I have had bouts of depression since I was in junior high. Now I'm in my 30's and it's become worse. I have recently been diagnosed with depression/ocd and put on Paxil 20mg which was increased to 40mg because of the obsessions. I am in such a deep black hole that it's difficult to think. The only things running through my head are of a negative nature and my wife of 6 years and 3 month old baby are suffering. They don't understand what this is I'm going through and it's hard for me to explain. I hate it. I feel alone!!! I feel doomed to misery!!!! I want to be on an island by myself with no contact with anyone. There seems to be no way out. I WOULD NEVER CONSIDER SUICIDE. But, I have to say I see where it would seem sensible to someone in this state of hopelessness. How do you get out of this......I'm desperate!!

Curt, if it's any comfort to you, a lot of us have been there and pulled out of it. But having people tell you to just pull yourself together and "put on a happy face" certainly don't help, except perhaps for the satisfaction you might get from punching them in the nose. This is at least as much a physical as an emotional problem, and there are physical ways to treat it, with medications, but also ways of helping yourself to "think your way out." A book that helped me a lot is David Burns's "Feeling Good," about cognitive therapy. The basic premise is that when you have depression, your thought processes are distorted, but you can learn to identify the distortions and then deal with them rationally. A few typical distortions are to dismiss positive facts about your life and focus on the negative ones; you generalize from particulars (taking one setback as proof that you can never do anything right, e.g.), and you assume you can read other people's minds ("they think I'm a loser" -- how do you know that?) It's a very common-sensical and practical book, I recommend it.

Another thing that helped me was just getting outdoors and doing something physical -- go hiking, or something like that. Personally, I love bird-watching, and it's something that really gets you out of yourself, so to speak: when you're trying to identify the markings of a warbler, there's no room in your brain left over for gloom and self doubt.

Good luck, and I hope you feel better soon.

Thanks for the reply. It sounds extremely juvenile but I suppose I just want some positive feedback since I'm stuck in a negative mode. Your post was very helpful and I will get the book you recommended.

I am going to get the book.

God knows I need it too.