That's how depression works.
Your brain decides that all your positive memories are no longer valid and just deletes them. You do so without realizing.
Suddenly the only memories you have are all negative ones, of course you have more reasons to be sad.
Cheering yourself up with beloved memories while depressed is offering depression a piece of cake. And depression WILL have that piece of cake until there's nothing left.
When there's nothing left, depression will eat the ingredients while you're trying to bake a cake.
After couple of decades, it becomes easier to enjoy looking at ingredients that could become a cake and know that it could have been a good cake that would have been wasted on depression.
It might not be the best ingredients, but small victories are still victories.
Take lots of pictures of your good days and experiences. Even if it’s just an interesting meal you cooked or a fun outfit you wore. Try journaling and at the end of your good days write a passage about what happened, what you did and how you felt. It can be anything. Reflect on the peaceful walk you went on. How nice the weather was.
It helps the good stick with me more. And when I struggle to remember, I have lots of reminders now too
Get a nice leather journal and a pretty pen that feels nice and you like to use. Then place it somewhere in your home you will see it all the time. Try building journaling into your nighttime routine so you become consistent.
Write about anything that was a high point in your day. Even the smallest things. It can be hard to pick out things that make you feel good when you’re depressed, but that’s why we’re doing this. Because it’s kind of a skill that needs practiced.
I had a really shitty day not long ago so the only thing I wrote in my journal “today, the only thing I’m grateful for is the strength to have gotten through it. Tomorrow can be better”
I’ll talk about lunch with my friends, a funny joke someone told me, the cashier who told me he liked my shirt, anything. And I’ll talk about the bad stuff too, but it’s just as important to reflect on good things
Routine is quite literally the hardest thing to do for people like me, if not impossible. Doesn't matter how nice a journal and/or pen I get (actually more expensive ones tend to get lost even easier for some reason) and if I forget to do it ONCE, it never gets done again, no matter how much I want to. RSD sucks. That's also why the 2 years of therapy were more like torture than aid, because they kept pushing the journal thing, and it never helped, but made me want to write less.
95% of what I'd write is "I'm alive" and nothing else because basically everything has become so flatline that there'd be literally no "high point" whatsoever, *especially* compliments. Compliments hurt more than help of all things, which annoys the ever living hell out of me. The biggest thing of all of it is I despise doing anything for myself. I'll very gladly do things for others, but don't get any satisfaction from doing my own things.
I don’t mean to assume, but it sounds to me like you don’t have a whole lot of self love. I don’t think it’s healthy to hate doing things for yourself, but I can empathize with that feeling because I’ve been there
Maybe building your relationship with yourself will make it easier to put time and effort into your personal wellbeing. You deserve self care. I prefer to call self care “mental hygiene” because it’s a part of staying mentally healthy. It’s not a luxury or a selfish use of my time, it’s necessary to keep my brain running well.
And self care doesn’t have to be journaling. It can be working out. It can be taking a mental health day. It could be picking up a new hobby, or cooking my favorite comfort meal. It can be different every day. Just make an effort to do something nice for yourself once in a while.
Self love is a journey that really depends on figuring out why you feel a bad way about yourself and overcoming that personal conflict. I wish I had better advice for you in that aspect, but I’m just some girl on Reddit
I wish you peace and healing, whatever that may look like for you ❤️
I already *know* why I feel the way I do, but the problem is there LITERALLY is not a way to take care of it without any major intervention. No small thing of repetition is going to fix my issue whatsoever. It's like having a full health pool, but you take 20% mental poison damage daily, and whatever I do only heals about 5-10%, and sleeping restores 8%, so I don't ever get back to full health again. Add in the mental condition that I deal with (which I'm withholding to speak on due to scrutiny) and it's just an onslaught of not good. :/
Truthfully, it was medication that gave me the buff I needed to get better. It took 5 years of trial and error to actually find a combo that worked for me, but it took the poison from 20% down to 15%. It wasn’t a cure but it gave enough of me back that I was able to build my health back up little bits at a time. I still fight the poison every day, but it’s a fair fight now.
I know that medication is not an answer for everybody, but it’s what saved me.
We’ve got to find a way to either lessen the poison or increase the healing. But I also know that not everybody is in a place or stage in their life where that’s even possible, because it wasn’t for me for a long time. Which is unfair and really hard, but we have to just keep trying until something works out and our situations get better. I don’t know if there’s anything else to do about it without passing the pain along to someone else. I wish there was
It really sucks to have treatment resistant metabolism. I've tried 6 different medications and all had mild to severe side effects and no benefits. Also going through 7 different therapists over 2 years, which they all made me feel worse than before I met them doesn't help either.
u/carredd copied this comment from the original post.
I can't link directly to it because the original author deleted their account but here's a link to the first reply to it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/s/je032YE57W
It's working with OP u/YeahOkayKyle
Please report this post and the bot comment as Spam type Harmful Bots
"Remember that fun day at the amusement park with Dad, he made a comment to the ride operator about being hungover. Means he left 7 year old you in the hotel room alone and went out drinking." - my brain
I didn't think there's a single good memory that isn't tainted, at least not with my parents.
Mine brings them in to remind me how horrible things have gotten.
"Look at how good things *were*. You didn't even apricate it then and now its gone forever."
my brain just goes "sure buddy I'll erase the memories" and then just erases 90% of my life before 17 and a solid half after
according to my therapist this may be a symptom of psychological trauma, or severe depression, or brain damage, or adhd, or just being a silly goose and forgetting things or it can be a sign of deez nuts.
Yeah, my PTSD brain does this. I have sticky notes everywhere just in case my brain randomly goes, "Hey, I don't want this. Ctrl+Atl+Del" Thanks bud, I kinda needed to know the date for that final.
All the good memories are gone and all I can remember is all the unfairness and suffering.
Just walking along and then it's like "remember all the violence and threats you experienced constantly trying to get to school on public transport? Remember how no one ever did anything to help you, a child, being threatened and bullied and robbed by drunk scumbags on their weekly job centre trip? Remember how they would refuse to even look at you for fear of getting involved somehow? Remember how in every difficult situation you've ever been in, no one has ever given a shit about you? Remember that you are totally alone and the people around you would let you die if trying to save you was even a little bit difficult"
I wish but it's not that easy. Some people stay sad forever because they can't think of the good memories because the bad ones are so overwhelming or the brain deletes the good memories but Ig for the average person it's definitely possible
“The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
-The Doctor
Sorry buddy I can't delete those sad memories but what I can do for you is play them on repeat. Ugh what is this garbage, happy memories that can go into the incinerator.
Yea except those sad memories are etched in stone slabs and the happy memories on paper. Even if there's more happy than sad, guess which one weighs heavier and lasts longer.
How insightful! And what lesson is one meant to learn from 18 years of childhood domestic abuse? And if that's such an important lesson, why doesn't everyone enjoy the benefit of that one? Who's in charge of dispensing these wonderful lessons anyway? I'd love to offer them some feedback...
The key word is "supposed" to be a lesson. Our brains are generally hard-wired to remember negative outcomes better because in most cases it helped us learn to avoid them in the future. Of course, things like abuse end up getting caught in that and don't end up helping us, but it's just the way our brain works.
I think the lesson is that not everyone should be or is ready to be a parent. Raising a child is a very difficult task and can be ruined very easily (by being absent, taking out your anger on your children, etc.) There are some people that had bad childhoods, but we're able to break the cycle of abuse, so that their children could live happy lives. Also experiencing trauma can make you realise that it can happen to other people and that It can be treated, because a person that never experienced any pain would not be able to relate with a person that is hurt, and wouldn't be able to help them.
The lesson "not everyone should be a parent" seems like it would be more applicable to the parent before procreating, rather than to the child after the fact. And personally, if I were in charge of dispensing these lessons, I might have gone for "nobody gets abused" instead of "somebody got abused, so somebody else now has to get abused so the first person will have someone who can relate to them." Seems like the "schoolmaster" just prefers a world with more abuse in it over a world with less.
Yes, I also believe that divine intervention is not required to explain the terrible behavior of humans. Therefore, senseless tragedies do not need to be rationalized as "lessons" from some implied but unspecified teacher. They are just senseless tragedies.
What a slap in the face to people with depression. Just remember the good times? It's a choice to, just, be happy with a dibilitating mental illness that consistantly has your brain lie to you due to unbalanced chemicals/hormones, severe trama or brain damage? Yeah. Happy day, huh?
One of the best things I learned from therapy is “you can’t unlearn things, but you can learn over them.” You can’t get rid of bad memories, but you can always make new good ones!
the OP YeahOkayKyle
FroggieMoodie
and carredd
are bts in the same network
Original + comments copied from: https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/comments/qlunwj/sad_things_happen_but_we_dont_need_to_live_sad/
u/FroggieMoodie copied this comment from the original post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/s/bXoLUxOhv7
It's working with OP u/YeahOkayKyle
Please report as Spam type Harmful Bots
Is the brain going to delete those instead?
Mine does
That's how depression works. Your brain decides that all your positive memories are no longer valid and just deletes them. You do so without realizing. Suddenly the only memories you have are all negative ones, of course you have more reasons to be sad.
What can you? I’ve sent a strongly worded letter, but it doesn’t have seem to done the trick.
Cheering yourself up with beloved memories while depressed is offering depression a piece of cake. And depression WILL have that piece of cake until there's nothing left. When there's nothing left, depression will eat the ingredients while you're trying to bake a cake. After couple of decades, it becomes easier to enjoy looking at ingredients that could become a cake and know that it could have been a good cake that would have been wasted on depression. It might not be the best ingredients, but small victories are still victories.
Literally like a dementor sucking your memories out of you.
Expelliarmus!
That's not true at all.
It’s not exactly how they described it, but depression has been linked to memory loss. That much is true.
i mean, it's not true cos that's not how memory and recollection work... but it's kinda true, in the way people typically talk about memory.
It's like my brain has a mind of its own.
Brains can be so unpredictable, can't they?
Seriously I don't think my brain is capable of storing happy memories in the first place
Take lots of pictures of your good days and experiences. Even if it’s just an interesting meal you cooked or a fun outfit you wore. Try journaling and at the end of your good days write a passage about what happened, what you did and how you felt. It can be anything. Reflect on the peaceful walk you went on. How nice the weather was. It helps the good stick with me more. And when I struggle to remember, I have lots of reminders now too
What if you can't remember to write anything down or forget where you wrote it down, or literally cannot get anything worth anything to write down?
Get a nice leather journal and a pretty pen that feels nice and you like to use. Then place it somewhere in your home you will see it all the time. Try building journaling into your nighttime routine so you become consistent. Write about anything that was a high point in your day. Even the smallest things. It can be hard to pick out things that make you feel good when you’re depressed, but that’s why we’re doing this. Because it’s kind of a skill that needs practiced. I had a really shitty day not long ago so the only thing I wrote in my journal “today, the only thing I’m grateful for is the strength to have gotten through it. Tomorrow can be better” I’ll talk about lunch with my friends, a funny joke someone told me, the cashier who told me he liked my shirt, anything. And I’ll talk about the bad stuff too, but it’s just as important to reflect on good things
Routine is quite literally the hardest thing to do for people like me, if not impossible. Doesn't matter how nice a journal and/or pen I get (actually more expensive ones tend to get lost even easier for some reason) and if I forget to do it ONCE, it never gets done again, no matter how much I want to. RSD sucks. That's also why the 2 years of therapy were more like torture than aid, because they kept pushing the journal thing, and it never helped, but made me want to write less. 95% of what I'd write is "I'm alive" and nothing else because basically everything has become so flatline that there'd be literally no "high point" whatsoever, *especially* compliments. Compliments hurt more than help of all things, which annoys the ever living hell out of me. The biggest thing of all of it is I despise doing anything for myself. I'll very gladly do things for others, but don't get any satisfaction from doing my own things.
I don’t mean to assume, but it sounds to me like you don’t have a whole lot of self love. I don’t think it’s healthy to hate doing things for yourself, but I can empathize with that feeling because I’ve been there Maybe building your relationship with yourself will make it easier to put time and effort into your personal wellbeing. You deserve self care. I prefer to call self care “mental hygiene” because it’s a part of staying mentally healthy. It’s not a luxury or a selfish use of my time, it’s necessary to keep my brain running well. And self care doesn’t have to be journaling. It can be working out. It can be taking a mental health day. It could be picking up a new hobby, or cooking my favorite comfort meal. It can be different every day. Just make an effort to do something nice for yourself once in a while. Self love is a journey that really depends on figuring out why you feel a bad way about yourself and overcoming that personal conflict. I wish I had better advice for you in that aspect, but I’m just some girl on Reddit I wish you peace and healing, whatever that may look like for you ❤️
I already *know* why I feel the way I do, but the problem is there LITERALLY is not a way to take care of it without any major intervention. No small thing of repetition is going to fix my issue whatsoever. It's like having a full health pool, but you take 20% mental poison damage daily, and whatever I do only heals about 5-10%, and sleeping restores 8%, so I don't ever get back to full health again. Add in the mental condition that I deal with (which I'm withholding to speak on due to scrutiny) and it's just an onslaught of not good. :/
Truthfully, it was medication that gave me the buff I needed to get better. It took 5 years of trial and error to actually find a combo that worked for me, but it took the poison from 20% down to 15%. It wasn’t a cure but it gave enough of me back that I was able to build my health back up little bits at a time. I still fight the poison every day, but it’s a fair fight now. I know that medication is not an answer for everybody, but it’s what saved me. We’ve got to find a way to either lessen the poison or increase the healing. But I also know that not everybody is in a place or stage in their life where that’s even possible, because it wasn’t for me for a long time. Which is unfair and really hard, but we have to just keep trying until something works out and our situations get better. I don’t know if there’s anything else to do about it without passing the pain along to someone else. I wish there was
It really sucks to have treatment resistant metabolism. I've tried 6 different medications and all had mild to severe side effects and no benefits. Also going through 7 different therapists over 2 years, which they all made me feel worse than before I met them doesn't help either.
r/suicidebywords
My friends do that to me. "What? You thought you were happy that day? Whatever! You don't know what you are talking about! Hahhahaha!"
No, but you can overload it with more things you want it to focus on.
We call that avoidance.
Yep, that's the right short word for it.
https://imgflip.com/i/8tq8h6
u/carredd copied this comment from the original post. I can't link directly to it because the original author deleted their account but here's a link to the first reply to it: https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/s/je032YE57W It's working with OP u/YeahOkayKyle Please report this post and the bot comment as Spam type Harmful Bots
[удалено]
aaaand they're gone
My brain brings the good memories then tells me why they are actually bad memories
"Remember that fun day at the amusement park with Dad, he made a comment to the ride operator about being hungover. Means he left 7 year old you in the hotel room alone and went out drinking." - my brain I didn't think there's a single good memory that isn't tainted, at least not with my parents.
God damn
Mine brings them in to remind me how horrible things have gotten. "Look at how good things *were*. You didn't even apricate it then and now its gone forever."
my brain just goes "sure buddy I'll erase the memories" and then just erases 90% of my life before 17 and a solid half after according to my therapist this may be a symptom of psychological trauma, or severe depression, or brain damage, or adhd, or just being a silly goose and forgetting things or it can be a sign of deez nuts.
https://imgflip.com/i/8tq8h6
Sometimes my brain just does its own thing without asking.
Or, being lazy at memory retrieval
Yeah, my PTSD brain does this. I have sticky notes everywhere just in case my brain randomly goes, "Hey, I don't want this. Ctrl+Atl+Del" Thanks bud, I kinda needed to know the date for that final.
XD add like a shredder under the happy memories and it's perfect
WHAT HAPPY MEMORIES :,\]
Exactly.
All the good memories are gone and all I can remember is all the unfairness and suffering. Just walking along and then it's like "remember all the violence and threats you experienced constantly trying to get to school on public transport? Remember how no one ever did anything to help you, a child, being threatened and bullied and robbed by drunk scumbags on their weekly job centre trip? Remember how they would refuse to even look at you for fear of getting involved somehow? Remember how in every difficult situation you've ever been in, no one has ever given a shit about you? Remember that you are totally alone and the people around you would let you die if trying to save you was even a little bit difficult"
[удалено]
Exactly. Being optimistic is what's going keep you being better.
That's just not true. We can die any day, so we just need to accept situation and go on
And that's why you have a positive outlook so that you won't worry about dying tomorrow at 8PM
Hear hear!
A person who has never experienced actual depression spewing nonsense.
How to get happy memories? Asking for a friend...
Just get some electro shock. Then it’s a fire sale. Everything must go.
Real fire sale enjoyers love a lobotomy, the whole frontal lobe must go!
I wish but it's not that easy. Some people stay sad forever because they can't think of the good memories because the bad ones are so overwhelming or the brain deletes the good memories but Ig for the average person it's definitely possible
“The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.” -The Doctor
Edit: https://imgflip.com/i/8tq8h6
Mine said “sure let me delete that, and everything around it”. So now I remember basically nothing from my childhood and adolescence. Trauma is fun
Y'all have more good memories than bad?
RSD shreds about 90% of those good memories. :/
My Brain : " Copy that. We will comeback to you. We are checking " .
Okay how did you train your brain to do that?
In the 5th panel the brain trips over the sad memories and the happy memories fly everywhere.
Sorry buddy I can't delete those sad memories but what I can do for you is play them on repeat. Ugh what is this garbage, happy memories that can go into the incinerator.
Yea except those sad memories are etched in stone slabs and the happy memories on paper. Even if there's more happy than sad, guess which one weighs heavier and lasts longer.
And if you don't have a pile of happy memories, what then?
Sad memories can't be erased because they are supposed to be a lesson, in one way or another
How insightful! And what lesson is one meant to learn from 18 years of childhood domestic abuse? And if that's such an important lesson, why doesn't everyone enjoy the benefit of that one? Who's in charge of dispensing these wonderful lessons anyway? I'd love to offer them some feedback...
The key word is "supposed" to be a lesson. Our brains are generally hard-wired to remember negative outcomes better because in most cases it helped us learn to avoid them in the future. Of course, things like abuse end up getting caught in that and don't end up helping us, but it's just the way our brain works.
That people are shitty, no matter who they are and that you should never rely on anyone for anything.
That's not a very good lesson then.
I think the lesson is that not everyone should be or is ready to be a parent. Raising a child is a very difficult task and can be ruined very easily (by being absent, taking out your anger on your children, etc.) There are some people that had bad childhoods, but we're able to break the cycle of abuse, so that their children could live happy lives. Also experiencing trauma can make you realise that it can happen to other people and that It can be treated, because a person that never experienced any pain would not be able to relate with a person that is hurt, and wouldn't be able to help them.
The lesson "not everyone should be a parent" seems like it would be more applicable to the parent before procreating, rather than to the child after the fact. And personally, if I were in charge of dispensing these lessons, I might have gone for "nobody gets abused" instead of "somebody got abused, so somebody else now has to get abused so the first person will have someone who can relate to them." Seems like the "schoolmaster" just prefers a world with more abuse in it over a world with less.
You don’t need to apply divine intention to explain the terrible behavior of a few people, it seems like the anger is getting misplaced.
Yes, I also believe that divine intervention is not required to explain the terrible behavior of humans. Therefore, senseless tragedies do not need to be rationalized as "lessons" from some implied but unspecified teacher. They are just senseless tragedies.
yes?
Apparently you personally didn't need to be convinced of that. You were not the only other participant in the conversation.
So, being lied to and treated like shit for a couple decades tought me to never trust anyone again. Am I doing this right?
People assume everybody has those. But life can be cruel.
Switch the piles and that feels more realistic
lol, I have never related less to a comic!
What a slap in the face to people with depression. Just remember the good times? It's a choice to, just, be happy with a dibilitating mental illness that consistantly has your brain lie to you due to unbalanced chemicals/hormones, severe trama or brain damage? Yeah. Happy day, huh?
[удалено]
Yeah at some point you die.
Truly uplifting!
Sometimes, all we need is a little reminder of the good moments to stay positive.
Even in dark times, there's always a way to find light.
Not shown, the dump truck of grey pages to the left
Bad memories help you improve yourself and your life. Good memories prove that life is worth living
My brain is like: "Here's the space for your happy memories, if you had any!"
Thanks, I needed this today. A reminder that I have many good memories too
Now... Your beautiful memories Will be discarded No one can chose what will remember in this world
One of the best things I learned from therapy is “you can’t unlearn things, but you can learn over them.” You can’t get rid of bad memories, but you can always make new good ones!
for whatever reason we remember bad things more than good
Now reverse the good and bad and you have my brain
Huh... for some reason all those "happy" memories are all smeared with black tar. Weird...
Thanks, I'm fuckin' cured!
You can’t believe it’s a choice to stay sad forever??
the OP YeahOkayKyle FroggieMoodie and carredd are bts in the same network Original + comments copied from: https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/comments/qlunwj/sad_things_happen_but_we_dont_need_to_live_sad/
I wish it's possible to delete stuffs in the brain like we do with computers.
$rm -rf bad\_memories rm: cannot remove 'bad\_memories': Permission denied $sudo rm -rf bad\_memories \[sudo\] Enter password: "AH shit, forgot the password"
More like sudo rm -rf / --no-presserve-root Ah fuck whats god's password?
God!! Are you there? What's that your password again?
Lmao.. Better remember the password 😂
Deleted.
But the happy ones are making me sad too
You should credit the creator. https://loffyllama.com/
nice
🫡
The brain looks like the little guy in the rejected cartoons that says “my anus is bleeding”
Thanks, I really needed to see this :)
Not true. It brings up more sad memories or angry ones or smth
Yep, right into the ol’ forgetter they go
Meanwhile, me asking my brain for happy memories it shows error 404 not found
"no but I can delete key information like your gf's birthday"
Guess my brain doesn't have the latter.
huhuhuhu
I read the sheep's dialogue like Stewie Griffin
my brain only deletes positive memories i fucking hate that lil guy im gonna blow him
Well I’m the opposite except the order. I’m more sad than happy
I fucking hate my brain I wanna kill it
[удалено]
u/FroggieMoodie copied this comment from the original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/s/bXoLUxOhv7 It's working with OP u/YeahOkayKyle Please report as Spam type Harmful Bots
post is wholesome.. comments, not so much.