The strange part is, I can kind of get into my past self's head and replay all of my reasons, but from my current perspective they seem corrupted and perverse. I know that I was trying to escape from my own twisted feelings of guilt, but the whole episode seems almost surreal now; me yet not me.

Another interesting thing that I'd never considered before is that I have a very high pain tolerance and fearlessness. I've always suspected that my grandfather, whom I take after quite a bit in this respect, decided to stop taking his medication after my grandmother died.

Thank you for sharing. I was wondering would it make a difference at all if someone else, (a friend, therapist, partner) would say how the current perspective is corrupted or warped. Would that make a difference? Would it help in that situation? If not, what does help, if anything to get out of that mode?

In the depressed mentality, you are 100% sure of your convictions. That's why you know that life isn't worth living. Anyone telling you things counter to your ideas is either lying or deluded or just plain naive. SSRIs are nothing more than "happy pills" that cloud your judgment and turn you into a stranger to yourself; basically lies in pill form.

Depression in full flower is an air-tight system that allows nothing contrary in, roughly equivalent to being in a cult, so cracking through the armor is difficult, indeed! The only way I can think of that could work (other than the person figuring it out for themselves) is to (a) be known and respected by them, (b) have experience with severe depression yourself so that they know you've been there, and (c) keep gently pushing them forward after the initial bluntness. Just getting a depressed person to see a shrink would be a huge accomplishment. Getting them to stay on SSRIs is another huge accomplishment (I haven't helped anyone with the first, but I have kept a friend going with the second).

For me personally, I keep mental snapshots of my baseline emotional state so that I have something to compare against. It's a kind of early warning system for when I'm falling so I can catch myself. Just realizing that my current sadness is of a purely chemical cause helps me get out of it sooner (within hours rather than days or even weeks). There are, of course, times of honest, real sadness, like anyone else gets, but they have a different feel. I can't explain the difference, but I can recognize it.

I'm currently developing some software to assist in that, by tracking your mood, amount of sleep, and other factors. The idea is that when things start moving away from your "normal" state it can trigger some alerts - something like Pingdom for your loved ones.

It's not ready for public use yet, but if anyone would be interested in trying out an early version when it is ready feel free to drop me a message on the email address in my profile, and I'll let you know.

PS: This might be because it's a stupid tattoo to begin with.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass

And Tool "Reflection", especially "And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt, Don't want to be down here feeding my narcissism, I must crucify the ego before it's far too late" which is of course a bit long to have it tattoo'ed but the idea, how narcissistic it actually is what you are doing... and how you must crucify this ego, this part of you, to find your true self and find peace.

My wife suffers from bipolar disorder, which is mostly characterised in her by periods of intense depression, which in her case can at times lead to making conclusions that externally make no sense at all. Things like "I'm going to kill myself because it will make life better for you. You can stop looking after me and go and find someone normal and have a happy life." She'll tell me these things completely seriously, as if its the only possible conclusion that could be come to given the available facts.

No amount of talking that over, and explaining how precisely the opposite would happen, will change her mind. The best I can do is to get her into hospital until the depression passes.

I imagine for straight depression, especially where it is more situational than chemical, and depending upon the person, it may be possible to look at things rationally and persuade them that there are other options. I would advise to be incredibly careful doing that though, since they may sit and agree with you just to reassure you and get you out of the way.

> I would advise to be incredibly careful doing that though, since they may sit and agree with you just to reassure you and get you out of the way.

That is an interesting perspective. I have seen that happen. They wouldn't want to upset me or make me feel like a burden or a failure for not successfully helping them, so I would gets agreements and assurances but I could tell there were not genuine.

Sometimes persuading them to do something else, sometime different, just being in a different place helps temporarily of course in that state people don't want to do anything or go anywhere, so that doesn't always work.

Being deeply depressed is like having a burden/cloud over your head, you can't think straight because all those issues are just sitting there in the background, blocking normal thoughts.

Once you come out of it, you don't really recognize the depressed individual that was running on auto pilot. That's my take on it anyway.

Let's assume you are a very avid programmer and love nothing more than coding and to you it is the most natural thing in the world, then let's assume someone comes along and tells you your view is just warped, corrupted and you have no idea what you are talking about. However clumsy that analogy is, how would you feel in that situation? Would your first, intuitive gut reaction be "You know, they might be right...I should have become a doctor or a lawyer and that's what I am going to do right now!"? Chances are you would feel affronted, offended and ultimately like the person does not understand you and has no idea what they are talking about. Completely regardless of whether they might be on to something and a different career choice might be "better", mind you. We only observe what your reaction would be to someone basically trampling on your view of the world.

From my point of view and self-observations, when you are severely depressed or suicidal, that is your view of the world and suffering from it, you have a hundred million reasons and scenarios played out in your head just why you are absolutely right to feel the way you do, why you deserve to be miserable and why you have no business being here anymore or why your only escape is to leave. The very fact that it has become so ingrained in you and you cannot just "flip a switch" and think and feel differently, that is the very thing that makes it depression and suicidal thoughts, that you CANNOT just magically escape because you are a world champion in convincing yourself why you are right to feel the way you do. Now along comes someone and tells you "You are just imagining that, people react very positive towards you, you are such a nice person! Your view is just warped, you are making it harder on yourself...". Now, how would that make you feel?

For me, it feels like my issues were not appreciated and the other person just does not understand the extent of my torment, they cannot relate, they don't understand anyway... see, nobody understands. At the same time, I know how egotistical and self-centered and warped that view is; I have a strange analytical way of looking at myself, it surprises even counselors. Yet, I could not change a single thing. Either I am watching, armchair analyzing myself like a lab rat or I am "in character" and suffering. Anyone telling me my view is "warped" usually ends up causing a huge quarrel because no matter how much I try to make them understand, of course they counter every point I throw at them to "fix me" and that soon leads to anger and feeling even worse because CLEARLY nobody understands me! Of course this is just my point of view, mind you.

What CAN you do or say? I think stop trying to convince them they are wrong; stop trying to "flip a switch", no matter how much you try with the very best intentions and your deepest love, you won't find a switch or the right combination of logic reasoning to just "snap the person out of it". I know this must be terrible to hear if you watch someone you love suffer like that, I am sorry. I can honestly not think of a better thing to do... don't push them in any direction or look for switches to flip, also don't belittle it like "you'll get better!" or "nah it can't be that bad!". I think just give them emotional support, hug, hold, let them cry, share honest(!) compassion... above anything, don't try to fix but be there and show them support in that way. Don't give them up, keep inviting them out or offering to come over even after they have said "no" or made up some excuse the last 5 times. Also, don't take some offensive words they say or tantrums they throw too serious. Generally try to not judge a depressed person too quickly, even if they are acting like major assholes... it's just more a passive-aggressive desperate cry for help, feel mercy for them, like for a wounded animal snarling.

Last and most importantly, speaking out of my own experience and I know this will not sound like a popular suggestion but I think it is vital: be selfish enough to not give too much of yourself! You can only get very emotionally invested and involved in a depressed person for so long before it can strongly affect you and seriously spin you out of control when their emotional abyss starts to sound all too logical and convincing and all of a sudden you find yourself staring down the same hole. Be wary of that, you have every right to, don't feel bad about protecting yourself - much like fire fighters won't blindly risk their own life. Never think that it is your role to "fix them"! Your role, if anything, is to just support however much you see fit and are able to safely give - it is a professional's role to provide them with ways of healing and "fixing" and they have their own ways of coping with it. I know for myself, when I see it in a person, I intentionally wall-off and protect myself because I know, I am in no safe position to take on more emotional baggage. It took me a LONG time to realize this and do this to protect myself. I know this sounds incredibly selfish but I know why I am doing this and I think everyone involved with a suicidal person should think about this too. Get them professional help.

Small things that seem to do wonders for me: taking a walk, go have a few beers with good friends and cleaning up my place. You can help with that and I think it does wonders, considering how little it is that you are actually doing. I think it is the thought of making something better with your own hands that can create quite a positive pull. And there is no shortage of little exercises your counselor can suggest or asks you to do. Seemingly silly things like writing down a few good qualities about yourself, things you are good at.

It is interesting that it is possible to be so introspective and at the same time for it not to help. In a certain way that is one of the common approaches in therapy. Let patients confront their irrational persistent thoughts. Would you say that this ability confers an immunity to therapy?

> stop trying to "flip a switch", no matter how much you try with the very best intentions and your deepest love

Yeah that is really the first instinct. I've been on both sides of it, and still (wrongly) think that it would work, even though it didn't seem to work before.

I'll have to try the show of support. That makes sense, thank you for suggestion. Looking back, getting out and changing the physical surroundings sometimes make a difference in the mental state.

> I think it is the thought of making something better with your own hands that can create quite a positive pull.

That makes a lot of sense. Some people are better at providing that. It is the personality and demeanor too perhaps -- just being with them, creates a better state.

Thank again you for sharing.

>Would you say that this ability confers an immunity to therapy?

I assume you are talking about me basically over-analyzing myself and it not helping me? The curious thing really is, I think ultimately I am just doing what most depressed people are doing, digging myself in further. When before trying therapy, I felt depressed and always sort-of out of place and "wrong", now I have no shortage of "proof" how broken I am, even by design/bringing up. When before, my issues were more in the here and now, it sort of spiraled into "everything has been wrong from the very start because those are the conditions I grew up under and missed out on this,this,this etc....". A more "sophisticated" kind of very toxic thinking and turning in circles,in cycles, if you will. If this ultimately works for or against therapy or bettering oneself, I cannot say. So far I think it has had some things easier, understanding connections or correlations; and some things harder, like this toxic thinking. But instead of that I might be circling over something else if I wasn't over-analyzing.

I think the confronting part does help because you become more aware of what's going on, otherwise you are almost at the mercy of whatever pattern you are following. The biggest "wow" or almost relief was reading about other people with similar thoughts and problems. Of course I wouldn't have doubted there are others out there before - but reading about it and in detail, how someone else says things you have felt or thought 100% the same, was an interesting and calming experience. Like FINALLY someone gets it.

I've battled depression in the past, but I don't think I ever quite reached a suicidal state. The way I got out of my depression state, was to finally admit that I can't keep suffering in my current life situation anymore, and to get away from the things that were causing my anguish, anxiety, stress, and despair. I spent the next two months doing utterly nothing (well at least, nothing productive), slowly becoming healthy again.

You definitely had it much worse than me, and so I want to ask sincerely, what if anything, got you out of your depression/suicidal state of mind? Or alternately, what has helped you manage these urges and emotions?

Only one thing helped: Remeron. I was better in a day and only needed to be on it for a month.

I had previously tried many different anti-depressants, but I am very sensitive to such things and I could not tolerate any of them. The only one that I could tolerate was Trazedone, which didn't work all that well, and was giving me priapisms, so I had to stop.

As it was, I could not tolerate Remeron on its own; it would give me vivid dreams all night long, as do many antidepressants. This is the last thing you want when you are depressed as the dreams are usually vivid hells.

In order to sleep well while on Remeron, I had to take Klonopin, which is like Valium. As it turns out, I only had to take Remeron for a month, but by then I had a residual dependency on Klonpin. I didn't really need the Klonopin anymore as I was no longer anxious, but if I tried to taper off of it, I'd have terrible withdrawal symptoms.

I did eventually get off of the Klonopin, but it took my five years of slowly tapering. And trust me, even going that slowly, tapering off of a benzo is no fun at all!

So, for me, depression feels very similar to what both darius and the original article were saying. It's like an erupting storm. It starts with something small -- some tiny failure which a normal person might say "okay, no biggie, I can deal with that." My problem was the multiplication. We have associative memories, and I as a depressed person immediately associated this failure with other recent failures, which associated with others, and others, until there was a deluge of connections. It feels like a literal suffocation by failure -- I mean it becomes hard to breathe and there is often an ache across my chest.

There was often a growing sense of paranoia -- that they would all find out. What they would all find out was not terribly clear, but it was something as simple as "I am useless" or "I'll never live up to any of their expectations." (If you've never suffered from depression you might even wonder why this is a bad thing -- but that sort of metanarrative doesn't happen when you're depressed because it's just obviously bad, it's rejection, and rejection is painful emotionally, and there is no reflection.)

And so each thing triggers other things, until I am just left with this deep feeling that I have failed as a human, like everyone else has this thing going for them and I simply do not, and my only normalcy comes from the lucky fact that most of them are not paying any attention to me, which is also sad in its own way.

I live a much less stressful life now, and that helps. I try not to commit myself to any futures -- I tell people that I don't make plans per se but only resolves, so that I am sure of the direction that I'm sailing, but not what I will find. That helps with avoiding that seed of failure from which the storm starts.

As for the storm itself, I've found that deep breathing does more good than you'd expect, because if you're focused on your breathing then you're not associating those thoughts so much; the thoughts still swim around your head but they don't breed new ones so much, and you can kind of quietly nod at them without indulging them. This gives me a better sense of the objects around me, which actually seem to totally disappear as I disappear into myself.

But sometimes, I will confess, I feel duty-bound to be honest to my younger self. And so sometimes when those seeds start, even these days when I can cope, I do just let them expand and expand until I cry myself to sleep. I feel oddly at home there, as if this is some permanent part of myself which I'm oddly glad I haven't lost. But because this is now a choice, and it's voluntary, I no longer feel suicidal during these periods -- just awful.

This is ... strikingly and surprisingly similar to what I recall going through (so similar in fact that reading it made my chest feel hotter): a feeling of uselessness, of under-performing, of feeling "stuck" in a situation where I was doomed to continue to fail.

> I live a much less stressful life now, and that helps. I try not to commit myself to any futures -- I tell people that I don't make plans per se but only resolves, so that I am sure of the direction that I'm sailing, but not what I will find.

Even your current outlook reminds me of that of my own.

Though my time in this state was the most painful time in my life. These days I can look back at it as a blessing. I feel that my failures and struggles have instilled a stronger sense of 'balance' in my life and forward outlook. Most importantly, I feel that I can sense others having a difficult time much more acutely than before. It's really made helping myself and others avoid this kind of stress/suffering a priority and cause in my life -- in fact, the only cause I feel deeply passionate about.

I had been working at a large software company for several years. I was in kind of an oddball group, doing miscellaneous web development. For the most part, it was fun. The team became like a family for a time.

The constant re-orgs were stressful, though. That was like having to re-interview for my own job every ten months or so. I have done 3D graphics programming on my own time for about 20 years, and I always told myself that one day I would find a way to do that for a living. Setting up a very high expectation - kind of like wanting to be the lead guitarist in a band.

I tried to interview for any graphics job I could find, during my four years at the company. I never got an offer. Eventually, there were so many re-orgs, that most of my friend-co-workers had moved on to other teams. I decided to quit and work on a game, doing what I love. Technically, that went amazingly well. But from a design standpoint, it never quite gelled.

Then my relationship failed at the worst possible time. Then I exhausted my runway. I interviewed with goog and failed (more high expectations). I interviewed with a startup for a graphics position and it seemed to go very well!! But then baggage from that failed relationship, and doubt, stopped me from relocating during a critical window.

Then came crippling anxiety and horrible depression. My life seemed to go from amazing to over in only a few months. Friends grew distant and didn't know what to do for me. I couldn't face anybody. I stopped taking any calls. It felt like life was trying to tell me "Go home. You lost the privilege of playing with the grown-ups."

Sad to say, I am still "down in it". I had to move "back home," which is an isolated place. I haven't written much code in months. Despite having been a programmer for 20 years, I fear I won't be able to pass anymore technical interviews. Rationally, I know I am a very good and accomplished developer, and I know that everyone who has worked with me would say the same; but I'm extremely anxious about approaching the job search and the interviews anymore. One day I will find the motivation and the nerve to start over again.

Focus on something small and achievable, and achieve it. Even if it's just goddamn FizzBuzz. Reverse a linked list, and messsage one old friend on facebook to have lunch. That's it. Just do something small. It cuts off the downward spiral, and establishes momentum in the right direction.

It's interesting that you and someone else here don't recognise those symptoms. But when I deconstruct my wife's experience of suicidal ideation, the article's summary match what I observed pretty closely, in terms of the escalation. She left her job due to latent anxiety, had mental health issues, blamed herself strongly, this turned out to stem from a teenage trauma I'd known nothing about. There more anxiety, drinking, an overdose and a very scary amount of "disinhibition". In the end a 3-day stay in a secure ward and lots of drugs was the start of a slow recovery.

It doesn't describe her mental state. I don't think I knew it well enough, and I'm not sure she'd be able to tell it to you, as your own pain is clearly hard enough to put into words.

But from the outside, I know what I saw, and that article covers. If you know or support someone with mental health problems, you'd do well to think about their behaviour in terms of those categories.

[an HN regular with a throwaway account]

I think he touches on a lot of the points you mentioned:

> every second feels like a minute

> you constantly obsess on what it was you did so wrong

> they felt you were a terrible disgrace

That sounds like deconstruction, negative affect, self-blame and 'falling short of standards'. It can be hard to quantify what you just instinctively feel by yourself. A lot of my time with my therapist is basically me rambling about an abstract feeling, and her relating and summing it up in one or two words. I think it helps me better understand what's going on, which can take some of the power away from the raw emotion.

Talking to someone about it is the best way to start getting better.

Anyone who has any inkling of how much real tangible pain your own brain can put you in, would never question why someone might commit suicide. There are times when not doing so requires incredible strength and perseverance. Either that, or not even having the wherewithal anymore to take your own life.

I did talk to people at the time until I was blue in the face. That did not help either, except for the moments in which I was talking.

Only one thing helped break the vicious cycle: Remeron. I was better within a day, and I only had to take it for a month. Brain chemistry is a bitch!

Oh man. This struck way too close to home, as it is was the biggest reason I didn't actually go through with suicide when I was at the darkest point in life. That feeling that you can't do anything right, even ending your already frail and delicate life: I don't know of many things more disheartening than that.

Your description of how it feels to be suicidal is very well written and probably the most accurate summary I have read in this regards.

Those days when I would just sit in the corner of my room staring at a blank wall for ... the whole day ... not fun.

PS: I eventually got better and have remained such for years

I don't think this fact has a lot of bearing on this article, though. I feel like these criticisms are just an unfortunate manifestation of HN's tendancy to be contrarian. They're not effective rebuttals; they're just "Wait, I have feelings, too!"

Furthermore, being sad/depressed/suicidal really shouldn't be a contest, and the way I experience isn't necessarily going to be the same as the way you experience it. This article articulates a lot of my own experience. I'm sorry/glad that it doesn't match your experience.

Pretty much. I've learned to read HN comments largely as a source of data, rather than as a community of merit. This kind of pot-stirring has happened every time anyone of significance in the tech community has committed suicide. It's just self-aggrandizing.

I took a different direction completely. I became enraged at all the people in my life who led me to thinking this way, who destroyed my passion for what I loved, for taking it away from me, and making me feel so obligated to them, while getting nothing in return. I rejected the thought of no future and mentally put myself in a new one.

I became a recluse and shut everyone out of my life, and then I moved to another state 600 miles away. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving, except my parents, I told them I was taking a vacation, just so they wouldn't file a missing persons report, but honestly, it would have taken them weeks to realize I was gone, that's how little we talked. I have a better relationship with my parents now, but that's probably because of the distance. We only talk every few months, and they know if they attempt to assert any control over my life I would have no problem cutting off contact with them. I don't talk to my siblings, and I haven't contacted anyone else from my past since.

Whether I'm missed by anyone aside from my immediate family. I doubt it, and I don't care either.

The experience was liberating to me. I live for myself and don't allow baseless obligations to dictate any decisions I make. I don't allow my decisions to be dictated by how others will judge me.