Well darn, I just finished chapter number 2 and I'm looking foward to reading the rest, but.....at the same time....extremely in the gutter emotionally now. I thought even though I was feeling a little down still, the fact that I'm still going to and dedicated to going to work, giong to the gym everyday, making an effort to be around and see my friends more, trying to be more social with my family instead of secluding myself...i thought these were all signs that I was fighting back and diong well.
In the book Dr. Burns has a grading system in which he claims is the best way to judge your emotional state. He said if you score within the 0-5 range then you are experiencing no negative/depression feelings, if you're 5-10 then you're not showing any depressive signs but are just unhappy, if you're 11-25 then it's beleived that you're suffering from mild, 26-50 moderate depression.....
then there's the range in which I fell into....51-75 (severe depression). His advice for people who fall in this range....the suffering in which people in this range fear is almost unbearable. It is highly dangerous because the severity of the mood swings could lead to suicidal impulses.
Well that's reassuring, great job reading this......I guess the thing I can take from it is that I put down zeros for the two serious questions. Every category out of the 25 categories tells you to rate from 0-5 the feeling you have on the topic. The major topics which thank god I didnt score high on were...
Do you have any suicidal thoughts? 1 out of 5
Would you like to end your life? 0 out of 5
Do you have a plan for harming yourself? 0 out of 5
So atleast that was good, I can remember back to my REALLY dark place when I slipped into my deep depression/anxiety 2-3 years ago. I might actually tear up admitting this here, and I honestly don't even know if I should. But I had a plan back then to end my life, the thing that snapped me out of it was that my little brother needed me to drive him to the store the next week to get a game that was coming out that he really wanted. He has a speech impediment and was having trouble telling the person in the store what game he wanted. I stepped in and helped him out, and honestly I just felt like crying inside. I looked at him and I was just thinking darnit Mike, this guy needs you you can't be thinking of this garbage. Go get yourself some help and get on the right track, what's he gonna do if I did that? What would my parents do if I would have done that?
Anyway, not to to remind myself so much of those dark days, because I'm really trying to pretend lke they never happened. But this book is just a good reminder of I guess how bad I was back then, but also brought me down a bit at the same time realizing just how far from "ok" I still am. But one thing is for darn sure, I'm committed more then ever to beating this and getting my darn life back. It's time to start feeling good again, I can't remember the last time I genuinely felt that way.