Sliding, can't stop

Hi there,
I've struggled for a while with PTSD, anxiety, depression, OCD, weird eating. Being inside my head so often means that it's hard to connect with the outside world. I also find it difficult to trust and let people in....I'm really lonely. I am in significant debt but I do have a good job. I desperately want to have children but with no partner, debt and rapidly approaching 40yo it looks like it won't happen. That leaves me with a whole sense of emptiness, loneliness and the future looks blank to me, like a wall I can't see past. I cry everyday. I keep trying to go to work but it's hard. I can't talk to my family - I'm the one who supposedly copes. I stopped going to my therapist - kind of gave up. My general practitioner told me that if I don't start helping myself she won't see me any more. I can feel myself withdrawing and I can't seem to stop it.
M

I'm sorry that your GP said that if you don't start helping yourself, she won't see you. That is very uncaring. They are humans too and make mistakes. Please don't let that get to you too much. You have a lot to bare, keep posting on here.

Thanks - she's pretty good but trying to snap me into action I think. I just don't know how much more I can do. I've completely stuffed up my life.

Even with the best of men, marriage can be overrated with the description of riding off into the sunset with the mindset of "happily ever after" living.

My husband is mostly sensitive to my feelings, but his family were not. We went to his church after we married and his church (in a small town) was not friendly towards me.

Marriage is not the bowl of cherries we have visions of when seeking a partner.

Children that are birthed into a union bring a wholly different set of problems.

I love my husband and children greatly and do give to them things that have significant sentimental value now that they are grown and gone from the nest. Both my boys did not immediately leave once they turned 18-years-old like many children do. So I feel that life here at home wasn't really frightening or bad for them. One stayed until he was 25-years-old. The other left only to attend the university, only to come home every weekend.

Looking back and thinking that I just had to be married back then....I now have hindsight as to what I could have done had I never met or married my husband. Don't get me wrong...I am glad I married him, but had I never met him, I think I would have made some changes in my life eventually.

I had the type of job that I could have traveled while doing my job in various parts of the country. A change of venue would have strengthened my emotional status. Since I had no family support system, I would make my own support system with other people.

I have family, but they have their own mental problems. How they help themselves is by stepping over the younger ones. My sister denies needing counseling and frequently criticizes the deep depression I found myself in more than once. She never congratulates my recovery. She just always brings up my past and tells people I am getting ready for another "breakdown".

But for conversation sake, even if I was heading towards another breakdown, how does a 'loving family' (siblings) criticism help someone like me who had a major depression?

I don't need that and have recently rejected them until they realize the sniping and putting me down to make themselves feel healthier and above me, helps none of us overcome our lifetime of issues.

I have all the conditions that you listed and they flare up occasionally. I think that the most annoying of them all is the OCD. It made my life miserable. I resist trying to do the repetitive things that enslaved me telling myself I don't have time for the physical redundancy.

I've found that an alkaline diet helps with the panic and anxiety and the depression. PTSD is not as stark when I eat alkaline foods, but I've learned to manage the flashbacks more effectively.

Now that I am 58-years-old, I see that 40-years-old was not the end of my youth, but a beginning of a life that I could change. Even at my age, I don't feel "stuck" in what I currently am. I envision a move, new friends, a different life starting.

Panic used to debilitate me. I talk myself out of it when I feel it coming on. I change what I am doing even if it means getting out of the house and burning off the excess adrenaline during a walk.

Our physicians really want to help us, but reality is, I had to do things for myself to get better. If I could only exercise 5 minutes a day, that is where I started. If I dropped one soft drink a day and substituted it for a fresh squeezed lemon and sweetened with stevia and made lemonade, I did that. (Lemons, limes, fresh oranges, apple cider vinegar and apples etc) alkalinize the pH in the bloodstream and gives you nutritional energy, not panic energy.

I've been there where you are and am telling you that you will get better with small changes...one at a time.

I still use my counselor's line. She asked me "How do you eat an elephant"? Because the elephant (the PTSD, major depression, OCD, fear etc) will be overcome one thing at a time.

Good luck to you.

Thank you so much for sharing - it all resonates. Small changes are probably the way to go - I think about them, look out the window and wish to do them but somehow don't. I get so low that I don't know if I want to choose to go on and then I get paralysed into doing nothing. It is a cycle and I know that I will probably bounce back. You know I think you're right - the OCD is the worst - debilitating, annoying, and shameful. I have decided to take medication now so maybe that might help. One thing at a time.......(poor elephant)
Thanks again

You are welcome.

I tell ya, it was slow go for me. I had to get used to changing that "one thing" in my life, so sometimes it took weeks, even months to incorporate healthy changes into my life.

You will automatically know when to start a new life change. You will feel really good when you master a new change.

Yes, there is a lot of shame associated with OCD, although only in our minds. Everybody else who doesn't understand OCD laughs at the "silly" things we do. I felt ashamed that it took me an hour to get home in what normally is only a 15 minute drive.

I've been blessed that I feel that this is under control.

I am not currently on antidepressants, but I took them for 20 years. I am on some medications due to a physical condition that I have.

What choice of change would you like to make first?