Emotions fight dirty
Diagnosed with depression 30+ years ago but dealing with it much longer, I've gotten pretty good at using my intellect to keep me in check. I'm in the middle of an episode, disabled for a few weeks. I get myself to the doctor, take my meds, avoid situations that would upset me. But my fucking depression does everything it can to shut down my intellect, it wants full control of me.
I'm in a pit, but most reading this group already know what that's like so I needn't describe my misery. Just thought I would throw out that bit about the emotions versus the intellect in fighting this disease in case anyone wants to chat about it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
But my view is that the self talk drives the emotional response. It is very important to talk positive to yourself even if you don't really believe it. Fake it, 'til you make it.
Use those goofy affirmations you've heard of. You are good enough, smart enough, capable and lovable enough, and darn it, people like you.
Then there's a three way battle to see who can drag me in deeper: emotion, intellect, or OCD.
OCD usually wins, which is no bad thing because it keeps me alive. In my worst state emotion and intellect wouldn't care if I was dead, but OCD knows dead people can't do OCD stuff. I think that's why Sesame Street's "The Count" is undead. If he was dead he couldn't count.
"Fake it 'til you make it" doesn't work for me. I can fake it until I disintegrate. If anything, I'm too good at faking it.
What does work is meds.
"Talk therapy" for me is always about climbing out of the burning wreckage of my worst crashes and then, later on, learning to live with the scars.
I ALWAYS have that three way battle, but my OCD can hijack the intellect and twist it against me since I have that OCD "pure" variety that's such a head-job. Sometimes I can get so into my head that I get sick to my stomach.
Yea, the "Count" can't do OCD stuff if he's dead, so he's "undead"; I like that, it applies to me for sure.
I faked it for 18 years and strangely enough, I didn't make it 
Part of that time I lived like the Count, the undead walking, thinking I was ok so long as the "episodes" came to an end without me letting anyone know what was going on inside me. Stealth was the most important thing to me because if someone knew I wasn't in good mental condition I would be "defeated" and thought of as "unsuccessful" or "bad".
Meds worked, I felt alive for the first time in so, so long......
Talk therapy lets me dig out of my holes and helps me to stop blaming myself for every damn emotion and thought. I was in middle age before I ever found anyone who comprehended what OCD was, and I saw a Psychiatrist for the first time when I was 18. People who get upset because there are more and more mental illnesses listed hasn't begged a Psychiatrist for help, described their thoughts in every detail, only to have them stair at you like you have three heads and they've never heard such nonsense in their lives.
To the OP: HANG ON through the episodes. Just hang on until the meds kick in, the talking helps, or new meds are tried (if needed). I tried pulling myself up by the bootstraps until I just wanted to strangle myself with them and leave this world. HANG ON.
