When suffering from deep bipolar depression the worst aspect for me is the constant negative thoughts and fears, and I’d be grateful for any advice on how to mute them.
I’m not the kind of person who responds to any kind of therapy, and relaxation or meditation techniques are also quite useless for me.
Last year was exceptionally bad for me due to a temporary reduction in lithium dosage. When I’m down I find that being with people is even worse than the rumination, so I withdrew completely socially, as usual, and spent almost six months playing Morrowind, Oblivion etc. This was the only way I could drown out the thoughts, but the moment I stopped playing they would crowd back in again and torment me.
So the only thing I’ve discovered is distraction, and Skyrim’s on the way, but I don’t want to spend half of every year playing RPG games that I’m not even interested in when I’m up, so I’d love to hear of anything else that works to engage the mind on that level and stops the rumination.
hi there, i know exactley what you mean. When im depressed, i hate being around people, or in public, i feel awkward, like even when i talk, my voice sounds funny to me. or if im in a store, i feel like everyone is looking at me.
i have been able to over come it but still happens a lot. you are not going to like my answer. You have to FORCE yourself, to do things. Make yourself go out for dinner, or the mall, and i know it will be horrible at the time, and you will feel so weird and uncomfortable, but after, you will feel better, and being social, comes easier and easier. Only you can help you..
I had to FORCE myself to go to the grocery store for shampoo this morning, i was uncomfortable the whole time, but i feel a little better now, becuase i did it!!!!!!
remember the laws of attractions, positive things, produce positive results. sometimes, i repeat, today is a good day, im going to be happy, out loud, over and over to myself. Drown the negative thoughts with positive thoughts. You have to beat them!
Many thanks for taking the time to let me know what works for you, but I have a different kind of problem and I should have given more details.
Before lithium, many years ago, I was very sociable, but not any more. I now find socialising in public pointless, even when I’m up, and gave it up in favour of doing things I love when I’m on my own. I suddenly realised that I couldn’t compromise anymore. I didn’t want to tell the polite lies that are necessary to keep a good dinner party going. I realised that I didn’t even like most of the people I socialised with, unless I’d had a few drinks. I’m older now and happy to live alone. I only see my closest friends when I’m up, and never in groups. Relationships don’t interest me any more. I never wanted to give up my independence in order to stay with one person. I tried once and it was a disaster.
So I don’t actually want to socialise at all. Ever. I don’t worry about what people think of me as no one seems to notice me at all when I’m out in public. The kind of negative thoughts I have are not about myself, but about other people. I think we live in a really horrible world where we’re all out for what we can get and lying to each other 95% of the time, especially in relationships, and that everyone’s pretending to be happy when they’re not. I think this when I’m up as well as down, but only obsess about it when I’m down.
Now these could be negative thoughts, or they could be true, and there’s no way to really know for sure.
But staying away from people is my way of surviving. As long as I’m left in peace I feel so much calmer, yet the advice is always to get out there and socialise. But why should I when even a trip to the shops can end up making me feel terrible? Even the most ordinary things people say in overheard conversations on buses can really upset me for days. If I see someone treating their child badly in a supermarket it can make me cry and I replay the event in my mind for weeks after.
I don’t even see my friends when I’m down as I can’t handle their lack of comprehension and the guilt I feel when they blame themselves because they can’t ‘cheer me up’. I’m also acutely aware of the fact that I’m not the friend they know, and talking about things makes me feel worse, not better.
But I don’t obsess about myself. I know I have an illness I inherited and that it’s biochemically-based, so I don’t blame myself for the way it makes me feel. I like the person I am when I’m not depressed. I don’t identify with the view that it’s an illness I ‘have’ because I believe that I ‘am’ bipolar, and without the disorder I would not have a self at all. I tried to fight against that for so many years, but have finally found peace in accepting what I can never change.
So Lucy, I think that if you’re a naturally sociable person it must help to force yourself to get out there and find that things are not so bad as they seem, and that’s great advice you offered, but for someone like me, who is so easily hurt by the way most people behave, it can only make things worse to get closer to the source of the pain more often.
I’ve tried positive thinking without success, and am irrevocably scientific, so I can’t get my head around the laws of attraction (though one of my best friends swears they work).
I have to go to the shops this morning. Just one shop. Going through the back lanes with my earphones in. Hoping I won’t meet anyone I know. Hoping I don’t see an animal dead in the road. Thinking of nothing except how good it will feel when I can close my door behind me again.
But even at home the negative thoughts don’t stop. Imagining arguments I could have had with people (I never do in real life) asking myself what’s the point of recycling when big business is polluting the world anyway, thinking of a single sparrow I saw killed by a speeding motorist ten years ago, or an incident of child or animal cruelty from way back, imagining what I’d like to do to people who act like that, thinking of how I don’t know one single good relationship yet everyone’s pretending things are fine, obsessing about the greed and materialism in this world, thinking of people spending so much money on meaningless things Christmas when kids are starving to death in other countries.
Those are the kinds of negative thoughts that crowd in on my mind 24/7 when I’m down (unless I use distraction techniques like RPG games), and no matter how hard I try I can’t think up enough positive thoughts to counteract them because I know that there’s so much truth in them and that the only way ‘normal’ people survive is pretending that so much isn’t really happening. Denial. So it feels as if depressed people are seeing the world far more clearly and realistically than most other people, and maybe that’s why no one wants to be around someone who’s ‘depressing’. How could anyone really be happy in a world like this if they had to accept what’s really going on?
I have a similar problem to some of the issues in this thread. Much of my depression and insecurity is caused or begins with negative thoughts. One would hit me and then came the onlslaught that started me to spiral downward. Pretty soon I was a mess. I've been on Lactimal and was recently prescribed Cymbalta to help slow me down b/c Geodon and Latuda were making me feel drugged in the morning. Saphris was a total disaster. Worst I've ever felt. Just lately, I've been finding it easier to recognize the thoughts that cause me to take a nose dive, catch them, and begin thinking about something positive. My wife used to tell me, "think happy thoughts," and I would become angry thinking it was a "Pollyanna" attitude. Now the idea doesn't sound so bad. I'm not perfect and when I around my co-workers that I often perceive as enjoying saying things that make me feel like crap. When this starts, I try to quickly find a way to leave. I'm around high school kids all the time. I tend to read into their expressions too much. I think, "they hate me," and really they probably don't its just the negative thoughts creeping in. The thoughts use any and every opportunity to take me down if I let them. Maybe its just easier for me. Maybe the bottoms going to drop out any day now and life will feel like crap again. I hope not.
MY BP Depressions and NEG thoughts can be a challenge at times. It can be quite a choir just to get out the door. I had a friend that also has been BP for years and would practice Positive Affirmations with me ...The affirmations have helped me.
I.E. "I"m Its going to be okay" and "this mood will not last forever."
Isolation is bad for myself and has made the depressions worse, and the Negative
thoughts are at time very hard to get under control. I try to replace
the NEG Thought with a Positive thought. Also if I concentrate on a Negative Thoughts
I tend to Invite more Negative actions.
Drowning out the Negative Thoughts 
