⚠I don't know what to do⚠

Sorry for the long post, but I don't know what to do. I feel like Humpty Dumpty, broken, and no matter how hard people try they can't put me back together. I have been dealing with depression my whole life. I honestly can not remember the last time I was truly happy. My wedding day? Nope I was so worried about what might, & what did go wrong to enjoy that day.
The first time I had a suicidal thought I was 12. Seriously 12 years old! How many freaking 12 year old think about killing themselves. That was nearly 2 1/2 decades ago. My whole life I have been more or less taught to not show my emotions. (Why are you crying? I can give you something to cry about if you don't dry it up.) I have bottled everything up for so long it has started "leaking" out.

Back in February I basically had a nervous breakdown and was hours away from killing myself. On a scale of 1-10 I was a solid 9. I had a very elaborate plan worked out where my wife would not be the one to find me. I don't remember it but I ended up calling my wife at work and telling her that I needed to goto the Mental hospital.

Through the whole process while I was there I was very cooperative, except I made it crystal clear that I did not want my wife to know how close I was to killing myself and what my plan was. All she needed to know is that I had seriously considered it, which she did know. So they release me to their partial hospitalization program and I am making long term plans and taking my meds as I should be. Then on Friday the 13th a nurse from this out patient facility takes it upon herself to call my wife without my knowledge or permission and tell her how I planned on killing myself. I have never been that pissed off at someone before.

I threw away my medicine and said I would never trust another doctor again. (I really hate lieing to myself.) Fast forward a few months and I decide to give a therapist a try because I knew I really needed help. Turns out she was a hypnotherapist, which I did not know before hand. At this point I was willing to try anything. After a few sessions I realized that it wasn't working for numerous reasons, so I quit going.

Now just a few weeks back I almost killed myself again. I was holding the method of choice (I am trying to be as vague as possible) in my hand. I decided to put it down and just goto bed instead. That eventually lead me to decide about a week and a half later that if I could just talk with other people who suffer with depression and suicidal ideation it would help me greatly. I ended up calling another local mental hospital and talked with them and pretty much told them over the phone how I felt. I told them I was just wanting information about their out patient program. They suggested I come after work for a free evaluation. To make a longer story a little shorter they ended up holding me against my will for what they called a 72 hour evaluation. Which they didn't count weekends. They have now ruined any chance of me ever trusting a doctor again.

Now I know I need help but I just don't know what to do. I am so tired of fighting. I have been fighting with suicidal thoughts for 23 years now & with depression for as long as I can remember. I am 35 now and I am just so tired of fighting. On one hand I don't want to kill myself because I know how much that will upset my wife. Yet on the other hand I just don't know how much longer I can hold on.

Hi Humpty Dumpty
I'm sorry you are in so much pain and struggling. I wish I had good words of advice..... I really think you need to find that trust again in doctors. Maybe try not to base all possible help on one experience that made you angry. One nurse that did something you didn't want.
I know a 72 hour hold probably was not fun.
I think you could give the meds a good chance, see if you can get a real therapist, not a hynotherapist as you had. Some kind of counseling. I hope you'll find help here. Plenty of caring people willing to listen.

Hi Humpty Dumpty,
I am sorry for all the pain you are feeling. I see you are hanging on for your wife. I have to do that sometime when I have experienced suicidal ideation. I will hang on for my children, dog, etc. Some docs and therapists can be a huge disappointment. But don't give up, Try a different doc or therapist. You are a worthwhile person and you deserve quality treatment.

Keep posting to us. That also helps sometimes. You are not alone. We are here with you.

The thing about it is I have been through 2 hospitals that have screwed me, & I have been to 3 therapists. Yesterday I got a list of therapists from my insurance company and went through the list to no avail. Sometimes I got a woman's clinic. Other times it was just voice mails. One secretary refused to even make an appointment for me with out an authorization code from my insurance. I have given up seeking help for now. It is apparently pointless.

(((((((( Humpty Dumpty ))))))))

I echo what the wise poster above said

Some doctors and therapists can be a huge disappointment

Please don't give up, we're here for you!

Btw I like your name (but I understand the pain )

Hi Humpty Dumpty,

I, too, have suffered from depression all my life though maybe not to the degree you have and are, but I did have times of not wanting to continue, and the only thing that kept me from seriously considering doing it was the knowledge that doing so would cause unforgiveable pain to my parents, siblings, and husband. Also, I have so many animal dependents, I'd hate for my husband to be saddled with the decisions about what to do with them all, and I care about their fate as well.

I went in and out of therapy over the years and never felt it changed much, but then it wasn't the right kind of therapy. My question to you is, what is going through your mind that leads you to want to end it? Is it negative inner dialogue? Self judgement?

I finally found a therapist who introduced me to Emotional Brain Training. EBT is about rewiring your brain, breaking stress circuits that have been encoded early in life and rewiring them with new ones that are based on compassion for self and others. It is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy. If you want to learn more about it, go to ebt.org. I get no kick-backs from recommending it.

One of the things this method does is teach you about recognizing what brain state you are in and what you are wired at. I was wired at 4/5, which is very stressed/completely stressed out. When you are at a 5, you are totally overwhelmed and stuck in black and white thinking that everything is awful, you are awful, and it will never end. For me it was a state of major depression and feeling that life was horrible and that it would never change and that I was a failure etc etc. EBT teaches you tools to use to shift yourself out of these brain states, with the goal that you can break those circuits by using the tools.

The tool to use when you are feeling so miserable is called the Damage Control tool. What you do is repeat these sentences over and over until you feel calmer and less distressed. They are:

Do not judge (myself or others)
Minimize harm (the harm that this stress is causing myself)
Know it will pass (though it feels like it will go on forever, it is just a wire being triggered)

I know this may sound like malarky to you, because when I was in such a negative state, the idea of "just think positively" just irked me! I felt like I could never do that! I have been using the method for a few months now and can honestly say that i haven't had a suicidal thought in over six weeks.

I had reached a place where I felt like I just couldn't go on living the way I had been, that living the rest of my life without change was not an option. I feel the most hopeful I ever have before since starting EBT.

It is work, though, and I made a commitment to do the work. The work comes from looking at yourself and checking in with yourself throughout the day, doing some meditative breathing and asking yourself what state are you in, what are you feeling? You use tools to recognize and express your feelings. I was raised in a family that stuffed negative feelings down, and so it was hard for me to even know how I was feeling to begin with, let alone express anger, sadness, fear and guilt. I had trouble feeling grateful, happy, or heaven-forbid, secure and proud! But this method helps you get back in touch with your feelings so that you can process them and spend more time feeling better because you ARE processing them. i have found that to be true.

I'm sure there are other CBT methods out there that help as well, but this is the only one I am familiar with. PM me if you would like me to share more. This method is internet facilitated but you are connected with other members via phone calls, so there it is a very supportive method. With past therapy, i had very little support.

You deserve support! Regardless of our faults, we are all deserving of sanctuary within. This was a concept that was very difficult for me because of messages given when I was a child. I had no sanctuary and self-love; I'm not saying I'm fixed now, but I am on the path and feeling better more of the time. The inner judge needs to go! If you are feeling it is impossible, just know that it's just a wire and that wire can be broken!

If you want to get a sampling of EBT, one way is to get Laurel Mellin's book The Pathway - can be found on Amazon for super cheap. She developed the current EBT, and what you read in the book is an earlier iteration of the current version, but it is still very helpful and based in neuroscience.

Sorry if I'm sounding like a cult member. It is just the first thing I have experienced in my 50 years that ever gave me hope.

It's difficult to say. A lot of times it's just a general overall feeling of worthlessness and I'm just a burden to others. I feel like they would eventually be better off without me in the long run. While other times I'm just tired of fighting this and want it to be over.

I have looked into the ebt and it sounds a lot like positive reinforcement which doesn't work for me. It's like saying over and over it's not hot outside, even though it's the middle of summer and you live in the deep south. Doesn't matter how often you say it that doesn't make it true.

Hi Humpty Dumpty,

The first thing I would do is re-think everything about your problem from the beginning and especially check if you have some underlying purely medical or nutritional problem. If you have hypothyroidism or B vitamin or Omega 3 deficiency, you're not going to know it and your going to feel terrible. MDs don't always check for these things. Here are some notes that might help:

http://forums.psychcentral.com/4262681-post105.html

I was also depressed for a long, long, long time but I did eventually find my way out of it completely. After you are depressed for a long time, it starts to seem like it's an intrinsic part of you because, seemingly no matter what you do, you always return to depression. It makes you think that it's in you and built in. I think that this is actually an illusion caused just because getting into the depressive mode is an unconscious transition, so it feels as if it is something that is out of your control. You might want to look at these notes and see if it makes sense in your case:

http://egg.bu.edu/~youssef/SNAP_CLUB...0164151576.pdf

- vital

I understand how you are feeling as i have had those exact same feelings as well. Lots of feeling that i am not worthy encoded long ago, and because I am not working and brining in money, I feel like I'm a burden as well. Or, at least before, I had nothing but negative dialogue going on in my head - but I don't feel that way now! As for EBT and your skepticism, I felt that way before as well. That is the depressed, stressed out brain talking in black and white.

EBT isn't positive reinforcement. I'll give an example. I was completely stressed out because I live where it is in fact bloody hot all the time in the summer, and if I let myself dwell on it I can in fact get myself worked up into a panic state. We are here because of my husband's job, one he got after being laid off, and it was the only offering at the time. I can find myself hating it here so much, and I can get so depressed about it because I feel we are trapped with no options of getting out. So, during a coaching session, I did a cycle about how I hate the weather here and can't stand living here and how I feel trapped with no escape. I was coached through the cycle to reach a conclusion that was acceptable to my brain. That conclusion was NOT 'it isn't actually that hot here" because my brain would have rebelled and said YOU ARE LYING TO ME! A reasonable expectation that we arrived at for myself was to repeat to myself that "I expect myself to process my feelings and take one day at a time." We take those new expectations and grind them in, repeating them over and over, several times a day. That may not seem like much, but low and behold I found myself calmed down and able to move on from those thoughts. Our situation here hasn't changed, but what has changed is my ability to cope. That is actually quite huge. This wire may get triggered again and I may find myself having another tantrum in the future, but what has changed is that I have a new set of skills to help me deal with my feelings, something I never had before.

The method is about teaching us the emotional skills that we should have received in childhood from our parents but didn't, largely because our parents didn't have them to give. Those skills make the difference between people who seem to just cruise through life "happy" and those of us who don't. Part of it is genetics - some of us, like myself, have a genetic propensity towards depression and because I wasn't given the skills it is that much easier for me to cave compared to someone who was given skills - my threshold is much lower than someone who is genetically gifted AND got the skills. But, thanks to neuroplasticity, it is possible for us to acquire the skills.

At first, the brain rebells. The brain likes the status quo, even when the status quo doesn't work! In the beginning we will find ourselves saying, this doesn't work, I can't do this! That is true for me. I still have days like that. I have perfectionist tendencies and so I will have times where I feel discouraged because I'm not "doing it right," but there is no doing it right, there's just doing it! Those are days where the brain is trying to restore the defaults! But you just keep chipping away.

Yours and my brains are full of circuits that we default to, with these feelings being a result. Right now your wires are telling you that none of this will work, but they are just wires that can be broken - yet it won't happen all at once - it takes gradual rewiring over time. We are full of expectations that our brains believe are truth but in reality are unreasonable, and the method is about examining those wires, identifying the unreasonable expectation and then identifying a new reasonable expectation that your brain can accept. It is work, I will admit. I strongly encourage you to get the book I mentioned; there is no obligation and you'll only be out the .99 and shipping from Amazon if you feel after doing some reading that it is all utter garbage LOL! It IS possible to rewire your brain away from the hell you are experiencing, but you have to be willing to try, yes? Here's a fun video about neuroplasticity, if only for some entertainment value and a smile :-)

Neuroplasticity demonstrated. This is very cool. ? Beyond Meds

Anyway, I only reach out to you this way because i understand the despair and pain, I truly do. I hope at least I have given you food for thought, thoughts that take you away from the ugly ones