[nikon]

Until around xmas I was feeling quite good and had had a month or two of reprieve from depression. It has crept back in though and i'm struggling.
this might be triggering - mentioning of SH etc.

i find myself going online obsessively, imagining i could be someone else, because it feels like i don't "feel" real. like not in the way of feeling like things aren't real around me, but like i just don't feel reality properly. like everything is behind a wall and i'm semi-numb to it and just feel grey about it. in my mind i "want" to be anyone but myself because it looks like other people feel "real" and they are alive, whereas inside i feel totally meaningless and inhuman. obviously i know that all people have problems, many have extremely difficult problems. i just don't want to be myself. it's not really character traits i hate about myself, although i'm not mad about myself, but more like i feel fundamentally defective. like i can't form connections with people, i can't feel love, i can't feel intimacy, i can feel human connection, i can't feel the excitement of looking forward to something, i don't feel interested in anything. these don't change a lot when i am not depressed - when i am not depressed i just feel more sociable and see friends more, and feel less lonely.

i have just come home after work and feel despair because life feels completely meaningless. the highlights of my weeks are seeing my therapist usually, because it feels like i have space to talk and someone will listen to me, and i feel embarrassed and ashamed about that. i'm 28 and have never been in a relationship, have never been physically intimate with anyone at all. i'm not longing for a relationship - i rather feel completely grossed out by the thought of sex and even kissing someone, as though i'm nine years old and have never moved out of that mindset. but it also feels like i'm completely incapable of any intimacy with anyone and i feel excruciatingly lonely.

i just don't even know what to do any more, and i feel like i can't talk to friends about this. friends can't help. i say things and they just say the cliche things back and i feel the same. i'm seeing my therapist this week. i'm on a lot of medication and i suspect that if or when i speak to my dr (or if or when this depression gets bad enough to do so) the medication will just be increased. just feels like a pointless roundabout, because so far i've always ended up in hospital eventually, and then change meds, feel better for a bit..... and eventually back there. i'm in recovery from self harm and addiction but often feel like there's no point, because i keep getting depressed anyway. i'm spending a large portion of my time unhappy and fighting thoughts about acting out to escape unhappiness, and it's starting to feel like there's no point. i don't like my family, i don't want to see them, and honestly i'd rather just be asleep or act out. nothing ever helps definitively and it feels like i've always got to cope on my own.

i don't know if this sounds really self-piteous - it's not meant to. i just feel like giving up, really.

[Fuzzybear]

[refractedlight]

I was you in my twenties. Depressed and had never had a relationship. Yet also terrified of having a relationship. Yet also so tired of being alone. The rest of my story doesn't matter. All that matters and all that I wanted to say was that I understand. You're one step ahead of me in that you had the courage to seek out a therapy. I'm glad you did that. In hindsight I wish I could have shed the fears I had of being "branded" or whatever as needy or broken. I'm glad that that times helps you, even as I understand why it makes you embarrassed.

I'm in a different stage of life and equally embarrassed by my depression and the fact that I can't overcome it. Somehow I think I should be able to, despite all the evidence that much of it is chemical or genetic or whatever.

Don't you wish there was just a place where you could go? A kind place? A mythical place where you're accepted and you can stay as long or as short as you need, no questions asked. But I know our mental health system is not like this. Like you, I know I'm just as likely to wind up in the same place, just with more meds. If I'm lucky.

I'm new here. I hope this was okay to commiserate rather than suggest what you should or shouldn't do. I responded the way I wanted to be responded to. Sometimes I think we just want to know that we're not alone.

[nikon]

Originally Posted by refractedlight

I was you in my twenties. Depressed and had never had a relationship. Yet also terrified of having a relationship. Yet also so tired of being alone. The rest of my story doesn't matter. All that matters and all that I wanted to say was that I understand. You're one step ahead of me in that you had the courage to seek out a therapy. I'm glad you did that. In hindsight I wish I could have shed the fears I had of being "branded" or whatever as needy or broken. I'm glad that that times helps you, even as I understand why it makes you embarrassed.

I'm in a different stage of life and equally embarrassed by my depression and the fact that I can't overcome it. Somehow I think I should be able to, despite all the evidence that much of it is chemical or genetic or whatever.

Don't you wish there was just a place where you could go? A kind place? A mythical place where you're accepted and you can stay as long or as short as you need, no questions asked. But I know our mental health system is not like this. Like you, I know I'm just as likely to wind up in the same place, just with more meds. If I'm lucky.

I'm new here. I hope this was okay to commiserate rather than suggest what you should or shouldn't do. I responded the way I wanted to be responded to. Sometimes I think we just want to know that we're not alone.

thanks for your thoughtful reply i'm sorry that you've had that experience in your life.
yeah, i definitely wish there was a kind place i could just go and be safe for however long i want/need. sometimes it really feels messed up that the kindest place i see in my life is talking to my therapist or dr, because i know they're not going to disappear - but then, they're only not going to disappear because i'm paying them. most of me would probably be ok with bought "friendship" though, because when there's not that guarantee, it always feels certain that friends are going to leave, or at least not really give a **** if you disappear and lose touch.

[refractedlight]

Yeah, I think it's often the alienation that gets me. And this sense of being a burden to people due to my depression. I try my darndest to fight those thoughts but they creep in nonetheless.

Like my bad night last night, I messaged a friend to express how bad it was, mainly because it can sometimes help to do that. And I know she struggles with depression as well, although possibly not in the same ways that I do.

She hasn't written back yet, and that's hard sometimes, because I then start to internalize her not writing back. These are the thoughts that go through my head.

*She's tired of me. Of course she is. I am very tiring. I am a broken record. I would escape myself if I could too.

*How dare she not write back. If someone wrote me a note like that I would respond immediately, if only to say I was thinking of them.

These are the reasons and the thoughts at least that keep me from reaching out sometimes, which then exacerbates the alienation even further.

I have a therapist as well. He's online, so I can write him whenever I please. And he is quite good at getting back to me. Oddly the same type of internalizing doesn't occur with him if he takes 12-24 hours to get back to me. I give him more latitudes than my friends, even though I am paying him.

Human emotional responses are weird.

Some of the worst moments and nights of my life were the crippling loneliness of never knowing if I would meet a person I could share my life with. I was 25 and had never dated or kissed a man. I was ashamed, which spiraled my depression even more. And it's not like I could stare in the mirror at myself and spout some kind of self-help nonsense (not that there's anything wrong with that. I have come to believe in it more now, but this is how I would have viewed it at 20.) and muster up the courage or confidence to reach out to men.

I see things a lot differently now almost twenty years later. But hindsight and all that. We do the best we can with the tools we have at the time.

And once again, I'm impressed that you sought out professional help. That's a great step.

[KYWoman]

There is a place called Geel, Belgium that's been embracing the mentally ill for over 700, yes seven hundred, years! In fact, generations have considered it an honor and a privilege to host people with mental illness. Scientific & medical researchers, practitioners have studied the results in person to marvel at the successes achieved by a community that chooses to accept people with mental illness vs ostracizing them and/or throwing them away. It is considered a model of psychiatric care and the world's oldest community psychiatric service. What if one day more communities chose to be more compassionate to those of us who are "different"? Just reading about this community made me feel better..for a moment.

[refractedlight]

Yes, what a wonderful thought indeed. That such a mindset could be embraced. In my darkest moments I consider my options for outpatient or inpatient care and they seem bleak indeed.

I have a friend in Germany who has sought long term inpatient psychiatric care and it sounds like they do a better job. I don't imagine it's perfect but seems much better than what we have available.

There's great fear in being "branded" as mentally ill, at least for me there is. It's part of why I'm depressed in the first place, dating back to my religious upbringing and having a mentally ill mother who was more concerned about looking happy than being happy. Appearances were everything. She still can't accept the dark shades of her mind and wonders why her three children struggle so.

[KYWoman]

I feel ya. I was illigetimately conceived in early 1960 to Catholic parents. My mother was only 17 & her mother was a 4th grade teacher at the Catholic school where both my parental units attended. My mother projected a lot of negativity toward me out of shame & guilt for 18 yrs. Father was 4 yrs older, but didn't seem to think anything was wrong with the abuse, so he joined the party. I left home as soon as I became of age to escape the abuse. I'm not sure I'll ever recover completely...due to some physical+sexual abuse that also occurred. I constantly remind self, that what happens to ya, doesn't DEFINE ya.

RE: the branding of mental illness is insufferable and unfair. So is life. I have survived many traumas in this life experience and I am stronger than I know. I just feel weak because I've been drowning in a quicksand of emotions for years and I've cried lakes of tears for way too many years.

It is exhausting trying to explain to people that mental illness is like any other physical illness. The brain is the motherboard and when circuits are fried (like the damaged synapses in my brain) the computer isn't going to function properly. They say ignorance is bliss, but some folks (like my family members) prefer denial than acknowledgement. Too bad stupidity is not against the law!