I talked with my therapist about it and he just asked if I expected him to come up with an answer. I told him I know he can't, but it still felt hopeless leaving like that. I know it's up to me to find a way to recover and cope, but it would just be helpful to feel like it's not some hopeless endeavor.

As far as the commute, it's been hardest because I don't like to go to sleep at night, so I'm very tired on the train. I used to try to do things, but mostly I now just listen to music and either count or actually try to sleep. Guided imagery is very hard for me to do - I've tried a few times while in a partial hospital program. The connections are the worst with the commute. After the train, it's wait around for a subway and then a shuttle bus. These days I try to be comfortable, so I won't push myself into crowded places anymore. I'll wait for the next bus if I have to.

As far as the paycheck, I don’t care much about it anymore. I don’t see any of the benefits because the apartment we have we can barely afford and it’s so small that my 11 year old is supposed to room with my 4 year old and that doesn’t work anymore. Now my 4 year old sleeps in my bedroom and I’m on the couch in the living room. There’s no place for me to go when things are stressful. I’ll often listen or write music on the computer to block everything out. One nice thing has been that when I am able to cope with the smallness, I can really enjoy the kids and I look forward to that.

I can probably trace this whole episode back to two major factors. Given that I’ve always felt generally down, I typically had the ability to just find ways to cope. It wasn’t perfect, but functional. Now I’m barely functional and hoping to not fall apart. I’m a manager level, so I have a lot of responsibility that I’m not good at taking care of in this state.

Back to the source: I realize the posts are long and probably not read, but it’s helpful to write things out (putting on words in DBT skills). My p-doc tried to bring me down off a dose another p-doc had for one of my meds. It was technically at an off-label dose, but had been kind of working overall when it was bumped up to that level (years ago). When I went down, I noticed things weren’t as easy as they used to be and of course my current p-doc brought things back up to the old level. I haven’t really ever gotten back to any kind of baseline, which is probably partially due to the other issue that came up.

My therapist was having me talk about my childhood, which I think now is not useful in therapy. I’ve got 45 minutes to talk and if we get to an emotionally charged area, I can’t do anything when time’s up except leave and go back to work. Well some of the things that came up made a lot of connections about things going on now and it put me in some kind of strange place. Basically I just couldn’t accept that things are the way they are and want to fight it.

My descent ends with me on leave from work to go to a partial hospitalization. I gain decent coping skills, but the feelings never go away. It’s just a hard process to go through. I’m fighting now with whether I should accept everything or fight. I want a mentor or someone to just tell me what’s best for me, because I can’t think clearly. My job is good, but frustrating. I can gain a lot of value from it, but mostly I now get frustrated and angry because I feel incompetent and frustrated that I work so hard, but certain others get to waste time investigating things I’ve already proven won’t work.

I have an interview for a place near home, but because it’s a pay cut it may not work out. Also it’s a step down. I worked hard and gave a lot of energy toward advancing and now I’m looking to step down. It feels permanent, but I know it’s not. It doesn’t stop me from trying again later.