Posted by mikhail99 on February 4, 2003, at 12:21:29
In reply to How much do your moods define you?, posted by Dinah on February 3, 2003, at 21:39:52
> I think I have trouble seeing myself consistently as the same person with different moods. I don't think "I am Dinah, and I'm not feeling terribly sociable today." or "I am Dinah, and I feel like chatting today." Instead I think "I am Dinah, a person who doesn't like to socialize." or "I am Dinah, who enjoys interaction." I don't know if this makes a whole lot of sense.
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> But the overall effect is to leave me without an enduring sense of who I am. A day to day sense of who Dinah is as a person. Because how I feel about something today may be completely different than how I feel about it tomorrow, I end up feeling disconnected from yesterday and tomorrow. Again, I'm not sure I'm making sense.
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> I think that to others, I appear to be the same person every day. I appear to have the same opinions and the same responses. I may even be really predictable. But I can't internalize that predictability.
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> Now I'm pretty sure I'm not making sense.Dinah, you're making perfect sense. I think that's one of the worst things about depression is that it robs us of our ability to know who we really are. At least, that's how it is with me, it's all dependent on how I'm feeling that day so I feel so inconsistent. I hope you're right in that people don't see us the same way we see ourselves, as up and down and inconsistent. I also think that the depression makes us harder on ourselves which just makes things all the more difficult.
sigh.
Mik
poster:mikhail99
thread:2464
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030203/msgs/2474.html