TOPIC: Permanently fixing Depression / Mental Health Obstacles -- Volcanica's Journal.

This is my journal. Just starting it now for accountability reasons. Thanks again Bad Idea Bear. I know what I have to do now, and why I've had shitty success for the past few years. I need to formulate a game plan and post it here, a check list as well as step by step things. I see a therapist 5 times a week right now, listen to self-help audios, and read books. I also talk on the phone with my close friends who are naturals or very successful in real life (doctors, lawyers, MBAs, w/e). I name this because I've got nothing going for me irl...

Glad to see you taking this seriously. Good luck mate, we're here with you.

" I've got nothing going for me irl..."
This needs to change, Immediately. You'll always be depressed when you don't like your life.

Are there any sports you enjoy, or ones you've always wanted to try? Do you exercise/go to the gym/go for walks?

Good luck! Get serious, find out what you want to change , work hard at it and stay accountable. You can do this shit!

KillTheInnerLoser wrote: Glad to see you taking this seriously. Good luck mate, we're here with you.

" I've got nothing going for me irl..."
This needs to change, Immediately. You'll always be depressed when you don't like your life.

Are there any sports you enjoy, or ones you've always wanted to try? Do you exercise/go to the gym/go for walks?

I haven't checked this thread in months. It's been a really hard year. I lost my passion and interest in basically everything that I used to do.

Right now, I am scheduled to go on an Ayahuasca retreat in 1 month.
I'm buying mushrooms and acid to take this or next week. (For a perspective shift, not recreationally)
And a peyote retreat in 2 months.
Then a trip to a third world country to volunteer in 3 months.

I've been reading a lot, going to therapy, and trying different psychiatric medications to take care of this.

My doctor is a dick. He keeps lying to me and changing my medications abruptly and without warning. I have no say in it and he'll drop me as a patient if I don't obey. He almost dropped me as a patient because I had previously "e-mailed him too much".

When the in-take fee to become his patient is over $5,000, literally, I think a few e-mails are justified.

On a light note, going to start seeing friends. Doing more of what I enjoy. Getting back to a healthy weight. I was 20-40 lbs underweight, just plain skeletal.

Physical therapy starting next week, since I'm still not fully recovered from my car accident.

I read 2-3 books a week. That's okay, but need to take more action. At a certain point reading is a form of procrastination.

Was seeing my therapist in person 3-5 times a week. That propelled my progress and healing, from both this year's traumas (girlfriend who kept threatening to commit suicide to manipulate me, kept telling me to commit suicide, lied about having cancer, etc.) and childhood traumas (molestation, being beaten for years, having a knife to my throat, some fucked up stuff).

I've had years of therapy and before this huge slump my life was going okay, I was at my peak around a few years ago before everything went downhill. But I did manage to largely get over my childhood traumas for the most part. Just gotta get over it 100%, completely, not a trace left. And heal myself from this year's traumas.

Propel myself forward and get to a baseline level of mental health, then start working on my game and women again. Until I'm at a normal baseline of mental health, I'm not ready to take further steps, too emotionally unstable.

Sailors Grave wrote: Good luck! Get serious, find out what you want to change , work hard at it and stay accountable. You can do this shit!

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement.

I love that you jumped into it with both feet, but 5 times a week might have been a little bit much. When I'm ready to tackle what remains of my psychological issues, I'll probably do therapy 3 times a week for 3-4 years. And THAT'S a buttload already, forget FIVE days a week.

Go outside and get some sunlight. Seriously. Lay in the sun for 20 minutes each day. You have no idea how much of a fucking difference it has made in my life recently.

And more importantly, like you said, spend time with friends. Calling is good, but one of the best things you can do for your depression is WORK HARD to seek out friends that you can see every week. I don't care where you find them, just do it.

And I'd be careful with the psychedelics. Just be careful, that's all.

5 days a week is too much. You need "off days" to process what you talked about in counselling, and integrate it into your life. You need time by yourself to do the "homework" - counselling is just 1hr but the real work begins when you leave the session and have the rest of the day/night to think about what you learned.

LSD/psychedelics: Go in with a plan. I'm in the process of writing a pair of articles about how to use LSD for self-development/self-counselling. I won't have them finished by the time you do your trip(s), but here's some good questions to write down on a piece of paper and explore during your trip (write them on a physical piece of paper - you'll forget to check your phone during the trip. Needs to be a piece of paper you can hold in your hands.)

Questions directed at yourself:
Is my depression serving me some purpose?
What do I want?
What makes me happy?
What things have I never dealt with?
What am I grateful for?
Is it ok if I'm not perfect?
If I could change one thing about my life, what would it be?
What's stopping me from making that change? What's holding me back?
If I fail or run into roadblocks, am I a failure?
Am I honest with people? Could I be more open and real?
Do I need my depression or can I let it go?
What do I like about myself?
Who are the people that are most important to me? Have I told people I'm grateful for them?


More general ones:
What is the meaning of life?
What is happiness?
Why do we want things?
Why does music sound so good?
What is existence?
How did I come to be?
Will we ever have everything we want?

I'm too lazy to read the whole thread but something I read struck me yesterday, thinking that 'lawyers, doctors, etc are naturals at life and are a happiness models to imitate'. Not quite.

I used to think like this but as I got more bits of what normal people consider success I realized that I overestimated 'normal' people, if there is something like normal. Being normal is being close minded, following the path of everyone else, being worried about what other people might think. This sucks, and I'm pretty sure you don't want this for your life.

So don't think you are behind everyone else. Create your own path. If you wanna do this banging a lot of random women, quitting the 9-5 job,and living life in your own terms in general, you have to be in peace with the vast majority of people thinking you are a loser (at least in the initial stages when progress isn't tangible)

Bad Idea Bear wrote: I love that you jumped into it with both feet, but 5 times a week might have been a little bit much. When I'm ready to tackle what remains of my psychological issues, I'll probably do therapy 3 times a week for 3-4 years. And THAT'S a buttload already, forget FIVE days a week.

Go outside and get some sunlight. Seriously. Lay in the sun for 20 minutes each day. You have no idea how much of a fucking difference it has made in my life recently.

And more importantly, like you said, spend time with friends. Calling is good, but one of the best things you can do for your depression is WORK HARD to seek out friends that you can see every week. I don't care where you find them, just do it.

And I'd be careful with the psychedelics. Just be careful, that's all.

Thank you for this. I do need to go out more. I use a light therapy box, but that's not a true replacement.

I'll be cautious with psychedelics. Mushrooms and acid this and next month. I'm researching how to prepare myself for such experiences, as I am not doing them for fun or recreation.

I'm reducing my therapy to 1-2x a week. It was overkill and time consuming and expensive. I largely did get a bunch of mental issues cluttering my mind out of the way with my original 3-5x a week gung-ho approach, but that's not sustainable, or at least I don't want to sustain it.

I live in almost pure isolation (went 30 days last month without stepping foot outside my house, literally), that has to change. my doc keeps playing with my meds and it's pissing me off and fucking me up. I was at okay emotional states at certain times this and last year and he changed my med combinations each time where I got worse, but it was still tolerable. I just adapted and my quality of life took a huge hit.

About to just order what I'm missing from the DW and self-medicate / be my own pseudo-doctor. (I won't stop seeing a psychiatrist, but this way I'll always have a back up in-case UNWANTED changes are imposed on me again. Which they have more than 5 separate times. He's explicitly broken promises not to toy around or change my medication regimen, and his excuse about breaking promises was, "That's just the way the world is." Nice one, dick.

Sad part is, he's the best psychiatrist I've found / had out of 10 to 20 I've seen. The others were much worse. One told me to choose between studying/achieving my dreams and sleeping, but that I couldn't have both. She wouldn't prescribe a stimulant AND a sleeping medication. Amateurs.

Gabo wrote: I'm too lazy to read the whole thread but something I read struck me yesterday, thinking that 'lawyers, doctors, etc are naturals at life and are a happiness models to imitate'. Not quite.

I used to think like this but as I got more bits of what normal people consider success I realized that I overestimated 'normal' people, if there is something like normal. Being normal is being close minded, following the path of everyone else, being worried about what other people might think. This sucks, and I'm pretty sure you don't want this for your life.

So don't think you are behind everyone else. Create your own path. If you wanna do this banging a lot of random women, quitting the 9-5 job,and living life in your own terms in general, you have to be in peace with the vast majority of people thinking you are a loser (at least in the initial stages when progress isn't tangible)

You're right and the timing of this post was incredible. I was just thinking about this topic. Why am I doing the things I do, why do I want the things I want? etc. Introspecting a lot lately.

Thank you for this.

How are you able to afford a therapist/psychologist 5 times a week? At least where I'm at it's crazy expensive. $100 an hour on the low end.

MasonV, every excuse is just a barrier to overcome.