Depression equals self-absorbed asshole?
Posted by Heather in I'm Deep Like a MarshmallowDo I have to get out of bed?
Do I really have to take a shower, dry my hair, put on make-up, and generally be presentable? Who really cares what I look like?
Do I really have to make breakfast for my kids? Again? Didn’t I do that yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and that, and that, that, that, that?
Look. There’s 10,000 loads of laundry that I really should get up and do. But I’d rather lie here on the couch. In these jogging pants. Without a shower. And no make-up.
Do I really have to parent my children? Can’t I just sit here and stare at them until they read the disciplinary thoughts in my head? Otherwise I’d have to get up and act on this misbehavior, and oh, the effort it takes to, you know, get up.
Good god, if I have to clean this kitchen one! more! damn! time!, I’m going to do things to myself with a steak knife that would give Edward a raging hard on.
These are but a few thoughts that have been running willy-nilly in my head lately. I sigh and huff at my kids more than I laugh and smile at them. I yell more than I should. I scream at the boys to shut up. Anger and frustration twist me into something I don’t want to recognize.
How long has this been going on? I don’t know exactly; long enough for me to notice them. Off and on, off and on they go, I’m sure much like they go off and on in other people’s mind.
Usually I’m quick to get over these thoughts since I’m just not the type to stay down long. But this time, they’re lingering and I don’t understand why.
Could I be *gasp* depressed? More than just the normal lows everyone goes though? Clinical depression does run in my family. This could be the start of it for me!
Certified insanity also runs in my family, but clearly we do not need to worry about me being insane. There are no signs whatsoever on this blog that I could be even the tiniest bit insane.
But depression? Is this its fingers creeping crawling into my mind?
For the first time in my life, I seriously began to wonder if heredity was out to get me.
My grandmother was clinically depressed. So much so that doctors recommended shock treatments as the solution. Though certainly, with “modern” medicine, these were a kinder and gentler shock treatment than years past.
Hahahaha! The shit doctors tell you! Electrical currents straight to the brain works wonders, and is kind and gentle! Ha ha!
What’s funnier is the speed in which we’re willing to believe them, even when they say crazy shit like let’s shoot electricity straight into your brain. Honestly, how are you to tell which one is insane? The one behind or in front of the desk?
What if all my grandmother really needed was to not be such a self-absorbed asshat?
The bug was put in my ear a few weeks ago that depression stems from too much self-absorption. I’ve been pondering the idea since.
(Disclaimer: I am not dismissing someone else’s depression. I try not to freely mock other people’s pain, only my own. All I’m doing is raising the question that maybe there isn’t a history of clinical depression in my family. Maybe it’s a history of self-absorbed assholes instead.)
I think of my grandmother as I knew her, and she lived until I was 31 so, unlike my paternal grandmother who died when I was 8, I’ve the experience of an adult grandchild and I saw things a child wouldn’t.
Nanny never had any friends. Not a one. She didn’t socialized, never had a knitting group or the like. She never worked. She didn’t volunteer her time to any programs or groups. She stayed home, ran the household (which, hello?, I know is 1400 jobs within itself) and took a weekly outing to the grocery store.
No damn wonder she was depressed.
I think about the weeks where my emotional state was what could be called depressed.
What was I doing?
I was absorbed with myself.
There were no thoughts of others, even my children, other than the resentment of the work I had to do as a mother.
Either I had been sick, or the boys were sick, or there was testing and I missed three weeks in a row of working in Parker’s classroom. Wally had taken the two most recent shifts at the Sea Lab.
It was all me, me, me. Oh, and let’s not forget the poor, pitiful me; pitiful because my life pretty much sucked at the time.
Well, whose damn fault is that?
Now, I don’t think throwing myself into mindless busyness is necessarily the answer. I’m sure underneath the depression there’s something needing to come up. But I also don’t think sitting and wallowing in the depression is necessarily going to make it come up any faster.
Won’t the issue rise when the time is right for it it rise?
In the meantime, if giving my time to others (or projects, or whatever it I feel I could do, not out of guilt, but of the simple joy of giving) helps save me from a possible future of electric shock treatments, or even psychotropic medication, and gets me through to the right time for the bubble to rise, then why the hell not?
I mean, before doctors prescribe Lexapro, or whatever the current favored antidepressant medication is at the time, do they ask if the patient a self-absorbed jerk? Do they ask how much time you spend thinking of yourself compared to thinking of others? Or what have you done for someone else lately?
Maybe they should?
I don’t know. I just know once I heard that statement and began to think and give to others, I started to feel better.
That’s not to say the depressing feeling hasn’t crept back in. I know there’s something I need to deal with, and I think I have a good idea what it is, but I can’t force the answer to come to me right now. I can’t force the magical solution, though I wish I could.
But in the meantime, I have some other people to think about.
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Seriously? I’m all too familiar with your internal dialogue. That bitch is in my head lately, too. Can’t figure out how to get over myself enough to be ME: optimistic, happy, Super Mom, sex pot wife ME.
If you figure out how to tell the bitch to shut up and go away, without the drug du jour, please let me know. I also come from a line of clinically depressed people who might just be undiagnosed self-absorbed assholes.
I might buy into the thinking of other people theory…worth a try.
Good thoughts. I’ve come to the same conclusions about myself a time or two or five. I’m much happier working myself out of depression than numbing myself with happy pills. The hump I can’t get over is the anxiety and freak outs that my mother and grandmother passed on down to me. There has to be a third component to the chocolate + booze solution.
I also think there is actual clinical depression (I’ve had that) and just “I need to get out / get a life / suck it UP” depression. I know people *coughmilcough* who could SRSLY benefit from doing some volunteer work and seeing people who have real reasons to be depressed, critical, and self-obsessed.
Ahem. I have come to a similar conclusion; however, my solution is to spend the entire year doing nothing but thinking of myself.
Your way is probably better, but my way sounds more fun.
I think you are absolutely right. Sometimes, you don’t know why you can’t work something through and kick the crap off of you. Being able to identify your blessings and think beyond yourself … really heals a lot. It’s difficult to do, but it does helpf i you can do it. I am not saying it’s a cure all because clinical depression is very hard to beat and I have been there. When you are stuck, by definition, you are STUCK. If you could just un-stick yourself, well then, how stuck could you possibly be to begin with, right? You would just do what needs doing and there wouldn’t even be an issue. But it’s not always that easy and sometimes the hardest thing we have to do can be as simple as standing up …. I get it. But if you are at a place where you can cognize that you live in a world with others and begin thinking of them too/first, it helps derail the spiral that spins you into STUCK (does that make sense?).
I hope today is better for you. I hope you have a few good belly laughs (I find those help as well). And know that your blog makes a difference in MY day! Keep us posted!
Tom Cruise told me to tell you to take a calcium supplement.
OK, no seriously, while I am by no means discounting depression as a true illness, I *do* think there is truth to what you are saying here. I’ve been reading (don’t laugh) Dale Carnegie’s “How to Stop Worrying And Start Living” and while a lot of it is totally outdated such that it is outright comical one of the things he says, which I find to be completely true, is that people who live outside of themselves and make a conscious effort to help others in some way every day tend not to be very depressed.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been feeling exactly the same way.
Battling depression is no fun. Part of my personal issues with it is that I am a giver. I spend too much time dealing with and trying to please others and no time dealing with myself or my own needs. I would say being self-absorbed isn’t really an issue w/depression, as least as far as my experience goes. And don’t be knocking that Lexipro! It’s the only thing keeping me from being in an istititute these days!
Sometimes it’s just depressing thinking about the enormity of taking care of kids and hubby. It sucks most of the time.
I think just realizing your life is gonna suck for many years to come is the first step. LOL!
Great post, Heather. I think it must be something about this time of year. I’m not usually a very “down” person, but I’ve been feeling really blah for over a month now. It’s effecting my libido, my want-to and the whole bit. I keep hoping that the coming springtime will help snap me out of it…surely that’s all I need!
Keep up the great work on your blog. I read you often.
I’ve been having this same conversation with myself for a few weeks now. Well, I’ve been having them for awhile, but they’ve gotten a lot louder (and wetter, becasue OMG with the crying!) of late. It’s impacting far too many areas of life for me to continue to pretend like something is not different, and I really hate the idea that I’m dragging people around me down as a result.
Thanks for this post…
That is a great great post. My dad was clinically depressed and took medication and went to counseling for it, so I don’t discount it either. However, sometimes I find myself thinking I’m going down that road. But a few days of kicking myself in the ass, asking what is so depressing about my charmed life, how can I be down when there are others less fortunate, I start to realize I’m not actually depressed. I’m just whiny.
Wow- I’ve written a few times on our blog about my struggles in the past couple of years. And then I’m embarrassed that I opened the door because, really, I think it was/is a symptom of me being self-aborbed. Again, like you, not commenting at all on anyone else’s state of mind or depression, stricly commenting on my own. I think you have a real point in this post that I need to listen to. Thanks
um hmm….it’s a continuum…exacerbated methinks by…FEMALE HORMONES… I know they do a number on me!! Seasonal Affect also as some have mentioned…Yogi makes some teas…Womens Moon Cycle…Green Vitality..placebos probablly but a nice cup of tea is an indilgence that gives you some “ME ME ME Time” and takes the edge off (lol–don’t put burbon in your tea till after noon) yeah, you’ll have to heat it up 6 times because someone will pull you away from it….wow we get more Me time that way…..maybe?
I have written a version of this post in my head 20 times. I am whiny and jaded and as you said self absorbed. I drive to pick up my daughter from school in my minivan listening to emo music and throwing myself a pity party. Blah blah blah
I am so glad you wrote this. Because I needed someone to remind me it’s not all about me. So yeah thanks for helping me fight the urge to grab a bottle of wine and go hide in the bathroom. I think I will go enjoy my family now
I don’t want to oversimplify the situation, but having two young kids who need you for EVERYTHING (including a reminder that they need to breathe in and out in order to live) can be a tad draining. Those “who cares what I look like” thoughts are all too common. I felt them at your stage of the game and they often stay around longer than one might like. Heredity is a factor, and we’re either somehow related or there are more crazies out there in the collective gene pool than I’m currently comfortable with. Alcoholism? Check. Grandma who had shock treatments? Check. Depression? Suicide? Despondency? Check. Check. Ditto. All this to say that I’ve felt like I was losing it on any number of occasions, but also? Exhaustion likes to mimic depression. So does a screwed-up thyroid. I sympathize and empathize and all the other -izes that apply. Be good to yourself. You look normal to me.
This is why despite my occasional fantasies of wow it would be great to be a stay at home mom and never have to get ready and rush to work in the mornings (yeah right…because being home with kids is a vacation) are fleeting because whine and bitch as I might about having the “boring” but stable job, I do, for the most part enjoy going into my office four days a week. I get out, I get to interact with adults, blah blah blah. Staying home with kids, especially in the winter when you’re more prone to stay home, is exhausting!
Last Saturday I was in sweats all day, never showered, never put on a lick of makeup and by 5 p.m. felt like drinking a bottle of wine and going to bed. The girls were fighting and my husband worked until 4 so by the time he got home I was looney.
This time of year just after the holidays is usually a huge let down to me. You get all worked up for Christmas, it’s fun (but stressful) and then it’s back to “normal” for everyone, plus a few extra loads of laundry and pounds.
And also? I think we’ve had maybe 2.2 hours of sunshine this year so far in Nashville.
Bring on spring. I’m ready!!
my daughter and i were discussing this very topic last week… she’s 21, i’m 52. we were both feeling a mite malaise-ish. and we both wondered, aloud, if there was a full moon. as a matter of fact, there was… big and bold and bright… taunting us. it happens a lot that way. maybe for you, too?
one other thought… don’t know where i read this, but it’s true… “the key to being joyful is to always be grateful”… works for me.
Wow, I thought I was down before, you say it’s all MY fault? Now I’m really depressed.
Seriously though, I just sat and nodded the whole time reading your post, I’ve been feeling the funk for quite some time… I spent a day manic cleaning and got a CRAPload done instead of wallowing and whining that the husband and offspring won’t do it. I felt soooo much better, was it because I: a) took charge, b) burned the energy, c) got stuff accomplished, d) got RECOGNIZED for said accomplishment, e) stopped feeling sorry for myself that it wouldn’t magically happen by itself or f) all of the above?
No simple answers, but your path is definitely one worth exploring.
I can see some of myself in what you say – I’ve dealt with depression for many, many years, sometimes a lot worse than others. I haven’t been depressed in years, now, though. What I thought I needed when I was in that really can’t function space was someone to care for me, and take care of all of my responsibilities. But that didn’t happen, so it must not have been what I *really* needed. I will say that medication helped. A *LOT*. I went for years and years thinking that medication was SO unnecessary, like Ashlie said, I believed “they” were just pushing the drug du jour – but I honestly don’t think I could have made it out without Wellbutrin. I took it for just over a year, and I haven’t been back in that space since. It’s like I had to train my brain how to NOT be depressed, if that makes sense.
Also? Alcohol? A depressant. I rarely, rarely drink. (Does that make you feel worse? I’m sorry. But it’s true for me! I can’t go there as often as I wish, because of the long-term effects.)
I’ve also just accepted that I’m going to have lower energy levels in the winter, and I let myself do that. It’s not depression, it’s just part of my rhythm.
“before doctors prescribe Lexapro, or whatever the current favored antidepressant medication is at the time, do they ask if the patient a self-absorbed jerk?”
Bravo! I know that depression is real, for some people. I rarely get depressed, and I’m thankful for that. On those rare days when I’d rather just stay in bed and weep, I imagine how terrible it would be to feel this way every day of my life. I’d soundly endorse medication for anyone that couldn’t get out of that fog.
But I also think that feeling blue, occasionally, is just part of life. We have moods, we are tired, we crash after the holidays, and popping a pill to avoid every discomfort isn’t necessarily the answer.
I loved your advice about thinking about other people also. My son called from his army base, the other day, in a terrible funk. Home for the holidays, he now misses his friends, his life is sh**. Among the advice I gave him was to run to the PX, get a couple of cool sports bottles that say ARMY on them, and mail them to his brother & sister with a note telling him they loved him. I don’t know if he listened to me…I hope so.
Oh, I know there is something to it. I think that your attitude can really affect a person who battles depression. I kind of look at it like when you have cancer or some other illness-you need to take care of other things that could affect it and you: crappy diet and poorly taking care of yourself is NOT going to make things better and/or make the cancer worse.
I think that it can help intensify and feed depression for sure.
Also, I think a pretty good indicator of clinical depression is when you kick yourself in the self-absorbed ass and try the bootstrap pulling with sincerity and well… it just doesn’t work.
I definitely think there’s something in the air. Reading your post and all these comments and the majority of us all nodding our heads. Is it the letdown after the holidays, the winter doldrums…
I’m certain there are people who are truly clinically depressed. I know for myself I’ve wondered if I’m depressed, but when I think about all the things I’m not doing that I know will make me feel better, I realize I’m just kinda in a rut and a little lazy…and that makes me the cycle of my not-real depression continue.
Usually after holidays things like this come up. Big letdown after all the buildup. Will you be getting out more or looking for the medicated road? Whatever, I hope things change for you, please.
Hehe – I’ve been called a lot of things but never a self-absorbed asshole. I’ll have to add that to my blog profile –
)
In dealing with my most recent episode of depression (for which I am now taking the wonder drug zoloft (at least for me it’s a wonder drug)), I kept feeling like, I FEEL SO SELFISH. THIS IS SO SELFISH.
And to get better, I needed to be selfish. And I don’t feel guilty about it.
I hope you find what you need.
I can’t wait to meet you.
Yep. Yep. Yep. Oh, YEP!
I feel about twelve hundred times better when I manage to get my ass up and out of the house. Sometimes I end up feeling worse because I go out in public and my kids are jerks. But I always feel better for getting out. Depression runs in my family too, and maybe I’m afflicted. But if shrinks prescribed less asshattery as a prelude to medication, they wouldn’t get all those nice shiney kickbacks from the pharmaceutical companies.
Kudos to you for looking at yourself first to see if there’s anything you can do to snap out of it.
This was a really interesting post to me because I’ve done both – I’ve tried kicking myself in the ass to snap out of it, and I’ve taken Lexapro. I think there is a definite tendency in this country to coddle ourselves and find magic cures for everything.
I freaked when I first started taking meds, feeling guilty and wondering why I couldn’t just control it already until I had a really awesome shrink explain that some people legitimately have a chemical imbalance and those are the people that these drugs help the most. If you are taking meds and have tried a few kinds and nothing works, maybe you are a self absorbed asshole.
Either way great post.
Thank you for this post. I think your statement is right on. Your honesty is sooo appreciated!
I just told a woman that we could no longer be friends unless she stopped talking about herself alllllllllllllllll of the time. She said then I guess we can’t be friends.
Now, mind you, since I met her about a year ago all she has done is complain and ask me things like what is wrong with me, how can I be like you, how come you seem so happy—well, I finally told her: you are self-absorbed, that is why you are so unhappy. I am pretty sure we are not friends anymore, but I finally told her the truth because she lost out on a GREAT job over her (as she calls it) pessimism.
She was like black hole…memememememmememememememe, sucking in everything around her….
But, I gotta say Heather, you are too funny to be an asshole. PS: I was on the same page when home with larva!
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