So, I've decided to start this thread about mental health because I felt compelled to, which is not a usual thing for me. I like ComicFury, but I'm not one to post much unless I'm advertising my comic or there's some thread that really speaks to me.
(A bit outdated, because honestly I post A LOT now, but keep in mind this was one of the first threads I did after returning to ComicFury)

I just feel really good today. I woke up at 7:30am today, but only because I had to pick someone up from work (they don't have a car). I'm not a morning person, but today I've just felt especially great.

For some background information, I have major depression / clinical depression / whatever you want to call it that makes you feel the bad bads a lot. I have mood swings like crazy and it feels like recently the highest level I've been able to reach mood-wise is "good for the most part, but with a dash of melancholy." I do have therapy every week and I have been taking anti-depressants, but sometimes that doesn't guarantee you to feeling okay or feeling stable. Don't get me wrong, it is really helpful and I'd rather have those things than not, but sometimes I just feel like "god damn, I'm trying my best here. Can my brain just let me have a good day without any caveats?"

Thankfully, today seems to be one of those days. I would say it's because it's the weekend, but besides last weekend and this one, they haven't been the greatest. Surprisingly, it was to the point where I was somewhat thankful that the work week had started.

Making comics has been a strange sensation as well. I've been in this weird zone where it feels like I'm half in and out of doing it. I'm still putting in the same amount of work, but it doesn't feel like it normally should, if that makes any sense. Don't get me wrong, once the page is done I can appreciate what went into it. I don't feel like my pages have been complete shit and I don't feel like I'm not making anything good. More like my mood is just not aligned with the effort I'm putting in. I know it isn't burnout, because this doesn't feel like burnout at all. Still, I figure as long as I can make pages and enjoy it to some degree then that is still a good thing.

I guess I also just want to say that if you have depression like I do or any sort of mental disability or you just feel like shit occasionally, that I understand how hard it can be. It can get really frustrating, especially when it feels like you are doing the things that are typically supposed to make you feel stable like therapy and such. I mean, there are more things I could do to boost myself like my diet and exercise, but I'm a bit afraid that won't help as much as it should. It's scary when you're doing as much as you can and you're somehow feeling more unstable. I don't know. Maybe it's just me expecting too much too quickly, but I'll continue to truck along.

Another thing: your comics and creative endeavors are worth it. You wouldn't be putting effort into them or thinking about them so much if they didn't mean anything or have value. Even if you feel that no one cares, you need to remember that you care. And that you caring is inherently valuable, no matter what anyone says. I'm not going to sit here and lie and say it's as easy as remembering that, because I struggle with self worth a lot myself. There are plenty of days that I ask myself if there's any point to making my comic. Try not to think those thoughts if you can.

If you want to share your experiences with stuff like this, go right ahead. I just felt like I had to get all this out.



tl;dr: This struggle bus of life can be difficult. Just try to do things to be okay. Talk to people, work on your passions, relax a bit, etc. Whatever helps.

Hello! I've never seen you post here, so I might as well say hi before I let out my mental health rant.

It's a long speech...

Probably actually a good idea to spoiler this stuff just because of how sensitive the information can be. Didn’t even think of that.



Its been a bit helpful to get this stuff off my chest, I think. Occasionally I’m not sure if talking about this stuff makes me feel better or worse. Must be good to at least not hold it in.

i swear I came here not having all that much to say... !!!


edit: i also want to just add a disclaimer I'm not trying to tell any of this to you individually on the presumption that you don't already know it- just throwing out my experience since maybe it could help somebody who is struggling to define their own problems and hasn't been able to quite pin it down yet.

Ive suffered from depression and anxiety all my life but never sought help until 24 years ago. Then a barrage of family deaths, illnesses, job problems, and a child that is bi polar...it just never seems to have let up.

It's been an uphill battle. People just don't understand why you can't just "get happy". If it were that easy believe me I'd have done it.

One thing I've has to remember is that I'm worth something. Remember that you are too.

Oh yeah, I completely get that. I’m messaging what I am partly because it’s like therapy and partly because it might just help people to know there are others with those sorts of feelings.

I have got to the point where I can generally recognize when my bad feelings are just coming from my brain and not necessarily anything I’ve said or done. It does get hard sometimes recognizing whether me thinking bad things is causing me to get bad, or whether I was already feeling bad and that’s making me think bad thoughts. There are patterns I recognize though.

This is a good conversation to be having, at least for me. It lets me know I'm not alone, even though I wish others didn't have to be in the same situation.

I understand not feeling up to par, like you're "not doing as much as you can/should." It sucks. Even though you *are* doing your best. It just doesn't look like the same level of best as the people you want to be like. At least, that's my case.

But you have strengths. Some people will call them weaknesses, but some of your qualities are true strengths. Like vulnerability. You'd be surprised how many people want to be vulnerable, but don't feel safe doing so in any situation. Some people get jealous when they see I am willing to express myself, even if I do it quite poorly at times. That makes me feel kinda bad though, knowing I have something they want. But then some folks will look at the same quality as a negative thing.

But yeah. I'm with @mitchellbravo on this: your mental health doesn't just depend on your upbringing or experiences. It's how your brain works, how your body functions, and a buncha sciencey stuff I'll never understand.

But it's hard to cope. I find it hardest to escape the self inflicted shame. Because I can avoid other people much more easily than I can avoid myself.

I want to suggest looking into frugal living or minimalist living to help you save money, but while it could help I'm not sure if it's the point I want to make here. I'm trying to say you are enough as you are. You are trying. And sometimes, you're going to require more rest than you want. But you'll get back up.

I hope that made sense. I'm so tired. I was up too late last night. I feel like I'm mumbling. Ok. Good "night".

Here's a hell of a story for you.

I'm one of those lucky ones who never really had to deal with extreme depression. But then I started to have this slow onset of anger--an emotion I never really dealt with growing up or even up until a few years ago. It just kept getting worse and worse, until I was just having so many angry days that I could barely function. I would find myself furious at BEING. Outraged that God could've ever thought the institution of existence was a valuable burden to place on anyone. I just could not figure out why everything had to be so damned difficult--why people had to be so intolerably petty and impulsively selfish. Humanity, it seemed to me, was a pathology. I stopped seeing souls and started seeing frantic rodents pounding at pedals for the dopamine hit. Desperate for control of some small part of life, and being so pathetically greedy and contrarian that they lost any semblance of value.

I didn't know what was happening to me. It was awful. It was the worst. But then it got much--MUCH worse. Unimaginably worse. A literal paradigm shift in what "worse" could even BE. I had a panic attack from weed, which isn't even something I enjoy indulging in. But I was under quarantine and bored, so I smoked with my roommate and watched Tiger King. What happened next was...scarcely describable.

It's called "Derealization." It's a dissociative disorder, but it's often triggered by strong weed. It's temporary, but it can last for years and it takes an unimaginable amount of self-control to manage in the meantime. This happened almost exactly a year ago. April 11th, 2020. I'll never forget that date.

I'll try to briefly explain what happened. (After having written it out, I failed at brevity--apologies)

The science of it is fairly simple: When your mind thinks you're being attacked, it shuts down your connection to reality so you can't relate to the terror of the moment. This is why gazelles go limp when the lion finally catches them. They shut down. It's nature's mercy. But then there's the flood of chemicals to the brain afterward...

I had a panic attack, right off the bat. I was shaking uncontrollably until my muscles ached. My mind was unraveling entirely. And when I say entirely, I mean ENTIRELY. I'm an extremely philosophically-minded person. I read Kant for fun. And this experience was the closest thing I can ever imagine to being literal Hell. I was actually convinced I was being given a glimpse of Hell. It wasn't hallucinatory. That was the thing. My mind was flooded with anxiety and despair as I frantically tried to make sense of the world around me. It had lost its reality completely. It was an emotion, and the emotion led me to break down existence--experience as a fundamental phenomenon--to its absolute constituent conceptual parts. All the basic things we take for granted--like the natural feeling of being present--I no longer trusted. I didn't believe in reality. I didn't know what it was. Words were senseless. I felt like the structure of reality had literally crumbled around me. It was fundamental existential dread.

I thought it would be over the next day, when I sobered up. It was not. For the next several months I would have episodes. I would have to break the whole of reality down to its essential conceptual structure and build it all the way back up just to convince myself it was something true. I had to decipher absolutely logically sound reasoning that the existence I was experiencing was legitimate. I did this, finally, by asking myself what the source was. If all this stuff around me was an illusion, or some Hellish alternate reality I'd slipped into (when, I couldn't be sure), then how do I know anything at all? I had to establish the context of my ability to even think about the reality around me being an illusion. My words, my language, my understanding of the concepts I was using to even reason through all this, was grounded in and sourced from the very reality I was suspicious of not being real. And so it had to be real. It was the source of context for all of my thoughts, and for my existence as I'd always known it.

It took months to get back to some semblance of normalcy, though even now I have occasional (VERY mild) anxiety pops. Nothing unmanageable. But it's that feeling of un-reality that is impossible to truly get across without you having experienced it. It was Hell. I had slipped into a pocket dimension from which I could see the real world, but through a looking glass darkly. It was absolute, purely manifested chaos. Context, in general, all but vanished. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

"...the institution of existence was a valuable burden to place on anyone"

Yes, my friend. That is one of the best summaries of life I've ever read.

Hoo boy, mental health. I've been having a tough time with mine as of late. Rant incoming.

edit: I felt weird about sharing this lengthy post with strangers bc it's about trauma and it's WAY too personal, so I wiped it.

I have PTSD in addition to autism. I was writing about my experiences and symptoms, but I realized I didn't want to share the details of my nightmarish childhood with people I don't know very well.

Everything is fine and I'm safe. I'm in therapy and I have resources. I'm mostly surprised at how much I wrote and decided that it needed to be moved to a diary entry in Google Docs.

I've noticed that a lot of users discuss things that seem traumatic, but minimize them because it's "not that bad" and blame themselves for being stressed. I'd like to remind you all that it's normal to have reactions to stimuli that remind you of a distressing situation, or even to be upset at something that happened to you in the past. It's just something your brain does and it's not your fault. It can be understood and lived with.

@Nooga
You are the only person I know who is also on Pristiq. It’s the only thing that’s helped me, too.

The kind of hypomania that isn't tinged with irritability is seriously awesome. I really really like it.

I don't have diagnoses, I just started being in touch with mental health services, but I suspect I have somehintg like adhd in addition to ocd and bipolar. Can't remember the classifications and types and stuff, but all of these are either mild cases or I've just managed to learn to manage them. I definitely don't get delusional or do anything truly crazy when I'm on the upswing.

I don't understand how people just wake up and go to sleep at roughly the same time each day for weeks on end, while keeping their rooms and houses clean, while taking over 5minute commutes/drives/walks to work, then also manage to have hobbies and projects.

I suspect the whole world is fucking shitting me on this. Nobody can live like that, first of all a 24 hour day cycle is not physically sufficient for all thet??

Neurotypicals are really different from normal people, it's incredible to live and constantly learn how different people can be compared to each other. People with neurotypicalism disorder are not fucking normal, don't even.

It's definitely important to talk about, and share our experiences because mental illnesses aren't the same experiences for everyone.


I've gone through that deep, empty depression where you have no energy to do anything except hurt yourself- and in the past couple of years now I've been fighting through high-functioning anxiety/depression and ptsd.

One where it feels like you're living on your own separate planet, everything is de-saturated and full of secrets. Nothing has meaning so you can fool everyone around you that you're happy. Recovering felt like sobering up from the chemicals in my brain.

The other feels like you're hyper aware. Everything is too saturated and bright. Your emotions are paper thin, you get riddled with this energy high driven by anxiety then you drop into complete desolation when the depression kicks in. The PTSD took control away and not being able to self manage was terrifying. It's like I would start to recover and then something small would set me off and I'd be back to square one.

I'm kind of like a dude when it comes to crying, I have a very even composure and it's tough to break. I scared so many people in the past couple of years with how easy it was to shatter me emotionally. I feel bad- I don't like people worrying about me.

I've learned recently that ptsd and other illnesses aren't necessarily permanent- and fortunately it seems like my symptoms have been waning. Like my first dental appointment this year gave me flashbacks, but even though my heart still accelerates as I've been going to get work done- the effects only last about a day and instead of winding me up into an anxiety attack only to be left in depression- I'm just hyperactive for a day and then sleepy. (Which to my twitter peeps- I'm sorry. xD I really do just get hyper and I'm like saodigjsaoigj look at how puffy my cheeks are lmao I'll probably get my self control back. ;A;)

And lately I've been very positive and I'm just waiting for the ball to drop... but maybe I'm getting back to normal.

To everyone who’s posted something so far, just wanted to say that it takes a lot of guts to share these sorts of things. And if there’s anyone else out there who is going through stuff that you’re not alone. People may have different amounts and degrees of bad things going on, but there are others who can understand. You’re not some sort of failure because you feel the way you do.

I have severe depression that makes me unable to do stuff a lot of the time, heavy autism that makes it hard to do stuff when I can do stuff, and a lot of minor health issues on every level.

At least Im not schizophrenic, I had me tested for that.

Also I'm really stupid in a ways that you can't even imagine

But you're a comedy genius who knows how to make people smile :) I honestly think that's way more important than academic success.

Seems we have a lot of autistic users here actually. It's nice to be among others like me.

aww thanks it's really nice to hear

I don't have any stories to share, but I wanted to thank @jmluvsbob for the comment you left on Arkin Blades update. I've been feeling really down about my work lately, lots of self doubt, and that helped. And you too @ZeroHour. I appreciate all comments, positive or not. It's hard to keep up and I always tell myself I do it for me, but any and all feedback is always welcome.

So yeah it's been an adventure since learning I had PTSD, a lot of my problems that I thought were just plain ol shitty anxiety turned out to be PTSD symptoms.
I was a huge mess before I got back on medications after over 6 years of not being medicated, I was diagnosed ADHD in the past and I thought I was functional enough to not need the meds. But I ended up developing a really REALLY bad temper and I'd get in bad drama situations constantly. After being kicked out of home by a crazy narcissist because I gave her a "smaller artichoke" for dinner (not even lying about this) I moved back home to Oregon after having left when I turned 18. I guess the whole situation really messed me up because it triggered my absolute worst nightmare, my first bi-polar psychotic episode. To even try to begin to explain the things I believed in that state would leave me here for a while but to make it short I believed in anything from the dog being chosen as a messenger to teach animals to talk to humans, to an ancient evil being after me because it was in love with me and possessing different people to do it, to secret organizations brainwashing society in to abusing children. I'd go between everything being incredible and amazing to everything being absolutely terrifying in an instant.
It took two hospital stays to get me back to normal and it was then that I was diagnosed bi-polar and PTSD, and I've been on meds and gone to therapy ever since. I had one more psychotic episode 3 years after the first but it was handled better than the first time. Still awful experience overall, I remember looking over the edge of a bridge and thinking I could jump and survive, and I tried to strip in a restaurant.
Now that my anxiety is being treated, I'm not really angry any more and I haven't had any real drama in a long time. I struggle a lot with depression, especially in the winter, it's super hard to be motivated to do anything I'm not REALLY interested in. But overall I'm doing a lot better than I was.

I'm always scared of going manic again, yet another side of me wants to feel the good sides of it again because of things like food tasting amazing and colors being more vibrant. Now, if I feel particularly happy or chatty, I have to wonder if I'm going hypomanic, rather than just enjoying myself, and it sucks. The line is so thin.

But, if one really good thing came out of my mania, it was that it sparked a lot of the ideas I had for My Magic Grandpa. I don't think MMG would have even existed if I'd never gone manic.

@GuyPercinn

Can I let you in on a little secret (as much as a secret it can be since it's being posted to this thread)?

I go through the same thing a lot. Especially since I put a lot of time and effort into the stuff I make. It's nobody's fault other than my brain's, but some days I'll get a little (or a lot) down because I feel like no one is reading my stuff or caring about what I'm making. It's got to the point where I literally have to prevent myself from looking at statistics, otherwise I'll get so obsessed with them that it just leads to bad stuff. I have to remind myself that I'm doing it for me too, and that there was a reason I started this comic in the first place, and that there's a reason I have a drive to make it.

When I started reading comics on here, I made a big effort decision that if I liked someone's comic, I would leave them a comment saying that I liked it and why I liked it. It's such a small thing really, but I think we often forget that the people who make things we like are people. They like to hear that the work they are putting in is making some sort of impact. It changes people's lives, whether in big ways or small ways. I may put a little extra in my comments too, like saying I appreciate a person's work or I'm happy that they made this comic. I know it's a big deal, because the same happened to me recently when @spike vacant left me a comment on my own comic. It made me feel so good and special and that my work mattered to people other than those close to me (specifically my wife, though I really do appreciate how much she loves my comic too).

I hope saying this doesn't make it seem like my comment is somehow less important or something since I do it with everyone. I mean, it shouldn't, but I just wanted to reassure you that I really do like your comic and I can't wait to see what happens next. Thanks for making it!