I understand your point, Upper, about wanting to prove you can function in normal life. I feel that way all the time. WHen I graduated nursing school I tried so hard to keep everything together without having to tell anyone what was going on but it eventually blew up in my face. I am on medication at this point but still working full time and am involved in other community activities. Just because you're taking medication doesn't make you any less worthy of a person. It doesn't mean you are weak or anything like that. WHen you have a headache you take Tylenol. Well, I have mood swings so I take lithium. It is what it is and like you said, it takes soooo much effort to pretend to be "normal." I pretend to be normal a lot of times while on the medication because I haven't found something that works great yet.

It's not worth it to continue down the road you're on. You will eventually run out of evergy to play the game and it will blow up in your face like it did for me. I see it all the time. My family doesn't understand it so I don't talk about it with them. I also picked a therapist and psychiatrist who are about 30 minutes outside of town so I wouldn't run into anyone I knew going in for an appt. Whatever you decide to do (I root for going to get help but it's obviously your choice) I wish you the best. The symptoms can be dreadful and I give you credit for reaching out through this forum for support.

To BeautifulDisaster.... congrats on becoming an RN! Way to go. As much as I wanted to work in psych because of what's going on with me personally, I realized that it would be too much of a trigger. When I see people acting the way I feel I want to join in! It's hard to suppress the feelings all the time. Just a thought that if it's too much for you, maybe you could try a different area of nursing then come back to psych later.... you know there are always psych nursing jobs!!!