The feelings have reared their ugly head again.
- Thread starter Spikey
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Hey there, this is only my first post. In case you can't tell I'm in a low mood to be looking around suicide forums... I feel exactly like that: bad feelings are rearing their heads again. They just come back uninvited. I had the worst year of my life last year, (I try to to call it other things sometimes, but really, it sucked). I guess I'm lucky because my family would do anything for me, they helped me make it into a NOLS semester in The Middle of Nowhere, Western Australia. Without all this modern information technology to constantly remind me of everything that bothered me... I became my old self for awhile. The rest of my group even elected me to lead them for a week without our instructors in the King Leopold Mountain range... It was great. But now I'm back and everything comes back to haunt me sometimes. I'm not suicidal, but I have no inspiration, and don't feel much reason to live... life isn't so bad that it's unbearable, but I have trouble finding a reason to try anymore.
At its worst the depression makes me want to die, but this is my way out of those feelings: I'm a philosopher at heart like most people, so I find out about other people's philosophies. Usually, the best ones are hard to disagree with even when you're depressed. I always thought therapy was only useful if the therapist's thoughts were something I had never thought of, so I've come to really appreciate the few that can do that.
Where I'm going with this is that in Australia I read "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. So did all 6 of the other students and two of the instructor/guides. Of all the help I've come across fighting these feelings, it was the best. It's not a book meant to treat depression, but it's sold something like... 60 million copies in 40-something languages... just the two-page preface made me rethink what the most saddening thing in my life meant to me. It made me realize that I loved the girl I did because in her I saw the things I loved most about myself. I got hooked and read the whole book in two days, and copied long parts in my journal.
For me, no single new idea can fight off sadness. It takes new ones, constantly, or new applications of old ones. That is, at least, until I find more satisfaction out of the effort I put into life. These ideas give me hope to hold me over. That's my 2 cents and if you take my advice and read it, maybe you'd do me a favor and talk to me about things you learned later.
At its worst the depression makes me want to die, but this is my way out of those feelings: I'm a philosopher at heart like most people, so I find out about other people's philosophies. Usually, the best ones are hard to disagree with even when you're depressed. I always thought therapy was only useful if the therapist's thoughts were something I had never thought of, so I've come to really appreciate the few that can do that.
Where I'm going with this is that in Australia I read "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. So did all 6 of the other students and two of the instructor/guides. Of all the help I've come across fighting these feelings, it was the best. It's not a book meant to treat depression, but it's sold something like... 60 million copies in 40-something languages... just the two-page preface made me rethink what the most saddening thing in my life meant to me. It made me realize that I loved the girl I did because in her I saw the things I loved most about myself. I got hooked and read the whole book in two days, and copied long parts in my journal.
For me, no single new idea can fight off sadness. It takes new ones, constantly, or new applications of old ones. That is, at least, until I find more satisfaction out of the effort I put into life. These ideas give me hope to hold me over. That's my 2 cents and if you take my advice and read it, maybe you'd do me a favor and talk to me about things you learned later.
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