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Disclaimer, NOT A DOCTOR, just someone w lifelong mental illness
Depression has different forms, some are like “situational” - you go through a devastating breakup and are depressed for a while until you are able to “get out of it”.
But chronic depression (you can look up the criteria, it’s something like 2 or more months or 2 or more depressive episodes per year, kinda arbitrary but a decent guideline) is something that really never goes away. Medication can *manage*, but not *cure* depression. (The only real exception is trauma-related depression, but I don’t know if that’s universally accepted or only a theory)
In any case, it sounds like you have chronic depression, and are managing it to an extent that it isn’t currently ruling/ruining your life, but perhaps could be made better. It wouldn’t hurt to see a mental health professional again, find someone willing to work with your needs and desires, who can help set goals for better managing your episodes. -
Don't feel alone buddy, most of us are in or out at some level. The way I see it, this, like many many psychological things are a huge spectrum. Sometimes and for some people, it's so low it's imperceptible from background noise, and other times it's highly noticeable. If you consider it that way, it's possible that most or all people are somewhere on the scale, but lucky enough that it's low enough to blend into the background noise (ie general ups and downs of life)
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@nzeetee (clearly, I'm not a doctor, but am so similar to your situation that I've learnt this mental model)
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@baeovvulf I'm no doctor either (my coworker has a BS in psychology, how it came up) but I know I have chronic depression. I have a tendency to just default to negative expectations in life so I can just deal with a small episode of depression when failure hits me instead of raising my expectations and taking a larger dive down.
Maybe it's time to go do some talk therapy again... -
@nzeetee I hear you there. I guess it's coming up again because I had to drop a college class due to stress from not making progress in my job hunt. Plus dating not really going anywhere this year.
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Well i dont feel that good neither.
Nearly all of the time im too lazy or depressed to do anything. Even some of my project still stay unfinished because i dont see the sense of doing anything productive, and then of course i go to play computer games because that is the only way of forgeting about that feeling. Sometimes i cant even play games. Sometimes i think what is the sense of all that? Why do i even make those projects if nobody knows what are they or is interested about them? -
@Gregozor2121 It was 3AM in the morning when I wrote this. My psudocode tends to get strange that late at night. :P
Motivation is always an up and down thing. My first year of learning to code was the worst because I didn't understand what the end goal of the projects were and the projects were so small that I didn't see a bigger picture.
Whenever I get burnout from a project I have to reevaluate if the project itself is burning me out and I need a fresh start, or if I want to change entire goal directions and learn a new language.
When I was getting burned out from games dev work and just C++ in general I shifted my focus to Java back end development because I liked the language and the backend is fun in it's own...special way. :P
My advice: try to code a little bit everyday. Even if it's just a dozen lines. It's how I got out of my funk.
if (rant !== story)
System.out.println("Dev rant story time")
A coworker mentioned to me that I might have depression as part of my personality. They think this because I always feel at my best when I'm being active/productive (programming) or doing meditation practice. I thought that was strange.
Bit of a brief background, I've had depression since I was about 12 and I still get small bouts of it into my late 20's. I've been on antidepressiants for a very short time and I've been through talk therapy multiple times. It was a lot worse then it is now and I believed I have it under control.
My coworker thinks that I ended up dealing with it for so long that it has become a part of my personality so I don't notice it actively. The whole thing has left me sort of, I don't know, jaded. Or maybe just afraid that it could be true?
I thought about how I have a very all or nothing attitude in life. I don't think about getting a house because I don't put too much faith in myself towards having a family. Or how I have to make very radical changes to my life immediately if something starts triggering the new depressive episode. If I can't code or read at night I'll hope in the car and drive with no destination in mind for several hours just to keep my mind at ease.
I don't know. It sorta upsets me because I always thought of depression as something you need to "get out of", but now I wonder if my case was severe enough that I've adapted my life around it.
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