This is where my lonely and private drift into apathy and personal collapse would change from desperate to frustrating. I tried counselors first because they were free at my university and I wouldn’t need at that stage need to tell anyone other than the counselor. This of course would prove to be a dead end, for price reasons the university only offered 10 sessions and these were useless for several reasons, not least because the problems ran deeper than I knew and on top of that, as policy the treatment they provided was designed to be in the context of assignments. They meant well but I couldn’t get any work done for reasons I did not and still do not understand that stemmed straight from the state of mind that compelled me to ask for help in the first place.

Psychotherapy was next, by now I’d had to tell the folks because things had long gone past crisis point, they payed for me to see a psychologist and this was better, but it was clear this would take a long, long time to be effective. I liked these sessions, it was helpful to analyse my perceptions and behaviour and in the context of the session it all made sense it was all clear, but the problem as I imagine many who’ve tried this before can relate to; was that it was all academic. It was like going to see an architect every week to agonise and lovingly pour over blueprints of my dream house when I KNEW I didn’t have the funds to even buy the plot let alone begin construction. Every session would be uplifting and assuring, I would furnish greater and greater detail of this hypothetical abode. It would look beautiful if only I could start it but of course I never would, so right after I left each session, all the good will would just evaporate into the wind as I opened the door leading out of the psychologist’s office.

My final recourse now has been psychiatry, this has been a very weird experience. Before I embarked on any of this I, like most people had preconceptions about any psychology based medical practice, I knew most of them to be hugely outdated and ill informed, but I hadn’t actually experienced it personally so my preconceptions were all I had to go on. The Strange thing with psychiatry is that it fit my image of Freud asking about your parents and you breaking down in cliche fashion on the leather couch (though it was actually a really tattered old cheap chair), it’s weird man, it’s weird. This seems to have been a more revealing course, but I don’t know how useful it’s been either, more just bruising, I leave every session feeling paranoid and abnormal, it makes me feel like a nut. Now the psychiatrist has me talking to psychologists again and they think that the conclusions he’s come up with are bizarre and unfounded and just wrong. I’ve never seen medical professionals disagree so much and approach things so differently and inconsistently.

I’m left now completely confused and I wondering whether talking to these people was all worth it, though I still feel like I can’t get out of this by myself so I need their help. The other thing they don’t tell you about depression and I think what helps create the situations I’ve gone through is that not only is depression not a complete picture, but the elusive, almost mythological goal for remission; is finding out WHY. Unfortunately finding this is so difficult because not only is it hard to find but it is not static, you can spend weeks trying to figure out what’s doing this to you and as soon as you feel close, you’re depressed for entirely different reasons. You once mentioned the analogy of a fellow blogger about depression being like fires constantly lighting in your head, like you I find this observation to be remarkably astute and to personalise it, I find that there is a prioritising of firefighting work to be done. When the everything is aflame and you have only so much water; you have to choose which fire is doing the most damage, which building needs to be saved the most, and since the fires are starting at random all the time - which particular blaze needs your attention the most will change too. This I believe accounts in part for the sense of futility in sufferers and how signs of improvement can be dashed so quickly as if they’d never appeared to begin with, they WERE real signs, they were really because people felt better, but only in the context of that one strand of their overall and hugely complex problem - one strand in an unknown structure of infinite complexity that changes pretty much everyday.

As for adult, I began writing erotica and it sort of ‘blossomed’ from there…. Adult webmasters are actually an okay bunch really (we just use language your granny probably wouldn’t like to hear…). And to be honest, there is less scamming going on among adult webmasters than in most other niches, so I’m happy enough there.

I heard from PB about three weeks ago and nothing since. And Neal has gone a little quiet of late too. But PB told me he reads Fraying Edges, so now we will see

Well, that proves that I’m not the least depressed at all and I hate to make a presumption that you are… if you are not, why do you even care to create this blog in the first place?

When I first got to know you, I wasn’t too sure why you were in the adult niche…and I do now realize how profitable it is if done right. I’m experimenting with a financial niche at the moment and how much I make a week on adsense alone is worth more than a month (or more) on my blogging niche. I’m now beginning to have a pretty good idea of how to play the game…

Off-topic again: Have you seen PB recently? Kinda miss him..

Yan

For me personally, depression is not profitable at all, lol!
Although I guess it is for some of the ‘mfa-ers’. There’s more money to be made, I reckon, in the ’self-help’ stuff, but I don’t do much on that, because, to be painfully honest, hardly any of it works!

This post has already been scraped a number of times. It’s funny actually, seeing some of the blogs it has turned up on (slimming tips as well as depression ones this time) - if the scraper blog owners actually read it they would realise their mistake

And I should imagine your blog gets scraped a lot, considering all that good content. Sad, but probably true. I guess all you can do is make sure you rank higher in the serps than the scrapers.

And off topic - well, I added an addition to my last post on my ‘mmo’ blog yesterday, but I haven’t updated it. Too busy with all my other blogs (and hosting problems myself).

Thanks for commenting here Yan.
I know it’s not really your type of thing to comment on a blog like this, so I appreciate that

Off-topic: Are you abandoning your MMO blog? As I see that you are not updating it anymore..

Yan

That post I made was a rather ‘angry’ post, as I had just read another ‘you can do it’ type ’self-help’ blog and was feeling pretty low. I just wanted to shout at the writer “for chrisake, you do not have a *** **** clue!” But there would have been no point. I would have been shouting at ears which do not want to hear.

Your response here makes me feel that way again. I wish I could help make the pain go away for you, but of course, I can’t.

All I can say is, I have felt what you are feeling right now and it is the most frightening, all-consuming feeling. Even the thought of going there again (which I just know I will) fills me with renewed dread. And all I can add to that is that I (like you on previous occasions) have been through this and come out the other side, and I guess that’s some kind of ‘hope’, but right now, I know those are very shallow words to hear (as, I also guess, are my closing words).

Do take care Sherma, and thank you so much for commenting here.
I really do mean that.
Zania

I thought responding to it there would be less confusing for me when I try to keep up with my comments.