Short cloudy days, long dark nights

fyrstormer

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(TL;DR at the end if you want to skip the monologue)

Whether seasonal or chronic, depression is a tricky thing. People who've never experienced it usually misunderstand it as feeling sad and mopey all the time, which is understandable since that's what the colloquial definition of "depressed" is. But in a medical context, "depression" is the opposite of "stimulation", hence why alcohol is classified as a depressant and caffeine is classified as a stimulant. Neurological depression literally means parts of your brain are chronically underactive. The effects of this vary widely from person to person, since two people with depression will probably have different parts of their brains suffering from underactivity, and everyone's brain is wired differently anyway.

A better colloquialism for neurological depression would be "burnout", but that term implies you've done something wrong, whereas your brain might very well be malfunctioning despite your best attempts to prevent it. Some people's brains just don't work right; the brain is an organ, and any organ can malfunction due to biological problems. That's not to say lifestyle isn't a factor at all, though. I'm a software engineer, and writing code is incredibly mentally taxing; after a long day of writing code, it's not uncommon for me to struggle to speak in complete sentences. Imagine designing an extremely complex machine (are you thinking of a car? try again; they aren't complex enough) using only your imagination, then writing down painstaking descriptions of each component and its interactions with other components using words and numbers only -- no pictures allowed. That's my job. It's not the only factor, but it's certainly a big one.

So, the real experience of neurological depression is: Being awake is continuously, unrelentingly painful. (even REM sleep counts as "awake", because your brain is running at full-tilt when you're dreaming.) This is because those underactive parts of your brain are struggling to keep up with the inputs they're getting from the rest of your brain, and asking them to process new sensory input at the same time is more than they can handle. Have you ever had a migraine? You know how lights and sounds make you want to curl into a ball smaller and smaller until you disappear? Neurological depression is like that, minus the pounding sensation (thank goodness), but instead of lasting for a day or two, it lasts for months...or years...or decades if you're really unlucky.

You can experience that underactivity as being sad and mopey all the time, depending on which parts of your brain are underactive, but that's not my experience. For me it feels difficult to focus my eyes (very similar to the two times I actually had migraines -- thank goodness they never became recurring), bright happy sunlight looks strangely dull, it becomes difficult to ignore small unpleasant sounds or anything else mildly irritating, and I start hoping someone will give me an excuse to blow-up at them. Basically it feels like being sleep-deprived no matter how well-rested I am.

There are plenty of stimulants nowadays to jog the underactive parts of your brain, ranging from the ubiquitous caffeine and the perpetually-maligned nicotine, to highly-targeted pharmaceutical-grade antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil, and Ritalin. (yes, ADHD is just another form of neurological depression -- but it impairs your impulse-control and manifests as being unable to sit still and focus, which looks like the opposite of depression. that's why it's treated with stimulants.) Certain carefully-chosen types of sensory input can also be helpful, such as listening to music, looking at pretty scenery, getting a massage, or even just looking at bright lights. Basically, anything that wakes-up the underactive parts of your brain, without over-exciting the parts that were working fine to begin with, is a valid treament option. But most people just binge on snacks so they can taste delicious things over and over again, and/or drink a lot of coffee or soda to stimulate their brains chemically. Unfortunately I'm extremely sensitive to all stimulants, natural or pharmaceutical, so I have to be very careful using them.

To make matters more complicated, it's not always obvious when depression is becoming more of a problem than normal. It almost never hits full-force all at once, but instead it builds-up slowly and progressively as an unidentified source of additional mental strain slowly tires-out the susceptible parts of your brain and the problem becomes self-reinforcing. You carry-on doing your normal work, your normal household chores, your normal leisure activities, but they may be ever-so-slightly too much to handle. The problem builds day-by-day, and you might not notice until you're in so deep that you're yelling at inanimate objects for failing to obey your will. (like this.) After all, your malfunctioning brain thinks your reactions make perfect sense, so it's hard to notice anything's wrong.

When you consider that lots of other people are dealing with the same problem to some extent this time of year, it turns into a huge charlie foxtrot for everyone involved. For at least the past 15 years I've noticed the time between Halloween and Christmas is fraught with people walking around with chips on their shoulders, most of whom are in denial that there's anything different about them when I mention it to them. (see the last sentence of the previous paragraph.)

The shortening days in late autumn and early winter are a problem for a lot of people -- not so much because short days are an inherently depressing thing, but because modern society demands that we not give-in to our hibernation instincts and instead continue charging forward in our lives as if it were the middle of summer all year long. When one part of your brain desperately wants you to sleep 12 hours a day but the rest of your brain refuses to comply, bad things are bound to happen after a while. For the past 6 years or so, I've had a lot of trouble with seasonal depression, because I burned myself out really badly in 2013 from a "perfect storm" of hard work, problematic "friendships", and a long-distance relationship that suddenly didn't become a short-distance relationship like we'd expected to. But I'm an adult in the modern world, so I had to force myself to keep working full-time and doing all the other stuff that adults are supposed to do, despite sometimes literally wishing for death, and the addition of short cloudy days and long dark nights has been just one more strain on top of everything else. The past couple winters were better because I figured out which medications would be most helpful in my years-long recovery, but a month ago my life got upended.

A month ago my girlfriend had a baby. (pictures here.) I was very happy about this, but childbirth is hell on a woman's body, and I unilaterally decided to stay up nights to take care of the baby so she could sleep 8 hours a night. (I sleep in the mornings after she wakes up.) She doesn't go to sleep easily, so being interrupted even once in the middle of the night to feed/change/entertain the baby would reduce her total sleep-time by at least 33%. That is not a good formula for recovering from surgery. My sleep schedule naturally skews pretty late, so at first glance this didn't look like a huge change for me, but the long-term effect is I've seen about 3 hours of daytime each day for the past month. I've made a point of stepping outside each morning to watch the sun rise, and that helps, but it's obviously not the same as actually being awake for the whole day. I see sunrises, sunsets, and lots and lots of nighttime. Fortunately the baby has been very low-maintenance so far, or I'd be in the mental ward by now.

TL;DR: The reason for the long post is because I'm one of those people who likes knowing how all the pieces fit together. (it's why I'm good enough at my job that I can afford fancy titanium flashlights.) If you are too, great! If not, the point of all of this is to say I've increased my Prozac dose a little bit, being awake is less painful, I feel less like strangling the first person who looks at me funny, and I apologize for my recent misbehavior around here.
 
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badtziscool

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I wish I could just say "chin up" and everything will be better for ya, but it's a lot more complicated than that. Just know that this is a good group of people and we only wish for the best for you.
 

fyrstormer

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Thanks. I wasn't trying to elicit sympathy though. It is a thing I've learned to live with. Some people have diabetes, some people have heart disease, I have a brain that malfunctions sometimes. I was just explaining why I behaved the way I did, and giving some background info to other people in the process.
 

noboneshotdog

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Congratulations on having a beautiful little baby. Wishing you the best of Holiday Seasons!
 

scout24

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Well written, thank you for the insight. I've got two of my own, one's got his chemical engineering degree and is out of school and working in his field, the other gets out of county jail in March if everything goes well. My Wife and I are spending a tremendous amount of time with our 10 month old grandson while her daughter is getting started in a nursing program, trying to get her feet under her at 20. (Just backround lest you think I'm talking out of my hat.)

The best unsolicited advice I can give is enjoy every moment, even the stressful ones. The days go by so fast in hindsight, and you get exactly one trip through growing up with each child. Everything, everything now becomes about the cute little munchkin and what's best for him/her. Try to sleep when they sleep if possible, even if it's cat naps. And nothing on earth is a better pick-me-up than a smile or hearing your munchkin laugh. Smile, laugh, enjoy time together as a family, reassure her that she's beautiful even when she doesn't feel like it, and know you are nurturing and guiding someone who will be looking up to you for years to come. Good luck and congratulations... 😁
 

Modernflame

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While I don't identify with the specific symptoms you've described, I respect the boldness of posting it here. Thank you for the narrative. May this flashlight season greet you well.

Cheers
 

Zandar

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Wow, what to say? First off, I'm sure I could be officially diagnosed with depression, if I ever spoke to anyone about it. I like you am a functional adult that often does not get enough sleep each day because of my crazy work schedule. Luckily for me I can binge sleep on my days off, since I only have myself to care for these days. I have had the d***h feelings as well, after my world got turned upside down, and for me, the forum has been a good way to keep interacting with living people. And I find that talking to the dead hasn't really been all that fruitful.
You have a lot more stress in your life than I do and a baby, however much loved takes a toll on any couple. I'm not a doctor, that's what my dad did and he was able to help many patients with depression. I will say human beings were designed a long time ago, way before we had processed foods and so many chemicals in our environment that were exposed to on a daily basis. It's very possible that a contributing factor in your depression might be from ingesting some of these chemicals in your food. I'm sure your doctor has already mentioned this, but for the benefit of others, a brain scan can help identify chemical imbalances in your brain And after that you and your Dr can work together to figure out which food(s) are causing the imbalance. One of the older treatments for depression in areas that don't see a lot of daylight in the winter time was daily exposure to a UV lamp, but use at your own risk. Just remember your not alone and your not mentally ill. You and I have spoken
before so I know, you know how to contact me. In fact, I just sent you a pm this morning.
Wishing you and yours the best, Zandar
 

fyrstormer

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Yeah, the hole full of possible treatment options would be better described as a borehole instead of a rabbit hole. You'd need a whole separate forum to discuss that topic thoroughly. (hence why dietary forums exist. ;)) Anyone can be sensitive to anything, but there's one food-chemical that is worth paying close attention to because of the way it behaves: MSG. Your body uses glutamic acid to calibrate the sensitivity of your nerve endings, and MSG is the salt form of glutamic acid. Your tongue is covered with nerve endings, obviously, and that's why MSG doesn't really taste like anything specific, it just makes everything else taste awesome. The problem is, after you swallow it, the MSG goes on to make all your other nerve endings more sensitive too, and nervous hypersensitivity makes pretty much any bad mood worse -- especially if you're prone to panic attacks. MSG makes me shaky if I eat too much of it.

Aside from inflammatory reactions which aggravate your nervous system, and the direct neurological effect of MSG itself, I don't place a lot of credence in the idea that you can adjust the way your brain works by changing your diet. Fads like "the alkaline diet" and whatnot are basically nonsense. Your body is full of feedback mechanisms that constantly work to keep essential nutrients and ions in the correct balance, and to keep foreign chemicals out of your bloodstream in the first place. (however, those feedback mechanisms may be miscalibrated, because biology is far from perfect, which is a whole different problem, and generally has to be solved with medical treatment.) Generally speaking, if you insist on depriving your body of something it thinks it needs (whether it is correct or not), your body will just downregulate your entire metabolism until your metabolic needs are in-line with the tiny amount of that nutrient you are withholding from yourself. Good luck getting any work done when you're sleeping 16 hours a day and still tired.

I think it's more of a purely psychological problem. (aside from neurological brain-malfunctions as I mentioned in my original post.) What I've figured out is, every man has an angry caveman in the back of his mind, and that angry caveman only knows how to solve problems in three ways: fighting, hunting/killing, and sex. But that angry caveman is largely useless nowadays, because modern society has done such a good job of eliminating the day-to-day immediate life-or-death problems that the angry caveman's solutions are good for. We are left mostly with long-term problems, which we are usually contractually-obligated to remain involved with until the contract expires, so all the angry caveman can do is watch these problems take months/years/decades to resolve but he isn't allowed to do anything to help. Having a angry-but-useless caveman caged in the back of your mind is a big problem for maintaining a healthy emotional balance, because instincts never conclude their work is done and they can shut off. (just look at how busybodies keep identifying smaller and smaller concerns as being life-threatening problems that must be solved immediately.) If your instincts don't get to do their jobs from time to time, they get more sensitive and more urgent until they overwhelm your higher brain functions. There's a reason most pharmaceutical antidepressants boost serotonin, because serotonin is used by the parts of your brain that think logically and suppress aggression.
 
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bykfixer

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Often times depression is just anger without enthusiasm.

Frustrations with held are good at causing the juices inside to simmer as we squash the 'fight or flight' instinct until the gland that produces those 'up' and 'down' mood chemicals gets all out of whack and begins to forget to make the 'up' kind.

Stress is often unseen as what would seem normal to some would cause others to lash out.

My doctor told me to avoid things like newspapers and tv news. Read lightweight topics such as a sports page or magazines that talk about happy stuff. He said to watch movies with happy endings or that make you cry happy tears. That, a mild depression med, lots of salmon, and time took care of things after a while.

The biggest benefit was to look for the breaks instead of the bummers. Something as simple as "wow, my car started again" instead of "crap it's cold today" turned into a "geez, I'm actually happy today" after a while.

During winter I looked for shades of gray in the gloomy sky, lit candles at night and listened to groovy jazz music. At a point genuine contentment creeped in until one day the clouds parted and the sun shined again.

I bought an aquarium and watched my fish a lot. One day I noticed the fish all fleeted happy like to Charlie Brown Christmas music and fought each other when I played Judas Priest. I picked my music based on how my fish acted. (I had a lot of alone time back then.) I bought a hamster and carried him everywhere I went. lol.

Was it easy? Hell no it wasn't. That was 20+ years ago and I still have minor battles to this day. The difference now is I would do exactly what you did here fyr and not walk around thinking "I'm too tough to be messed up".

Best regards.
 
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