I made a similar post a couple of years ago, but I think it’s time again after seeing a few nice-guy/incel posts here. So, guys who have made it to the other side, what would you say to your previous self? I’ll leave my own personal answer in a comment below.
After getting my depression treated, I was able to really work on myself better and have lasting results. With the untreated depression, it was like trying to rebuild a house while it was still on fire. I’d try to fix one part of my while the other stuff was still actively messing me up. Getting treated let me let go of a lot of things that were just a byproduct of my own mind and focus on what the root causes of things were. I wasn’t reliving slices of all my previous bad days every day. I could come to terms with things in my past, see what I did that was cringe/jerky/etc and understand it and see better ways to go through life.
It was far from a quick fix, and I still have to live with that part of me, ala The Babbadook. This year in particular has been very hard on me. Medication just lets me manage it, it does nothing to fix core problems. That’s why many people go to therapy in addition to medication. Meds do just enough so I can sweep away the bad crap my mind tries to trick me with before it causes trouble.
What it feels like and how people react to it is different for everyone because we all have different brain chemisty and different underlying and associated issues. For me, a quick visit to my GP and a cheap Rx for Lexapro gave me what I needed. My partner had a much harder time and it took a few years to get sorted out. She also talks to the therapist and has done DBT programs and group therapy to get where she is, while I usually do ok on my own or just talking things out to her or friends.
It can be a real struggle, but it really sucks being your own worst enemy and is far, far worth it to talk to a medical professional if you think you are having problems. No matter where you try to hide from things, you can’t escape your own mind, and it knows every way to really mess you up if it wants to. It isn’t being weak and it doesn’t mean you are a bad person, it’s taking personal responsibility for yourself. You wouldn’t try to heal a broken leg yourself, and a mind is no different. Some things are best left to the pros.
Huh. So the depression was using up so much mental bandwidth it made the difference between being able to reflect and improve and not being able to. Interesting. I’m glad you’ve figured it out.
Parents modeling shitty behavior definitely happens, but usually kids gravitate towards or away from it pretty continuously, depending on their own personality.
I always knew he was a bad example, but having to grow up in that environment gave me a crappy set of social skills for when I was in the outside world from my family. I had to play the transactional game to stay out of trouble, and worry about my own well-being for most things. From spending my whole development years that way, I knew his behaviors were bad, but without any other context, I couldn’t grasp that I was doing much the same things. I was just being me and what I felt I had to do.
There’s obviously a lot left out of the story, it’s 40+ years of life. I started making progress acting like a decent human in my later 20s / early 30s as I moved out and started meeting better people and being able to spend more time around them. After my wife divorced me, I spent a lot of time by myself reflecting and that was when I went to the doctor about depression as I was completely humbled and ready to face up to having problems I couldn’t fix on my own.
After getting medicine, it was the last boost I needed, as I was able to let go of a lot of things holding me back. Whenever something would go bad, it would feel like it would drag every memory of me screwing up or people “screwing me over” back up to the surface and it would just swallow me whole. I couldn’t get anywhere because I’d just go into survival mode and shut down. Medicated me can tell those memories to shut up because I need to tend to the current thing that needs my attention. Which at that time was for me to stop being a jerk.
I still get mad at myself for all the bad things I did to people and to myself, but now they moreso serve as a reminder to stay being my best than something that really haunts me. Everything is just more manageable is about all I can say. It’s hard for me to really accurately verbalize my feelings through all these time periods without really taking a ton of time. I just think a lot of people, especially men these days, suffer with a lot of this stuff, and I’d rather rehash my worst times than see people get sucked down deeper into manosphere and incel crap. I haven’t forgotten for a second how bad and lonely those feelings are, and I don’t want to see other people go through it feeling alone.