Depression and Anxiety

Churchill's black dog. He's hovering in the background at the moment.
I hate Winter as well. I'm a sun worshipper and if I can't sit in the sun I get depressed. I can't do any physical activity but just sitting in the sunshine cheers me up. ( my excuse for cruising)

I don't suffer from clinical depression but I get heartily sick of myself for constantly worrying, always looking at things in a negative way and being a terrible hypochondriac. Sad news items wear me down so much that I do, now, try to avoid them. When I was away the other week, no phone, no internet and very busy decorating and painting furniture I felt like a different person, as if all the things I worried about where hundreds of miles away and couldn't affect me. Soon as I got home all the worries came back [thinking about that character with the black cloud that used to be in a cartoon strip]. I had a friend who suffered from post surgery depression after a heart operation; it totally took him by surprise but is thankfully on the mend in both ways now.

Post surgery depression is very common. They pump you full of powerful drugs that can take many days/weeks to clear your system.

I'm seventy-five and I've had recurrent periods of depression since the menopause in my fifties, so about twenty years. It's been every year for the past three years and at the moment it has lasted since January, with a brief respite in April.

I'm beginning to feel desperate and thrashing around for solutions. The NHS offers a short course of CBT and at the moment I'm paying for private counselling, though at £45 a session I won't be able to continue with it for too long. Over the years, I've come to the conclusion that, although there may be triggers, it is endogenous problem.

I try so hard to keep up with my normal activities but the effort is draining. I feel better at night, but that is clouded by the fact that I know I'll wake up feeling dreadful again.

My main symptom is a feeling of 'butterflies' on the pit of my stomach which never goes away and which seems to lead to an inability to make decisions and cope with the ordinary everyday tasks, though I do try to achieve something every day.

I've got wonderful support from my poor husband and hate burdening him with such a drag of a wife. I don't tell many people, It's not that I'm ashamed, it's just that there really isn't anything that anyone can do much as they would like to, and if people don't know it means that I have to 'act', which stops me from giving in to the desire to give in totally.

I think depression affects everything, and because my symptoms are 'physical, I can't get away from it even when to an outsider, I'm acting normally.

MIND offer some courses which have been helpful, but everything they offer is time limited as they are a charity.

As anyone with depression knows, no-one in their right minds would want to feel like this. Just trying to get through to a time when I'll feel like myself again.

Depression is an insidious illness which turns me into my own worst enemy. I feel worthless and undeserving. I blame myself for being weak. And, worst of all, at the very time I need help I isolate myself.

I have levels of depression which I measure by how able I am to socialise. I never socialise in the real world, (that's my normal), but generally manage online. When I'm really bad I don't even do that.

VQ, I would totally agree with your first paragraph, it is me to a tee. But under normal circumstances I can and do socialise in RL but retreat into a shell when I am low.
The dementors in Harry Potter disturb me, as this is how I feel depression overcomes me, suck the happiness out.
As I have got older, I am better able to understand the triggers and return to normal in a few days or occasionally weeks.