I know this is an old topic, but I'm still trying to find something that will work for me. Can't afford therapy, or medication - living paycheck to paycheck. A prescription means not enough food for my kids.
Been playing in PbP games, because can't find local,game, and it's been good, but hasn't been fun for the past few months. Can't explain why, except that NOTHING is fun.
The question for me - is it better for my kids to have a clinically depressed dad, or no dad?
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See what people wrote above? Yeah. GET PROFESSIONAL HELP. A prescription for after-patent drugs (like most antidepressants) is actually dirt cheap. And the question you ask is the wrong one. No dad means kids who will always have to deal with that. ALWAYS. The relevant question is whether a depressed dad is better or worse than one who was depressed but got better and is now healthy. You know the answer to that one, don't you?
I recognize it for what it is, and make myself do things I don't feel like doing.
I joke around here :-)
SSRI's are all I can think of.
Listen music. Nox Arcana saved me many times
There was a time in my life where I was more like an empty void than a human being. Sometimes I still have these moments, but the time of my life when that was a perpetual state of mind seems to be over.
I still don't know what got me out of it, to be honest, which is why I didn't provide a real answer last time.
But if I had to hazard a guess, it was probably a change in environment. My friends have told me that I seem to be more full of life since I moved in with my grandma. So a key feature seems to be, remove yourself from an environment that is neglectful or damaging to your emotional health.
Sometimes removing yourself from the environment is not possible. Failing that, surround yourself with emotionally nourishing people (good friends and family, if you are lucky to have them) who have only your best emotional needs at heart, and remove people who are toxic, if possible.
In retrospect, during that Dead Time, I was distant from my friends (probably because i was dead in my head), and other folks who were also my friends at the time, weren't the best people to be my friend, to say the least.
It also helps to learn about what emotional abuse and neglect are and how to identify them. Sometimes people who claim, may even believe they have your best interests at heart, are emotionally destructive to you, which is the insidious thing about covert emotional abuse. What may seem to be normal in a relationship, what you may have been taught is normal in a relationship, could very well be entirely unhealthy and destructive.
Granted, there is a difference between depression that has a mostly neurological origin and depression that has a mostly environmental origin. Both are valid and serious illnesses. So even if you have the most loving environment in the world, you could still be depressed because of brain problems. In which case I can't help you, and you should see a psychiatrist and psychologist if you can.
Even if your brain problems have a mainly environmental cause, you should still see a psychiatrist as well as a psychologist, who may still be able to help you. Environmentally induced brain problems are still a bit easier to manage on medication.
A thing people forget is that s+$$ty people are bad for your brain. S*%~ty people literally starve your brain, and kill your brain cells. For example, it's common knowledge that abuse causes PTSD, an anxiety disorder. it's a less known fact that emotional neglect, even without emotional abuse taking place, can also cause PTSD or complex-PTSD. For which I have nearly all symptoms, confirmed by my therapists.
And children who were severely emotionally neglected from infancy tend have underdeveloped brains, just as if they were physically malnourished, even if they were well fed.
Even if you do remove yourself from a toxic environment and develop a good emotional support system, brain problems don't magically turn themselves off, you will still think and interact with the world like an emotionally neglected person, and it will take a lot of effort, time, probably years of it, perhaps your whole life, to readjust, or become an adjusted person for the first time in at least years. It will be a gradual process, that you won't be able to notice actively happening, but someday, you may look back on your life, and notice, hey, I've come far in the past few years, and I feel a lot better than I did before, and love myself a lot more as a person now.
There, that's my real post on the matter. I hope it helps.