Mato, to be very honest. You have received such good advice here from so many people with great compassion. Really man pull yourself together, re-read all the advise and start acting on some of it, that might pull you out of this pit of self-pitty and indeciveness! If I were in your shoes I would be so inspired by some of these replies that it would have sprung me into some action!
Perhaps the right reply or poster did not show up, yet. 
Just hang around.
To those who critisize my attitude I need to defend myself and say that the amount of psychological pressure I had to put up in my teens (with the fucking panick attacks haunting me everytime I drove the car in the highway to go watch alone some crappy movie in the multiplex) and early 20s (I’m 25 now) was beyond comprehension. Nevermind if there was an actual reason for feeling the way I did, I just did. I practically lived like a hermit and a spartan too between the ages 21-24 because the pills wouldn’t work and all I could think of was that I must try and improve things and that suicide is not the answer. For those who have not been there in this nightmarish existense were you DO jog everyday and fake-smile watching the sunlight pour in your face (because that’s what a depressed person should do) and eat your macrobiotics and take your pills and do your deep breathing and your yoga and your meditation and yet still your body and mind do not respond AT ALL to all this and you have to watch your peers being happy and out there living their lifes with their friends, while you have to starve yourself and do cold showers in the middle of the winter to “man up” (because people “out there” face “real problems”(stop being a pussy Dimitri watch wrong with you? you have it all!)), with no tv, or radio, or cellphone, or magazines, just me and this fucking empty house my father rented for me next to the sea and still yet all my mind fed me was death and embarassment and guilt because I’m I’m a pussy, or a psycho or I’m not not trying enough or maybe I ate too much olive oil (one teaspoon. god I don’t have the heart to enlist all the starvation inducing things I tried in the process of “purifying my body”), so then if you haven’t been there where despite you dearest efforts for years and years you hate yourself for being embarassed (and your heart goes crazy) when you talk even to the person at the counter in the super market and you feel like god has forsaken you and the universe is just this dark and cold and empty wasteland (which it so essentialy is) then please at list don’t be bullish.
I have read about and tried more than you can imagine and sure enough maybe that has made me cynical but I am tired of all failures and dissapointments. And so this is why I came here, after finally having narrowed down what my problem seems to be, asking for a targeted solution, something closer to what jlg mentions (btw the posture thing is true my neck is very very stiff and my shoulders are rounded because in the process of trying all those things I also spent a hell of a lot of time in front of the pc (not that much anymore thought)
I can add to this. I have been taught by some excellent teachers and one thing comes to my mind. They always say that depressive people should avoid forward bends. They also say that backbends and handstands ignites the fire within. So do lots of backbends and handstands 
Here is one of my favorite quote:
“One cannot change the past, but one can ruin the present by worrying over the future.”
So let me ask you this. If you woke up today with no knowledge of your pass. would you feel the same today?
If you didn’t worry about how you might feel tomorrow. Would you feel the same today?
Detach yourself from your past. You deserve a fresh start.
[quote=Mato;21283]To those who critisize my attitude I need to defend myself and say that the amount of psychological pressure I had to put up in my teens (with the fucking panick attacks haunting me everytime I drove the car in the highway to go watch alone some crappy movie in the multiplex) and early 20s (I’m 25 now) was beyond comprehension. Nevermind if there was an actual reason for feeling the way I did, I just did. I practically lived like a hermit and a spartan too between the ages 21-24 because the pills wouldn’t work and all I could think of was that I must try and improve things and that suicide is not the answer. For those who have not been there in this nightmarish existense were you DO jog everyday and fake-smile watching the sunlight pour in your face (because that’s what a depressed person should do) and eat your macrobiotics and take your pills and do your deep breathing and your yoga and your meditation and yet still your body and mind do not respond AT ALL to all this and you have to watch your peers being happy and out there living their lifes with their friends, while you have to starve yourself and do cold showers in the middle of the winter to “man up” (because people “out there” face “real problems”(stop being a pussy Dimitri watch wrong with you? you have it all!)), with no tv, or radio, or cellphone, or magazines, just me and this fucking empty house my father rented for me next to the sea and still yet all my mind fed me was death and embarassment and guilt because I’m I’m a pussy, or a psycho or I’m not not trying enough or maybe I ate too much olive oil (one teaspoon. god I don’t have the heart to enlist all the starvation inducing things I tried in the process of “purifying my body”), so then if you haven’t been there where despite you dearest efforts for years and years you hate yourself for being embarassed (and your heart goes crazy) when you talk even to the person at the counter in the super market and you feel like god has forsaken you and the universe is just this dark and cold and empty wasteland (which it so essentialy is) then please at list don’t be bullish.
I have read about and tried more than you can imagine and sure enough maybe that has made me cynical but I am tired of all failures and dissapointments. And so this is why I came here, after finally having narrowed down what my problem seems to be, asking for a targeted solution, something closer to what jlg mentions (btw the posture thing is true my neck is very very stiff and my shoulders are rounded because in the process of trying all those things I also spent a hell of a lot of time in front of the pc (not that much anymore thought)[/quote]
Dimitri,
I have much compassion for you and your situation. However to not say things because I am afraid that I might hurt or offend you will also not serve you very well.
In the very first line you say that you want to defend yourself against those who critisize you. Well, I don’t see a person who defends himself, I see a person who blames everybody and everything around him, from the psychological pressure, pills, crappy movie right down to your father. Please re-read your reply carefully with an open mind and decide for yourself. Perhaps it is time to ask yourself what do you want and to take action on that and live accordingly.
People, come on, let him breath. It is easy to burden somene with our convictions.
Depression is hard to overcome. Those who try to give advise are in a very hard position, because all they can do is to share their conviction that there is a way out. But it is like standing on a river side, and saying “smile, you are free” to the drowning.
To make an example: let us picture depression as the opposite of being in love. Instead of being constantly high, it is being constantly low, and just as hard to overcome. Ever been in the position that you had to fight against love ? Fighting depression is just as hard. For the person suffering from it, it is seemingly impossible to break it.
What is the value of it ? Because for everything in life there is a good side, what usaually presents itself later.
One benefit is that any chronic pain (as depression can be described as such - pain is pain, regardless if it is physical or that of the soul) will make one try everything to get rid of it, thus seek, search, try things. You are doing well.
My opinion is that you need to survive it. No matter how long it takes. No matter how long it has been. Why ? Because, you do not have any other choice. Suicide rarely has oneself as a traget. Usually the targets are others, to show them how miserable I am, that it made me kill myself. It is a sign, a big red light to others - I am in trouble !
Don’t think I do not know it. I know it perfectly well. Sometimes it just seems the only way out. It is a temptation to stop. But it does not work, and it would be silly trying to be sure.
You see, I admit that you are in life threatening danger. You might actually die. So act accordingly.
OM
Mato,
A little criticism seems to have done you good. You’re feeling your anger and frustration and seem to know exactly what you want. By the way, for someone from Greece, your English is excellent. As good as a native speaker in fact.
i do empathise with how you may be feeling. I too have a long history of depression and have tried many things to feel better. I am about the start a yoga practice which feels like it could give me the discipline that i need in my life and boost my sense of self worth. One thing we both know is that there are absolutely no quick fixes and pills dont work. I really feel that a practice of yoga can help depression immensely. that is what i hear anyway and I know from the very little i have already done, that i feel much better.
Mato –
I learned about releasing neck muscles and breathing from two good choral voice instructors (for the record, this was before yoga for me). If you want to ramp it up from there, find someone trained in Alexander Technique.
Good luck, buddy. You have it a lot worse than I ever did.
Feel free to let me/us know how it’s going.
OK, now that I’ve given you that, I’d like to check in on three things that were useful for me but don’t seem to be on your list. I acknowledge you may have already tried them.
- diet. What you mentioned about diet didn’t include my counselor’s big recommendations – poultry, eggs, warm milk, and vegetable starches (baked potato is my favorite). 2) sleep. 3) thought and memory hygiene. This is the hardest one for me because I still have an inclination to sabotage it.
(This is where yoga has helped me the most. In asanas and in trying to meditate I’ve learned more about little parts of me resisting my efforts to be healthy. It is also where pills helped me the most – they showed me for a while what a healthy brain sounds like, and that I shouldn’t automatically trust my thoughts. After all, they are just thoughts.)
If any of this sound new or surprising I am happy to give you what I have, but that’s mostly Dr. Amen’s book.
[quote=Techne;21415] thought and memory hygiene. This is the hardest one for me because I still have an inclination to sabotage it.
[/quote]
And for the most of us, after a lifetime of practice. This is just how things are, no need to dispair. A new start every day, every hour, every minute. It requires resilience, yes, but this is how resilience is built. You would not want to spend eternity in your current shape, do you ? There is always room for improvement.
It is also where pills helped me the most – they showed me for a while what a healthy brain sounds like, and that I shouldn’t automatically trust my thoughts. After all, they are just thoughts.
Dangerous these thoughts are. ([I]rolling yoda eyes[/I])
Thoughts are not just thoughts, they have the annoying tendency to carry themselves out. Do not underestimate the power of the dark side !
Heed this advice from your vanilla muffin boy
Yes, I was imprecise – by ‘just thoughts’ I did not mean to indicate they are of low capacity for effect, but that they are not trustworthy. That is, they could be true, but in fact they fall short of that and are ‘just’ thoughts.
The point of thought and memory hygiene is that thoughts and memories are to be tended because not doing so has strong detrimental effect.
Thank you, Hubert.
(He, he – vanilla muffin? Who’d want one of those? I must post my pumpkin and zucchini granola bar recipe.)
Another idea many people find incredibly helpful is understanding the benefits of the negative (and the negatives of the benefits). Dr John Demartini a chiropractor & world renowned self-development guru, is a huge resource on finding the natural balance of the universe through working with positives and negatives. His Demartini method is a tool you can work with. He runs workshops all over the world called The Breakthrough Experience and there is a book on the subject. See - http://drjohndemartini.stores.yahoo.net/books.html
I apologize for not replying for a while now. Initially I was subscribed to this thread and was notified by email every time someone posted a reply but then for some reason I stopped receiving notifications.
There is one thing I would like to further discuss and that is my stiff shoulders and neck. In fact my shoulders are rounded permanently and to “open up” and stand normally requires so much energy from me that I run out of breath within minutes. I have spent so much time in front of the pc. I recall years and years of suffering in painful sitting postures and just putting up with it. When I try to push my shoulders back, these two bones at the frontal base of my neck jump out and the skin around them seems very stretched. One thing I can tell you is that I have never been able to do stitting meditation properly because it is always too difficult for me to sit up straight like I should.
Techne I read a bit into the Alexander Technique. It says the creator also had a problem with hoarseness of voice, which is a problem for me as well. This is not something I just now realise. I have been worrying over the hoarseness of my voice for years now.
Do you guys think my emotional stagnation is related to all that? I think there is a good chance it is.
Looks like I was “right on” in my firts post and I do belive that your posture has a lot to do with your emotional stagnation.
It took me a while to be able to sit comfortably in meditation. It doesn’t only come from the shoulder opening but also from the position of the sacrum when sitting down. I say when you sit in a chair your probably slipping down (lying) in the chair instead of arching your back and sticking your butt out? am I right?
[QUOTE=Mato;21283]To those who critisize my attitude I need to defend myself and say that the amount of psychological pressure I had to put up in my teens (with the fucking panick attacks haunting me everytime I drove the car in the highway to go watch alone some crappy movie in the multiplex) and early 20s (I’m 25 now) was beyond comprehension. Nevermind if there was an actual reason for feeling the way I did, I just did. I practically lived like a hermit and a spartan too between the ages 21-24 because the pills wouldn’t work and all I could think of was that I must try and improve things and that suicide is not the answer. For those who have not been there in this nightmarish existense were you DO jog everyday and fake-smile watching the sunlight pour in your face (because that’s what a depressed person should do) and eat your macrobiotics and take your pills and do your deep breathing and your yoga and your meditation and yet still your body and mind do not respond AT ALL to all this and you have to watch your peers being happy and out there living their lifes with their friends, while you have to starve yourself and do cold showers in the middle of the winter to “man up” (because people “out there” face “real problems”(stop being a pussy Dimitri watch wrong with you? you have it all!)), with no tv, or radio, or cellphone, or magazines, just me and this fucking empty house my father rented for me next to the sea and still yet all my mind fed me was death and embarassment and guilt because I’m I’m a pussy, or a psycho or I’m not not trying enough or maybe I ate too much olive oil (one teaspoon. god I don’t have the heart to enlist all the starvation inducing things I tried in the process of “purifying my body”), so then if you haven’t been there where despite you dearest efforts for years and years you hate yourself for being embarassed (and your heart goes crazy) when you talk even to the person at the counter in the super market and you feel like god has forsaken you and the universe is just this dark and cold and empty wasteland (which it so essentialy is) then please at list don’t be bullish.
I have read about and tried more than you can imagine and sure enough maybe that has made me cynical but I am tired of all failures and dissapointments. And so this is why I came here, after finally having narrowed down what my problem seems to be, asking for a targeted solution, something closer to what jlg mentions (btw the posture thing is true my neck is very very stiff and my shoulders are rounded because in the process of trying all those things I also spent a hell of a lot of time in front of the pc (not that much anymore thought)[/QUOTE]
Sadly, I do know what you mean. I to had a terrible childhood. Tried to commit suicide when I was 15. Survived although I didn’t want to at the time. Put on a fake face so I wouldn’t be committed so I could blend in and people won’t know what is really going on inside. I had no support system at home abusive father and absent mother.
Went through the motions of life. Abused drugs and alcohol. Carried so much pain in my body.
I’m thirty eight now and only in the last few years I have started feeling whole, not saying I don’t have bad moments. I’m human. It just took that long, the birth of my daughter, reading Eckart Tolle, Dr. Wayne Dyer, practicing yoga. That is what started helping me change my life. Change my way of being and thinking. I realized I have to own it, it’s my life, my journey.
The only place I’m going with this is - your post sounds like you are aware. You are not to far gone since you asked for help. I hope you find your way. I hope you find the peace that you are looking for.
[QUOTE=jlg;21637]I say when you sit in a chair your probably slipping down (lying) in the chair instead of arching your back and sticking your butt out? am I right?[/QUOTE]
Yes you are right, I’ve always had people (teachers, aunts, peers) telling me to sit up propely and not slouch. I just do not know what to do with this now. It is not easy to reverse such a problem. To make things worse, I have to spent the next 9 months servicing the Greek army which is compulsory. I avoided this for as long as I could but now I am out of time and have to show up in Sparta at August 10. Who knows it might not be a complete and total waste of time and I might learn a thing or two over there, but doing extravagant, flamboyand yoga postures is out of question.
LaLuz
I think our problems are overlapping in certain areas and thus I can sympathise but it seems to me you actually had it worse than me. I mean you had actual problems during your childhood, a sort of family drama going on that would have gotten to pretty much anyone, emotionally healthy or not. Me, I in fact had a great childhood, but it is all downwards from there. I did not have real external problems, it is just the way my body works. Which is why I have never fallen for drugs or alcohol - having a good childhood has given me some basic groundwork to draw hope from. I know what it is like to feel really, really good, I used to be like that all the time as child and I just don’t know what else to do with my life if I don’t have that feeling. Nothing else seems to be worth the effort and everything I used to enjoy has ceased being enjoyable.
[QUOTE=Mato;21634] In fact my shoulders are rounded permanently…
[/QUOTE]
Why do you believe that this condition is permanent? Unless there is something wrong with your bones, my guess is that the condition could be corrected by strengthening the muscles in the back. Lat pulldowns behind the neck or pullups behind the neck, and nutrition geared toward muscle growth should do the trick. I would join a gym and talk to a personal trainer.
[quote=Mato;21087] I have tried everything. Macrobiotics, meditation, medication, jogging, breathing, postures, I have tried everything I could think of to inumerable variations.
[/quote]
You could try engaging with the full spectrum of yoga practices.
Try this website http://www.aypsite.org/
They teach a full-scope system of yoga called AYP that covers highly effective and safe practices leading eventually to a complete flowering of consciousness and , for want of a better term,enlightenement.No stone is left unturned,the aim being to fully illuminate all layers of self…
This done through finding your own inner guru achevied primarily through two practices- Deep Meditation and Spinal breathinig pranayama (optimisations without any frilly superfluous nonsense added on & taken respectively from trasscendental meditation and the kriya yoga tradition- so you see you have heavyweight practices that work- i.e get results,this is science- that of self trans-morph-ation),their dynamic duo.
I offer you meat , i.e actual yoga practices, rather than just words.
Intending a stable Global awakeinng, the alleviation of the suffering of ALL of us(yuour suffering is my suffering), and Global enlightening (the fruits of a recession )
No excuses now!
Act today(read the first lesson on that site- lesson 13- found under the Main Lessons section; it explains the simple procedure utilized in the powerful practice they have opver there called Deep meditation)What are you waiting for?
Best of luck!
CORE 789 -
I just glanced at the website. Looks like a good one I will go through when I have more time. Thanks for posting it!