A thought

[danaeris]

... someone said I wasn't depressed in a recent response to a journal entry.

There are different kinds of depressions. I was just chatting with merovingian on AIM and the topic of cognitive therapy (using logic to clearly refute the depressive trains of thoughts that are getting you down), and I said this. I thought it bore inclusion. Here is my edited version of it:

Some depression is caused by stress. In the last year, I have graduated from college, started 5 new jobs, ended four jobs, been unemployed (extendedly), moved ... to an entirely new place unlike anywhere I'd ever even visited, ended three relationships, and began one other relationship. All this began just when I had begun to stabilize about 1.5 years after leaving my ex husband.

That is an ABSURD number of high-stress life events to go through in one year.

If you figured all of that into one of those stress calculation thingies, I'd have been due for a nervous breakdown at some point along that line. Instead, I was just depressed, moody, and lost my ability to cope well with, well, almost anything going wrong.

And let me pre-emptively state that I'm not trying to excuse behavior. I'm trying to understand behavior. Only by understanding behavior can we prevent it in the future and move beyond it.

Comments

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I said at the time, and will say so again, that I don't think you're *clinically* depressed. Also, that I greatly dislike the confusion surrounding the term 'depression', which can mean "dent or concavity", "economic downturn", "chemical imbalance in the brain" or "unhappiness".

This is not to say that you would not benefit from therapy or treatment, cognitive or otherwise, merely that in my educated but armchair opinion, that it isn't necessary for you at this time. Nor is it necessary for us to put you on suicide watch, I devoutly hope.

And honestly, your "stress" list reads about average for someone in your age range these days, and is what most of your contemporaries probably are going or went through. Which is not to say it's not stressful, merely that it's not unusual. Different people cope differently with different stresses, of course. (And I'm convinced that most of those "stress calculators" date from the sixties at best in their expectations. Life has changed a lot.)

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

ok. I never claimed to be clinically depressed.
Nor to need to be on suicide watch.

I never claimed to be unusual in my stress list, although I do NOT think that it is normal... Most people who have just graduated from college either stayed in their college town (with or without job), went home (with or without job), or went somewhere completely new, but with a job. I imagine very few people moved somewhere totally different from anywhere they'd ever visited let alone lived, and became unemployed at the same time. It is an unusual combination. Heap all the rest on top of it, and you get what I've been for the last year.

[auros]

Also, the amount of relationship stress is, I think, higher for poly folk in general, simply because there are more individual changes packed into less time.