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Honestly, really just typing this more for venting's sake. I'm pretty sure I know where to go if this gets out of hand.

I was diagnosed with depression when I was 13. Was briefly on Prozac and regularly seeing a counselor until my parents sort of stopped both of these things. It was difficult, but with time and willpower, I like to think that I managed to overcome what I prefer to call "my mind's habit of thinking in bad ways."

For a good longish while I was doing great until I ended up in a strange kind of college rut, feeling as though I was being forced into going one direction when I wanted to go in another. This ultimately culminated in my "running away"/moving to California to be with my fiance. On the whole things felt much better, though I was and am still struggling about going after my career goals.

Though that's definitely a problem in itself, for me the real issue starts in the summer of 2009. My Mama had a stroke that left her immobile for a while (she's come a long way since then), some medication caused her to have 3 blood clots in her lungs (that she had to be briefly re-hospitalized for), she had to have both her gall bladder and her spleen removed, and she has since then been diagnosed with lymphoma. So far during the course of her chemotherapy treatment she had to be re-hospitalized AGAIN due to pneumonia.

It's been an abnormally difficult time, I suppose you could say. Add to that overzealous family members that have been confronting me over my career goals during this time, and the passing away of my Uncle due to complications after a quadruple bypass surgery around Christmas 2009...? Yeah, I guess I don't really have to say anything else about that. It's been hard.

Oddly I haven't really noticed any "weirdness" until about a month ago. Up until then I've more or less considered any sad moments of mine to be pretty natural. Stress and some lingering moments of mourning for my Uncle, or fear of what might happen to my Mama. But since about a month ago I've found myself thinking and doing things that are really beginning to concern me.

1.) The urge to run away. I felt like this throughout the last year that I spent in college and finally found my way out, in a way, by moving out-of-state. Now the urge to run away has come back, but what concerns me is that at times, I find myself wanting the worst circumstances to come out of it. I know that I COULD go back home to be with my parents, or maybe with a friend, but that's not what I find myself wanting. I find myself wanting to take only the bare minimum of what I need and running off to a place where no one knows who I am. Realistically speaking, in my situation, that would add up to me being homeless and who knows what else. And the problem that bothers me is that sometimes? I WANT that to happen. And I know that's not normal.

2.) Body image problems. I'm 5' 3" and currently 120 lbs. at the most, and everything I see or read says that I'm just a healthy girl. But when I look in the mirror, the weight doesn't sit right on my body, and I find myself getting far too nitpicky about it. Sometimes, I will get through most of my day and realize that all I've had was a small cup of yogurt and a half of a glass of cranberry juice. I have actually never HAD body image problems, before. This is entirely new to me and sometimes it scares me. I know what I see in the mirror and I know that I'm developing some bad habits as a result because I want the image in the mirror to be JUST as I want it to be, but NO ONE around me thinks that I look unhealthy - I am even regularly called scrawny. I'm starting to wonder if the girl that I'm seeing in the mirror is NOT the same girl that other people are seeing. Does this make sense? I also used to regularly dress myself up and maintain my appearance - definitely not in an attempt to improve my looks, as many people were more just shocked or amused at my offbeat self, but as a means of self-expression. But these days I have very little interest in dressing myself up. I see myself in the mirror and I guess that, in a way, my body has become something that I no longer wish to play with because it doesn't appeal to me. My fiance knows that it's not really like myself to be this way and regularly tries to encourage me to dress up just for fun, but since I broke the zipper to a favorite dress of mine I pretty much dread dressing up at all, anymore...

3.) Motivational issues. The main reason for my move out-of-state was so that I could break out of my college rut and start to pursue my true career goals, but since I've moved, I've found that to be much more difficult than I imagined despite having put forth so little effort. A lot of it is that I am afraid of failure. I have an extremely small support group, but plenty of people who would swoop down on me in a instant to tell me they told me so, if I don't make my goals happen. Back in my highschool years, after I initially got over my depression, it was very easy to just not CARE what anyone thought of my goals. But during my college rut things got confusing and I got scared. I moved away to get AWAY from that fear, but it's still here, and ever since certain family members decided to criticize me heavily during the summer of 2009, it seems to have increased tenfold. And just knowing that makes me dislike myself even more.

I think that some of these issues, or at least the body image one, could go into a different subforum, but I guess that what it all really boils down to is that I'm pretty sure I'm relapsing into another low. I'm starting to do things and think in ways that just aren't LIKE myself, and though Summer 2009 - Christmas 2009 has been pretty hard on me, it's nearing the end of May 2010 and I'm still tripping along this weird path. I don't think I'm asking for what to do if and when this becomes too much - I could look into getting a counselor, or at the least call a hotline - but I do feel like I want to vent right now and say that I see these weird little warning flags - the not eating so much, the lack of motivation, the urge to run away and even the desire for it to turn out poorly - and I get a little scared. I've had suicidal thoughts in that past, and I've turned toward self-harm a few times in the past as well, once turning out "successful," if it can even be called that. I don't know if I'm close to that level or if I'm still far away from it... but sometimes, I'm afraid that one day I'll wake up and I'll BE at that level again, and I won't even know that it happened.

I guess that's one of the scariest things about relapsing into a low...? Having been there before, and being afraid of reaching that point and - just like before - not realizing that you're at that point, or not even CARING that you are.

/tl;dr

Has anyone else who is dealing with depression relapsed in such a manner? I realize this is potentially a pretty stupid question, so I'll add to it: If you have, how were you able to rise back out of it? Were you able to do it on your own, did you need the help of friends or professionals?

@iSmexDoll Yes, just venting, even if it's only here, does help. My fiance had been at work all day and I just really needed to get some things off my chest at that time. I didn't feel like I was about to do something regretful, but I was (and sort of still am) scared and just needed to talk. Maybe just to know that there are others in similar positions. I mean, I know there are... but actually seeing it spelled out helps and makes me not feel so alone.

I'm going to be trying to make the effort to do more of the things I used to enjoy, and I've told my fiance to help me remember to eat, seeing as I've done such a poor job of it, these days. You're right that at least I have love to keep my occupied and help me at these times. Sometimes I feel like I don't want to burden him, even though he's more than willing to help me. I know that's something else that I need to get over.

As for meditation, that is something that I used to do in highschool, but I stopped during college... it would probably be in my best interests to start up, again.

As for college education, I guess that at the time, what had made it so difficult was that everyone wanted something else for me. I'm seeking to get a degree in the theater arts, but everyone else wants me to either be a doctor - doesn't everyone want their children to be doctors? - or a teacher. Even my only source of financial aid was actively discouraging me from getting a theater degree. It's hard to be faced with that kind of situation - I would have ended up losing my only financial aid if I continued down the path I wanted for myself, and if I lost that financial aid, then I wouldn't have been able to go to college, anyway. It's been 2 years since I left - I'm 22, now, and was in college for 3 years - and now my issue is not so much that I can't get work, it's that I'm so afraid of failure thanks to all the discouragement I've received, that I can't find the WILL to look for work, the WILL to audition for things. Like I'd rather just let the opportunities slip by than take them and risk being rejected, and then dealing with the subsequent "I told you so"s. Oddly, the rejection from casting directors I could take - I've done that before. But the "I told you so"s from family members - that's what I'm just in no position to handle, at the moment.

Thank you for saying these things to me, actually. I mean, in my heart I know that everything you've said is the truth. I've known it for a while. And for a while, I was charging ahead with what I wanted for myself despite what others thought... I guess it's just that these days, that old fear has come back despite what my head tells me, and in a way I suppose it paralyzes me... if that makes sense?

I know what I want and I know that it's really the course that I should take, no matter what they think. And yet I'm still freakishly scared of the conflicts that will rise out of it. It's like I've lost a chunk of my bravery and I don't quite know how to get it back, yet. Right now, I just really hope that trying to take better care of myself as far as eating and body image goes will help jumpstart some kind of recovery from this slump that I've found myself in. The slump isn't as bad as it was before but it's still concerning and not a place I want to be in, despite how easy it is for me to just STAY depressed and unsatisfied with everything.

I'm pretty sure I have some anxiety issues. Anxiety seems to be something that runs in my family on both sides. Most of my childhood has pretty much revolved around everyone freaking out at everyone else about things...

At the moment my fiance and I are at a transitional period in our lives. We're about to move out of our house because our roommate is moving across the country, and are currently trying to pull funds together to move further south, to LA - I currently live in Oakland. Because we're in a transitional period like this, I would mostly be interested in enrolling in an acting school in the LA-area, but I haven't looked up any specific programs yet. The one that I currently know of is the Actor's Conservatory Theatre program in San Francisco, though if memory serves I would need to complete a B.A. degree before I could enroll in that.

At the moment I'm not sure if I would want to enroll in an acting school closer to my family. Having the distance between us seems to help; it puts less pressure on me to do whatever they wish I'd do.

Yes, exactly~ I mean, I don't always see eye-to-eye with my family. I still love them for sure, but it seems that especially these days, they've been really coming down on me for my career preferences. confused At least, so long as I'm further away, I don't have to deal with their criticism quite as much. I mean, I do try to let them see it my way, but it really seems like talking to a brick wall. It just doesn't seem to connect.

Also, thanks for wishing me luck with the move. We should be in LA by the end of this summer if things go smoothly. In the meantime I would like to audition for some small things here in the Bay Area. I just... really need to get over this fear of criticism. It's seriously crippling me, which hasn't helped me with any of the other weird things that I need to get over. I wish my brain could just snap out of it right now.