For the past few months I've just been feeling down. I don't know what caused it, I don't know how to stop it. It's not depression, well, I don't think it is, I mean, I don't have any problems, my home life is pretty OK and nothing in my childhood was overly hard that it would cause problems later in life. 3 of my pretty close friends come over last week that I hadn't seen in about a month and while I was excited to see them, I didn't feel happy. It's like I had to force a smile..

For example, today is my birthday, I'm 19. Most of my friends are still away at Uni until next week so I'm just here alone on my birthday. It's weird. You know how you normally get excited for birthdays (hello? Presents!).. this year I'm not for some reason. I don't know why.. It doesn't feel like it's today. It doesn't feel like it's been a year. Why do we get so excited for birthdays anyway? Is it just the thought of presents? Thinking back to when we were kids, we got excited because we got to have a party, all our friends got to come over to our house, we got to play party games and get lollie bags.. I think by the time you get to about year 3 or 4 the excitement wears off. We stop having little kid parties, and start having sleep overs. Someone always gets left out, and a fight breaks out, lasts for a week and then we forget about it until the next party, and the person that left us out, we leave them out. Then high school comes along. A world of underage drinking parties. Oh the fun! Now I'm 19. You're in between the 18 and the 21. What do you do? It's just an age until you reach another "monumental" birthday. Nothing special. Just an excuse to go out and get pissed. Which I have every intention of doing *nods* But eh.. I just feel strange.

Anyways, yeah, probably ignore this thread, delete it if it breaches any of the rules. I just feel weird and I don't want to say anything to my friends because I don't want to worry them for something they don't need to be worried about. Is what I'm feeling normal, like is it some sort of phase?

Love Susie ox

It's not normal to not be content, especially when you don't have much reason to not be content. Not looking forward to presents or seeing friends? Sounds like clinical depression. You really shouldn't be down all the time and there is medication to fix it.

Though I'm sure others will chime in with chime in with better advice/personal experiences.

Sounds like clinical depression. You really shouldn't be down all the time and there is medication to fix it.


my thought exactly. Clinical depression comes from chemical imbalances in the brain. Everything in your life could be going great, and yet, you just cannot get happy.

We are not medical professionals, but I suggest you go to one. Talk to your doctor about the way you feel. Be honest with him. If your doctor just gives you a prescription without asking you a lot of questions, see a different doctor. If this is clinical, you need to make sure the right medication is prescribed.

happy birthday hun! 19 is great...it's your last year before hitting 20. I considered it my year to act like a jackass before I became an "old fart" at 20.

it is Ok to be down from time to time. It is OK not to be happy all the time. But what you are describing has been going on for months, and you owe it to yourself to get better. Any prescription is not going to be some "magic pill" that is going to make you happy and smiley again, but it can help balance the chemicals in your brain that are triggering the negative emotions.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!

Okay, now, for the real part of this post: It sounds like depression... You probally want to talk to a doctor.

WARNING: Look into the doctor! Don't go to them if they have a history of being a Pill Pusher. And, if they subscribe you ANY medicine, I don't give a fuck what they tell you about it! LOOK INTO IT BEFORE YOU TAKE IT!!!!!!! That is the most important thing with Anti Depresents. Many of them have been related with suicide... It's usually for people under 18, but, I wouldn't take anti depresents without doing a lot of research on the one your subsribed first...

PM me if you need to talk! :) Or, if you need to know why I feel so strongly about anti depresents...

For the past few months I've just been feeling down. I don't know what caused it, I don't know how to stop it. It's not depression, well, I don't think it is, I mean, I don't have any problems, my home life is pretty OK and nothing in my childhood was overly hard that it would cause problems later in life.This is such a common misconception. While childhood problems/home life/circumstances/whatever can cause you to suffer from depression later in life, recent research suggests that it is no more than a problem with the wiring in the brain that does not become severe enough to notice until insecurities pop up. People assume that you have to have issues to be depressed, when sometimes it's a hormonal (read:thyroid or estrogen) problem or a brain wiring problem (clinical depression).

Anyways, yeah, probably ignore this thread, delete it if it breaches any of the rules. I just feel weird and I don't want to say anything to my friends because I don't want to worry them for something they don't need to be worried about. Is what I'm feeling normal, like is it some sort of phase?

Love Susie oxI don't know. It very well may be. I do suffer from clinical depression. Mood disorders (like depression and bipolar disorder) run in my family, and I'd much rather have the former than the latter. I didn't really get all that depressed until, well, approximately my 19th birthday. At the time, I was in a wheelchair, and not being able to walk or be normal was really affecting me. But now, even though I'm feeling better, I still suffer from excessive tearfulness, especially if I don't take my medication.

The cadence of your post suggests you might be just the tiniest bit anxious, and you've plainly said you aren't feeling like yourself. That's definitely a symptom of depression or a related disorder. Let's be clear: I'm not a doctor, I'm only a pre-med student; and if I were a doctor I would not be a pill-pusher. Medication on its own is not going to help you, and may not help you even if you combine it with therapy (although it very well may). If I were you, I would go to a doctor (maybe your family doctor, if you've known him/her forever, or perhaps a psychiatrist) and describe how you're feeling. He or she will be able to determine if you're suffering from depression or just the normal ups and downs of life. If I were you, I wouldn't delay. Not only is depression a little dangerous, but it keeps you from functioning and feeling right in your day-to-day activities. I look back at all that wasted time when I was too shy or scared to ask for help, and I really wish I had.

All this to say, I hope you feel better soon. I'd really like it if you'd PM me so we can talk a little bit, Susie. You sound like, maybe more than anything, you need someone to listen to you.

<3 Mary

Well, as everyone has said before me, you should go and talk to a doctor to be sure because feeling miserable isn't fun, i know that all too well. What you described is very similar to how i feel and seeing as people have told you to see someone, i feel i should too, but that isn't going to happen, anytime soon ahyhow. I was just about to go and wish you a Happy Birthday but i guess i can do it here too. So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!!
I am an awesome listener and i can try to give some advice so always feel free to PM me.

People assume that you have to have issues to be depressed, when sometimes it's a hormonal (read:thyroid or estrogen) problem or a brain wiring problem (clinical depression).I always thought i had no reason and should not be allowed to feel this way because i don't have it nearly as bad as others. But you can't really help how feel.

Does it ever feel like your missing something. Sometimes I get that way when I feel like I am missing something. Like a very important memory that you normally focus on. But for some reason you have forgotten it. May be you need some one in your life like a boyfriend sometimes if you have some one to hang out on a every day basis. Can help. Even a hobby can help it does me. Just some things to think about. You still should seek some one to help you though.

Always try to look to the bright side of things. I know it's difficult..Trust me, I really do know that, but just try telling yourself that someday there will be something that is worth all of this. I disagree with what was said about the medication. I was on anti-depressants for a long, long time and I found that they just helped me to push the problems aside instead of trying to find and resolve why I was feeling this way to begin with. If it gets unbearable then of course, go see a doctor. But I think you should find someone who you can talk to. Find things to motivate you to go out and do things. It helps, I promise. <3

Here is something that you may want to try.

I drink 24oz of this a day and it has helped me not to be so tired.

Go and buy a bottle of Braggs Apple Cider Vinegar. It's all organic and good for you.

Put one teaspoon in an 12 glass of water. Drink one on the morning and then one in the afternoon. It takes some time to get used to the taste but it will help you I promise. If you can't handle it, then you have a great additive for salad dressing.

I know how you feel, i've been feeling the same way the past couple weeks, ever since I graduated. If you want to talk, feel free to pm me.

tMR, what's that apple cider vinegar stuff do exactly?

Anyways, yeah, probably ignore this thread, delete it if it breaches any of the rules. I just feel weird and I don't want to say anything to my friends because I don't want to worry them for something they don't need to be worried about. Is what I'm feeling normal, like is it some sort of phase?
o.O Why are people here so depressive? It's OK to be negative sometimes!

Having occasional negative thoughts doesn't make you a weird person. It makes you REAL and WHOLE.

o.O Why are people here so depressive? It's OK to be negative sometimes!

Having occasional negative thoughts doesn't make you a weird person. It makes you REAL and WHOLE.

There's a difference between having negative thoughts and being depressed. It absolutely is okay to have negative thoughts. But it's another thing to be constantly down for days, weeks, months on end.

Well...I am nowhere near any kind of expert on something like this. I know myself, that I will go through 'depressive' days, where I feel bad about myself and everything else...but it's a hormonal thing for me, right before or in the beginning of that lovely thing called PMS.

Maybe you should ask a parent or someone you know who would be able to steer you in the right direction. None of us here, obviously, are certified to tell you anything definitely, but if you think that you should seek out a professional opinion, then by all means do so.

Happy birthday, by the way. *hugs* :)

You could be suffering some emotional turmoil from the shift between school and university. It's a very different culture from the structured and IMHO, relatively stress-free, school environment and it can be very over-whelming. It's normal to feel this way, but it's not very fun.

I'm in my second year of university studying a Health Science degree and it fucking well sucks. "University is the place for new opportunities for growth" my arse. My school faculty, for one supposedly on the cutting edge of medical and therapeutic treatments, is stuck in a time-warp in regards to their teaching syllabus, both the subjects and approach.

It could be hormonal, it could be regret at not seeing your school friends as much (my school friends are great people and I wish we were able to hang out more often), it could be a deeper unconscious fear, it could be uncertainty about what you'd like to do with your life. There should be counsellors on your campus that you should see. Living frightened and emotionally detached is no way to be; I've been there.

For the past few months I've just been feeling down.

Great avatar, Susie! :)

I can't tell by your post if you're dysthymic or depressed. The former is milder and doesn't respond well to antidepressants, but counseling can help. Interestingly, regular aerobic exercise increases serotonin levels in the brain that may improve your mood, and I try to start my day by reading the comics and getting a few laughs. (Keeps the BS from gettng too deep, if you know what I mean. Laughter is good medicine!)

Antidepressants, like all medications, have their pros and cons and can be a Godsend for people with major depression. Most studies of antidepressants have been in people with major depression, but medication alone isn't as good as medication + counseling. Your doctor should know the criteria for major depression and can ask you specific questions to see if you have it.

Hope that helps, Susie! I'm sorry you're feeling blue all the time, but there are ways out of it. It takes a little work, though. Don't give up, OK? And a belated Happy Birthday! :)

tMR, what's that apple cider vinegar stuff do exactly?

Eversince I was 20, I have used Aveda skincare. Below is an article from Braggs. I am not one to believe articles such as this but I am almost 40 and I don't think that I look 40.

That Can Keep You Ageless

No system can "cure" disease. No person can "cure" you of your ailments, aches, pains and diseases. Only the internal functions of your own body banish diseases. The human body is self-repairing and self-healing. Every human body has a built-in healing mechanism. Burn that into your consciousness.
To simplify, We are going to call this healing power -vital force.

[Reprinted from NEW WOMAN magazine]

Condensed from the book THE BRAGG HEALTHY LIFESTYLE - TOXICLESS PROGRAM, BODY PURIFICATION & HEALING SYSTEM by Patricia Bragg, N.D., Ph.D., and Paul C. Bragg, ND, Ph.D.


You must have vital force in order to stay alive. When your vital force is exhausted, then there is death.

Every day of your life you meet people with a huge vital force. On the other hand, every day you see tired, exhausted, nervous, frustrated people full of aches, pains, disease, stresses, strains and tensions. Most of these people are prematurely old.


Every three months you get an entirely new bloodstream, so it is not the blood that gets old.

Every eleven months every cell in your body has renewed itself, so you have a practically new body every eleven months.

Every two years you get an entirely new bone structure, so in three years you are really born again.


People with a low quota of vital force have a low resistance to infectious diseases ... they are the people with frequent colds, flu, strep throat and many, many other infectious diseases.

They are the people who are chronically fatigued. They are the people with poor memories. They are the people who are full of aches and pains. They are the unhappy people. They are the irritable people.

With the vital force at a low ebb, then enervation takes over. When enervation takes over, physical troubles multiply!

The tongue should be called "The Magic Mirror" because it reveals the great amount of toxic poison stored in the body.

One way a doctor diagnoses a person is to say, "Let me see your tongue." If the tongue is white-coated, she knows that person is in a highly toxic condition. This is one of the oldest methods of diagnosing a person's health that doctors follow.

Remember, the tongue is one end of a thirty foot tube extending from the mouth to the anus. When your tongue is coated, nature is trying to extract and eliminate the toxins buried deep inside your body. Help by brushing and cleaning your tongue daily.

You can now see by your tongue how much toxic poison is stored in your body. Your tongue's surface reveals to you the great amount of encumbrance that has been clogging up your entire body through wrong, toxic-forming foods and liquids.

That is the reason I am not interested in the name of your physical trouble. All physical problems are due to a local clogging of the circulation, the tissues and the entire pipe and tube system.

You often hear people say, "A new virus is attacking people. It seems that everyone is picking it up." That is exactly right, there are thousands of germs floating around everywhere, and remember they are here for a purpose. Infections, germs, bugs, viruses and bacteria are scavengers. They clean up decaying filth. If that decaying filth happens to be in your body, they are going to start eating the toxic slime.

Just remember it is impossible for any kind of germ or virus to attack clean healthy tissue. They only eat decaying matter.


Dirty blood picks up infections.
Clean blood is your protection against infection.

If by wrong eating you create decaying matter in your body, it's only part of nature's plan that germs will come and eat this dead substance. Germs never attack clean, toxic-free tissue or clean, toxic-free blood.


If You Want to Attain Vitality Supreme . . .

It is possible, in my opinion, to live in a perfect state of agelessness. Let's reason it out together: Every three months you get an entirely new bloodstream, so it is not the blood that gets old. Every eleven months every cell in your body has renewed itself, so you have a practically new body every eleven months. Every two years you get an entirely new bone structure, so in three years you are really born again . . . the renewal process has taken place.

In my many years of travel, I have met hundreds of people 100 or more years old. Their vision was perfect, they had no hardening of the arteries, no blindness or aches or pains. These people never ate refined or processed foods, but ate foods that were close to nature. Their natural diet continually purified their bodies with each meal.

Avoid food and drink that clog, obstruct and throw waste into your arteries, organs and cells. Study the following list of so-called foods, drinks and other materials and never again let them into your body.

These processed, sugared, salted, refined, chemicalized foods work slowly, but very effectively and are deadly.

People will often tell me: "My Grandfather is 88, eats any food he wants to, and still he is living." There are a lucky few who have a stronger constitution than others. They have inherited bodies that have wide arteries and veins and have a capacity to burn poisons three times faster than the average person. But remember: When that 88-year-old was born, there were 86,000 others born that same year yet, there are very few of those 86,000 left . . . not a very good percentage.

So the first thing to do is to avoid forever the following so-called foods and materials which humans put into their bodies . . .


Refined sugar and all the refined sugar products such as jams, jellies, preserves, marmalade, ice cream, sherbets, Jell-O, cake, candy, cookies, chewing gum, soft drinks, pies, pastries, tapioca puddings, sugared fruit juices, fruits canned in sugar syrup.

Catsup and mustard made with salt or sugar, Worcestershire sauce, pickles, green salted olives. White distilled & filtered vinegars.

Salted foods such as corn & potato chips, salted nuts, pretzels, salted crackers.

White rice and pearled barley.

All refined, sugared, dry cereals such as corn flakes and others.

Deep fried and greasy foods.

Saturated fats and hydrogenated oils are enemies and premature killers of your heart.

Food which contains cottonseed oil. When a product is labeled vegetable oil, find out what kind before you use it.

Oleo and margarines, saturated fats and hydrogenated oils.

Peanut butter that contains salt and all hydrogenated oils used for hardening.

Coffee, decaffeinated coffee and black and China teas. (100% herbal teas are O.K.)

Fresh pork and pork products.

Smoked fish of any kind.

Smoked meats, ham, bacon, sausage.

Luncheon meats such as hot dogs and salami, bologna, corned beef, pastrami and meats containing the dangerous preservatives sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite.

Dried fruits processed with dangerous sulphur dioxide (a preservative).

Chicken & turkey injected with stilbestrol or fed chicken feed that contains drugs.

Canned soups (read labels - look for sugar, fillers, starch, white or wheat-white flour and preservatives).

Food that contains benzoate of soda, or cream of tartar (a preservative).

Bleached and unbleached white flour products such as white bread, wheat and rye bread that uses a mixed wheat-white flour, dumplings, biscuits, buns, gravy, noodles, spaghetti, pizza pie, ravioli, sago, pies, pastries, cakes, cookies, prepared and commercial puddings, and ready-mix, refined bakery goods. If you use wheat, it should read whole wheat; then you know it contains no white flour. Substitute whole grain flours in all bakery goods.

Leftover cooked veggies & premixed old wilted salads.

No self-drugging: no aspirin, buffered aspirin, antihistamines, laxatives, sleeping pills, tranquilizers, pain killers, strong cathartics or antacids. Correct your problems by living a healthy lifestyle so you won't need any of the above. The above listed all have side effects. It's best to live a healthy lifestyle.


I want you to remember first and keep it in mind at all times that the ideal diet is raw fruits, salad, sprouts; raw, steamed and woked or baked vegetables; and raw nuts and seeds with a preponderance of raw and cooked green leafy vegetables (chard, beet tops, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, turnip and mustard greens, collards, kale etc.)

I do not expect you, unless you are very ambitious about internal cleansing, to try to reach the 100% state of purification. There are various degrees of health that can be obtained by controlling the diet. I feel that if you can, in time, balance the diet to 60 percent raw fruits and vegetables and properly cooked vegetables and minimize animal proteins, fats and sugars, then you can live in a higher state of wellness and enjoy a healthier, longer life.


Purification Takes Time

But don't expect to get immediate results. Slowly you will feel better and stronger once you start on this self-healing treatment. As you start on this program of purifying your body, you are going to stir up old toxins, and you do have plenty of them. Everyone has them because most everyone carries five to ten pounds of deeply buried toxic poisons in their body.

That is what sickness is, in the final analysis - your body becomes so corroded and loaded with vicious toxic poisons that it throws up its own healing crisis in the form of fatigue, colds, flu, boils, pneumonia and hundreds of other indications of the body's ridding itself of poisons. Disease is no mystery to me. It's something that is slowly built up by toxic poisons in every organ of the body.

So be ready for a series of healing crises if you want to attain vitality supreme. This is a compensation action, this is the vital force asserting itself. You cannot get away from paying your price to nature! There is no way to circumvent the crimes you have committed against your previous body. Body cleansing is important and needed!

You will not feel your best until you have eliminated all the toxic poisons from your body. Gradually through eating more raw fruits and vegetables you will flush out the heavy accumulation of toxic poisons.

Eliminate the greater portion of the heavy foods from your diet and eat more fruits and vegetables (organic is best) and you will notice a remarkable rejuvenation. Your aches and pains and excess weight will melt away and your energy will soar; no longer will you suffer from fatigue and excessive tiredness. The changes are miraculous!

But when you first go on this program, you may at first look wretched. This will usually happen during the crisis period, when the greatest amount of poisons are loosened from your pipes and vital organs and are being flushed out of your body. When you have gone through the crisis, then you can see the new you revealing itself. Your eyes will become brighter, your skin and muscle tone will become healthier, your joints will become more supple and there is a state of well-being that will throb throughout your entire body and make you glad to be alive.

Keep in mind it took quite a long time to get into the condition you are in now, through wrong habits and wrong eating, and now you must be patient with nature. It takes from two to three years to reach the high point of internal perfection. You cannot throw caution to the wind. If you have been accustomed to eating meat several times a day and eggs and cheese every day, you have to slowly eliminate the excessive use of these foods.

As you add more fruits and vegetables to your diet, you will soon estimate how much of the stimulation foods that you can eat every day and gradually reach a status quo. This is the point where toxic poisons are no longer retained in your body. This is the condition you should seek: a clean, painless, tireless, ageless body!

You will continually hear people say, "You should eat a hearty breakfast to get energy." This is not true - scientifically it takes a tremendous amount of nervous energy to masticate, digest, assimilate and eliminate a regular heavy breakfast.

The morning is the time to drink fresh fruit juices, or better still to eat whole fresh fruit. This is the ideal nourishment for early morning because fruit requires the most infinitesimal amount of digestion. The natural sugars of fresh fruit can give you more blood sugar than eggs, meat, toast, buns, coffee and sausage.

Your body operates on blood sugar. A healthy person manufactures a fourth of a cup daily. This blood sugar is where the muscles draw their energy. Fruit is light and does not require the tremendous amount of energy to digest that cereals, meat, eggs and other heavy foods require.


I Have Seen People Banish Many Physical Problems

I have seen people banish physical problems by eating nothing but raw fruit for breakfast! It's easy and healthy!

Your noon meal should consist of a large vegetable salad - raw - either chopped or grated cabbage, carrots, beets and celery. They are the base of your health salad. To this combination you can add any raw vegetables you desire - cucumbers, lettuce, broccoli, radishes, parsley, avocados, tomatoes, green onions and sprouts.

Or perhaps you would enjoy just a large cole slaw (grated or chopped cabbage) salad, or a cabbage, carrot and raisin salad or a raw grated beet, turnip and cabbage salad.

You can make a salad dressing of raw, Bragg Organic Apple Cider Vinegar and olive oil or just a freshly squeezed lemon or orange. Always eat your fill of raw salad first. Never let hot food touch your mouth until you have had your fill of the raw salad. The salad as well as fresh fruits are the internal purifiers, the fighters of toxic poisons!

If you have not been used to eating a large raw vegetable salad, go slowly. You may say to me, "Raw salad fills me with gas," or "Raw salads do not agree with me." When a raw salad does not agree with you, it shows you have a mucus condition in the bowel. They are sick bowels. So there is only one thing to do and that is to change your diet slowly. It took a long time for the bowel to be in this condition and it will take time and conditioning to get the bowel ready to accept the raw salads. The daily salad is very important. It is the master internal cleanser - nature`s broom.

The next question is what to eat with this salad. The best thing would be a baked potato and a fresh cooked vegetable like string beans, steamed squash, peas, corn on the cob, carrots, beets, broccoli, greens or any fresh vegetables, squash, etc. you desire.

Now what about protein? If you feel you need meat, eat it, but just remember, not more than two times a week. You can have fresh fish several times a week. I personally prefer the healthier and safer vegetable proteins; try them yourself!

The racehorse does not eat concentrated protein. She gets her great speed, strength and endurance from the vegetable kingdom. Raw nuts, seeds, raw wheat germ, nutritional yeast, tofu, natural brown rice, soybeans and dried beans are delicious, nutritious, rich, healthy vegetarian sources of non-uric acid, non-cholesterol protein.


52% of Americans will die of cardiovascular disease

You must always keep in mind that meat is a secondhand food. The animal ate the green growing things that produced the meat. And when that animal was killed, it retained all the poisons it had in its body. Meat has uric acid and contains heavy concentrations of visible and invisible saturated fats. These waxy fats (cholesterol) clog the human pipes and cardiovascular system. Studies show that vegetarians live longer.

Milk is mucus-forming. No animal except man drinks milk after weaning. Studies link it to allergies, indigestion, juvenile diabetes, etc. Instead enjoy the delicious, healthy soy, nut and rice milks.

Allow at least five hours between each meal. The digestive system must have time to do its important work efficiently. The evening meal must start with some kind of raw fruit or vegetable salad. Let us say at the noon meal you had a large vegetable salad, so now you would like to change to a fruit salad. This is perfectly all right because a delicious fruit salad is not only tasty, but is a real toxin fighter. Fresh fruits are very aggressive, they will help dissolve and flush toxic poisons out of your body.

You can start your next meal with a fruit salad, as our principle is always to eat something raw at the beginning of your meals. But when you eat a fruit salad, you should always wait ten minutes before eating hot food. Fruit leaves the stomach faster and prepares the way for the hot food of your mealtimes.

You may have two cooked vegetables - one yellow and one green. Have a dish of steamed or baked carrots and a dish of lightly steamed greens such as spinach, chard, kale, mustard, beet or turnip greens. These yellow and green vegetables are rich in essential vitamins and minerals. Organic veggies and fruits are the healthiest for you.

If you crave sweets after a meal, try fresh fruit or baked apples, stewed fruit or even occasionally a healthy pie, cake or cookies made with whole grain flour and honey.


If You Are Filled with Anxiety and Stresses . . .

Be sure your diet includes plenty of foods rich in B vitamins: Raw wheat germ, brewer's yeast, blackstrap molasses, brown rice, lentils, barley, soybeans, dried peas and beans, peanuts, cornmeal, buckwheat groats, mushrooms, broccoli, turnip & mustard greens, spinach, peas, cabbage, grapefruit, and oranges.

Never, under any circumstances, use mineral oil as a laxative. Mineral oils rob the body of the fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and F) waiting to be assimilated in the intestinal tract.

Only use enemas or high colonic irrigations in cases of sickness or extreme constipation. Your nerves move your bowels and they can do the job if your B-complex intake is adequate and your diet is balanced daily with 8 glasses of distilled water plus herbal teas, fresh juices and fruits, salads, vegetables and whole grains. For good elimination daily, mix 1 to 2 tsps of: 1/2 oat bran and 1/2 psyllium powder or soaked flax seeds to juices, soups, herbal teas, whole grain cereals, baked goods, etc. or Bragg Pep Drink or Bragg ACV Cocktail (1-2 tsps Bragg Raw Organic ACV "with the Mother" and 1 tsp raw honey in glass of distilled water).

And remember, there is nothing as important as good elimination, so take care of this important function. Don't tell me you are too busy. Bowel elimination is vital to vigorous health. This waste matter must be moved out of your body regularly.

Many people are sick simply because they are starving for sunshine. The rays of the sun are powerful germicides. As your skin absorbs these rays, it stores up this healing and germ-killing energy. The sun can provide the best remedy for you if you are nervous and filled with anxiety, worry, frustration, stresses and strains. When you lie in the early or late day gentle sunshine, its soothing warm rays give you what your body is crying out for - relaxation!

The Bragg Stay Ageless Program promotes lifelong health and fitness through the simple Bragg Healthy Lifestyle!

other Bragg LifeStyle Articles you can read:

Patricia Bragg - The Organic Cheerleader
Healthy Heart - Key to a Long Life
Liquid Aminos - Stirfry and a Healthy Diet
Apple Cider Vinegar can Help Reverse Aging
Apple Cider Vinegar and it's benefits
Honolulu Marathon Winners who are Bragg Followers

I have used Braggs since I was around 26 or so. It takes some time to get sued to but it does work. Below is from their webite.

That Can Keep You Ageless

No system can "cure" disease. No person can "cure" you of your ailments, aches, pains and diseases. Only the internal functions of your own body banish diseases. The human body is self-repairing and self-healing. Every human body has a built-in healing mechanism. Burn that into your consciousness.
To simplify, We are going to call this healing power -vital force.

[Reprinted from NEW WOMAN magazine]

Condensed from the book THE BRAGG HEALTHY LIFESTYLE - TOXICLESS PROGRAM, BODY PURIFICATION & HEALING SYSTEM by Patricia Bragg, N.D., Ph.D., and Paul C. Bragg, ND, Ph.D.


You must have vital force in order to stay alive. When your vital force is exhausted, then there is death.

Every day of your life you meet people with a huge vital force. On the other hand, every day you see tired, exhausted, nervous, frustrated people full of aches, pains, disease, stresses, strains and tensions. Most of these people are prematurely old.


Every three months you get an entirely new bloodstream, so it is not the blood that gets old.

Every eleven months every cell in your body has renewed itself, so you have a practically new body every eleven months.

Every two years you get an entirely new bone structure, so in three years you are really born again.


People with a low quota of vital force have a low resistance to infectious diseases ... they are the people with frequent colds, flu, strep throat and many, many other infectious diseases.

They are the people who are chronically fatigued. They are the people with poor memories. They are the people who are full of aches and pains. They are the unhappy people. They are the irritable people.

With the vital force at a low ebb, then enervation takes over. When enervation takes over, physical troubles multiply!

The tongue should be called "The Magic Mirror" because it reveals the great amount of toxic poison stored in the body.

One way a doctor diagnoses a person is to say, "Let me see your tongue." If the tongue is white-coated, she knows that person is in a highly toxic condition. This is one of the oldest methods of diagnosing a person's health that doctors follow.

Remember, the tongue is one end of a thirty foot tube extending from the mouth to the anus. When your tongue is coated, nature is trying to extract and eliminate the toxins buried deep inside your body. Help by brushing and cleaning your tongue daily.

You can now see by your tongue how much toxic poison is stored in your body. Your tongue's surface reveals to you the great amount of encumbrance that has been clogging up your entire body through wrong, toxic-forming foods and liquids.

That is the reason I am not interested in the name of your physical trouble. All physical problems are due to a local clogging of the circulation, the tissues and the entire pipe and tube system.

You often hear people say, "A new virus is attacking people. It seems that everyone is picking it up." That is exactly right, there are thousands of germs floating around everywhere, and remember they are here for a purpose. Infections, germs, bugs, viruses and bacteria are scavengers. They clean up decaying filth. If that decaying filth happens to be in your body, they are going to start eating the toxic slime.

Just remember it is impossible for any kind of germ or virus to attack clean healthy tissue. They only eat decaying matter.


Dirty blood picks up infections.
Clean blood is your protection against infection.

If by wrong eating you create decaying matter in your body, it's only part of nature's plan that germs will come and eat this dead substance. Germs never attack clean, toxic-free tissue or clean, toxic-free blood.


If You Want to Attain Vitality Supreme . . .

It is possible, in my opinion, to live in a perfect state of agelessness. Let's reason it out together: Every three months you get an entirely new bloodstream, so it is not the blood that gets old. Every eleven months every cell in your body has renewed itself, so you have a practically new body every eleven months. Every two years you get an entirely new bone structure, so in three years you are really born again . . . the renewal process has taken place.

In my many years of travel, I have met hundreds of people 100 or more years old. Their vision was perfect, they had no hardening of the arteries, no blindness or aches or pains. These people never ate refined or processed foods, but ate foods that were close to nature. Their natural diet continually purified their bodies with each meal.

Avoid food and drink that clog, obstruct and throw waste into your arteries, organs and cells. Study the following list of so-called foods, drinks and other materials and never again let them into your body.

These processed, sugared, salted, refined, chemicalized foods work slowly, but very effectively and are deadly.

People will often tell me: "My Grandfather is 88, eats any food he wants to, and still he is living." There are a lucky few who have a stronger constitution than others. They have inherited bodies that have wide arteries and veins and have a capacity to burn poisons three times faster than the average person. But remember: When that 88-year-old was born, there were 86,000 others born that same year yet, there are very few of those 86,000 left . . . not a very good percentage.

So the first thing to do is to avoid forever the following so-called foods and materials which humans put into their bodies . . .


Refined sugar and all the refined sugar products such as jams, jellies, preserves, marmalade, ice cream, sherbets, Jell-O, cake, candy, cookies, chewing gum, soft drinks, pies, pastries, tapioca puddings, sugared fruit juices, fruits canned in sugar syrup.

Catsup and mustard made with salt or sugar, Worcestershire sauce, pickles, green salted olives. White distilled & filtered vinegars.

Salted foods such as corn & potato chips, salted nuts, pretzels, salted crackers.

White rice and pearled barley.

All refined, sugared, dry cereals such as corn flakes and others.

Deep fried and greasy foods.

Saturated fats and hydrogenated oils are enemies and premature killers of your heart.

Food which contains cottonseed oil. When a product is labeled vegetable oil, find out what kind before you use it.

Oleo and margarines, saturated fats and hydrogenated oils.

Peanut butter that contains salt and all hydrogenated oils used for hardening.

Coffee, decaffeinated coffee and black and China teas. (100% herbal teas are O.K.)

Fresh pork and pork products.

Smoked fish of any kind.

Smoked meats, ham, bacon, sausage.

Luncheon meats such as hot dogs and salami, bologna, corned beef, pastrami and meats containing the dangerous preservatives sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite.

Dried fruits processed with dangerous sulphur dioxide (a preservative).

Chicken & turkey injected with stilbestrol or fed chicken feed that contains drugs.

Canned soups (read labels - look for sugar, fillers, starch, white or wheat-white flour and preservatives).

Food that contains benzoate of soda, or cream of tartar (a preservative).

Bleached and unbleached white flour products such as white bread, wheat and rye bread that uses a mixed wheat-white flour, dumplings, biscuits, buns, gravy, noodles, spaghetti, pizza pie, ravioli, sago, pies, pastries, cakes, cookies, prepared and commercial puddings, and ready-mix, refined bakery goods. If you use wheat, it should read whole wheat; then you know it contains no white flour. Substitute whole grain flours in all bakery goods.

Leftover cooked veggies & premixed old wilted salads.

No self-drugging: no aspirin, buffered aspirin, antihistamines, laxatives, sleeping pills, tranquilizers, pain killers, strong cathartics or antacids. Correct your problems by living a healthy lifestyle so you won't need any of the above. The above listed all have side effects. It's best to live a healthy lifestyle.


I want you to remember first and keep it in mind at all times that the ideal diet is raw fruits, salad, sprouts; raw, steamed and woked or baked vegetables; and raw nuts and seeds with a preponderance of raw and cooked green leafy vegetables (chard, beet tops, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, turnip and mustard greens, collards, kale etc.)

I do not expect you, unless you are very ambitious about internal cleansing, to try to reach the 100% state of purification. There are various degrees of health that can be obtained by controlling the diet. I feel that if you can, in time, balance the diet to 60 percent raw fruits and vegetables and properly cooked vegetables and minimize animal proteins, fats and sugars, then you can live in a higher state of wellness and enjoy a healthier, longer life.


Purification Takes Time

But don't expect to get immediate results. Slowly you will feel better and stronger once you start on this self-healing treatment. As you start on this program of purifying your body, you are going to stir up old toxins, and you do have plenty of them. Everyone has them because most everyone carries five to ten pounds of deeply buried toxic poisons in their body.

That is what sickness is, in the final analysis - your body becomes so corroded and loaded with vicious toxic poisons that it throws up its own healing crisis in the form of fatigue, colds, flu, boils, pneumonia and hundreds of other indications of the body's ridding itself of poisons. Disease is no mystery to me. It's something that is slowly built up by toxic poisons in every organ of the body.

So be ready for a series of healing crises if you want to attain vitality supreme. This is a compensation action, this is the vital force asserting itself. You cannot get away from paying your price to nature! There is no way to circumvent the crimes you have committed against your previous body. Body cleansing is important and needed!

You will not feel your best until you have eliminated all the toxic poisons from your body. Gradually through eating more raw fruits and vegetables you will flush out the heavy accumulation of toxic poisons.

Eliminate the greater portion of the heavy foods from your diet and eat more fruits and vegetables (organic is best) and you will notice a remarkable rejuvenation. Your aches and pains and excess weight will melt away and your energy will soar; no longer will you suffer from fatigue and excessive tiredness. The changes are miraculous!

But when you first go on this program, you may at first look wretched. This will usually happen during the crisis period, when the greatest amount of poisons are loosened from your pipes and vital organs and are being flushed out of your body. When you have gone through the crisis, then you can see the new you revealing itself. Your eyes will become brighter, your skin and muscle tone will become healthier, your joints will become more supple and there is a state of well-being that will throb throughout your entire body and make you glad to be alive.

Keep in mind it took quite a long time to get into the condition you are in now, through wrong habits and wrong eating, and now you must be patient with nature. It takes from two to three years to reach the high point of internal perfection. You cannot throw caution to the wind. If you have been accustomed to eating meat several times a day and eggs and cheese every day, you have to slowly eliminate the excessive use of these foods.

As you add more fruits and vegetables to your diet, you will soon estimate how much of the stimulation foods that you can eat every day and gradually reach a status quo. This is the point where toxic poisons are no longer retained in your body. This is the condition you should seek: a clean, painless, tireless, ageless body!

You will continually hear people say, "You should eat a hearty breakfast to get energy." This is not true - scientifically it takes a tremendous amount of nervous energy to masticate, digest, assimilate and eliminate a regular heavy breakfast.

The morning is the time to drink fresh fruit juices, or better still to eat whole fresh fruit. This is the ideal nourishment for early morning because fruit requires the most infinitesimal amount of digestion. The natural sugars of fresh fruit can give you more blood sugar than eggs, meat, toast, buns, coffee and sausage.

Your body operates on blood sugar. A healthy person manufactures a fourth of a cup daily. This blood sugar is where the muscles draw their energy. Fruit is light and does not require the tremendous amount of energy to digest that cereals, meat, eggs and other heavy foods require.


I Have Seen People Banish Many Physical Problems

I have seen people banish physical problems by eating nothing but raw fruit for breakfast! It's easy and healthy!

Your noon meal should consist of a large vegetable salad - raw - either chopped or grated cabbage, carrots, beets and celery. They are the base of your health salad. To this combination you can add any raw vegetables you desire - cucumbers, lettuce, broccoli, radishes, parsley, avocados, tomatoes, green onions and sprouts.

Or perhaps you would enjoy just a large cole slaw (grated or chopped cabbage) salad, or a cabbage, carrot and raisin salad or a raw grated beet, turnip and cabbage salad.

You can make a salad dressing of raw, Bragg Organic Apple Cider Vinegar and olive oil or just a freshly squeezed lemon or orange. Always eat your fill of raw salad first. Never let hot food touch your mouth until you have had your fill of the raw salad. The salad as well as fresh fruits are the internal purifiers, the fighters of toxic poisons!

If you have not been used to eating a large raw vegetable salad, go slowly. You may say to me, "Raw salad fills me with gas," or "Raw salads do not agree with me." When a raw salad does not agree with you, it shows you have a mucus condition in the bowel. They are sick bowels. So there is only one thing to do and that is to change your diet slowly. It took a long time for the bowel to be in this condition and it will take time and conditioning to get the bowel ready to accept the raw salads. The daily salad is very important. It is the master internal cleanser - nature`s broom.

The next question is what to eat with this salad. The best thing would be a baked potato and a fresh cooked vegetable like string beans, steamed squash, peas, corn on the cob, carrots, beets, broccoli, greens or any fresh vegetables, squash, etc. you desire.

Now what about protein? If you feel you need meat, eat it, but just remember, not more than two times a week. You can have fresh fish several times a week. I personally prefer the healthier and safer vegetable proteins; try them yourself!

The racehorse does not eat concentrated protein. She gets her great speed, strength and endurance from the vegetable kingdom. Raw nuts, seeds, raw wheat germ, nutritional yeast, tofu, natural brown rice, soybeans and dried beans are delicious, nutritious, rich, healthy vegetarian sources of non-uric acid, non-cholesterol protein.


52% of Americans will die of cardiovascular disease

You must always keep in mind that meat is a secondhand food. The animal ate the green growing things that produced the meat. And when that animal was killed, it retained all the poisons it had in its body. Meat has uric acid and contains heavy concentrations of visible and invisible saturated fats. These waxy fats (cholesterol) clog the human pipes and cardiovascular system. Studies show that vegetarians live longer.

Milk is mucus-forming. No animal except man drinks milk after weaning. Studies link it to allergies, indigestion, juvenile diabetes, etc. Instead enjoy the delicious, healthy soy, nut and rice milks.

Allow at least five hours between each meal. The digestive system must have time to do its important work efficiently. The evening meal must start with some kind of raw fruit or vegetable salad. Let us say at the noon meal you had a large vegetable salad, so now you would like to change to a fruit salad. This is perfectly all right because a delicious fruit salad is not only tasty, but is a real toxin fighter. Fresh fruits are very aggressive, they will help dissolve and flush toxic poisons out of your body.

You can start your next meal with a fruit salad, as our principle is always to eat something raw at the beginning of your meals. But when you eat a fruit salad, you should always wait ten minutes before eating hot food. Fruit leaves the stomach faster and prepares the way for the hot food of your mealtimes.

You may have two cooked vegetables - one yellow and one green. Have a dish of steamed or baked carrots and a dish of lightly steamed greens such as spinach, chard, kale, mustard, beet or turnip greens. These yellow and green vegetables are rich in essential vitamins and minerals. Organic veggies and fruits are the healthiest for you.

If you crave sweets after a meal, try fresh fruit or baked apples, stewed fruit or even occasionally a healthy pie, cake or cookies made with whole grain flour and honey.


If You Are Filled with Anxiety and Stresses . . .

Be sure your diet includes plenty of foods rich in B vitamins: Raw wheat germ, brewer's yeast, blackstrap molasses, brown rice, lentils, barley, soybeans, dried peas and beans, peanuts, cornmeal, buckwheat groats, mushrooms, broccoli, turnip & mustard greens, spinach, peas, cabbage, grapefruit, and oranges.

Never, under any circumstances, use mineral oil as a laxative. Mineral oils rob the body of the fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and F) waiting to be assimilated in the intestinal tract.

Only use enemas or high colonic irrigations in cases of sickness or extreme constipation. Your nerves move your bowels and they can do the job if your B-complex intake is adequate and your diet is balanced daily with 8 glasses of distilled water plus herbal teas, fresh juices and fruits, salads, vegetables and whole grains. For good elimination daily, mix 1 to 2 tsps of: 1/2 oat bran and 1/2 psyllium powder or soaked flax seeds to juices, soups, herbal teas, whole grain cereals, baked goods, etc. or Bragg Pep Drink or Bragg ACV Cocktail (1-2 tsps Bragg Raw Organic ACV "with the Mother" and 1 tsp raw honey in glass of distilled water).

And remember, there is nothing as important as good elimination, so take care of this important function. Don't tell me you are too busy. Bowel elimination is vital to vigorous health. This waste matter must be moved out of your body regularly.

Many people are sick simply because they are starving for sunshine. The rays of the sun are powerful germicides. As your skin absorbs these rays, it stores up this healing and germ-killing energy. The sun can provide the best remedy for you if you are nervous and filled with anxiety, worry, frustration, stresses and strains. When you lie in the early or late day gentle sunshine, its soothing warm rays give you what your body is crying out for - relaxation!

The Bragg Stay Ageless Program promotes lifelong health and fitness through the simple Bragg Healthy Lifestyle!

other Bragg LifeStyle Articles you can read:

Patricia Bragg - The Organic Cheerleader
Healthy Heart - Key to a Long Life
Liquid Aminos - Stirfry and a Healthy Diet
Apple Cider Vinegar can Help Reverse Aging
Apple Cider Vinegar and it's benefits
Honolulu Marathon Winners who are Bragg Followers

That is one of the biggest crocks of shit I have ever read.

Every human body has a built-in healing mechanism..

Yes it does. Unfortunately, it happens to be finite, and nothing can change that. There's numerous theories about ageing; primary and secondary ageing, programmed death etc. We may have a few ideas about it, but we're still in the dark.

Every two years you get an entirely new bone structure, so in three years you are really born again

Not exactly. Your bones continually remodel during your life in order to adapt to the stresses applied to them (feel your shins? The "lumps" aren't consistent as they are places where the bones were palced under stress and thickened as a result.) and to stabilise your blood calcium levels. Your body isn't magically replacing your old bones into new ones as it implies.

Infections, germs, bugs, viruses and bacteria are scavengers. They clean up decaying filth. If that decaying filth happens to be in your body, they are going to start eating the toxic slime.


Please. Bacteria and virii multiply in order to survive, just like we do. Depending on how well a job they do of invading us, our death is an unfortunate side-effect of their multiplacation. Besides, for foreign cells and debris, we have phagocytes to clean them up.

If by wrong eating you create decaying matter in your body, it's only part of nature's plan that germs will come and eat this dead substance. Germs never attack clean, toxic-free tissue or clean, toxic-free blood

Again, see above. Bacteria generally attack healthy tissue because it's more ideal for multiplying in!

It is possible, in my opinion, to live in a perfect state of agelessness

They're entitled to it and positive thinking is a very powerful and useful thing, but the facts are this; we will all age. Some of us will age severely, others will age more gracefully (I recall a professor aged in his 70s, who, without exaggeration, did not have one wrinkle on his face or body and looked like he was 30).

My heart will give up one day because I use it. It will wear down because. I can make its job a lot easier by eating correctly and exercising, but it will still stop one day.

These processed, sugared, salted, refined, chemicalized foods work slowly, but very effectively and are deadly.


True, excess refined sugars can cause hyper-insulin, and we should consume lower GI foods. However, our genetic makeup plays an important part too.

I want you to remember first and keep it in mind at all times that the ideal diet is raw fruits, salad, sprouts; raw, steamed and woked or baked vegetables; and raw nuts and seeds with a preponderance of raw and cooked green leafy vegetables (chard, beet tops, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, turnip and mustard greens, collards, kale etc.)


What about protein and carbohydrates? Protein is very important for muscle growth and repair, and carbohydrates are an important part of energy production. During puberty, your body will need these as well as some level of saturated fats. I realise they mention protein intake later, but I wnat to address it up here.

The racehorse does not eat concentrated protein. She gets her great speed, strength and endurance from the vegetable kingdom. Raw nuts, seeds, raw wheat germ, nutritional yeast, tofu, natural brown rice, soybeans and dried beans are delicious, nutritious, rich, healthy vegetarian sources of non-uric acid, non-cholesterol protein

Good for the racehorse. It may come as a shock to people, but...we're not horses! Low-saturated fats are GOOD, and those foods are useful, don't get me wrong. However, I believe that they are also important for testosterone production in males. You need to achieve a BALANCE, not a "I'll have none of this or my diet will consist solely of this" attitude.

And when that animal was killed, it retained all the poisons it had in its body

With all the damage done to our soils by industrial chemicals and pesticides vetegables are automatically better? There's an argument that whilst natural, untreated vitamins and minerals are better absorbed by the body than supplements, you can't count on that anymore due to the copious amounts of chemicals used in growing the vegetables and controlling pests affecting their quality, as well as passing on the chemicals to you. Frankly I think that argument is reasonably valid. If you grow your own vegetables naturally, that's fine, but most of us don't.

As your skin absorbs these rays, it stores up this healing and germ-killing energy.

Vitamin D is good for you. But as someone who lives in a country with one of the most highest rates of skin cancer, you need to be sensible about it.

The advice given for vitamins intake to combat stress and anxiety was accurate, but I wasn't imrpessed with the rest of their information.

Infections, germs, bugs, viruses and bacteria are scavengers. They clean up decaying filth. If that decaying filth happens to be in your body, they are going to start eating the toxic slime.

Just remember it is impossible for any kind of germ or virus to attack clean healthy tissue. They only eat decaying matter.

It was an interesting article up until that point--then I just skimmed the rest. Viruses and bacteria are not the same thing, and therefore can't be lumped into the same "scavenger" category.

In addition, she's simply wrong to claim that "healthy cells" by themselves ward off bacteria and viruses. The immune system combats them--this is a "duh" statement to any rational person--along with the other defense mechanisms (e.g. skin, hair) the body has. Because of this, she'd be more accurate to say such "purification" aids your immune system in fending off the invaders, rather than claiming that the mere presence of "healthy" tissue is enough to ward them off.

I like the concept of healing by nature, just not the way she describes. It's hard to take stock in the opinion of someone who overlooks rudimentary science; although, it's plausible she preys on ignorance so she can further reinforce her theory. Conceding that viruses indiscriminately attack all living cells and not just those that are "tainted" would run counter to what she posits. ("I eat nothing but steamed beets and unrefined nuts--COME AND GET ME, AIDS!")

P.S. You can tell by my copious use of quotes that I think she's a quack. <3. Where are her scientific delineations?

For the past few months I've just been feeling down. I don't know what caused it, I don't know how to stop it.

Feeling down for as long as you say you have been and not being able to establish why certainly can make the initial uneasy feeling spiral into depression. In my own experience, trying to suppress or stop this feeling can make the problem more persistent. The more you try to stop it the more engrained the feeling will be. Dealing with your feelings is a more healthy approach than avoiding them.

I'm not sure I know what depression is myself but feeling permanently down, out of your body, and feeling detached from who you thought you were are not the way you are supposed to feel or how you are used to feeling. That is the extent to how down I have felt before for long periods and my own interpretation of depression.


I just feel weird and I don't want to say anything to my friends because I don't want to worry them for something they don't need to be worried about. Is what I'm feeling normal, like is it some sort of phase?

Talking to your friends about it and sharing the problem with those you know personally is a healthy way of getting the problem from your mind and making sense of it by hearing their opinions, rather than those of your own. They are your friends, they will want to help you but unless you don't say you won't know and you'll feel isolated. You could try discussing it without making a big deal of it, by saying "anyone else get bummed out by not enjoying birthdays/feeling in limbo/not being a kid anymore", if your friends are the same age then chances are they will be dealing with the same issue.

My advice would be to go to the doctor after talking to your friends or family, but avoid taking medication because you don't want to become dependent on it.

My depression lasted for a year in it's worst state, then the feeling gradually died off over time, now I live in a higher state of awareness - sounds cheesy but becoming depressed can be a liberator, it can make you appreciate life more and in viewing it that way it can be seen as a phase - a necessary phase of your own development. I think you are reflecting on where you are now since leaving school and are puzzled about the future.

It's easy to say but try not to let the world/your environment bewilder you, let it inspire and be a constant source of entertainment. (like my post if you are thinking it's major BS;))

I took up painting, it is something that makes me feel good, it occupies my thoughts and helps me when I'm down. If you do not have a hobby then try something you have always wanted to do, it's worth a shot.

I think to answer the title of your post; it is normal to go through these feelings, if they stop you from getting on with your life then seek help, if not then get on with it.

I see everyone's point with the article that I posted. All I can do it refer back to those that I know who use this product, myself included.

I am not going all Tom Cruise on you about this, it is merely information about a product that I feel strongly about. Again, it is INFORMATION from them about their product. A bit slanted but all I can express is how it makes me feel.

Eversince I have used this product, I have felt better. If you are down adn depressed, in my case at the time, I always felt horrible. I had less vocus and interest in things. After I started using Braggs, I noticed a huge difference. And that difference filtered down to other parts of my body and so on.

All I know is how it makes me, and those I know about, feel.

All I ask it that you try it for one bottle, if you can. If not then use it in your salad dressing.

Who remembers meeting me at the EvBoard party? That girl I was with is my best friend, second to Dardee of course. LC and Bonita met her. She is 40 as well and she looks 25-26.

I am oly stating facts that pertain to she and I.

happy belated birthday ^^;;; i also thing its clinical depression hey the comercials really do help XD i hope you feel better soon go see a doc.

Thankyou everyone who replied to this post. I read every reply and I've been thinking..

I think it could be because I have just left school and I'm in the transition (sp?) between high school and life. I am still living at home, trying to find a job. I've just finished a 6 month Tafe course. Most of my friends have gone away to Uni, well 3 of my really close friends have gone. I talk to Rhiannon (who lives 10 hours away) every day. I talk to Karla (4 hours away) once a week and we send emails a few times a week, but I hardly talk to Candice because she has no reception where she is. They all come back home next weekend for a month so I'm really excited and looking forward to them coming home. =)

I think that's what I need. Something to look forward to. Last time they came home I felt really down because they had all been off doing new things with their life whereas I was still in the same place doing the same things. But it wore off after a few days and I could genuinly enjoy them being home. I need something or someone in my life that I can see just about every day, someone to love me I guess. I went away for the weekend to see my sister and I couldn't wait to get back home because I missed my kitty. I was sitting in the car getting all impatient because the car trip wouldn't go fast enough for me to get home! Hahaha. It makes me feel loved when I get home because she is sitting by the door waiting for me and she sleeps with me at night time. I've had her for like 6 months, so she's still only a baby and very much in that loving mood! Haha.

For the most part, it isn't really a feeling of being down it's just a weird feeling. Like a feeling of nothing.. like I don't have any emotion? I don't like looking forward into the future (talking 3+ years future here) incase things don't work out how I had expected and I just get disappointment.

Apart from all that blab I just went on with, I am still able to get simple joys out of life like when you wake up and you see frost (still get excited about this - leave me alone alright!!), I like it when I wake up and my cat is lying next to me on my pillow looking at me, I like it when I get messages from my friends, when someone does something that lets me know they still care, that they're still thinking of me; when someone walks past that smells really good you just want to go snuggle into them and smell them forever! Hehehe. I love hugs! Really tight hugs!! And my best friend who comes home next week gives the BEST hugs ever!! So I'm looking forward to getting lots of hugs off her!!

If any of you guys are still reading this, just rattle off random things that you get pleasure out of. Things that make you smile =)

Thankyou again to everyone who took the time to read and reply to this post =) *huggles you guys all tight and warm*

Love Susie ox

Like a feeling of nothing.. like I don't have any emotion? I don't like looking forward into the future (talking 3+ years future here) incase things don't work out how I had expected and I just get disappointment.

I know that feeling well; I'm not sure whether I'd like to continue with my health sciences degree, or change to another course. I've also experienced emotional detachment for quite some time, which I'm slowly breaking down.

Have you felt a lack of emotions since you've finished high school, or have you felt them for longer? Perhaps more importantly, what has changed about yourself or your situation that you don't like feeling emotionally detached from others? The fact that you feel uncomfortable about your current state is actually a positive sign, as it appears that deep within your psyche, you want to genuinely feel. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.

In my experience, the difficult part is analysing why you've constructed an emotional barrier. It's not pretty having to ask yourself these questions, but it is of benefit and a vital method of releasing your emotional burden. Therapy can help you through this. Good luck, and PM me if you'd like to talk further.

I think that's what I need. Something to look forward to. Last time they came home I felt really down because they had all been off doing new things with their life whereas I was still in the same place doing the same things.

I feel similarly. I've been at the same job for nearly two and a half years. Whenever I really want to get depressed, I like to go beyond that simple statistic and think of it like...


I started when I was 17 (JAILBAIT). I'm 20 now. I've simultaneously lost my innocence, embarked into adulthood, and shed my teenage years in this timespan.

I was still in high school when I started my job; it's been two years since my graduation now. On top of that, those who were freshmen when I was a senior are now seniors themselves this fall. I FEEL OLD. Again, we've done this aging at the same stagnant job. Hello, life!--oh, don't mind me, I'm just WATCHING YOU PASS BY.


The worst is when I see people I went to school with come in, and there I am, slaving away at my monotonous job that the person plucked off the adjacent bus stop could do. Not as good as me, mind you, but they could still do it nonetheless.

But, good news: my bogus-ass workplace is getting my two week notice on July 7th or 8th, I haven't decided which. (My Evanescence-loving coworker Lisa is quitting with me too, b/c we're bitches like that.) I've decided that I need to free myself from the shackles that bind me, even if I don't have another job to also tie me up with when I quit. I'll manage.

Liberation is on the horizon.

P.S.

If any of you guys are still reading this, just rattle off random things that you get pleasure out of.

I like Happy Bunny (I wear a Happy Bunny shirt now that says, "Hate is just a special kind of love we give to people who suck") and smart people. AND RAIN. Oh, and I like getting newfound appreciation for Evanescence songs; I used to not care for "Bleed" too much, but I was looking through the "What song would you like remade" thread and people kept saying how good it was, so I decided to listen to it more. The ending is my favorite. <3.

Have you felt a lack of emotions since you've finished high school, or have you felt them for longer?

I've think I've only noticed it since I finished school.. But during the early years of high school I sat with a group of bitchy girls where I was the bottom feeder so to say. I wasn't treated all that nice. But then by year 9 I had moved from that group to a group of people that were actually my friends and treated me with the respect I deserved. Then in year 12, my final year of high school I spent a lot of time with a girl who has since become my best friend. She made me realise things that I had been blind to for so long. I guess Ev's BMTL does have some meaning for me! Hahaha.
So yeahh.. I think from those early years of school I'd learnt to 'block out' emotion I guess to protect myself from getting hurt?

The fact that you feel uncomfortable about your current state is actually a positive sign, as it appears that deep within your psyche, you want to genuinely feel.

Yeah. I am aware that this is happening. It feels like I'm not feeling anything at all, emotion wise. I want to be able to feel things again, not just continuing to feel little bits here and there. I want to feel my emotions to their full extent. Make myself know that I am alive.

I'm not really into psychology, but I've got some theories. The first one is that maybe you've lost interest because you need something new, to discover new sensations, for example, instead of having a party on your birthday, going to a rollercoaster or going to spend the night in the campside with your friends. That may be new for you and then feel more excited about that. But you say that you feel down as well when your friends come to visit you after long time. If you're 19 this "depression" could be caused by hormones, although it seems that these hormonal changes are only on teens. But your body still gets through many changes. Maybe this apathy can be also caused by some external factor. For example, changing weather can cause depression, or mental effort for exams or hard work at college; also, having to adapt to a new situation (moving to a new house, spending most of the time on your own,...). So you know, I would recommend going out with friends very often, or meeting new people. The most important is to be active, to do things (but without overloading yourself!! cos that causes stress and consequently depression). Take care.

So yeahh.. I think from those early years of school I'd learnt to 'block out' emotion I guess to protect myself from getting hurt?

Possibly. Then again, it may not be that. As you said, you moved to a social group that respected you (did & do you still feel good about that?) and you had a great best friend in Year 12. In my opinion, your past experiences may be a reason, but if you had a good support network during the last few years of school, that may not be the main reason why you feel fairly numb. It may be something else, perhaps closer to home. Can you think of any reason why exactly you decided that "hey, living in a tower emotionally detached from people really sucks, I want out?"

As you said, you moved to a social group that respected you (did & do you still feel good about that?) and you had a great best friend in Year 12. In my opinion, your past experiences may be a reason, but if you had a good support network during the last few years of school, that may not be the main reason why you feel fairly numb.

I did and do feel good about moving from one group to the other. For one it made me realise that I wasn't locked there for the rest of high school, and it let me know that I had to power to decide that this isn't how I wanted to spend the rest of high school and have the ability to change that situation. Plus, after I left the group fell apart - literally. 2 weeks after I left two other girls left together and not long after that another girl left, leaving a grand total of 3 people. Made me feel really good about myself, that somehow in a weird way I was kind of the thing that was holding the group together even though they treated me like shit.
I'm a pretty.. I wouldn't say shy, but I'm pretty quiet. Half the time I don't notice it until someone makes a comment about me being quiet. It's normal for me, but not for others.. I'd prefer to be an invisible spectator that right in the middle of it. Would this have something to do with it? I don't think it would.. But just thought I'd throw that one in there.
Sitting here, just thinking.. I am trying to find an emotion of how I feel right now, this very second. I can't find any. I'm not happy, I'm not sad, I'm not lonely.. I'm just here.

It may be something else, perhaps closer to home. Can you think of any reason why exactly you decided that "hey, living in a tower emotionally detached from people really sucks, I want out?"

I don't know. I don't know if it was a gradual realisation or if just one day I thought "hey! I can't feel anything". I knew/know that this isn't normal, and that I wasn't always like this. Or maybe I was and I just never really took any notice to it until recently.

Opening up like this really isn't me. I never open up unless I'm drunk and it's to someone I really know, but in here I feel somewhat safe because I don't any of you guys and you don't know me, so it's easy just to speak out without the fear of being judged.

its good that you can open up i understand how scary it is to talk to the people you know because as you say that you are going to be judged! its really good that you can open up :D

I'm a pretty.. I wouldn't say shy, but I'm pretty quiet. Half the time I don't notice it until someone makes a comment about me being quiet. It's normal for me, but not for others.. I'd prefer to be an invisible spectator that right in the middle of it. Would this have something to do with it? I don't think it would.. But just thought I'd throw that one in there.
Sitting here, just thinking.. I am trying to find an emotion of how I feel right now, this very second. I can't find any. I'm not happy, I'm not sad, I'm not lonely.. I'm just here.

By spectator, do you mean you'd rather not participate in those events where you're quiet at all? If so, then perhaps you should do something with your friends, or by yourself where you don't feel pressured to engage in conversations where you feel awkward or what-not.

I don't know. I don't know if it was a gradual realisation or if just one day I thought "hey! I can't feel anything". I knew/know that this isn't normal, and that I wasn't always like this. Or maybe I was and I just never really took any notice to it until recently.

Opening up like this really isn't me. I never open up unless I'm drunk and it's to someone I really know, but in here I feel somewhat safe because I don't any of you guys and you don't know me, so it's easy just to speak out without the fear of being judged.

Telling ourselves an idea or belief is one thing; actually knowing and believing it at a conscious and unconscious level is another. Maybe it was the shift of social networks from school to tertiary education, maybe it's the different culture outside school, maybe yor relationship with your family has changed. It could be a lot of things that made you decide that being emotionally detached isn't much fun and/or were responsible for locking away your emotions.

I tend to be somewhat reserved about my feelings as well (partly due to the barriers I put up, partly to the whole macho "guys don't express their feelings" bullshit). It's not an emotionally healthy thing, and it's good that you feel confident in discussing them here.

You said you feel more confident here because no-one can judge you; are you afraid of people looking down on yourself like in junior high school? Would it be fair to say that you'd like to be accepted for who you are by others, but you find it difficult for people to do so when being quiet and/or emotionally detached?

By spectator, do you mean you'd rather not participate in those events where you're quiet at all? If so, then perhaps you should do something with your friends, or by yourself where you don't feel pressured to engage in conversations where you feel awkward or what-not.

Uhmm.. Meaning.. Like.. For example, if I'm in a group of people and there is a conversation going on, I'd rather just listen than contribute to it. Most of the time it's because I can't think of anything to say, but other times it's because I don't feel like what I would have to say is that important/interesting so I don't say anything at all. A lot of the time I don't even notice that I'm not saying anything, and I'm just listening, but then others, I kind of wake up and realise that I haven't said anything for the entire conversation apart from a laugh here or there. But in situations where it's one on one or me and 2 or 3 other people and they're having 'issues' I'm pretty good there. I'm a good advice giver. But when it comes to me, I generally keep it to myself, well, apart from this thread! Hahaha. I'm pretty open on my LJ for some reason. Even though a lot of my friends read it, I block that thought out and just write whatever, pretending it's just for me and the people I don't know. I think I went off track there.. Hrmm.. Oh well.


Telling ourselves an idea or belief is one thing; actually knowing and believing it at a conscious and unconscious level is another. Maybe it was the shift of social networks from school to tertiary education, maybe it's the different culture outside school, maybe yor relationship with your family has changed. It could be a lot of things that made you decide that being emotionally detached isn't much fun and/or were responsible for locking away your emotions.

You know, you were the first person to suggest that it could be because I had just finished school and going onto something new. I think you're right with that one. I don't think, well, I'm pretty sure that before school had finished I wasn't feeling like this.. But after school had finished and it was this year, a lot of my friends moved away to go to Uni and I was left here on my own pretty much, I had to fill the time with myself. I couldn't drive 5 minutes and see my friends when I was bored or feeling lonely. Realising this absence, I started spending more time with my best friends sister who is 2 years younger than me, trying to fill the void of her being gone. Even though Kate is completly different to Rhiannon, it still made me feel a little bit of comfort being around her. Spending more time with Kate was a good thing because when she needed advice or someone to talk to she'd call me, which she never use to do. It made us closer, but in saying that Rhiannon and I are as close as we use to be.

I tend to be somewhat reserved about my feelings as well (partly due to the barriers I put up, partly to the whole macho "guys don't express their feelings" bullshit).

That macho guy thing is a load of shit. I can understand why guys don't express their feelings to other guys, but to girls it's a quality if a guy is able to open up to her, well, to me it is anyway. It lets you see a whole other side of the guy that you never knew exsisted. Lets us know that you're not all "I'm a guy. I have no emotion. I'm tough"

You said you feel more confident here because no-one can judge you; are you afraid of people looking down on yourself like in junior high school? Would it be fair to say that you'd like to be accepted for who you are by others, but you find it difficult for people to do so when being quiet and/or emotionally detached?

I'm not afraid of people looking down on me, I'm scared of people judging me. Because in high school I was 'the quiet one', it kind of made me believe that that is what I was and that I had to live up to that expectation kinda.. That if for some reason I felt the urge to just yell something I couldn't because it'd make people notice me (I hate being the centre of attention) and re-think their view of me. That sounds really stupid hey? I can't explain what I mean. OK, for example (this is one of me being out-going), there was this guy that I met on a holiday in Fiji (he is from Sydney). He came up for a weekend to see me and my friend that was in Fiji with me. He stayed at my friends house and they made out a bit (expand 'a bit' to 'a lot'), but it was a once off thing, and nothing went further than that (he was drunk, courtisy of me *nods* hehe). I had a bit of a crush on him, and when she told me what happend after he'd left my heart dropped, it actually felt like my heart was sinking, it was so weird. Anyway, about 2 or 3 weeks later I went down to Sydney to see my aunty and we met up and went to Darling Habour for the Saturday night. Was pretty fun, just me and him. I was able to just act normal, not hold back. He didn't know me as the 'shy girl' so I didn't feel like I had to act a certain way for him not to judge me. So my infatuation with him expanded. He was being the perfect guy, doing all the right things, making sure I was safe. To me he is a really good looker, so for him to be spending time with me and wanting to made my self-esteem rise considerably. Anyways, so about 2 weeks later I got the courage and told him I thought I liked him. The feeling wasn't returned, but despite that it didn't lower my self-esteem at all, I was just glad that I had a friend like him and that nothing had changed between us. For that short amount of time that that was going on, he was in my head constantly, I could feel. I would find myself smiling to myself for no other reason than him - just thinking of him made me smile. But now I'm back to my feeling of numbness. That's why I said I think I just need someone to love me, or for me to love.. Just to have someone..

Anyway I think a lot of that was highly irrelevant, but I was able to pinpoint a time where I knew I could feel..
You probably don't think this, but just having you talking to me, and making me express how I'm feeling and what I think has helped me a heap. It's made me examine myself. Thankyou.

For the past few months I've just been feeling down. I don't know what caused it, I don't know how to stop it. It's not depression, well, I don't think it is, I mean, I don't have any problems, my home life is pretty OK and nothing in my childhood was overly hard that it would cause problems later in life. 3 of my pretty close friends come over last week that I hadn't seen in about a month and while I was excited to see them, I didn't feel happy. It's like I had to force a smile..

For example, today is my birthday, I'm 19. Most of my friends are still away at Uni until next week so I'm just here alone on my birthday. It's weird. You know how you normally get excited for birthdays (hello? Presents!).. this year I'm not for some reason. I don't know why.. It doesn't feel like it's today. It doesn't feel like it's been a year. Why do we get so excited for birthdays anyway? Is it just the thought of presents? Thinking back to when we were kids, we got excited because we got to have a party, all our friends got to come over to our house, we got to play party games and get lollie bags.. I think by the time you get to about year 3 or 4 the excitement wears off. We stop having little kid parties, and start having sleep overs. Someone always gets left out, and a fight breaks out, lasts for a week and then we forget about it until the next party, and the person that left us out, we leave them out. Then high school comes along. A world of underage drinking parties. Oh the fun! Now I'm 19. You're in between the 18 and the 21. What do you do? It's just an age until you reach another "monumental" birthday. Nothing special. Just an excuse to go out and get pissed. Which I have every intention of doing *nods* But eh.. I just feel strange.

Anyways, yeah, probably ignore this thread, delete it if it breaches any of the rules. I just feel weird and I don't want to say anything to my friends because I don't want to worry them for something they don't need to be worried about. Is what I'm feeling normal, like is it some sort of phase?

Love Susie ox

Wow! I think we've got something in common. I turned 19 back in April, and I was in a sort of depressed state too. I wasn't sure what it was, or what it still is. As you said, it's nothing at home. In my case, I think my friends had something to do with it. I used to look forward going to TAFE (for non-Aussies- Technical College), it's my 2nd year now, and now I really don't like going. And I'm not exactly sure why. It'll go eventually. That much I'm sure. For you to have that depressed or whatever it is state as well, it must mean it's normal. But my "depressed state" started around my B'day, and got worse, and around end of May, beginning of June it got really bad. Breaking point. The worst part was that I had exams at that time too.
So don't worry, it'll all be fine. :D

Uhmm.. Meaning.. Like.. For example, if I'm in a group of people and there is a conversation going on, I'd rather just listen than contribute to it. Most of the time it's because I can't think of anything to say, but other times it's because I don't feel like what I would have to say is that important/interesting so I don't say anything at all. A lot of the time I don't even notice that I'm not saying anything, and I'm just listening, but then others, I kind of wake up and realise that I haven't said anything for the entire conversation apart from a laugh here or there. But in situations where it's one on one or me and 2 or 3 other people and they're having 'issues' I'm pretty good there. I'm a good advice giver. But when it comes to me, I generally keep it to myself, well, apart from this thread!

Hahaha! Shit! Do I know you? I'm exactly like that! I'm terrible in a group. I'm too quiet too...I can't think of anything to say. But yeah, in smaller groups or one-on-one conversations, I'm good too. As for advice... I think I give good advice... I hope I do... ah well...

Not to be rude, but things didn't "work out for me eventually" over the 18 months I've been at uni (instead, I became more and more emotionally detached) until I finally decided to do something about it two months ago. People can put up some very powerful barriers at an unconscious level, which block what they'd like to achieve.

I'm scared of people judging me. Because in high school I was 'the quiet one', it kind of made me believe that that is what I was and that I had to live up to that expectation kinda.. That if for some reason I felt the urge to just yell something I couldn't because it'd make people notice me (I hate being the centre of attention) and re-think their view of me.

It seems as though you're unsure of who you are and whether you'd still like to be the "quiet one" or whether you'd like to be noticed now. It's normal to feel confused about your identity. You said you're not afraid of being looked down upon, but being judged. Are you concerned that people will see yourself in a different light and that they may not accept yourself, or are you more concerned that you haven't been showing your true nature to others?

Generally speaking, if you're not comfortable with yourself, then opening up to others will be extremely difficult. You know yourself better than anyone else, and if you're not sure about who you are or what you want, then other people will have a very tough time trying to see that, especially if you're detaching yourself emotionally. You appear to want others to accept yourself, to be in love with someone else and yet I think you hide your emotiions and your identity away, making it virtually impossible for others to open up to you, or you to them. If so, then you'll need to ask yourself; what has happened that made m want to lock myself away?

Does that seem accurate to you or does it sound like a complete load bullshit? (I won't be offended if you say so; our experiences and attitudes are all different, and your reasons/context may be completely different to mine)

It seems as though you're unsure of who you are and whether you'd still like to be the "quiet one" or whether you'd like to be noticed now. It's normal to feel confused about your identity. You said you're not afraid of being looked down upon, but being judged. Are you concerned that people will see yourself in a different light and that they may not accept yourself, or are you more concerned that you haven't been showing your true nature to others?
I am more concerned with people seeing me differently. I don't think I am concerned with the fact that they might not be as willing to accept me though, but maybe I am?

Truth be told, I don't even know myself. I know I don't want to be "the quiet one" all the time, but I can't seem to be anything different than that unless it's with people I don't know, and it just one on one or 2 or 3 people. I don't function well in crowds! Haha. But I can't seem to get myself out of it. Stuck in a habit I guess?

Hey, could you help me out (a little more! Haha). How would you show a girl you're keen? There have been one or two guys that seem a bit "friendly" so to speak, but I don't know if it is just me misinterpreting them, or if they are genuinly interested..

Generally speaking, if you're not comfortable with yourself, then opening up to others will be extremely difficult. You know yourself better than anyone else, and if you're not sure about who you are or what you want, then other people will have a very tough time trying to see that, especially if you're detaching yourself emotionally. You appear to want others to accept yourself, to be in love with someone else and yet I think you hide your emotiions and your identity away, making it virtually impossible for others to open up to you, or you to them. If so, then you'll need to ask yourself; what has happened that made me want to lock myself away?

I know that I know myself better than anyone else (seem weird that Hilary Duff singing those words came into my head when I read that?), but I guess that I just take it for granted that other people know me too? That even though they have gone through high school, and many of them primary school aswell, they don't even know me, but I'm not aware of it, guessing just because of the length of time I've known them. I was having a conversation with two of my closest friends yesterday and we were talking about what our biggest fear was, and either they've been thinking about it before or they just knew, I don't know, but they were able to reply straight away, where as I sat and thought about it for about 5 minutes and I still didn't know. I think my biggest fear would either have to be losing my friends physically, or dying slowly and painfully or just being in a lot of pain and not being able to do anything about it.

Does that seem accurate to you or does it sound like a complete load bullshit? (I won't be offended if you say so; our experiences and attitudes are all different, and your reasons/context may be completely different to mine)
No, it does seem accurate, so much so that it scares me - that someone I don't know and have never met or has never met me, is able to define me so well. What are you studying at Uni? If you're not doing Phsycology, I would look into it, you'd be really good =)

Wow! I think we've got something in common. I turned 19 back in April, and I was in a sort of depressed state too. I wasn't sure what it was, or what it still is.

Hahaha! Shit! Do I know you? I'm exactly like that! I'm terrible in a group. I'm too quiet too...I can't think of anything to say. But yeah, in smaller groups or one-on-one conversations, I'm good too. As for advice... I think I give good advice... I hope I do... ah well...
I am so glad that I'm not alone, especially with the whole quiet thing, alot of the time it feels like I'm abnormal, and if I am, atleast we can be abnormal together *grins*!! Hahaha. Thankyou for replying =)

omg i know exactly how you feel, now and then i feel so down because i'm accepted by that many people and i am told that i am weird and all that stuff. my b'day was the other day and i put on this act as though i was excited but inside i just wanted to fall into a hole and not see anyone at all. i tried to kill myself when i was younger but ovbiously it didn't work coz i am still here. hiowever, i put on an act as though i am really happy when im not and a lot of people tell me that i am always so happy and that i am so strong, but they don't realise that inside the smallest things hurt so bad and that i feel like weeping!! newayz i am at skool at the moment so i have to go rite now need more help e-mail me at gurlz_rock_4_eva@hotmail.com