depression and anxiety states hampering detachment?

[Depression = 72% of members]

According to the poll, 72% of members are depressed.

Putting statistics to one side, I took the survey a few months ago and it said mildly depressed.

This was already after being no contact for nearly a year, I wouldnt have wanted to see the results if I had taken it during the relationship, my inclination is probably borderning on clinically depressed.

So where there are many posts, my own included, that span about trying to make sense of what had happened, trying to deal with emotional upset. One thing Im at the stage now of realising is that it is difficult to be accurate and difficult to make good decisions when in a disrupted state of mind, such as depression and anxiety cause and amplify emotions.

I took a path eventually away from thinking about my ex, the hurt she caused and a mixture of feelings I had and started to work on dealing with my own clinical problems first. They included depression, anxiety and prehypertension. There was no value in blaming my ex for these things, regardless that she was a root cause, they lingered on afterwards, a byproduct of the experience. The point is, I made poor decisions during the relationship because of altered mood cascading into disorganised thinking, lack of sleep, poor diet, stress, it all starts to come together like a perfect storm.

Since tackling depression anxiety ive found myself in a far better healthier place, is it a coincidence that my thoughts about the relationship have also changed? That getting out of the blues has made me able to make new relationships and find happiness elsewhere, leading to that toxic cord I had with my ex become severed and seen not as significant as it once did.

So when asking ourselves to make decisions - and the right type of relationship is way up there on the list of important life choices - if in a state of depression I wish, and I know how difficult it is, that I would have been more aware that the decision making process is going to be impacted on. For those in the 72% who beat themselves up like I did, for maybe recycling and getting hurt again, but with a backdrop of making choices in far from the best frame of mind to do so, its something worth forgiving oneself about but ultimately the way to detachment for me was to put her to one side and acknowledge that I had to prioritise my efforts into healing myself first. Less time researching BPD, more time researching better diet, exercise, medications, therapies. No overnight cure, but every step in the right direction begins to culminate in other spheres.

basically changing the things that can be changed, not trying to change what cannot (the past). my life has moved on and im forced to focus on managing and removing depression and anxiety, to the point I cant afford the luxury of thinking about my BPDx anymore. If I fail to stay sharp I have a lot to lose, my ex and the relationship is absent from the equation. I wont let the past damage my current wellbeing, career and relationships with others, its also led me to realise that the fact it has done so, it wasnt truly the love I had wished or believed it was. Again, a notion bourne out of depressed apathy that made me think how I was treated was the best I deserved. Utter nonsense - but in that frame of disorganised thinking I truly believed it.

are you properly appraising the significance that depression has on decisions or thoughts about the relationship? I never even realised I was depressed, I thought I was happy in the relationship and just had to work on a few issues. This perspective is radically different from the state of mind I have moved on to now and appraise the choices I made, the thoughts and feelings I had, in hindsight.

[Cromwell]

According to the poll, 72% of members are depressed.

Putting statistics to one side, I took the survey a few months ago and it said mildly depressed.

This was already after being no contact for nearly a year, I wouldnt have wanted to see the results if I had taken it during the relationship, my inclination is probably borderning on clinically depressed.

So where there are many posts, my own included, that span about trying to make sense of what had happened, trying to deal with emotional upset. One thing Im at the stage now of realising is that it is difficult to be accurate and difficult to make good decisions when in a disrupted state of mind, such as depression and anxiety cause and amplify emotions.

I took a path eventually away from thinking about my ex, the hurt she caused and a mixture of feelings I had and started to work on dealing with my own clinical problems first. They included depression, anxiety and prehypertension. There was no value in blaming my ex for these things, regardless that she was a root cause, they lingered on afterwards, a byproduct of the experience. The point is, I made poor decisions during the relationship because of altered mood cascading into disorganised thinking, lack of sleep, poor diet, stress, it all starts to come together like a perfect storm.

Since tackling depression anxiety ive found myself in a far better healthier place, is it a coincidence that my thoughts about the relationship have also changed? That getting out of the blues has made me able to make new relationships and find happiness elsewhere, leading to that toxic cord I had with my ex become severed and seen not as significant as it once did.

So when asking ourselves to make decisions - and the right type of relationship is way up there on the list of important life choices - if in a state of depression I wish, and I know how difficult it is, that I would have been more aware that the decision making process is going to be impacted on. For those in the 72% who beat themselves up like I did, for maybe recycling and getting hurt again, but with a backdrop of making choices in far from the best frame of mind to do so, its something worth forgiving oneself about but ultimately the way to detachment for me was to put her to one side and acknowledge that I had to prioritise my efforts into healing myself first. Less time researching BPD, more time researching better diet, exercise, medications, therapies. No overnight cure, but every step in the right direction begins to culminate in other spheres.

basically changing the things that can be changed, not trying to change what cannot (the past). my life has moved on and im forced to focus on managing and removing depression and anxiety, to the point I cant afford the luxury of thinking about my BPDx anymore. If I fail to stay sharp I have a lot to lose, my ex and the relationship is absent from the equation. I wont let the past damage my current wellbeing, career and relationships with others, its also led me to realise that the fact it has done so, it wasnt truly the love I had wished or believed it was. Again, a notion bourne out of depressed apathy that made me think how I was treated was the best I deserved. Utter nonsense - but in that frame of disorganised thinking I truly believed it.

are you properly appraising the significance that depression has on decisions or thoughts about the relationship? I never even realised I was depressed, I thought I was happy in the relationship and just had to work on a few issues. This perspective is radically different from the state of mind I have moved on to now and appraise the choices I made, the thoughts and feelings I had, in hindsight.

[SlothMaiden]

Hi Cromwell,

It's great to see you've started taking care of yourself first in this stage of detachment. I'm personally in the middle of processing things from r/s w/ uBPDexbf. To answer your question, yes, I think depression & anxiety can play significant role in people's decision making during relationship. I used to have major depression episode when I was in grad school aka "dark era" and thus started my limited-symptom panic attacks as well. I couldn't make any decision because I had no will to do anything, let alone think objectively about myself or my well-being in general.

The same would apply to decision regarding r/s too. When I was still staying physically with uBPDexbf, I probably was too consumed by him controlling me and started to have some kind of fear & anxiety. I couldn't think clearly. If it wasn't for the restaurant owner that forbid me to go back with him at the hotel, I have no idea what I have to endure that night when he started to get physical.

So I would say that it's important to get yourself better throughout the detachment process so everything will progress smoothly. It's gonna be hard on both end (you trying to take better care of yourself and you trying to detach) but at least it will help you deal with future dramas that may arise.

[once removed]

depression and anxiety, or any triggered state made it hard to see the forest through the trees, for sure.

it took me a while to get a hold on, or work with it in any real way, but naming it, recognizing it, at least helped, and started the process.

ten forms of twisted thinking run rampant when we are depressed, according to david burns:

1. All-or-nothing thinking - You see things in black-or-white categories. If a situation falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. When a young woman on a diet ate a spoonful of ice cream, she told herself, "I've blown my diet completely." This thought upset her so much that she gobbled down an entire quart of ice cream.

2. Overgeneralization - You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal, as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as "always" or "never" when you think about it. A depressed salesman became terribly upset when he noticed bird dung on the window of his car. He told himself, "Just my luck! Birds are always crapping on my car!"

3. Mental Filter - You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water. Example: You receive many positive comments about your presentation to a group of associates at work, but one of them says something mildly critical. You obsess about his reaction for days and ignore all the positive feedback.

4. Discounting the positive - You reject positive experiences by insisting that they "don't count." If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn't good enough or that anyone could have done as well. Discounting the positives takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.

5. Jumping to conclusions - You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion.

Mind Reading : Without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you.

Fortune-telling : You predict that things will turn out badly. Before a test you may tell yourself, "I'm really going to blow it. What if I flunk?" If you're depressed you may tell yourself, "I'll never get better."

6. Magnification - You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. Emotional Reasoning - You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel terrified about going on airplanes. It must be very dangerous to fly." Or, "I feel guilty. I must be a rotten person." Or, "I feel angry. This proves that I'm being treated unfairly." Or, "I feel so inferior. This means I'm a second rate person." Or, "I feel hopeless. I must really be hopeless."

8. "Should" statements - You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be. After playing a difficult piece on the piano, a gifted pianist told herself, "I shouldn't have made so many mistakes." This made her feel so disgusted that she quit practicing for several days. "Musts," "oughts" and "have tos" are similar offenders.

"Should statements" that are directed against yourself lead to guilt and frustration. Should statements that are directed against other people or the world in general, lead to anger and frustration: "He shouldn't be so stubborn and argumentative!"

Many people try to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if they were delinquents who had to be punished before they could be expected to do anything. "I shouldn't eat that doughnut." This usually doesn't work because all these shoulds and musts make you feel rebellious and you get the urge to do just the opposite. Dr. Albert Ellis has called this " must erbation." I call it the "shouldy" approach to life.

9. Labeling - Labeling is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." You might also label yourself "a fool" or "a failure" or "a jerk." Labeling is quite irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Human beings exist, but "fools," "losers" and "jerks" do not. These labels are just useless abstractions that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self-esteem.

You may also label others. When someone does something that rubs you the wrong way, you may tell yourself: "He's an S.O.B." Then you feel that the problem is with that person's "character" or "essence" instead of with their thinking or behavior. You see them as totally bad. This makes you feel hostile and hopeless about improving things and leaves very little room for constructive communication.

10. Personalization and Blame - Personalization comes when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn't entirely under your control. When a woman received a note that her child was having difficulty in school, she told herself, "This shows what a bad mother I am," instead of trying to pinpoint the cause of the problem so that she could be helpful to her child. When another woman's husband beat her, she told herself, "If only I was better in bed, he wouldn't beat me." Personalization leads to guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy.

[Hopefulgirl]

     I had anxiety during the relationship, and both anxiety and depression after the relationship ended (or taken from me, as i put it).  The anxiety made me not want to reach out to him in the aftermath of being basically discarded.  I never could predict what his response would be. Sometimes he acted like he cared about me deeply and sometimes he was so cold hearted it would pull me into the depths of depression within a minute of getting a text from him.
     Of course, the depression made me not want to date again (like, EVER) so that's affected me really moving on and putting it behind me.  I used to be such a positive hopeful person and yes, I hold myself accountable for letting myself try too hard or going too long holding on to someone who was not going to change.  But sometimes i think i could heal faster and move on if i could just vent my resentments to him.
 Too afraid, too depressed, to not think the next person i fall in love with is going to turn out exactly the same.

[SlothMaiden]

Thanks, once removed, for providing us the information (or I would say my wake-up call). I've been in negative phrase lately and it's really hard to find some positive things in life even though it's already there. It's my twisted thoughts that won't go away. I need to work on that.

To Hopefulgirl,
I'm sorry that you've to go through all the pain like that. I understand you, the feeling of being discarded and don't know what to expect, or worse, when to expect it. It's gonna take time. Being depressed is one of the thing we have to go through. So hang in there and just vent out on this board, it will help.