1. I'm not a therapist and I didn't stay at a Holliday Inn Express last night.
2. If you really think that you have a problem, talk to your doctor and find a therapist. This is the #1 thing that helped me.
I'm trying to write a response and have deleted several in composing this one.
Depression with anxiety (for me, they feed on each other and dealing with one helps with the other) and hypomania are my issues. "Fixing" them, I haven't yet. I've learned to deal with and mitigate them. I'm going to focus on dealing with depression, because that's what I really have the most experience with and has impacted me the most. My manic episodes have been brief, and usually occur immediately before or after depression and they've not directly impacted my work since I've been able to focus that energy in a way that was productive. I didn't do it on my own. Seek therapy to develop the skills to help you.
On sleep: Sleep, but not too much. This is hard, especially with depression. For me, I found that I wouldn't sleep in either extreme state. The worst was a period of depression where I'd sleep an average of 1 hour a night for 3-5 days, and then crash for a day. I didn't want to be by myself in a dark room and an empty bed, and my dreams were far from pleasant. But I needed that sleep, I went insane without it. I was hallucinating. I saw things constantly moving out of the corner of my eye. I was convinced I was hearing things, but couldn't see what made the noise (didn't help when, once, it turned out that a spider had taken up residence in an errant grocery bag, that scratching noise was real). I felt that things were crawling on me (at one point I convinced myself that I had fleas I couldn't see, that scene from A Scanner Darkly where the guy goes nuts seeing the bugs everywhere, I could sympathize). So for the love of god, get some sleep. If you find yourself oversleeping (note: easier said than done), find a reason to get up every day. I had school at the time. I didn't miss a class. It forced me out of the apartment. Later, I quit grad school and got a full-time job. The responsibility of having to go somewhere really did help kick me out of that cycle. I was socializing with people, made new friends, and got out of the apartment for 9+ hours a day. Like I said, easier said than done, but find something to motivate you out of the house at least every weekday. I spent a lot of money eating out, but that walk to the restaurant got me out of my home and out of my head for a while. Just don't let food become a crutch, I nearly topped 240 lbs at one point (not good on my frame).
A note on exercise: Walk around the block. Walk around the office block. If you're in a city where this is feasible, walk to lunch. You don't need to become a gym rat, but getting a little bit more exercise and fresh air can help to brighten your mood and help you get through the day. I took up soccer a couple years back, it provides me with both exercise and socialization.
A note on socialization: Socialize, but don't hide yourself in it. In my worst depression I was trying to get other people to go out with me all the time or to do things at someone's place (never my own, it was a constant mess). I was overdoing it, and when I left I felt emptier than when I got there. I was all smiles, and sometimes they were genuine. But when I left I went back to a neutral face, and all the thoughts that I was hiding from came flooding back. Try and make some real connections, maybe meet with a support group. Finding someone, in addition to your therapist, that you can talk to about your issues is incredibly helpful. I've talked to several friends over the years about my issues and told them what some of my warning signs are. I've never stopped an episode with this, but they've helped me recognize it earlier so that I could deal with it before I lost myself in it (in my deepest depression, as noted above, I was not at all of sound mind).
A note on medication: I've never taken medication for my issues. There were a couple episodes of depression where I probably made the wrong choice with that, however. This is a personal decision that you should make with the guidance of your doctor. If you find something that helps you, good. I've just found that (most of the time, again some episodes got...dark) talk therapy and CBT have been mostly sufficient for me.
A note on work: Work is good, it keeps me from sitting around all day and thinking about whatever's driving me mad, and it puts me in a situation where I socialize. Socializing isn't always easy when you're depressed, sometimes it's just fucking painful. But if you can get past the pain, the benefits (for me) payoff. Hopefully you have a good boss you can go to for help. But you probably don't (at least by my measure, most bosses aren't good bosses). Find a way to state your need for a reduced workload when you're depressed without saying that you're depressed. Tell them that the 3 projects are just too much, you can finish 2 of them if they can hand the third off to someone else. This may not be as much as you want removed from your plate, but it's a start and you're not pressing your luck. If you've got a good boss (like I presently do) you can be honest, tell them you need a light load for a few weeks, and they'll accommodate you. But get diagnosed. If you can't get out of bed in the morning, get diagnosed and go through HR to get a flex schedule. Getting diagnosed is incredibly important to keeping your job when you have issues with depression. Work with a manic episode. Try to focus, I'm lucky that I can with mine (or I focus well enough on the tasks at hand). If you can't, sell them on whatever you want to work on. Don't try to ask forgiveness later for "slacking" on your assignments for a month, it may not go well. Convince them that the tool you're making will really payoff in the end. Convince them that the resources you're learning and studying can be used in the project, but you need this time to develop the skills. And don't lie to them about this. That'll come back on you, too.
A note on sympathy: Sympathy is not enabling. If you're looking for advice on how to help a friend, be sympathetic but try not to do anything to encourage their negative feelings. And don't dismiss them when they have problems. One of the cruelest things that I ever saw was when a friend attempted suicide and nearly all her friends abandoned her. You may feel angry and confused over their actions, why did they keep this from you for so long, because they didn't think they could talk to anyone. Your anger and confusion is normal and natural, but do not let it out on them. We need support in these situations, feeling abandoned will only drive us back down that hole. The friendship may not survive in the end, but as a decent human being at least give it a chance.
A final note: This may not be well-written, I'm under a time crunch here. I'll try and read it again when I get home later tonight and reply with corrections or a better post.
You're welcome. Like the author of the story that prompted all of this, I've come to the conclusion that we need to be more honest and open about these things. If nothing else, just telling my family and a few of my friends got me past a lot of hurdles. I could stop faking things so much, I didn't have to hide from them. That required an immense amount of my already very limited energy to pull off. But, it's also helped some of my friends and people around me to realize that, yes, they could in fact go to therapy or talk about their problems and not it didn't mean they were bad people or something.
How did you find a therapist? It's tough realizing that maybe my unhappiness isn't due to my job, it might just be me. I'm worried that my entire life is going to spent job and home hopping in an attempt to find something not miserable.
