I don't write or talk about this much, it is something that I keep pretty close to me. It is not that I am embarrassed by it or ashamed. What I deal with is very small in the grand scheme of what others have deal with on a daily basis. But I thought I would write a little about what I experience. Maybe someone will see it and see that they are going through something similar and maybe it will help them in some way.
A little background into me. I am extremely introverted, I am scared of rejection and isolate myself as a defense mechanism from that and I struggle with learning deficiencies. One would think, that as an adult, these things would not have the same effect on me as they did as a child, but in many ways their effects are amplified. Now I have worked through my learning issues but my introversion and fear of rejection still haunt me.
Growing up, I never understood what or why I would go into these cycles where I would seemingly give up or be defeated easily and then go through cycles where those things didn't come into play. Most people would just chalk it up to a teenager being a teenager and I believed that same thing. Once I became and adult that all these problem and issues would correct themselves and I would no longer have to worry about them, but come to find out that was not the case at all.
I cycled like this for a while until about 2008 when my first real experience with condition hit me. Bought a house with money I didn't have, my marriage was in the crapper and I had just failed out of college. I was down in my luck. I assumed that I would recover though in a couple months as I always had in the past, but I didn't. I tried to self-medicate, only made it worse. Everything I did only made it worse, even thinking about it made it worse. It came to a point where I had to seek professional help. This was a big deal, because it was very hard on my ego to have to admit that I had a problem that I could not fix on my own. I was helpless and falling fast.
Luckily, the Dr recognized what was going on pretty early and put me on medication to even me out and break the cycle but more importantly he told me what was going on. I was not just depressed but I had depression with psychosis. It manifests in me by become a cycle of compounding depression. Meaning after first becoming depressed, I become more depressed just because I know I depressed. Any actions to break the cycle or relieve that emotional pain that don't work further worsen my mental state.
I don't know why I wrote this, I know that there are people that have it far worse than I do. But maybe someone will get something out of this and maybe it will help. The most important thing I can stress is that depression is like a weight on our backs, each day a little more is added until one day we break. Don't be afraid to seek help, it was the best thing that I have done for myself and my family.