What do I do?

I often get discouraged by my own depression.  I suppose that doesn't make sense, but I don't know how else to articulate it.  I mean, depression is kind of like being discouraged all the time.....  What I'm trying to say is that I hate taking my depression seriously.  I tend to be incredibly hard on myself, and instead of wallowing for a minute, I'm always pushing.

When I feel tears start to form, I think to myself, "Okay...you have five minutes to feel panicked and depressed, then you need to get your shit together and figure this out."  Sometimes I even set a timer.

It's just that, I know what the bottom looks like and I have every intention of avoiding it for the rest of my life.

When I went to the mental hospital seven years ago, I was diagnosed with a myriad of things.  Panic disorder, anxiety, agoraphobia....you name it.   My Axis 1 diagnosis was listed as Major Depressive Disorder (you can read about it here).  It's a different kind of depression that what you most generally hear about and it's categorized by recurring periods of depression.  When I was in the loony bin, I was told that without proper medication, I would almost certainly find myself experiencing these cycles for the rest of my life.

I tried the pharmaceutical approach for a long time but it was so hit and miss.  When one medication made my feelings worse and my thoughts darker, they would change the dosage or change the medicines all together.  They told me it was all a matter of trial and error--that by process of elimination they would eventually find one that worked for me.  Any pill that was able to lift my mood left me feeling bogged down by the side-effects.  Welbutrin would stop me from sleeping, so they had to prescribe trazodone.  Trazodone gave me crippling panic attacks, so they had to prescribe ativan.  Ativan left me feeling zonked and it made me gain weight, so they wanted to prescribe a diet drug.....

After a while, it got out of control.  Not only did the medicines fail to improve my mood, but they left me unable to take pleasure in anything.  Food didn't taste good, I was unable to have an orgasm, I was gaining weight despite the fact that I had no appetite, I suffered chronic headaches, I was distracted and unable to focus....  Eventually I gave up on the whole thing.  I stopped going to my appointments and I stopped taking my medications.  (I certainly don't recommend this!!!!)  I started reading philosophy and forcing myself to get out of my comfort zone--out of my shell.

That's when things started to change for me.

Now that I am experiencing a similar (though very different) kind of a depression creeping up inside of me, I am reminded of all those small changes I made to my life.

When I first began making changes, one of the things that I did when I found myself in a situation that caused me to react with sadness or discouragement, I'd ask myself, "What is my responsibility here?"  And then I'd just kind of follow the bread-crumb trail and reverse-engineer a solution.

Grief is such a different kind of sadness.....  It's not just about removing yourself from isolation and finding pleasure in small things (although that is a part of it),

What is my responsibility in terms of dealing with grief?  Beyond taking care of myself and allowing myself to mourn and be sad, I am at a loss.

And, to be honest, I really suck at allowing myself to feel negative emotions.  I find it indulgent.  My ego kicks in and a little voice in the back of my head starts saying things like, "Suck it up," "get over it," "get your shit together, there's no time for this."

I don't know why my self-talk is so harsh....  I'd never speak to someone I loved that way, yet...here I am, berating myself for feeling emotions that, I think, are pretty fucking valid.

It's kind of ridiculous when I think critically about it, but I don't know how to proceed from here.