Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Does anyone else find that exercising makes you more depressed, or am I just a freak of nature? I know it's supposed to help relieve depression, but for me it seems to just make it worse.

That really sucks, fupapack. :(

Thanks jwoop! I've had some bad depression in my life so I know it can be worse. It's just a general lack of motivation and not finiding enjoyment in things I usually do that I'm experiencing now.

You know what though, I'm actually trying to make plans to move to get away from the weather so yeah for doing something to help myself.

I've been having a hard time with stomach issues for a long time now. I finally have an appt with a GI doc on the 20th. When I woke up this morning I knew it was going to be a bad day. I had promised Z we would go see Santa and make gingerbread pancakes. I shouldn't have eaten those pancakes. After getting the girls ready with little to no help from my husband we are on the road. I started feeling worse despite my anti nausea meds. I called my husband (we took separate cars) to come get the baby. While I loaded up his car and moved the car seat between more puking he just stood there. Finally I lost it and told him to buckle her in since he was standing there. He started yelling at me to grow the fork up that I'm always sick and I need to get used to it and stop ruining my kids lives. Whaaaaaat!? I already feel tremendous guilt about always being sick and missing things. It kills me on a daily basis. Is it really too much to ask him to take his two children somewhere by himself? I drove home in a rage. Puked some more. Now I'm in bed crying. I hate my body. I can't handle being sick anymore. It makes my social anxiety/agoraphobia worse. When that gets bad I get really depressed and don't see the point of living. Its just one big giant circle. Happy forking holidays. All I want for Christmas is a partner who can be there through sickness and health and who can help with our kids from time to time or with cooking, cleaning, etc. I'm only asking for a little help and support.

that sounds so frustrating, i'm sorry you had to go through that!

Amajor, I'm SO sorry. Do you think it could be postpartum depression? Your partner definitely should be supporting you more. Hating your body is just crazy. I've seen your photo in the other thread and you're totally beautiful! Anyway, if you're getting to the point where you don't see the point in living, you definitely need to start seeing a therapist as soon as possible, if you're not already, and maybe get on medications. And if it gets really bad, check yourself into a hospital. There's no shame in that if you feel unsafe. <3

Where are you going? Boston, right? :P

Where it is warmish year round

much as i deeply love new england, this type of move really, really improved my quality of life. hope it goes well for you.

amajorrecords, big hugs. i hope you find out what's going on and it can be addressed quickly and easily.

Yeah I love N.E. very much too. But now that the only kind of depression i'm rocking is seasonal I need to do something to fix that.

Thank you fupa and torque.

And thank you too jonny. I don't think it's PPD. I think I am physically just not feeling well and am getting majorly overwhelmed. Things would be worse in my mind if it weren't for my kids. They make me get out of bed, function like an adult, and remember to smile. They are my world. I meant I hate my body because of being so physically sick. However I do appreciate the compliments greatly. I'm not at the point I don't see a reason to live right now. I've been there before many times though. I think just the stress of being ill, an increase of anxiety, and winter time blues make me nervous I'm heading in that direction. I'm not afraid to ask for help and won't hesitate if needed. It means a lot to have someone suggest therapy, meds, or even a hospital stay without it being a negative thing. I have never seen it as such but friends and family usually do. They think I'm not strong enough or just want attention. Especially my husband. I think I was just venting about him and his lack if support in general. It makes everything harder. I'll manage to push through. Thanks to everyone for giving me a safe place to vent.

Oh, duh. I'm an idiot. Sorry

Oops. I hit submit too soon and had to edit to continue my post.

No, no don't say that jonny! It was easy to misunderstand. I hate how my body physically looks somedays too. Your compliments did mean a lot. Thank you. <3

Well, I feel like I'm slowly slipping back into the thick of it. This time of year is so hard for me. Northern Europe in the fall/winter? I would not recommend it for anyone...but especially not people with seasonal depression issues.

I finally told my therapist I felt like I was slipping back into my depression. I'd avoided telling her for a week or two because I guess I felt embarrassed and like I should have it figured out by now. I somehow feel like I'm "failing" at therapy if I'm not on a constant upswing.

The really bad part about all of this lately is that I'm letting what little bit of structure I had go. I rarely eat during the day and when I come home I usually have a big meal of something carby/fatty/salty/unhealthy because I'm starving. Then that makes me sleepy and I go right to bed. I've also been skipping my vitamins for months, skipping showers on the weekends when it "doesn't matter," staying inside for three days at a time, etc.

The scary part about all of this is that now that I've had some time "out" of that deep hole I was in last year, I am so afraid of going back there. The fear is intense. And the fact that I'm on medication now and can still see myself inching ever closer is depressing in itself. It makes me think, "If this is so scary, why aren't you working harder to keep it from happening?" and "If you're on medication and this is happening, you must be really effed up." My negative self talk is crazy.

I find it so hard to make yourself do anything that's good for you when you're depressed. The things I need to do to fix this are the things that seem so incredibly impossible. My boyfriend has been checking in on me, making sure I've eaten, reminding me to take my vitamins, etc. But I wish I could do more. In the end, I will have to do something for myself to fix this and I lack so much confidence in myself to even do the smallest things (like showering over the weekend) that I feel a bit hopeless.

These are also the times when I miss my "old life" back in the states a lot. When I was depressed, there were a lot of things I could do to get away from that - go visit a close friend for the weekend in another city, meet a friend for a healthy, veggie lunch, go see my mom, etc. Here I have very few options like that. For example, I hate cooking or doing anything that takes effort when I'm depressed. In the states, if I wanted to order takeout but didn't want to eat junk, there were options for that. You could get "healthy" takeout for those nights when you needed an out. Here that's not possible. These are frivolous little things to complain about on the surface, but over time and in those frustrating dark moments, they are the things that pop up in your mind.

pickledtreats, have you tried setting up small goals for yourself? I think if you set yourself up to fix everything at once you're setting yourself up for failure and then it seems like bothering is too much work and you add fear of failure.
I don't have depression but I do a trick when I am super busy and don't want to work. I say I'll sew for an hour and then see where I am and go from there. And then in an hour I have 6 ornaments and the onesie made and I can start to see progress and I can tackle the next thing and the next.
So say you'll cook for an hour, you start and then go from there. Getting started is the hard part but once you're rolling it is easier to keep momentum. I also talk out loud to myself to encourage myself. Nobody's going to be there to say great job on making that soup, or you really did good to get those ornaments sewn, but goddamn I am proud when I get my work done. I think people sometimes are afraid to share their successes because they think they are small. Be proud of what you accomplish instead of ashamed of what you don't.

Thank you, panda. Seriously. <3s to you for saying these things and encouraging me!

I am working on trying to get better at these things. I've never set goals for myself before and it is a recommendation from my therapist to do so. I actually suck at it. She asked me if I could think of a way to reward myself and I couldn't. I've never actually said to myself "If you do ____, you can get a mani/pedi!" or whatever they tell you to do in SHAPE and SELF. My way of working for most of my life has involved bullying myself and beating myself up to get things done since I didn't really have a model or anyone guiding me through the process of "work" while in school. "You better do this or you'll disappoint ___." Etc. It all comes from a deeper place and I'm exploring it in therapy, the reasons for my procrastination, etc. And while I like exploring the whys behind all of this, there comes a time when you have to stop pathologizing it and figure out how you're going to deal with it. That's where I'm stuck at the moment.

Tonight I'm going to try to do two stints of 25-minute work intervals on the stacks on marking I have here. But it's a bit like meditation. I'm at that stage where I can barely focus for 2 minutes. I'm trying to work up to a flow state, but damn, it.is.hard.

I'm also trying to set mini goals. I literally had a goal this week that if I ate three meals (breakfast, something for lunch at school, and dinner) that I could watch an episode of Downton Abbey. It was actually pretty awesome and felt fun to reward myself. Now I just need to figure out what things can actually serve as carrots enough to motivate me to do things.

In honor of panda, I'm also going to say out loud what I got done today and be proud of it. I'll say it to my cat Tiffany and see what he thinks.

You will get those 25 minute intervals done tonight. Yes you can! Shout it out! Post it on your FB page, make that commitment to getting things done. Your cat will be impressed, I tell you what.

Okay...so I didn't do that marking. BUT! I did cook a delicious and nourishing stir-fry for myself and my partner and it yielded enough for a leftover lunch. And I did laundry. So there are some things to be proud of.

But I hereby announce to you and my cat that I will do some intervals of marking today! Even if it's just one!

i'm feeling a bit cheerier and made plans to visit austin in a few weeks with the intention of moving there if i like it.

In Treatment! I mean, he goes through shiitake, but he doesn't ever give up his dedication to his practice.

My mum is a shrink too. I think it helped me growing up. She understood everything me and my sisters did and why we did it, which was annoying as a teenager, but very helpful in retrospect.

I get frustrated at first because it's hard, and I think my body can do better/beat myself up, but as I begin to see progress I feel proud of my efforts and the endorphins do give me a bit of a lift. I think you just need to find a form of exercise you actually kind of want to do. Running on a treadmill (or running at all) or ANYTHING gym-related does not do it for me, but ballet class and riding my bike and yoga make me happy. Yoga especially because it is about being where you are, which is really encouraging in a non crazy-spin-class-lady-barking-at-me way.

When anxious thoughts turn to hopeless, depressing ones. I feel worthless, but I am really working hard at keeping motivated and (TRYING TO) be kind to myself.

How exactly does it make you feel more depressed? Just general “I feel worse” afterwards with no obvious “reason”? Or is something happening during your workout to trigger it – frustration, pain, tiredness, etc?

I ask because I went through this a few years ago, when I really really wanted to “get in shape” and therefore had incredibly high expectations of myself that I had no hope of meeting. So I’d finish every workout feeling frustrated and exhausted, which of course make me more depressed. I’d then just quit after maybe a week or two because it was making me feel bad.

It wasn’t until I learned to allow myself to exercise with absolutely zero expectations that I actually got anywhere. In that way, accomplishing anything at all actually helped me feel better. That make exercise more enjoyable, encouraged me to do it more, and so the good feelings continued.

It’s not always easy – I’m coming out of a depressive episode during which I didn’t exercise at all, and when I occasionally tried I fell into the old trap of “why can’t I do this!?” anger and frustration. But it’s been about a month now of the old mantra of “no expectations” and once again, it’s helping. Not gonna lie though, getting out of that hole was really hard and I couldn’t have done it without the help I had from my therapist and my partner.

And of course you know this already, but you're definitely not a freak of nature!

Yes. But mostly for me it triggers dysphoria about "why can't my body do that" and "other guys who never exercise ever have no problem with it" This is probably not helpful to you sorry.

the weather was super spring like today. i went mountain biking for a quite a few hours and now i feel like i'm almost myself again.