Hi again, don't let us overwhelm you......just take your time & think through what you are feeling. Maybe even jot down some of the things your thinking & feeling. When you feel like it, you can post. We are here to support.....& there are great people here for that. I know I joined here just about 2 years ago. I had been dealing with anxiety & depression for about 10 years at that time. Then I started having some weight loss problems again & that was when I joined here.

My mother was dealing with cancer at that time & she did some things that caused a situation that ended up in a person pulling fraud in order to get into taking care of my Mother at her home & stole all her valuable jewelry & I caught the person stealing my Mothers identity. It ended up being a trauma that I couldn't handle & I was afraid for my life especially after she had the police called to my Mothers home to accuse me of abusing my Mother & then OD'ed my Mother on Morphine. I ended up being hospitalized in the medical hospital just when my Mother died because the stress made me feel so sick I couldn't eat. I had my psychiatrist & psychologist at the time, but they too didn't think what I was going through was as serious as it actually was. Besides the weight loss problems, I had some symptoms that I just didn't understand. They were so strange & the people here helped me realize that what I was dealing with was PTSD. At that time, my psychiatrist started to realize that was what I was dealing with too.

The point I am trying to make is that I would explain the symptoms I was experiencing to my psychiatrist & he always had a term for it. At that point, I realized that it seems like everything we experience (no matter how normal or not) has a psychological name for it. What makes a diagnosis is when there are a series of symptoms that exist for a certain problem & that the problem is effecting our daily life in a negative way.

Along the same line, I have had problems with my husband for the 31 years we have been married. Over the years, the same issues continued to come up. We were both aerospace engineers & he was able to function at work. Over the years, his personality problems started getting in his way of performing successfully & his managers at one company decided that he wasn't performing well enough & fired him. Before that, he would always leave a company when he got upset with them.....before they fired him...& he would always find another job. His problems finally got in the way of his performance & when he got older, he couldn't find another job. For the last 4 years, he has been a complete pain to live with & I pointed out what it looked to be as being the problem. Initially he thought the problem was that he was depressed because he couldn't find a job. He was determined that if only someone would hire him as an engineer again that he would be able to perform like before.....so no way did he think of himself as being disabled. I have been complaining to my psychiatrist for several years now about what my husband is doing & just a few weeks ago, it came to him that my husband might be dealing with adult ADD. My psychiatrist is head of a medical trials group & had my husband check out the possibility of becoming part of the trial. He answered the questionaire & started reading the bood that my psychiatrist suggested reading about the adult ADD. It became obvious that he has been dealing with this for at least all the time we have been married & probably was why he didn't do well in college even though his IQ was extremely high. He was always using the excuse that he didn't do well because he was bored.

The point being that we all have many different symptoms that fall under many different diagnosis. It is when the symptoms join together under specific diagnoses & when a specific diagnosis gets in the way of our daily functioning that our problems need professional help.

That is why we need the professionals to determine exactly what is going on with us. They are the ones that can sit back & put the pieces together. All we can do is see the pieces, but putting them together is a whole other issue.

I know for me, the anxiety & depression I was going through wasn't helped by any meds. As a matter of fact, I have a list of about 40+ meds that were tried on me with only bad side effects to show for it & absolutely no help psychologically. For me, it takes having a great psychologist to help he get through each day. At the beginning of my depression, I too was suicidal, & have lost count of the number of times I was hospitalized for OD's. I know that after going through that, suicide definitely isn't the answer. Looking back, there is always hope & I would hate to have missed out on what I now have in my life if I had a suicide attempt that had been successful. Life is never perfect......there are always problems to deal with. What is important is realizing that help is needed & being able to ask for it.

I know when I first was first feeling horrible, I didn't know what was happening to me. I would sit in my office at work, close my door & cry all day. I went to my GP thinking I was just really sick & then they realized it was horrible anxiety attacks I was dealing with. When my insurance told me I had to go to a psychologist, I sat there, not knowing what to say. I couldn't figure out even how to answer his questions & got absolutely no where in therapy. It has taken me years to figure out how to work through therapy.....it just didn't come naturaly to me & I just didn't like to talk about myself or my thoughts.

You are definitely on the right track to realize that you have somethings going on with you. Hopefully here you will feel comfortable enough to be able to open up some & as you are able to deal with your shyness, it will all come together for you. It just takes time & patience....& there are alot of great people here & we are here to listen when you feel like talking. There is also the PM ability if you feel like expressing your thoughts to a specific person rather than to everyone.

We are here for you & hope things start looking better for you,
Debbie