[Bipolarchic14]

I don't expect anyone to actually respond or to even read this. It is long! I just want to complain about life and needed a place to rant.

Begin rant...so my "disorder" has really f***** up my life. Every time I start a new job, I do really well. Then a really bad depressive episode comes on, and though i function okay, it's not great. I have been at my current job for four years. I went from towards the top of my position, where I was approached to do special projects, etc to now being passed up for every good thing that comes along. I use to feel comfortable going to work, it was a place to escape all of the emotional s*** in my life. Now I hate it. I feel judged and even worse I feel stuck since I don't feel well enough to find a better job.

So in the past year and a half I have been going up and down. It's to the point that I am not able to predict how I will feel from one day to the next. Some days I am really depressed but I can function okay, other days I am so tired I have trouble keeping my eyes open at work. I have days i randomly start tearing up for no f*****g reason. I am usually able to fight my depression but lately I have had to really push myself to get out of bed and do what I have to do in life. I just want to curl up in the middle if my bed and not have to face my life.

I can't even plan things because my mood is so unpredictable right now. I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago and literally slept more than half of my vacation. I had been looking forward to my vacation for so long and I feel like it was wasted. I made plans to go to a couple of concerts this month as I have been trying to fight my social phobia and fears of large crowds. At both events, I started this annoying cough I get when I am upset and overwhelmed. Instead of panic attacks I get an asthmatic cough.

I feel uncomfortable talking to my friends. One friend is always competing with me at work and lately she has been coming up on top and bragging to me about it. Nothing like being kicked when you are down. My other friend is always so argumentative and i don't have the energy to fight her nor do I really care if she is right or wrong. I just want some normal f*****g friends that I can laugh and joke around with. Is that too much to ask for?

My family could care less that I am struggling right now. I have been really trying hard to improve myself including my personal appearance. I have been exercising more and I have been trying to fight phobias I have and have been trying to improve my brain function. Progress is so slow though and my family is not very supportive. One brother barely talks to me and it's not like I have done anything wrong. I don't drink or do drugs. I am not violent. I am just sad a lot, so not much fun to be around. My other brother is tired of hearing me complain, I don't blame him. I don't think he knows how much i struggle with this though. He thinks I have a choice. He has even suggested that someday I may be homeless if I don't improve my life. I am just tired of struggling with things other people take for granted. I just want a normal life.

I have been really suicidal lately, not that anyone really cares. I can't even go to a mental hospital for help. I am afraid I will lose my job and my insurance and not be able to support myself. Besides I heard they don't really help depressed people. I just don't know what to do anymore. How do you know if life is worth living or if you are just better of calling it quits? That is the question I have been struggling with lately.

[Crazy Hitch]

Hi Bipolarchick

I am sorry to hear that you are not in a good place right now.

When we feel like this we wonder where the stability is and why things are just so unpredictable for us.

I completely hear you on the job situation. I climbed the corporate ladder in my previous job and then crashed and burned until there was no way but out. I'm not suggesting that is where you are headed, people do and can rebuild and restructure after an episode, very successfully actually.

I can sometimes feel anxiety in crowded situations and a lot has to do with my current mood. I think that it's very brave of you to have made the effort to go. That is so important. That we take time out for ourselves, even when we don't want to.

It's not asking for too much to have friends that you can laugh around and joke with. We all need that. I must say if I had a friend at work bragging about success - grrrrrr - my devil horns would come out!

I think the steps that you are taking are extremely proactive and I admire your resiliance. You're getting out there. You are looking after yourself physically. Yes, sometimes progress does feel like it's slow - sometimes it is a case of one step forward and one step backwards and then two steps forward. We need to move slowly with it. People that don't have this don't get it, so it would be a normal assumption for your brother to think you have a "choice". Well, sorry brother, we didn't choose a chemical imbalance. We don't choose our mood episodes. We don't choose to become depressed. We don't choose to become manic. Sigh.

We care about your current thoughts.

Yes, I do understand that you face the complexities of your job.

But.

What's more important?

Looking after yourself and your mental wellbeing so you will be well in the long term, or .... ? What? If you balance the scale, sometimes we are only left with one choice - getting the medical help that we deserve - and you deserve help right now, because you are worth it!

To be honest you CAN'T answer the question if your life is worth living right now.

How do I know this?

Because you're depressed.

Can I make any important decisions when I am depressed?

Nope. I can't.

September 2014 I thought that's it. I'm done. And, I was really close to being done when by luck of the draw I received intervention.

It's January 2015 right now and boy - am I SO GLAD it never happened that way.

I am HERE.

I have a changed outlook.

Since feeling that way and being that close I had a complete overhaul of my meds.

I am doing so much better.

I only tell you this because depression does not last f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

Oh hell yeah it certainly feels like it when we're in it, doesn't it?

But the reality is the chemical imbalance will adjust itself.

It will.

It always does.

So don't you go be making any decisions about your future.

You can't.

You need to hang in there.

[wildflowerchild25]

I understand a lot of your post. I was the leader of the technology program at my school - but I could barely handle it. I went in to the new school year severely depressed and couldn't get out of it. I was known as the teacher who never smiles among my students. Then I had to go out on leave for three months. Now I've lost the technology director position but I haven't lost my job. I do understand not feeling well enough to get another job though. Mine is too stressful so I'm looking for another one, but i'm scared I won't be able to present myself well enough in an interview.

But all that aside, I agree with hooligan above. I was in a terrible place in October. I'd been depressed since May. I though this is it. This is what my life has come to. It will never be any better. But I was lucky. A pdoc listened to one of my suicidal rants and put me in the hospital. In there I started the slow recovery process. I received ECT treatments and though it took six weeks, I finally started to feel better. And now I've been stable for almost two months. And this is the second time this has happened to me - so I'm living proof that depression doesn't last forever. You WILL get through this. You just have to stay alive to find out. It's worth it.

[7kitty]

Originally Posted by Bipolarchic14

I don't expect anyone to actually respond or to even read this. It is long! I just want to complain about life and needed a place to rant.

Begin rant...so my "disorder" has really f***** up my life. Every time I start a new job, I do really well. Then a really bad depressive episode comes on, and though i function okay, it's not great. I have been at my current job for four years. I went from towards the top of my position, where I was approached to do special projects, etc to now being passed up for every good thing that comes along. I use to feel comfortable going to work, it was a place to escape all of the emotional s*** in my life. Now I hate it. I feel judged and even worse I feel stuck since I don't feel well enough to find a better job.

So in the past year and a half I have been going up and down. It's to the point that I am not able to predict how I will feel from one day to the next. Some days I am really depressed but I can function okay, other days I am so tired I have trouble keeping my eyes open at work. I have days i randomly start tearing up for no f*****g reason. I am usually able to fight my depression but lately I have had to really push myself to get out of bed and do what I have to do in life. I just want to curl up in the middle if my bed and not have to face my life.

I can't even plan things because my mood is so unpredictable right now. I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago and literally slept more than half of my vacation. I had been looking forward to my vacation for so long and I feel like it was wasted. I made plans to go to a couple of concerts this month as I have been trying to fight my social phobia and fears of large crowds. At both events, I started this annoying cough I get when I am upset and overwhelmed. Instead of panic attacks I get an asthmatic cough.

I feel uncomfortable talking to my friends. One friend is always competing with me at work and lately she has been coming up on top and bragging to me about it. Nothing like being kicked when you are down. My other friend is always so argumentative and i don't have the energy to fight her nor do I really care if she is right or wrong. I just want some normal f*****g friends that I can laugh and joke around with. Is that too much to ask for?

My family could care less that I am struggling right now. I have been really trying hard to improve myself including my personal appearance. I have been exercising more and I have been trying to fight phobias I have and have been trying to improve my brain function. Progress is so slow though and my family is not very supportive. One brother barely talks to me and it's not like I have done anything wrong. I don't drink or do drugs. I am not violent. I am just sad a lot, so not much fun to be around. My other brother is tired of hearing me complain, I don't blame him. I don't think he knows how much i struggle with this though. He thinks I have a choice. He has even suggested that someday I may be homeless if I don't improve my life. I am just tired of struggling with things other people take for granted. I just want a normal life.

I have been really suicidal lately, not that anyone really cares. I can't even go to a mental hospital for help. I am afraid I will lose my job and my insurance and not be able to support myself. Besides I heard they don't really help depressed people. I just don't know what to do anymore. How do you know if life is worth living or if you are just better of calling it quits? That is the question I have been struggling with lately.

Hi. I am bipolar, and I have been deteriorating over the past 1 1/2 years. I felt much the same way you do before I was hospitalized for a week for mental health issues in October. They tried to make me think it was a voluntary admission (maybe because they knew that that is what I needed), and maybe technically and legally it was, but for all intents and purposes, it was not. Leading up to my hospitalization, I was dishonest with my mental health care providers, conveying the impression that I was better than I actually was for fear of being hospitalized, for the same reasons you expressed.

I thought spending a week in the hospital would be my ruin. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am not being polyanna about this: it did pose some challenges, but these challenges were overcome. Now, I am in better health than I have been in years. I have suspected for quite some time that the lithium I was taking was no longer therapeutic. It wasn't. In retrospect, it was never as therapeutic as it could/should have been.

But that is the past, and there is nothing I can do about that now. What I can control (to an extent) is how I function going forward.

My hospitalization was a blessing. Changing medications for anybody, and certainly somebody with bipolar disorder, is extremely risky, at least on an outpatient basis. I have heard of so many -- too many -- sad stories when this ended in suicide. However, under the watchful eyes of the hospital psychiatrist and the staff, I made the change in a safe environment. I am now doing better than I have in years.

I am not hokey, and I do not believe in fate or anything like that. I have a hard time accepting what many believe: that things happen for a reason. But I will say from my experience that my hospitalization was the best thing in the world for me.

I am now healthier than I have been in years . . . maybe decades. That does not mean I have no challenges. I do. That is the nature of my illness. However, after my hospitalization and receiving the medication and treatment I so desperately needed, I realize that problems can be overcome, and that there are many solutions -- many possibilities -- when you are healthy and thinking more clearly than you have in years. Like you, I thought that suicide was the absolute, only solution to my problems. Now, although my problems remain, thankfully, I am now able to view them more rationally and realize there are many options to choose from. You see, I believe life is about choice and consequences. There are consequences to every choice, and there are always more than one consequence to our choices. Some are favorable, some are more favorable than others, some are not at all favorable or pleasant. One thing for certain is that I am in control of my life, and I can make choices based on consequences I can accept, or, sometimes, on the least bad of many bad options, if that makes any sense. I hope it does.

I felt compelled to write because my heart went out to you when I read your post. I was there. I am now on the other side. Again, I am not rosy-glasses, polyanna, etc. When I was where you are, I would not have believed what I am expressing now.

I was going to tell you to have faith, but faith is not the issue. That will not help, I believe. I am asking you to have courage. You can never beat this, but you can manage this. You can know the stability you cannot grasp or accept now. If I can know it, so can you.

Shortly after being discharged from the hospital, I had a therapist (who struggles with the same issues I do) tell me that once you receive the treatment you need, doors start to open. She could not explain it, other than to say they do. It happens. At the time, I thought it was hokey, and I did not accept it. Now, I know exactly what she is talking about.

I write this to ask you, a stranger, a favor. Please seek the help you need. Be honest, and if that leads to a brief hospitalization, so be it. It is not permanent. Take what comfort in that you can.

If you do wind up in the hospital, follow the instructions of your provider. Take your medicine. Go to recreation. Comply. Attend every group session you can. (I say that as in introvert; this was exceedingly difficult for me because I take great comfort and obtain energy in being alone.) This took a great deal of courage and discipline on my part, because it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I literally had to force myself. I'm glad I did, because it was an important part of my therapy.

Please forgive me for the length of this message. I'm hoping you choose to read it and at least think about my situation, and the fact that you were and are not alone. I have been there.

[BipolaRNurse]

I've been there too, and pretty recently (went into the hospital on Halloween night). My inpatient stay not only kept me safe, it provided me with insight that I hadn't had about the nature of bipolar depression. It never lasts.....it may seem like that, but the only way to learn this fact is to survive.

So hang in there. The previous posters have given you some great advice. Stay with us. This too shall pass.