[akekaomen]

The pain won't stop. I don't like being around people but have to work. I hate failing like this. I can't seem to get treatments to work. I use dbt or CBT to try to cope. I can't work hard enough to cope.

[Sam2]

Work can be a good deversion if you like what you are doing. Unfortunately, it doesn't get rid of what is making you depressed. This is a hard time of year for people who are alone, depressed or have other problems. Society says we should be happy during the holidays. That just adds to the guilt when you don't feel good.

IF you aren't already seeing a therapist, check one out. You can work only so many hours in a day, and if you continue to overwork yourself, something will have to give. If you haven't had therapy before, start with something that isn't that painful or important to you. Finding a therapist is alot like finding a friend or getting a date. You ask leading questions to see how they will react, only tell them things that are not going to cause you pain. If you get along, great. then you can go into more confidential things. If you don't, you haven't given up your painful problems and don't have to worry about someone else knowing.

Therapists will also help you find alternative and healthy ways of coping. I'm sorry, I don't recognize your initialed words, so I didn't take them into account.

Sam2

[Rohag]

Akekaomen, do you mean you can't work the Dialectical Behavior Therapy/Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy techniques hard enough to derive psychological relief? Are those therapies/techniques simply not working for you?

If you are struggling too much with something you've been told to try, let your therapist/doctor know. They need to have a better solution than "try harder."

[akekaomen]

DBT can work well when I'm around people who can help me maintain a stoic indifference. I wish I could change my therapist, but I can't without causing myself more distress (very late night appointments after work).

My therapist doesn't use dbt, but I learned it and it works overall, but I need to be around people who aren't always happy, but are coping. At work, people put on happy faces, so I feel like I'm failing because I can't be like that. I'm coping, not happy and dbt isn't really there to make you happy, just helps you gain control of yourself in hopes that it will lead you toward happiness later.

My therapist does psycho-dynamic therapy, which I've found is horrible for me. Delving into my past has often brought up pain that I can't resolve and made me fall into deeper depression. Now he just sits and listens to me whine about the whole therapeutic process, which isn't all that helpful either.

I think I'm one of those patients people don't want to have. I'm not a very good patient because I can't stop trying to think about my therapist and psychiatrist and primary care doctor are all trying to just get me to be someone else's problem. I'm now trying to look at hormone issues and was supposed to follow up on neuro-psych testing. For now the hormone thing is all I can handle.

Biggest pain point for me right now is the shame that I feel for having emotional pain. It has limited my ability to function and made me less capable than I could have been. I have failed to achieve academic success (was hoping to get a PhD when I was younger) and now I'm limited at work because it holds me back. I am ashamed of my constant wanting to avoid people around me and reality. It's just hard to accept life for what it is and not judge.

[Fuzzybear]