around behind a screen when I'm like that too, but knowing that others can see through the blank smiles makes me uneasy. You're not meant to be back here.
But what else am I supposed to do? I don't know why I slip into the slumps. It genuinely feels like absolutely nothing is going on in my chest or mind. I'm not sad, and the place in my chest where I usually feel things is just a blank space. It feels like the only options are either fake some peppiness or pretend to feel sad. Both of which are non-ideal, I'm not a big fan of faking emotions I'm not actually feeling, but I feel trapped. If my emotions could be graphed, I'm on the centre line of apathy, but others want me to swing further up or down.
Which actually handily leads me onto the topic of F and I's conversation earlier. To keep it short, my emotions fluctuate between super high energy and super low energy very fast, and F can't keep up. He made a small diagram that will haunt me for the rest of my memory-having days. He says he wants to be able to match my emotions, but the emotional whiplash of me jumping from high to low is exhausting for him. God, when he told me that, the guilt nearly took me off my feet. I told him not to shift his mood on my account, that if I'm sad he need not follow me into the pits of hell, but he insisted so I told him to wait for me outside the gates at least. I don't want other people to be affected by my emotions. I'm exhausted by my mood swings too, so why on Earth would I want to inflict that on the people around me? Save yourselves, don't bother getting close or else you'll get whipped.
Reading back now, it's quite funny seeing the two paragraphs back to back simply because of how contradictory they sound. I'm simultaneously a blank slate with nothing going on internally, and a emotional wreck that zips between manic happiness (though I haven't been like that in a good while) and crushing sadness. F doesn't like it when I switch on a dime (fair) and he also doesn't like it when I don't feel anything at all (less fair), so you can imagine how confused and frustrated I am. You said you don't like the rapid, massive changes but also you don't like the stability of numbness?? What do you want from me??? What he wants from me is to find a middle ground with my emotions instead of letting them consume me, or not feeling them at all. Brother. If I knew how to regulate them to something more palatable, I would've done so already.
The issue is extremes. I'm terrible with finding a middle ground with my feelings. Ever since I was a little kid, I would feel things very strongly and very fast, and to me that was to my benefit because I didn't linger on anything too long. If I lost a toy, I would sob hysterically for about 30secs to a minute, but then the tears would dry and I would feel nothing. I didn't care about it anymore and I went along my merry way. To me, that was fucking great. No need to be slightly sad for extended periods of time, just speedrun that shit, feel it all in one go and get it out of the way, I don't have time for that crap. But ApPaReNtLy this is not a healthy way of dealing with emotions 🙄 But it's efficient and you can't argue with results.
I told F the best way to help me during days of the epic highs and lows of my mood is to just...not acknowledge it. Like a kid throwing a tantrum, don't feed into it and let me tucker myself out. If you don't play along and continue as you are, it's 1. More comfortable for me because familiarity is stability and 2. Maybe it'll subconsciously teach me that "No one is coming, Get Up." There's a reason why you don't engage with a toddler throwing a tantrum, you don't want to encourage that kind of behavior. To be fair, no one ever came when I was a kid and genuinely sad, so if it didn't work then, I'm not sure on its efficacy now.
Thank god I went to my GP and he referred me to a psychiatrist for my depression. We're going to see what's wrong with me psychologically yeaaaaa
