Depression Support Group
Depression is a real and debilitating condition that is often misunderstood by family and friends. Its meaning can range from a prolonged period of sadness to an actual mental illness with specific symptoms. Find and share experiences with others who are going through the same struggles.
I have reached a state of non-living and I really don't care. Not caring for long time span is getting painful.
I have no friends, I talk to nobody, only person I ever talk to is my dad, and we just seem to have the same conversation every time, which I think he forgets about, so we have the same conversation again. If I express anything negative it upsets him so much I don't dare anymore. He is very elderly. I might talk to my sister once every couple months and she just pours out all her troubles and is usually pretty once sided conversation. This is the extent of my human contact, and has been for at least the last year.
I leave the house once a month, my dad takes me to the grocery store and sits in the car because he is too old to walk around. This is the only time I see another living person. The trip causes me so much distress I don't sleep for the entire day before and half the time I have to reschedule because I've worked myself up into such a state, or am so exhausted, or the anxiety is just too bad to leave the house. Then it takes me 2 days or more to recover.
My time is entirely taken up by doing things that avoid facing life entirely, mostly reading, watching TV, and playing the same video game. This is the time I can account for, I seem to lose a lot of time, I don't think it is forgetting, it is more like my brain simply isn't recording.
When I decide to do something that is at all productive, I end up in an anxious state where my thinking is dis-jointed and I find I've been pacing for long stretches getting all worked up, sometimes for hours. So I go back to my escapist activities. My attempts at creating checklists or doing small tasks end up putting me in this same anxious state. Leaving the house, or even thinking about it, causes me great distress.
Action of any kind has seemed to become impossible. My finances are all messed up, even the bills I can pay with my disability check are forgotten or neglected. My house is trashed, I walk around the same mess and it just gets bigger. I don't even keep myself clean.
I haven't been to the doctor for awhile, I cancel, they cancel, calling them distresses me, but I still have medication, not that it is helping with this at all. They keep most of the psychotic symptoms away, otherwise reality goes away altogether, but I still have trouble keeping my thoughts going in a linear manner.
Not that I've ever had a decent doctor, or at least not for maybe 20 years. They seem intent on giving me the same few medications, and if I am having a bad period they just increase the dosage until it makes me sick. Lithium, Lamictal, and Seroquel. And if I start feeling better they get this idea that the medicine made me better, even though it is apparent that I'm just changing due to my cycles, and will still get just as bad again when the cycle goes the other way, at which time they will increase the dosage again, until I complain to much about the side effects. The Seroquel is the only thing that I think helps, keeps me from getting voices and visions and runaway delusions, not any help at all for depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, and any number of other problems I have. They have tried a handful of other meds, but they either made me psychotic or other extreme side effects, or nothing, but mostly they just want to give a lot of Lamictal which I have never seen any evidence that it effects me one way or another. The lithium maybe helps some, but that it still does anything for me is very questionable, except make me ill, and have shakes and tremors anytime my anxiety is bad.
I've had a few therapists, but they either listen to me ramble on, without any feedback whatsoever. Or they want to preach to me without bothering to listen at all. Helpful advise seems totally nonexistent. I am thinking that they don't give personalized advise intentionally, in fear that they might be found responsible for any actions taken based on that advise. So anything like life-coaching is off the table. Just generic stuff I can read in a book. I've read so my books, I already had this information. I need someone to listen enough to understand my issues, and give advise based on it, because even with all my introspection, my thinking isn't working. And properly applying generic strategies for coping has only gotten me so far, they help, but I need so much more. I think that both the doctors and therapists seem me as a very well spoken and intelligent and I think my mental health is much better than it is. And when I am totally dysfunctional I don't make it to the doctor at all, except when I am hospitalized, but there they are mainly concerned with locking us up to prevent injury, than actual diagnosis and treatment.
Been going up and down for so many years, I'm getting increasingly cynical and frustrated. This doesn't help with treatment either, but it is hard to escape from, because it is firmly based in my reality for the last 30 years.
Strangely lately, things that happened to me long ago haunt me, more than they have since the immediate aftermath at the time. Have no idea the whys and hows of that.
This posting perhaps is the most direct effort I've (successfully) put forward in awhile in an attempt to deal with things. Honestly I don't see where it will be productive, but I must have a little hope (or just desperation), or I wouldn't have bothered.
Hey world, help
I have no friends, I talk to nobody, only person I ever talk to is my dad, and we just seem to have the same conversation every time, which I think he forgets about, so we have the same conversation again. If I express anything negative it upsets him so much I don't dare anymore. He is very elderly. I might talk to my sister once every couple months and she just pours out all her troubles and is usually pretty once sided conversation. This is the extent of my human contact, and has been for at least the last year.
I leave the house once a month, my dad takes me to the grocery store and sits in the car because he is too old to walk around. This is the only time I see another living person. The trip causes me so much distress I don't sleep for the entire day before and half the time I have to reschedule because I've worked myself up into such a state, or am so exhausted, or the anxiety is just too bad to leave the house. Then it takes me 2 days or more to recover.
My time is entirely taken up by doing things that avoid facing life entirely, mostly reading, watching TV, and playing the same video game. This is the time I can account for, I seem to lose a lot of time, I don't think it is forgetting, it is more like my brain simply isn't recording.
When I decide to do something that is at all productive, I end up in an anxious state where my thinking is dis-jointed and I find I've been pacing for long stretches getting all worked up, sometimes for hours. So I go back to my escapist activities. My attempts at creating checklists or doing small tasks end up putting me in this same anxious state. Leaving the house, or even thinking about it, causes me great distress.
Action of any kind has seemed to become impossible. My finances are all messed up, even the bills I can pay with my disability check are forgotten or neglected. My house is trashed, I walk around the same mess and it just gets bigger. I don't even keep myself clean.
I haven't been to the doctor for awhile, I cancel, they cancel, calling them distresses me, but I still have medication, not that it is helping with this at all. They keep most of the psychotic symptoms away, otherwise reality goes away altogether, but I still have trouble keeping my thoughts going in a linear manner.
Not that I've ever had a decent doctor, or at least not for maybe 20 years. They seem intent on giving me the same few medications, and if I am having a bad period they just increase the dosage until it makes me sick. Lithium, Lamictal, and Seroquel. And if I start feeling better they get this idea that the medicine made me better, even though it is apparent that I'm just changing due to my cycles, and will still get just as bad again when the cycle goes the other way, at which time they will increase the dosage again, until I complain to much about the side effects. The Seroquel is the only thing that I think helps, keeps me from getting voices and visions and runaway delusions, not any help at all for depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, and any number of other problems I have. They have tried a handful of other meds, but they either made me psychotic or other extreme side effects, or nothing, but mostly they just want to give a lot of Lamictal which I have never seen any evidence that it effects me one way or another. The lithium maybe helps some, but that it still does anything for me is very questionable, except make me ill, and have shakes and tremors anytime my anxiety is bad.
I've had a few therapists, but they either listen to me ramble on, without any feedback whatsoever. Or they want to preach to me without bothering to listen at all. Helpful advise seems totally nonexistent. I am thinking that they don't give personalized advise intentionally, in fear that they might be found responsible for any actions taken based on that advise. So anything like life-coaching is off the table. Just generic stuff I can read in a book. I've read so my books, I already had this information. I need someone to listen enough to understand my issues, and give advise based on it, because even with all my introspection, my thinking isn't working. And properly applying generic strategies for coping has only gotten me so far, they help, but I need so much more. I think that both the doctors and therapists seem me as a very well spoken and intelligent and I think my mental health is much better than it is. And when I am totally dysfunctional I don't make it to the doctor at all, except when I am hospitalized, but there they are mainly concerned with locking us up to prevent injury, than actual diagnosis and treatment.
Been going up and down for so many years, I'm getting increasingly cynical and frustrated. This doesn't help with treatment either, but it is hard to escape from, because it is firmly based in my reality for the last 30 years.
Strangely lately, things that happened to me long ago haunt me, more than they have since the immediate aftermath at the time. Have no idea the whys and hows of that.
This posting perhaps is the most direct effort I've (successfully) put forward in awhile in an attempt to deal with things. Honestly I don't see where it will be productive, but I must have a little hope (or just desperation), or I wouldn't have bothered.
Hey world, help
kailajo318
I'm sorry to hear that you're struggling do much. That seems very hard to deal with. I think you're in the right place reaching out here. You can talk to me if you want to ever talk whether it's about whatever is bothering you or anything random just to talk. I can relate to getting distressed about going out anywhere or calling. Even though it still bothers me a lot I just think to myself that it's something I have to do and the sooner I do it the sooner it'll be over. But it's still terrifying and I won't deny that. I hope you can feel better. I'm sending you my best wishes.
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