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Dear Tiana,
You ask me the following questions ? Here is my answers.
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Have you been diagnosed with depression by a doctor? Or would you say that these are swings in your outlook on life, or perhaps related to life events?
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I went to doctors for diagnosis. They confirm my own diagnosis as bipolar and depression. My own guess for my mood swing probably has 3 factors, the 3 Ps:
1. Predisposing factors - My genetic makeup, my personality and outlook on life, my upbringing, my cultural and family influence, my attitude, my orientation to life, my assumptions about the world and myself. The key aspects is I have period sof days of strong and fortitude , followed by periods days of loss of motivations & anxiety.
2. Precipating factors: My immediate triggiering events. e.g. have a exhausting day, some ache and pain, disappointment, rejections. My hunch is the " I am a person waiting to be triggered". If I am in a strong day , this event won't bother me. Since most of these triggering events are unavoidable. I just have to accept them and work on the other two factors.
3. Perpetuating factors: How I respond to my anxiety sypmtoms, How I react to my depression. My avoidance pattern. My withdrawal pattern. My non-experimental and negative reactions due to past unhelpful assumptions and strong negative synapse connections. I want helpful assumptions & reactions, replacing the strong bad synapse connections with growing helpful synapse connections. The perpetuating factors maintain and deepen depression.
The depression is going to come back. I want to get ready for it. I want to shorten its stay. I want to work on the 3 Ps of depression,. In addtion, I need to build helpful behavioural patterns. Examples are "getting up early, getting to the support group here when I am depressed(not withdrawal pattern), experimentwith new behaviour, identifying helpful and unhelpful behaviours".
I am waiting for depression to come to do my behavioural experiments.
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 (Online)
|  Oct 13, 20
Depression is the common cold of mental illness. What does it mean? Since viruses are everywhere, if I am not mature in my defense system, I am bound to get a lot of common cold during the year. I need to find a way to reduce its
a. frequency
b. duration
c. intensity
The attacks are going to come, whether they are a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, a few months, a few years. My intensity of depression is usually mild. The symptoms is " just not motivated to work". I just turn off my mobile phone when I am depressed. No sadness or melancholic.
I am thinking that I may be able to cut the depression duration down to a few hours using behavoural activation techniques to get myself moving. The behaviour activities technique that I am going to use is "increase more small activities(pleasant or mastery). I need to identify what kind of activites that I can do during my depression period. If I can find more doable and enjoyable activities during my depression period, then I think my motivation will come back in a few hours.
It is difficult to do things during the depression period. Welcome, MMS!
I assume you are looking for suggestions on how to lengthen your depression-free periods of time?? My first thought is to think about what has helped in the past. Secondly, check out our programme, from top to bottom. Find tools there that ring true to you, that seem like you could do them to help you be successful in your goal. Logging on here to find support and help is a great step!! I'm really glad that you are trying to be pro-active while you have the motivation!
Have you been diagnosed with depression by a doctor? Or would you say that these are swings in your outlook on life, or perhaps related to life events?
Thanks for sharing!
I have mild to moderate depression. I expect depression to come back in between one month to 6 months. I will try to shorten its stay to one or two days this time around. A long stay of depression is disruptive to the quality of life. Because I do not do anything during the depression period, I have to do a lot of catch up during the normal period.
Normal period= 135 days (2010Jan21 to Jun5)
Depression period = 42 days (2010 Jun 5 to July 17)
Normal period = 58 days (2010 July17 to Sep 15)
Depression period= 17 days (2010 Sep 16 to Oct 3)
Normal period = ??? (2010 Oct4 to ???)
Appreciate any good suggestions. |
