I am profoundly depressed!

To say my emotional state varies wildly would be sort of an understatement. Its not that I have crazy mood swings and go from really happy to suddenly sad, bipolar doesn't work like that but there are days when I wake up and my brain decides that I will be soul crushingly sad for the next month for no reason, and the above comment is the perfect summarization of that feeling. you just want nothingness. you don't want to eat you don't even want to get up. you don't like what you're watching but you don't want to change the channel.you don't like that your apartment is dirty but you don't want to take the time to clean it. and so you sit there and hate yourself and call yourself pathetic and childish and selfish, and it only makes the depression more severe and makes you just want to waste away like the pile of dust you see yourself as.

Then the really dangerous thoughts begin. you start to try to justify your existence in an attempt to cheer yourself up. I mean, logic says that it can't be all bad right?you search for something, anything positive that you done for your environment or for the people around you. you try to imagine what would have happened if you hadn't been involved. if you weren't there. would they be happier? would they have made better decisions without your influence?

For myself this train of thought seems to be to measure the impact that I've had on the people around me because what worth is your life if after its over you're just forgotten and everything goes on like nothing happened?

Before I go on I should mention that I abhor suicide. that's like cutting off your arm to stop an itch on your elbow. When my bipolar disorder swings back around to happy land I go from 0 to sonder in no time flat and I feel like a monk who has achieved zen. Everything is wonderful everything's for me I have days where I am just on fire everything I say makes people laugh everything I do turns out alright and by the end of the day I feel amazing.

It's weird but the good days save me from the bad days. Comparing my thought processes before and after the depression actually shows me how irrational I'm being and give me a chance to cheer up a little bit.

To say my emotional state varies wildly would be sort of an understatement. Its not that I have crazy mood swings and go from really happy to suddenly sad, bipolar doesn't work like that but there are days when I wake up and my brain decides that I will be soul crushingly sad for the next month for no reason, and the above comment is the perfect summarization of that feeling. you just want nothingness. you don't want to eat you don't even want to get up. you don't like what you're watching but you don't want to change the channel.you don't like that your apartment is dirty but you don't want to take the time to clean it. and so you sit there and hate yourself and call yourself pathetic and childish and selfish, and it only makes the depression more severe and makes you just want to waste away like the pile of dust you see yourself as.

Then the really dangerous thoughts begin. you start to try to justify your existence in an attempt to cheer yourself up. I mean, logic says that it can't be all bad right?you search for something, anything positive that you done for your environment or for the people around you. you try to imagine what would have happened if you hadn't been involved. if you weren't there. would they be happier? would they have made better decisions without your influence?

For myself this train of thought seems to be to measure the impact that I've had on the people around me because what worth is your life if after its over you're just forgotten and everything goes on like nothing happened?

Before I go on I should mention that I abhor suicide. that's like cutting off your arm to stop an itch on your elbow. When my bipolar disorder swings back around to happy land I go from 0 to sonder in no time flat and I feel like a monk who has achieved zen. Everything is wonderful everything's for me I have days where I am just on fire everything I say makes people laugh everything I do turns out alright and by the end of the day I feel amazing.

It's weird but the good days save me from the bad days. Comparing my thought processes before and after the depression actually shows me how irrational I'm being and give me a chance to cheer up a little bit.

I was lucky, when my life was like yours (as you describe it) I was given a cat. 

1. Unless you are a complete "basket case", no matter how crappy you feel, you soon realise that you have to look after your cat no matter what. And then one day, (several days, or several years after you first met, I've had both, something goes click in your cat's tiny mind, and they become you amazingly powerful little friend.

Then, for a few years, you are no longer "alone". 

You, like me swing between up and down, possibly a little more than I do, but I can relate to everything you have written, so far. What you need to do in order to "recover" and defeat your diagnosis, is "lessen your affect". Just as films and carefully written text can change the way you feel, YOU can also change the way you feel, by feeding yourself information.

Here's a bad example, (that I am quite good at). I can be happily doing something that does not require ferocious concentration and my mind wanders of into random thoughts. IF those thoughts lead me to think about my family, who have in my opinion (and experience) failed me in nearly every way it is possible to fail, my mood eventually changes. If I am having a ragingly succesful day, I try deliberately to NOT enjoy it at the time, but "just get on with whatever I am doing and I'll enjoy it later". This sort of thing helps to dampen the amplitude of the mood swings, and I am seeking to replay euphoria, with contentment, and rage with competence.

As an Autist I lack interioception, so figuring out my own feelings was difficult, and I'd end up in a strong emotional state without realising it. BUIT eventually I learned to look at my own behaviour or topics of thought, and I found that as my mood changed so did my behavior. So if I found myself thinking about my family a lot, and making stupid mistakes, then I'd just know it's time to go and do something different.

Being able to actually take ownership of my own emotional state has been difficult although it got immensely easier after my diagnosis of autism/add. Pity I was nearly sixty before I got one... ("I could have been a contender" etc. etc.. ;c)