[pliepla]

I've recently started with a new Ts. She's following some kind of behavioural therapy and focuses on 'activating' me.

Things I'm trying to deal with now are

• I studied engineering. Not my choice, but my parents were over the moon with my degree. They also believe(d) I have no right to be unhappy because I have such a 'beautiful degree'. They probably only loved the engineer I didn't want to become and not the person they forced into a future he never wanted.
• I have difficulty accepting myself since the moment I gave in - it took 4 years to get me to my knees and make me comply to their whishes. It lead to a series of depressions, difficulty maintaining friendships (I can't believe somebody would voluntarily want to be near me) and even greater difficulty trying to establish or maintain a romantic relationship.
• I am currently divorcing.
• My ex wife gave me the opporunity to pursue another degree. I succeeded but with delay - which in part laid the foundations for our breakup - and only a 'cum laude" on my diploma. While I had very good grades in my bachelor, the fear of not performing well enough and eventually ending up in something similar to my old job made the pressure too high and I lost the - admittedly small - chance to try and get funding for a phd.
• The public services that are to 'guide' me towards work are pushing me back to engineering. Just as I expected (they actually told me in advance they would and no therapist I've been speaking to the last years wanted to believe this).
• I am too depressed to even think about what I would still want to do. Honestly, there is nothing that even seems worth doing
• I have no children. Given that I am 46 years old ... well, this is a particularly tough nut to crack.
• I'll probably never have a relationship again.
• I have no contact with my mother because of my choice to marry my (now ex) wife. You must know that my mother started yelling at me when I was seventeen at the moment I began my higher education and that she never stopped until I broke with her when I was 38. My father died just before I completed my education in engineering, but he always made it clear that he would never approve of me trying to find a job that was not engineering.
• I was bullied at school. I never really felt bothered by this but I am becoming more and more frustrated that my former bullies are alle succesful in life with wives, children, ...
• I used to love cooking, I have lost all interest in food and my relationship with food has evolved to merely trying to stuff myself with a minimal amount of calories because ... well, just because I don't fee like sitting down to eat. I don't believe I will ever enjoy a meal again.
• I've had a psychiatrist who, after two and a half years when I noticed studying became hard, came up with the idea that my parents were probably right in the choice they made for me. I have huge difficulty thrusting 'all these charlatans' again. I have the same feeling towards my current Ts.

I can't handle all this and I have become very passive. It has been an ordeal trying to fine a Ts and I had been without any treatment since the moment I completed my second degree (last January).

Her idea is that 'activating' me will make me feel good about myself. My perception at this moment - next to searching for a job, I am continuing tango classes (more because my dancing partner of years aks me to than for my own pleasure), I've started painting (the first year requires no creativity but mostly consists of technical excercies) and am learning to play the tabla (which I have been dreaming of for a few years) - is that I am merely squeezing the last bit of energy out of my limbs. I also notice that at the tiniest break (like when I am on the bicycle going from one thing to another or when I stop doing things because it is really time to go to bed), ruminations are back in full force. And they're getting worse. I'm angry all the time. I feel like punching people in the face, just because they look too happy. I can't help but thinking all this activating is just making matters worse.

Is this strategy really one that can work?

[Alioi]

I'd guess it depends whether the pattern of issues that unfolds for you with people, or just inside yourself, has been understand fully enough and is being changed. Is this based on any particular causal model of that for you individually?

I guess behavioural activation might claim/intend to do that, but only deal with a narrow subset of the pattern, at the level of observable 'symptoms'. So really could be not much different to, oh just think/do positive and stop doing that negative stuff?

[maybeblue]

So the theory is that thoughts-feelings-behavior all influence each other. If you change one, the other ones could/should follow. If you find things that you actually enjoy, then your mood will improve. Or if you find that you become good at something, you develop a sense of mastery and a feeling of competence. Also, as you noticed while you are doing stuff, the rumination is less.

Personally I have never found that to be enough...especially if I perceive that there are real problems in my life as in I'm not depressed for no reason. If I solve one of those problems, l feel better. Other ways to feel better would be to change the way you think about some things...not just positive thinking, but actually changing the way that you look at an issue. And accepting that something is the way it is, can reduce anger. All easier said than done. But possible. If I were you, I'd give the behavioral thing a little longer and if it doesn't work go back and ask her what else she has.

Also medication is a possibility.

[pliepla]

Thank you, guys.


I have always perceived my problems as mostly existential. Every crisis I have can be reduced to this one issue: how can life be meaningful when you don't have any affinity with technology and yet your were pushed into exactly that by your parents and are living in a society that does not seem to allow people to even consider anything else. For now, I feel as if I am merely keeping busy in order to not be able to think of these issues. But that's all it does. Whenever I slow down - and I don't even dare to think being obliged to take a vacation when I start working again, I mostly refer to moments like transportation, meals, showers or going to bed - it's all coming back to me twice as hard. I feel as if nothing is ever going to change fundamentally and that at some point - illness, retirement or even having to take a vacation - things will hit me even harder than they have recently. I am already starting to feel tired, so exhaustion might force me to slow down any time soon.
Moreover, I'm experiencing things that scare me. I've never been raging mad before. Neither have I ever had the urge to become agressive.
I am trying to address the feeling of meaninglessness by trying to find a job away from technology. So far I hardly got any response (and if I do, they point out I will make less money and won't be happy in the job. As if I haven't given that any thought myself). My anger and urge to become agressive give me the feeling I am a ticking time-bomb. It scares me.

As for medication: SSRI's (sertralin and citalopram) and a SRI (trazondon) cause sleepiness, an SNRI (duloxetin) had the same effect but the evolution was slower, with wellbutrin (buproprion) I had convulsions and had to stop immediately and finally a tricyclic antidepressant (I don't remember which one) put me to sleep almost immediately. While I took citalopram, I gained weight (26 kg, from 80kg to 106kg, in one year). I also took rilatin because that would 'wake me up'; It worked, not for me though but for the company that was selling the pills. The last time I saw a psychiatrist, he told me not to count on medication anymore.

[Alioi]

What if your increasing feelings of anger and aggression - which contrasts with your comments about having been pushed around and originally bullied - could translate into assertiveness and getting non-tech type work and social relationships you might want?

[pliepla]

Originally Posted by Alioi

What if your increasing feelings of anger and aggression - which contrasts with your comments about having been pushed around and originally bullied - could translate into assertiveness and getting non-tech type work and social relationships you might want?

Maybe. But I'm so scared I might kill somebody before that happens ...

Guess I never thought of it that way.