ive been depressed for nearly a decade, but im the workaholic "never let yourself rest because thats wasting time" type of depressed. but for the past 2 months, ive literally done nothing but lie in bed. i cant even bring myself to take my prescribed medications anymore. i lied to my psych by saying im forgetting to take them, because if i tell the truth, what is he even gonna do for me ? how does a psych solve that problem ? if it makes him feel any better, i also dont feed myself or bathe or leave my bed most days lmfao. im typing this up at 4am because i require my sleeping med in order to fall asleep, and i couldnt bring myself to actually take it until now. would anything even work ? shoot ideas if anyone reads
I hope this isn't inappropriate and I accept that I might be totally off-base here and projecting my own problems and the problems of people I've met onto you, but I think the part of your life when you've been a workaholic who never lets themselves "waste time" by attending to your physiological needs might be very very very strongly related to this two month breakdown you're going through, and I think it's working on two fronts:
What you're describing sounds like a pretty severe case of burnout. We don't talk about it, but it absolutely can get this bad, and in my mind that's part of a natural tendency for the body and brain to overcorrect something that hasn't been working. Your brain has probably been sending alarm bells for a long while now that the way you've been approaching work hasn't been compatible with your holistic health which 100% requires rest and mercy in order to function at capacity. I think it's easy to get used to these alarms and fade them out to the background when there's this new shiny meaningful project that you want to work on. That's great and frankly admirable but only in the short term of say a few days or weeks or so. When it becomes chronic and clear that you aren't going to hear or respond to your brain-body's needs it can get to a drastic point where it needs to forcibly break the cycle and force the issue by going completely dormant, as the only way to break free from an incompatible situation.
That's a pretty straightforward diagnosis, but I think recognizing it as a natural and potentially healthy response and not something to work against or to let it mean something about you that it doesn't ("I'm at heart a no-good bedrotter who can't do anything because right now I can't bathe or leave my bed") is anathema to the psyche of a perfectionistic type of person. I'm going to pull a little more on the perfectionism thread I'm imagining here because I think it's important for understanding your current situation.
I think the people I've known and myself in the comparable situations I've been in as more of a type-b perfectionist are people who are certainly very rational about matters of life and logic, but have a self-critical complex that doesn't play by the same standards we approach everything else with. Our self-criticism can be highly irrational because we don't hold our self-criticism to the same standards of rationality we approach other subjects with because we "Don't deserve the mercy of a rational judge." We fall into black-and-white thinking about ourselves where something like skipping brushing our teeth before bed because we're too tired can mean that we're slobs and might as well not come in to work the next morning because we can't do anything right.
Imagine how bad a serious self-criticism complex like that can get when someone enters a major depressive episode and can't get out of bed! I mean, you don't have to imagine it, you're living that hell right now. Two months ago, your standards for yourself were quite high and now you're on the floor and it's impossible to get back up to those standards you were barely hitting before. Why would anybody even bother getting up at all! Why should I take my pills, I'm never going to be good enough!
But the fact is, the standards were incompatible or unrealistic. That's not to say it's a matter of your standards being "too high," in the future you might be able to meet standards that are much higher. But for one reason or another it was an irrational and incompatible standard that was incompatible with healthy function, and now we have to shift our framing. This process can only be done by you, and perhaps with the help of a professional.
I don't have any solutions for you here, because I don't think there's any external advice or command that you really can or should be listening to. You should be listening to yourself and your very exhausted body, with a sense of mercy and grace about the suffering that you're going through. And you are moving through it, even as you stay still and rest.
