mike90

Id have to agree. A few of you could stand to learn a little about tact.Can't you understand that maybe when someones going through something painful isn't the best time to be critical and insulting about how they live their lives?

Have to reply to something Pangloss said a bit back in this thread. To your comment about the single mom working at Wal-mart making $5 dollars an hour. Since Ive seen you admonish people so regularly for just throwing out biased opinions without evidence or research I have to point this out. I work at a Wal-mart and I make just over $11 dollars an hour. Not a huge sum of money I know, But its more then adequate to fully support myself and I must note that its more then twice what you thought someone would make at Wal-mart. If your going to try to classify a subset of the population as "losers" or inferior in some way by their level of income or place of emplyment, (and it seemed quite clear at least to me that you were doing just that to prove a point you were making) get your facts straight before doing it next time

Im not trying to be critical of women here, so i hope I don't offend any. But in most of the relationships that I have seen my friends and people I knew casually have they were also eventually cheated on by various girlfriends. And just about every female friend I've ever had either were promiscuous or told me about cheating on their boyfriends. I just feel like in my age range all most really care about is sex, male or female. Makes it hard to be optimistic about finding a girl a little deeper that you could have an actual relationship with.

Well herme I have some relatively minor " psychic powers" ( hate that term) and have a small group of friends with similar "abilities" . I have never experienced someone being able to physically affect anything with their minds, but I have known people that could read others thoughts and feelings, and I can do this to a limited extent myself. Its not like your thinking it is. My abilities are largely uncontrollable and seem to reach out on their own independent of my wishes to wreak havoc on my life from time to time. I have to be careful to keep my mind gaurded as its easy to get yourself into bad situations meddling around with something you don't understand. In fact i spend a fair amount of time wishing I didn't have said "abilities" as they seem to pretty actively interfere with me having a normal life at all

Well cheating in my experience isn't generally a one time thing. In almost every relationship ive seen where someone cheats and is forgiven, they just end up waiting a while then cheating again, only in most cases they are more careful about getting caught. In my opinion the cheating itself, no matter what the given reason for it, is generally just a symptom of greater character deficits somewhere else, that you just haven't seen yet. Not to say that everyone that cheats will do so again, but it certainly does seem to be the case often enough. Ultimately it seems to be a lot of peoples way of signalling they are not ready for a serious relationship.

Well Cal I sympathize with your situation. It's your life and your right that only you will be able to figure out what the best choice is, but I will share with you what happened to me and what I did about it. My ex "cheated" on me online with some guy she met on the net. Eventually I played Columbo and figured out what she did. There was a big tearful fight and I told her it was over. And she cried and begged and pleaded and threatened suicide and pulled out every trick in the book and of course promised never to do it again. And i took her back ultimately, as i still loved her. Months went by and she moved out of our apartment and back with her parents to help them with money. This was really the final nail in the coffin. Eventually she got really chummy with someone at work, and when we see eachother Im constantly hearing about this person. This should have set off a red flag and it did, but one of the biggest problems in our relationship was that she never had her own friends to hang out with, and was mega-possesive of me. I had urged her to try to make friends at her new job, so i thought ok well I cant get on her case acting jealous now that she went and did it. Well and of course i should have trusted my instincts, as one day she shows up at my door after not talking to me for a week ( strange for her) to let me know shes leaving me for this person at work. Lil over a year later and I've finally managed to cut the last tie with her tonight, as she finally returned the last possesion of mine she was holding on to about a half hour ago.The computer i bought for her shortly before we broke up, and im relatively sure she was already cheating on me when i bought it for her, but what can you do? Don't know if this is your first girlfriend. My ex was mine. and i think thats making it a lot harder to get over it all. As you yourself said theres not much a total stranger can say to help at a time like this. But for what it's worth I wish you the best of luck getting through this.

On my computer, getting ready to celebrate my 20'th birthday with my roomates

One of my friends went to New Zealand a couple years ago and said it was absolutely fantastic for a lot of the reasons already mentioned. So I'd have to add New Zealand on there as a close second.

Sigh. As I've said yes I do smoke pot regularly currently. I was not under the influence of any drugs at the time of any of the things that have happened to me with my empathy. All the things that I've posted on here happened to me when I was stone cold sober. I've only recently began smoking pot again because as I said it's the only thing that seems to help my depression , which without it is too intense for me to deal with. Also as I mentioned my last bad drug induced experience was also my first one, and caused me to swear off any strong drugs. Pot doesn't make me freak out or see strange things, and in fact I would have to say it impairs me noticeably less then alcohol does, which is why I dont drink anymore either.

Hm they find English attractive there too? That certainly can't hurt. I speak perfectly good english here, but women always seem to find me unimpressive anyway

Wow im so tired I just hit send right in the middle of explaining. Sorry. Anyway he was aware of it also, and knew that I was too and I had tried to use my empathy before to help him and see If I could basically get in there and see whats wrong with him. So with this happening after another such attempt, it freaked him out quite a bit. It made him wonder more exactly what was wrong with him, that something like that could have happened. All three of them pretty much reacted to it as strongly as I did, and as far as I know we are all still a little bit freaked out by the whole thing. A little bit out of our realm of experience, even with some strange things we have seen. One other thing I wanted to add to maybe help put it in perspective a little. you before had mentioned seeing dark entities while on drugs. Well during one bad depression relapse maybe a year and a half ago I began trying drugs other then marijuana again. I took too many mushrooms one time and had my first ever " bad trip". I hallucinated some very very bad things. At that point in my life I felt that it was one of the worst experiences I'd ever had. So I quit taking any drugs stronger then marijuana, not wanting to ever have such an experience again. what I experienced that night with whatever that was must have been at least 100 times as bad as that. One last point I want to make for anyone that reads this. by the way i talk about all of this stuff you may think its some normal thing for me. Nothing could be further from the truth. I haven't always been like this. I've only been dealing with this for 4 or 5 years, and these things feel as strange to me as they must for others to read about. I never wished for a life like this, and I wish I was a normal person that didn't even have to know about any of this stuff. But well you get what you get, and I make the best of it that I can.

Ok now in answer to your questions gib. Sorry if i was unclear before, but there were 3 of us there. Myself, Jason, ( the one whatever it was came out of) and my friend blair. jason was the only one of my long time friends that stayed my friend through my first suicidal depression. Blair i met shortly before becomng suicidal the first time. I met him through karen, she is the one who started this whole mess with me by turning my empathy from a dormant abilty into an active one when I was 20. as for how my friend Jason felt about the whole thing, well he wasn't entirely surprise. As I might have mentioned previously, when i first became empathic I began to notice something wrong with him. It was like he sent out this dark energy. I know thats not very descirptive, but thats how it felt. Interestingly enough a lot of our friends also noticed this about him over the years, but were unable to tell just what it was that was bothering them about him. But he unnerved people, often just by being around

I've always wanted to go to Japan. I'm a big fan of a lot of japanese movies and animes, and it just seems to me from the way they write there way of thinking about life is a lot more similar then mine then most american people I've met. I'd like to see what the culture is like there and see if thats true at all. Plus there are just a lot of things about japanese culture I find interesting, enough to want to at least visit and take it all in to find out if I could live there.

Well I just typed out a long reply, and when I hit send it loaded for a long time and then my post vanished. God i hate dial-up its either 3 posts in a row or none at all =P I would type it all out again now, but I have to go and deposit my check ( hooray for that as there is about 4 dollars in my checking account atm lol) and then meet a friend from work so we can go visit a coworker in the hospital. When i get back I'll try again.

Um ok if she had stepped out of the house to do something, Im sure she wasn't underneath the house the whole time since your first post. I don't know I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, but its obvious at this point that you have some sort of "agenda" by being on this site. From reading your posts all you seem to do on here is make cryptic comments and innuendos and insult anyone that doesn't share you opinion. In short it just seems like your here to play games with people for whatever reason. Maybe its fun for you I don't know, but its wearing thin to me

Well honestly once I calmed down from the whole experience me and my friend ( not the one the "entity" came out of, but the other friend that was there) had a number of discussions as to what it was I had seen, and the possibility that it was just his inner emotional state I was seeing was the first idea we both came up with. But both of them agreed with me that whatever it was just felt evil. This person is someone I've known for 8 years, and I find it hard to beileve what I felt was just his emotions. Mainly do to its strength, malevolence, and how quickly and effectively it attacked me. My friend has never before shown the ability to do anything on that level. And whatever it was I felt was definitely aware of what I was trying to do and angry about it, so it attacked me. My friends also said that while I was wherever I was, they could feel the presence of something in the room with them, and how angry it was. So it wasn't just that I used my empathy to feel how he felt inside. It's more like i pulled some other presence out of him, which then manifested itself in the room with us. So my current theory is that there could actually be some sort of entities inside of people, but wether or not this would be a supernatural occurence or somehow someones emotions acquiring some kind of sentience I don't know. The only information I have to go off of is this one experience, which as i mentioned I've mostly blocked out of my mind somehow. And as one might expect, I have no wish to try to recreate the whole experience to get more information so I'm stuck with the little bit of info I do have. This isn't something I think of everyday, but it does still bother me. And the whole mental block that happened seems to have brought to the forefront of my mind the 2 experiences in my childhood where I may have repressed memories, and that so far has been the most unpleasant side effect.

Once again forgive me if I type anything incomprehensible as I am still utterly exhausted, not getting much sleep this week. You've been warned Thanks for your replies bettina and gib. Bee you bring up a good point about needing to find ways to cope with it. i'm still trying, its just hard. At least Im just too tired to be bothered much by anything these last few days lol. In answer to your first question gib, no we werent on any drugs. In a way i wish we had been, then i could just dismiss it as that. Since I dont have any valid excuses I can tell myself , I have only the options that it really happened to me or im just insane. But then my 2 friends would have to be also. They both experienced a degree of what I did, but i got by far the worst of it for some reason. About my first depression, no it wasn't exactly a 180. Although in any circumstance, I can definitely understand how a friend telling you there suicidal would be scary . I have had several suicidal friends myself. But its just hard to understand them completely not wanting to be friends with me anymore just because I had too much " baggage" Thats essentially what it was, as many of them told me they thought being around me was depressing, and I was often told I needed to " just get over it". Thats very helpful when your suicidal. I dont know just seems selfish to me. They knew I wasn't a very happy person long before I told them tho. And honestly I think a lot of them suspected anyway , and just didn't want to say anything about it. Well honestly too tired to type anymore lol. Thank god tonight is my last night before my vacation. Getting used to sleeping in the day is hard, but the pay raise will be nice I guess.I want to thank both of you again for being so understanding and compassionate , I don't really see a lot of that these days. Would you find what I said about the "dark entity" to be impossible without drugs or hallucination of some sort being involved gib? I'm not offended or anything, just curious. And how about you bee? What do you think about it?

That does bring to mind when GW said in some press conference or other "God is in the whitehouse now". Sigh, and this is our president? Laughable.

Even if you could conceivably come up with such technology in the near future, I doubt american social mores would allow it. People would be automatically leery of it, like many were when cloning was first announced. Theres still a built in social aversion there to tinkering around with human dna at a certain point, and certainly i think theres a strong enough vocal religious presence to successfully fight off such a thing happening for a long time to come. Not that Im saying they are the only ones who would be opposed. I must say such a thing sounds quite horrific to me, hell i would register to vote just to vote against such a thing, and Im either an atheist or an agnostic depending on which day you catch me on

Thats an attitude that assumes people are always capable of acting in their own best interests. If that was the case why would we even have laws? Why are there laws requiring you wear a helmet when you drive a motorcycle? This is common sense and if you choose not to do so your only endangering yourself, yet there is a law there in place forcibly regulating people's behavior because some are too careless or unintelligent to make the safest choice themselves. Also it would seem laws against drunk drivers are there to protect both other motorists and the drunk driver himself from harm. On another note there are warnings on almost every consumer product you buy these days. Dont spill the coffee on yourself, its hot. Don't let your children play with plastic packaging materials as they may suffocate, don't sit there in an enclosed space and breathe in chemical fumes, dont take 30 aspirin because you have a migraine,dont operate unshielded electronic equipment while immerses in water =P Most of these are common sense, and some would argue to let natural selection take its course. as George Carlin said once, the kid who eats too many marbles doesn't grow up to have his own kids. But that is not how society works. There will always be an active system in place to protect people against there own stupidity, or lack of information. At the least i would think they need to make it common knowledge that companies are upping levels of addictive substances in products, as i doubt the average consumer is aware of this. wether you like it or not its long been a built in feature of society to protect people from being idiotic when they wont protect themselves, at least in America

I see what you mean after thinking about it Aardvark. Seems to me like maybe the government needs to put stronger regulations on all addictive substances, as the average consumer simply does not have enough awareness on the subject to protect themselves

WEll first off I'd like to say thank you very much Gutz and gib65 for your posts. I know at least for me sometimes its very easy to get stuck in this insular little world where i feel like I am just incredibly screwed up and that I'm the only one that feels this way, a solitary nutcase. And the surprisingly negative knee jerk reaction a lot of people have as soon as anyone says anything negative or depressing makes me want to bottle it all in and not talk to anybody a lot of times. Sometimes when the depression gets too big its impossible NOT to talk about it, as it's in my mind 24 hours a day. That ultimately makes me more withdrawn and not able to talk to anybody, as I'm afraid of the stigma attached to depression. It goes oftentimes unspoken how taboo psychological problems still are in modern society, and how fearful a lot of people still are of any " abnormal thinking" . Your last long post really struck a chord with me gib, as this is exactly how i think in so many respects. A lot of people just say " you have to be more positive" but just like you said it doesn't work that way. My mind is relentless and its always picking something apart. Due to my low self esteem its easy to find anything negative to say about myself, but to honestly feel positive about myself I have to have something logical to base it in. For example I am proud of my work ethic, because that to me is actually provable. I can measure this easily by how much i physically accomplish versus my coworkers. So when i can get more tasks done on a day to day basis then x person i work with, I can feel like im useful and a valuable part of the effort going on there. My job is probably the only thing giving me any self esteem or sense of fulfillment right now. Just like you said I cant just tell myself I'm a good person and people like me and etc. because my mind always argues back.People like you eh? Then how come you have almost no friends and absolutely no social life, and you spend all your free time sitting in front of the computer. Also something in my subconscious tilts everything to the negative. I can be sitting there having a great day, and all of the sudden a memory of being made fun of or treated badly or some other negative memory of something in my past will just pop into my head seemingly from nowhere, and can oftentimes cause a domino effect leading me to sitting there and thinking of one negative thing about myself or my past after another Its always a dice roll wether this will merely ruin my day, or launch me into another deep depression where i get suicidal and start harming myself. Sometimes a seemingly minor cataylst can lead into a depression that lasts for weeks or months. I try to stay positive, but the flood of negative input my brain sends me 24 hours a day is simply overwhelming, and usually easily crushes any positive ideas about myself or where my life is at that i try to tell myself. Im still really unsure of how to feel about my whole experience with the "dark entity" . It was one of those experiences that changes your way of thinking forever. I already have a mind that makes me predisposed to depression, and finding something that terrifying and that disturbing actually inside of another person doesn't help. And its frustrating having such a powerful experience and not really being able to tell anybody. Sometimes I'm afraid if I was actually honest and spoke of my experiences in life openly, everyone would think I was insane and I would be locked away somewhere. Might sound paranoid to some, but I've already been through depression so strong it led to mental instability before, and I spent a week in the psych ward after my first suicide attempt. That gave me a lot of insight into how the medical profession treats people with depression. They forbid the use of words like crazy, but a crazy person is what they treat you like. I feel an incredible alienation due to having the depression AND being empathic. It's hard enough when you feel hopeless and pointless most of the time, which most people cant relate to. When you add in ideas like thinking you can feel what other people feel, or having out of body experiences where you go INTO other peoples minds, well 99.9% of people are going to dismiss you as a wacko right off the bat. Since the depression and empathy are such a huge part of my life and i can't trust 99% of the people in my life enough to tell them about it, it feels like I have to cover up things about myself and lie to people or they won't like me, which doesn't do wonders for my self esteem. The first time I admitted to all my friends that i was deeply depressed and suicidal, most of them didn't want to be my friends anymore after they found this information out. The deeper i spiralled into depression the more my friends distanced themselves from me, reinforcing the idea that no matter how close i feel to people I can never tell the truth or people won't like me anymore. The sad thing is after years of being terrified of my friends finding out what I was really like and abandoning me, that is exactly what happened. Because of my abnormal sensitivity ( in several respects) it's incredibly hard for me to feel emotionally close to other people, and after investing years in friendships to the point where I could actually trust these people enough to open up to them and then being shunned just made all my insecurities worse. Even though in my little world I am respected and feel well liked by everyone in my life right now, that doesnt do anything for my self confidence or feelings of alienation, as I basically feel like that acceptance is conditional and I have to lie and pretend to be someone I'm not to maintain it. As to your question about medication gib, it didn't work well for me. Everything they put me on either made me feel incredibly unemotional and detached from everything around me, or made me feel hyperactive and on edge, like I was on street drugs. I still rather unsure as to how much of it was the medications fault and how much of it was mine, as I was mixing drugs and alcohol with the medication a lot of the time, which your not supposed to do. But in my experience depression and addiction go hand in hand , and not merely chemical addiction. I've noticed a tendency I have to get easily addicted to anything thats distracting enough to let me forget about the depression for a while. For a while that was videogames, and for a long time MMO's in particular(Everquest . Looking back I can see why. Playing the game allowed me to immerse myself in another world, one where I could be popular and successful, unlike my real life. I actually dont remember much of 2001 at all as I was spending 90% of the time I wasn't at work playing everquest. The problem is eventually I see whatever crutch I'm using for whatever it is. And the realization that my life is empty enough that I need something artificial to fill up all my time always sets in eventually. What that something is doesn't seem to matter particularly. For a while it was videogames, then drugs and alcohol, then games again, and now I'm once again back to drugs. But whenever that realization finally breaks through the layers of denial I try to surround myself with in everyday life, that always triggers another suicidal depression. I've already been through two this year. One when i basically realized I had become an alcoholic to avoid my problems, and now recently the second when i realized the same about marijuana. What the average person just doesn't understand is how different the mindset of a depressive person is. Everyday seems like climbing mount everest. Nothing bad has to even happen for mespend the entire day struggling with myself to fight off the depression, which oftentimes seems to come from no identifiable sourse. Many times I just suddenly start feeling horribe, with no reason I can think of why. On rare occasions it's so bad I have to go lock myself in a bathroom stall at work and cry until the feeling passes, or risk having a total emotional meltdown at work and losing my job. It's also really hard to control my temper, and I find myself reacting with great anger to trivial things on a daily basis. It seems like there is always a great underlying anger underneath the pain, an anger from feeling so bad for so long and not having any way to cope with it. I hope both of you continue to reply here, I cannot describe the relief of actually being able to open up and talk to somebody that won't automatically write me off as a wacko or offer shallow and critical "help" like just get over it. I've been working 16 hour days all week and am very tired atm, actually about to get ready for work right now, so i apoligize if this post is too long or rambling.

WEll first off I'd like to say thank you very much Gutz and gib65 for your posts. I know at least for me sometimes its very easy to get stuck in this insular little world where i feel like I am just incredibly screwed up and that I'm the only one that feels this way, a solitary nutcase. And the surprisingly negative knee jerk reaction a lot of people have as soon as anyone says anything negative or depressing makes me want to bottle it all in and not talk to anybody a lot of times. Sometimes when the depression gets too big its impossible NOT to talk about it, as it's in my mind 24 hours a day. That ultimately makes me more withdrawn and not able to talk to anybody, as I'm afraid of the stigma attached to depression. It goes oftentimes unspoken how taboo psychological problems still are in modern society, and how fearful a lot of people still are of any " abnormal thinking" . Your last long post really struck a chord with me gib, as this is exactly how i think in so many respects. A lot of people just say " you have to be more positive" but just like you said it doesn't work that way. My mind is relentless and its always picking something apart. Due to my low self esteem its easy to find anything negative to say about myself, but to honestly feel positive about myself I have to have something logical to base it in. For example I am proud of my work ethic, because that to me is actually provable. I can measure this easily by how much i physically accomplish versus my coworkers. So when i can get more tasks done on a day to day basis then x person i work with, I can feel like im useful and a valuable part of the effort going on there. My job is probably the only thing giving me any self esteem or sense of fulfillment right now. Just like you said I cant just tell myself I'm a good person and people like me and etc. because my mind always argues back.People like you eh? Then how come you have almost no friends and absolutely no social life, and you spend all your free time sitting in front of the computer. Also something in my subconscious tilts everything to the negative. I can be sitting there having a great day, and all of the sudden a memory of being made fun of or treated badly or some other negative memory of something in my past will just pop into my head seemingly from nowhere, and can oftentimes cause a domino effect leading me to sitting there and thinking of one negative thing about myself or my past after another Its always a dice roll wether this will merely ruin my day, or launch me into another deep depression where i get suicidal and start harming myself. Sometimes a seemingly minor cataylst can lead into a depression that lasts for weeks or months. I try to stay positive, but the flood of negative input my brain sends me 24 hours a day is simply overwhelming, and usually easily crushes any positive ideas about myself or where my life is at that i try to tell myself. Im still really unsure of how to feel about my whole experience with the "dark entity" . It was one of those experiences that changes your way of thinking forever. I already have a mind that makes me predisposed to depression, and finding something that terrifying and that disturbing actually inside of another person doesn't help. And its frustrating having such a powerful experience and not really being able to tell anybody. Sometimes I'm afraid if I was actually honest and spoke of my experiences in life openly, everyone would think I was insane and I would be locked away somewhere. Might sound paranoid to some, but I've already been through depression so strong it led to mental instability before, and I spent a week in the psych ward after my first suicide attempt. That gave me a lot of insight into how the medical profession treats people with depression. They forbid the use of words like crazy, but a crazy person is what they treat you like. I feel an incredible alienation due to having the depression AND being empathic. It's hard enough when you feel hopeless and pointless most of the time, which most people cant relate to. When you add in ideas like thinking you can feel what other people feel, or having out of body experiences where you go INTO other peoples minds, well 99.9% of people are going to dismiss you as a wacko right off the bat. Since the depression and empathy are such a huge part of my life and i can't trust 99% of the people in my life enough to tell them about it, it feels like I have to cover up things about myself and lie to people or they won't like me, which doesn't do wonders for my self esteem. The first time I admitted to all my friends that i was deeply depressed and suicidal, most of them didn't want to be my friends anymore after they found this information out. The deeper i spiralled into depression the more my friends distanced themselves from me, reinforcing the idea that no matter how close i feel to people I can never tell the truth or people won't like me anymore. The sad thing is after years of being terrified of my friends finding out what I was really like and abandoning me, that is exactly what happened. Because of my abnormal sensitivity ( in several respects) it's incredibly hard for me to feel emotionally close to other people, and after investing years in friendships to the point where I could actually trust these people enough to open up to them and then being shunned just made all my insecurities worse. Even though in my little world I am respected and feel well liked by everyone in my life right now, that doesnt do anything for my self confidence or feelings of alienation, as I basically feel like that acceptance is conditional and I have to lie and pretend to be someone I'm not to maintain it. As to your question about medication gib, it didn't work well for me. Everything they put me on either made me feel incredibly unemotional and detached from everything around me, or made me feel hyperactive and on edge, like I was on street drugs. I still rather unsure as to how much of it was the medications fault and how much of it was mine, as I was mixing drugs and alcohol with the medication a lot of the time, which your not supposed to do. But in my experience depression and addiction go hand in hand , and not merely chemical addiction. I've noticed a tendency I have to get easily addicted to anything thats distracting enough to let me forget about the depression for a while. For a while that was videogames, and for a long time MMO's in particular(Everquest . Looking back I can see why. Playing the game allowed me to immerse myself in another world, one where I could be popular and successful, unlike my real life. I actually dont remember much of 2001 at all as I was spending 90% of the time I wasn't at work playing everquest. The problem is eventually I see whatever crutch I'm using for whatever it is. And the realization that my life is empty enough that I need something artificial to fill up all my time always sets in eventually. What that something is doesn't seem to matter particularly. For a while it was videogames, then drugs and alcohol, then games again, and now I'm once again back to drugs. But whenever that realization finally breaks through the layers of denial I try to surround myself with in everyday life, that always triggers another suicidal depression. I've already been through two this year. One when i basically realized I had become an alcoholic to avoid my problems, and now recently the second when i realized the same about marijuana. What the average person just doesn't understand is how different the mindset of a depressive person is. Everyday seems like climbing mount everest. Nothing bad has to even happen for mespend the entire day struggling with myself to fight off the depression, which oftentimes seems to come from no identifiable sourse. Many times I just suddenly start feeling horribe, with no reason I can think of why. On rare occasions it's so bad I have to go lock myself in a bathroom stall at work and cry until the feeling passes, or risk having a total emotional meltdown at work and losing my job. It's also really hard to control my temper, and I find myself reacting with great anger to trivial things on a daily basis. It seems like there is always a great underlying anger underneath the pain, an anger from feeling so bad for so long and not having any way to cope with it. I hope both of you continue to reply here, I cannot describe the relief of actually being able to open up and talk to somebody that won't automatically write me off as a wacko or offer shallow and critical "help" like just get over it. I've been working 16 hour days all week and am very tired atm, actually about to get ready for work right now, so i apoligize if this post is too long or rambling.

WEll first off I'd like to say thank you very much Gutz and gib65 for your posts. I know at least for me sometimes its very easy to get stuck in this insular little world where i feel like I am just incredibly screwed up and that I'm the only one that feels this way, a solitary nutcase. And the surprisingly negative knee jerk reaction a lot of people have as soon as anyone says anything negative or depressing makes me want to bottle it all in and not talk to anybody a lot of times. Sometimes when the depression gets too big its impossible NOT to talk about it, as it's in my mind 24 hours a day. That ultimately makes me more withdrawn and not able to talk to anybody, as I'm afraid of the stigma attached to depression. It goes oftentimes unspoken how taboo psychological problems still are in modern society, and how fearful a lot of people still are of any " abnormal thinking" . Your last long post really struck a chord with me gib, as this is exactly how i think in so many respects. A lot of people just say " you have to be more positive" but just like you said it doesn't work that way. My mind is relentless and its always picking something apart. Due to my low self esteem its easy to find anything negative to say about myself, but to honestly feel positive about myself I have to have something logical to base it in. For example I am proud of my work ethic, because that to me is actually provable. I can measure this easily by how much i physically accomplish versus my coworkers. So when i can get more tasks done on a day to day basis then x person i work with, I can feel like im useful and a valuable part of the effort going on there. My job is probably the only thing giving me any self esteem or sense of fulfillment right now. Just like you said I cant just tell myself I'm a good person and people like me and etc. because my mind always argues back.People like you eh? Then how come you have almost no friends and absolutely no social life, and you spend all your free time sitting in front of the computer. Also something in my subconscious tilts everything to the negative. I can be sitting there having a great day, and all of the sudden a memory of being made fun of or treated badly or some other negative memory of something in my past will just pop into my head seemingly from nowhere, and can oftentimes cause a domino effect leading me to sitting there and thinking of one negative thing about myself or my past after another Its always a dice roll wether this will merely ruin my day, or launch me into another deep depression where i get suicidal and start harming myself. Sometimes a seemingly minor cataylst can lead into a depression that lasts for weeks or months. I try to stay positive, but the flood of negative input my brain sends me 24 hours a day is simply overwhelming, and usually easily crushes any positive ideas about myself or where my life is at that i try to tell myself. Im still really unsure of how to feel about my whole experience with the "dark entity" . It was one of those experiences that changes your way of thinking forever. I already have a mind that makes me predisposed to depression, and finding something that terrifying and that disturbing actually inside of another person doesn't help. And its frustrating having such a powerful experience and not really being able to tell anybody. Sometimes I'm afraid if I was actually honest and spoke of my experiences in life openly, everyone would think I was insane and I would be locked away somewhere. Might sound paranoid to some, but I've already been through depression so strong it led to mental instability before, and I spent a week in the psych ward after my first suicide attempt. That gave me a lot of insight into how the medical profession treats people with depression. They forbid the use of words like crazy, but a crazy person is what they treat you like. I feel an incredible alienation due to having the depression AND being empathic. It's hard enough when you feel hopeless and pointless most of the time, which most people cant relate to. When you add in ideas like thinking you can feel what other people feel, or having out of body experiences where you go INTO other peoples minds, well 99.9% of people are going to dismiss you as a wacko right off the bat. Since the depression and empathy are such a huge part of my life and i can't trust 99% of the people in my life enough to tell them about it, it feels like I have to cover up things about myself and lie to people or they won't like me, which doesn't do wonders for my self esteem. The first time I admitted to all my friends that i was deeply depressed and suicidal, most of them didn't want to be my friends anymore after they found this information out. The deeper i spiralled into depression the more my friends distanced themselves from me, reinforcing the idea that no matter how close i feel to people I can never tell the truth or people won't like me anymore. The sad thing is after years of being terrified of my friends finding out what I was really like and abandoning me, that is exactly what happened. Because of my abnormal sensitivity ( in several respects) it's incredibly hard for me to feel emotionally close to other people, and after investing years in friendships to the point where I could actually trust these people enough to open up to them and then being shunned just made all my insecurities worse. Even though in my little world I am respected and feel well liked by everyone in my life right now, that doesnt do anything for my self confidence or feelings of alienation, as I basically feel like that acceptance is conditional and I have to lie and pretend to be someone I'm not to maintain it. As to your question about medication gib, it didn't work well for me. Everything they put me on either made me feel incredibly unemotional and detached from everything around me, or made me feel hyperactive and on edge, like I was on street drugs. I still rather unsure as to how much of it was the medications fault and how much of it was mine, as I was mixing drugs and alcohol with the medication a lot of the time, which your not supposed to do. But in my experience depression and addiction go hand in hand , and not merely chemical addiction. I've noticed a tendency I have to get easily addicted to anything thats distracting enough to let me forget about the depression for a while. For a while that was videogames, and for a long time MMO's in particular(Everquest . Looking back I can see why. Playing the game allowed me to immerse myself in another world, one where I could be popular and successful, unlike my real life. I actually dont remember much of 2001 at all as I was spending 90% of the time I wasn't at work playing everquest. The problem is eventually I see whatever crutch I'm using for whatever it is. And the realization that my life is empty enough that I need something artificial to fill up all my time always sets in eventually. What that something is doesn't seem to matter particularly. For a while it was videogames, then drugs and alcohol, then games again, and now I'm once again back to drugs. But whenever that realization finally breaks through the layers of denial I try to surround myself with in everyday life, that always triggers another suicidal depression. I've already been through two this year. One when i basically realized I had become an alcoholic to avoid my problems, and now recently the second when i realized the same about marijuana. What the average person just doesn't understand is how different the mindset of a depressive person is. Everyday seems like climbing mount everest. Nothing bad has to even happen for mespend the entire day struggling with myself to fight off the depression, which oftentimes seems to come from no identifiable sourse. Many times I just suddenly start feeling horribe, with no reason I can think of why. On rare occasions it's so bad I have to go lock myself in a bathroom stall at work and cry until the feeling passes, or risk having a total emotional meltdown at work and losing my job. It's also really hard to control my temper, and I find myself reacting with great anger to trivial things on a daily basis. It seems like there is always a great underlying anger underneath the pain, an anger from feeling so bad for so long and not having any way to cope with it. I hope both of you continue to reply here, I cannot describe the relief of actually being able to open up and talk to somebody that won't automatically write me off as a wacko or offer shallow and critical "help" like just get over it. I've been working 16 hour days all week and am very tired atm, actually about to get ready for work right now, so i apoligize if this post is too long or rambling.

Lol so do I. If i wasn't pretty igfnorant about science my post count would be a lot higher then it is.