Trig) Not doing as well as I thought

I guess I'll complain here, because I'm in a really, really bad way.

I've been fighting suicidal thoughts for a long time . . . this is not a 'I'm going to kill myself' post, just an . . . an I don't know what to do post, I guess.

A large part of the reason I don't kill myself is because I don't want the psychiatrists and everybody who called me mentally ill to win. They can't win; what they did to me was so very wrong. 'The best revenge is living well', right? It's just not very nice for me.

Problem is, I'm not living well. I'm miserable. I hate most things about my life. People look in from outside and think that I'm so over-achieving and successful, so I must be so happy and put-together. I'm not. Almost everything I do, I do it out of fear of the hospital. I feel like they won't be able to put me back there if I am extremely successful. It worked so far, and so I feel like I can't stop.

I don't know how to say it. I don't want to be a lawyer. This latest set of exams is destroying me. My hair started falling out from the stress. I've been fairly constantly ill with the flu, fevers, migraines, etc. since I started revising for them. Actually, that's a bit of a lie. I didn't start revising until like, a week before, because I just can't give a **** anymore. I was ill from the stress of not revising.
I've never had a problem with exams, but these ones are just too much and I don't even want what comes after them. I hate that the doctors were able to delay my life so badly and cost me so much money that I have to become a lawyer to pay off all my debt, instead of being able to be an academic like I wanted to be (and would already have been, if they hadn't gotten ahold of me). I feel like an idiot saying this to anybody, too, because it's an extremely competitive process to become the kind of lawyer I'm going to be. Only like . . . one in four or one in five people who start the process get there. I got there, and I don't want it. Well, maybe I didn't get there; I'm legitimately worried that I'm going to fail two of the exams.
Most of the reason I'm here is debt, but the other reason . . . well, they can't put me in the hospital or drug me if I'm a ****ing barrister, right??

I have a therapist. He's not actually very good at making things better, he just helps me keep going. Maintains me, I guess. He's my only source of support. He's away next week, and when I found that out I cried. A lot of the time, when he goes away I can very easily pass a week or more without interacting with any human beyond, like, shopkeepers and stuff. He went away once and I didn't even speak a word aloud the whole time he was gone, because there was nobody to talk to. I'm horrible to him, too. I tell him he's useless and he doesn't understand me, which is true in a way I guess. But he spends so much time with me, most of it for free, and he's still nice to me. He waited with me for two hours before my exam on Wednesday, making sure I was OK.

I have only one friend, and he lives in a different city. I don't want to burden him with my problems; mostly because he grew up in foster care because his mum is a nutter like me. I don't think he needs any more nuttery in his life: it seems unfair to him.

I still talk to my mum sometimes over e-mail, but I have to pretend like everything's OK. She still thinks I see psychiatrists and take the drugs. She's also responsible for a lot of the "treatment" I was put through. She's flying over in a month or so to see me get called, and she's going to stay with me. I don't want her here, and I really don't want her in my tiny little flat. What if she notices I'm not drugging myself? What if I start crying uncontrollably, as I do, and she tries to have me drugged? How am I going to reality-test if she's here? She thinks I shouldn't have to reality-test; she thinks I should drug myself until I don't have to.

I dunno. I cry all the time. There's no support, because every single last bit of support comes second to drugging myself with the antipsychotics. I don't even know what support they could offer me even if they would. I can't even get rape counselling because they want me to take antipsychotics first; they decided that before they even met me. They just saw my medical records and decided that I wouldn't be able to get counselling unless I drug myself.

The thing is, at this point I don't even know what I can try. I've done everything. I control every aspect of my life. I do all the diets, therapy, exercise, everything . . . I've read all the books. I'm still unhappy. I'm still scared all the time. And I'm getting to the point where there's nothing left to try.

Is this me giving up?? I don't know.

I'm also tired of reality-testing all the time. I don't even have particularly alarming delusions. Why the **** do I have to be constantly testing to make sure what I'm seeing is real?!? Why does it freak out normal people so much if I comment on something benign that isn't really there?!?

And while I'm at it, I only have like £90 to last until the end of the month. That's doable I guess, but I always prefer having a cushion. And I have to pay the water with that, too.

And all my family - cousins and such - are getting married. I've only had one relationship in my life and he abused me horribly. All I really want is a husband, as awful as that is to say. I'd like to be pregnant, too. I don't want the kid at the end, I just want to be pregnant. How weird is that??

I'm sorry you're suffering, fish.

There's a Madness Radio interview about suicidal feelings: http://www.madnessradio.net/madness-...ngs-david-webb

I don't understand everything he says, but I find his story somehow reassuring. He struggled with suicidal feelings for many years, and even had a couple of suicide attempts. He's now found his way to a place of peace. He doesn't provide answers as such, but maybe hearing someone who's been there and come through it will help you?

From reading the whole post I have to say I think you're in a bad way because of the circumstances you find yourself in. That probably sounds really obvious, but holding on to that thought can help. It's not you; it's you in this particular situation. Situations change.

I wonder if "fighting" them is part of the problem? The stuff I push away the most is the stuff that makes things hardest for me. Maybe you need to let them come up and see what they have to tell you.

Whatever it takes!

Possibly the energy you're expending putting on this front is depleting you? I do understand your need to put on that face. It's more than just a social thing for you. It probably feels like a matter of life and death. But you may need to free up some of that energy to use more productively. Maybe even just making this post will help release some of it for you.

It's a stressful career. I often wonder why people choose it.

I've already told you what I think of this perspective. This is your life. Maybe I'm too much of a fatalist, but there's a great peace is accepting that what is is best. Let it go. Play the hand you've been dealt.

Debt sucks. I'm convinced money problems alone can drive people into that distress that we label 'mental illness.'

Don't count on it.

Maybe expecting him to make things better is asking too much of him?

Sounds like your mom is the fourth situational source of your distress. (One is this need to maintain a mask of wellness. Two is the doubt over the career choice. Three is the debt.)

Huge stress!

Can you cancel her visit? Can she stay in a hotel? Can you buy some tic tacs, put them in a prescription pill bottle, and pop one every night?

That really sucks. I've seen that with my son too. All help has that string attached.

I think another reason you're not getting support is that mask you're maintaining. In order to get support you have to admit you're in pain. And you find admitting you're in pain to be risky because it means allowing people to see behind that mask.

I think that embracing the pain can help. Don't push it away. Move toward it. It's not going to destroy you. Have you ever done tonglen? Cultivating compassion increases your peace. You have a lot of pain which can be transformed into compassion. They've actually demonstrated with brain scans that feeling compassion stimulates the part of the brain which is underactive in depressed people.

Maybe. When we carry the past around with us, it makes it very hard to live today.

Same here. (Waving, not giving you the finger.) Different numbers for me, and it's a student loan payment rather than the water bill - but ... same here. A wing and a prayer, fish, a wing and a prayer.

My mom says that once she complained to her mom that all her friends were getting married. Her mom asked her, "Would you want to marry any of those men?"

It's never awful to say what you really want. I think it's nice that you know something you really want. Not everyone does, you know?

Remember that song? "You gotta have a dream. If you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?"

Ok, I've exhausted my bag of "clever" thoughts. Nothing to say to this except maybe, "Don't do it."

this is you in mini-crisis. you are strong.. change the perception of who you are by first eliminating all that "nutter" self-talk. As you know, psychologists call them self-defeating behaviours. i am guilty of them myself at times. Also sounds like a bit of transference between you and your T. if this is truly happening, then you will need to request a new T as this is a violation of ethics. sorry you are having a bad day fish.... this too shall pass.

*hugs* You'll be fine. If you have come this far, you can do anything!! I second pretty much everything Costello said. I've been fighting the same thoughts... Which is what lead me to applying for counselling services from the grad students at a nearby college. And what had me staring at a crisis number multiple times over the past few weeks. I know my stress can't be compared to yours; that would be a huge understatement of your struggle. But often... Covering up your vulnerability only serves to weaken you. Much like you see in NPD: They only put up a facade to shield themselves from their true problems.

If you need to, you can private message me whenever. We seem to have a lot of coping mechanisms & thought processes in common. Maybe I can help you put yourself back on track? Not as charity, but who knows if helping you won't somehow trigger something positive in myself??

Thanks, I'll listen to it shortly. I'm going to eat and revise agency law for a bit.

[QUOTE=costello;2362214]
From reading the whole post I have to say I think you're in a bad way because of the circumstances you find yourself in. That probably sounds really obvious, but holding on to that thought can help. It's not you; it's you in this particular situation. Situations change.

I'm afraid that I actually will try to kill myself.

It isn't a social need for me -- there's hardly any social in my life!! I know the energy I'm expending is killing me. Like, I like my hair, I don't want it falling out.

I'm sad because, well, I don't think it should have to be this way. Only a tiny part of my energy actually goes to staying "normal" and coping with whatever psych symptoms I have. The rest is all putting on this facade, so they can't drug me or lock me up because I'm so capable.

One of the more stupid things I'll ever say: I didn't choose it. I ended up in it.

Definitely. It's not even unmanageable debt, it's just . . . debt. It's blocking me from what I want to do.

I kind of have to, don't I? What other guarantee is there, than being financially secure, capable and well-connected to lawyers?

That was a poor choice of phrase. I meant that he hasn't got many insightful things to say. I thought that going to therapy was about getting a different perspective on problems and maybe a bit of signposting ways through it; he just sits there silently for hours and lets me wallow.

Definitely. There are days that I hate her. There are days that I don't mind her. I'm never really happy she's in my life, though.

She decided independently of me to come; I can't afford a hotel and I know she won't bother if she can sleep in my bed.
I was just going to take birth control pills for a while. They're free here and I have a prescription for them in my drawer somewhere. I also feel like I shouldn't have to fake-drug myself in my own home.

Yeah, I don't ****ing understand it. The whole system is set up to get people into the worst way possible then lock them up. Nobody wants meds, so they avoid all the other support . . . then they deteriorate to the point they end up in hospital with a syringe of thorazine jammed in their arse 24/7.

I'm just not sure who to approach?! I know it can't be anybody medical, because they'll just drug me -- or anything that they might do, they'll make druggings a prerequisite.

What is that?

I found it empowering, actually. I'm a nutter and everybody else can just go stab themselves with a rusty spoon if they don't like it!!

He's not technically a therapist. He's a professor of psychoanalytic psychology. I go to him because he doesn't have anything to do with the ethics. Therapeutic ethics say it's OK to drug me, to force treatment on me if I behave in ways they disapprove of. No thanks!!
Besides, he's all I've got in the way of social support at the moment. Why would I get rid of that?!

Thanks honey. I would reach out more, but I still don't know what I'm looking for.

How are you feeling? You said for a while there you weren't doing so well. Any better?

Yesterday & today I'm actually feeling a glimpse of who I used to be... My eyes are actually kind of welling up because I've been waiting for this for so ****ing long. The motivation to do ****, intellectual fascinations are coming back, I'm writing poetry. Whatever it is -- be it hypomania or a sign that things are going well, I'll ****ing take it. Granted I wrote ( & subsequently deleted ) some nonsense **** in the forums last night & my "not giving a **** about anyone" meter has resumed being high. But at least I have better coping strategies with the latter. It's easier to feign compassion than sanity.

Yeah you seem ebullient today That's nice. We're both cursing a lot too, haha. The filters don't censor all my British cursing.

I saw your bit about the sex hotline. That was pretty funny :P

I want someone to give a **** about, actually.
Been thinking about dating a lot. I spent the last year absolutely enamoured one of my lecturers, mostly because he's the world's kindest man. Also he always wore really tight trousers so his bum was on full display, and if you looked hard enough so was his willy. That was kind of nasty, actually. Civil procedure and a big side helping of John Thomas.
So I need to divert myself. I've been messaging this guy on OKCupid and he seems alright. I don't do well with men IRL though. I don't let them touch me, so they leave.

I shouldn't complain about money. I have more than enough. I'm just stupid about it. I keep it squirrelled away in case I have to run. I hoard it. I guess to most people that is "savings"

And I often make extra pin money doing freelance translations. Maybe I'll go bid on some now, that would help me get through.

Oh thank you! At least it's not going without notice. And I always curse so much, but perhaps since it's early I'm less keen on finding different words to use! Hahahaah. And yeah, I honestly don't have the foggiest idea what that was about... I've never had anything slip out like that before! Not even whilst properly intoxicated!

I've always had things for teachers, myself... But I have huge daddy issues, so that's pretty self-explanatory! Lol. Hopefully you can find a nice asexual man to keep you company. I know they're out there & I'm pretty sure OKC has that option? I used to be on that site. I liked the quizzes!! But all I made were friends, which isn't such a bad thing.

Being broke ****ing sucks. That's my life story. Maybe I'll hold my boyfriend hostage & have him help me translate **** for money? ; )

I always say, between the psych hospitals and being a cook it's amazing that I recall any non-curse words at this point.

Ha. Yeah. Daddy issues. That's me!!
Even my one ex-partner was a Daddy Issues partner. It's kind of gross, looking back on it now. They like, dressed the same and everything. Beat me the same. I'm lucky I never let him touch me or that really would be gross!

Yeah I want a nice ace man. I'm fine with an open relationship actually, too. OKC doesn't have an ace option; I just set it on "men" and hope I meet somebody nice. I haven't met anything lasting on there, yet.
How did you meet your boyfriend/fiance?

Oh, usually when I translate I skip the hostage-taking step.

I think I figured out what I need. I need like . . . a manager or something. Somebody to keep me on track. Accountability. Does such a thing exist?
Or maybe I'm just revising the indoor management rules for companies too much. :-/

HAHAHAH I'm a pretty accomplished chef as well, at least in my own home! Tonight I'm being lazy (that & we haven't done our weekly grocery haul yet), but tomorrow is going to be sushi night! And I know you're vegan, but I have this AWESOME recipe for "tuna" sandwiches made out of mashed canned chickpeas... Kind of like a take on a hummus sandwich? It's awesome!
Yeeeeeeeeeah, I've learned to come to terms with that. I can never find a guy my age attractive... One time I even briefly dated this man who was 38 years my senior! Yikes, lmao. I never found anyone who was a mimic of my Father or anything, THANK THE UNIVERSE. I've never been beaten by a significant other but I had a really fun relationship where he would regularly threaten to kill me... Oh, being a teenager is so tumultuous!
Man that really sucks! Asexuality needs to be more accepted. Even as a struggling sex addict, I think that society is so over-sexualized to a point of ridiculousness... I can't watch a decent movie without SOMEONE having to take their ****ing clothes off for fan service. Makes me retch. Whatever happend to intellectual stimulation?
Anyway, back onto point. I actually met him on this website I was big on when I was 14. I realized I still had a profile on there & I said "well **** it. I might as well see if there is anyone interesting around these days!" And not but one day after he signed up to the site, I messaged him. We hit it off instantly. It's pretty much all downhill from there, moving to phone conversations, visiting him, & moving in with him not but 6 1/2 months after we first spoke... And here we are, well over a year later! It's weird.
The only site I've seen asexual as an option was a fetishy site, but I'm sure you're uninterested in that. Unless I'm wrong! Hahahaha.
Ohhh but the hostage step is the funnest one! :O

a therapist tried to convince me i was a sex addict
i told him i wasnt coming anymore.

A manager would be perfect!!

And LMAO newtus. Good one. :P

Eee that sounds awesome! I'm reviewing the vegan because I'm so damned hungry on it. I've always been adverse to land-meat, but fish is OK. Tuna isn't my favourite. I ate an omelette earlier and I feel AMAZING. It could just be because I hadn't eaten in like 24 hours though. What's the recipe? Is it the Isa Chandra Moscovitz one with the wheat gluten?

Yikes! My parents were about that far apart . . . and my ex was twenty years older than me, but he lied about it. Said he was only 12 years older and I was the idiot who believed him. He actually had a daughter my age going to the same university and now I sometimes worry he was a paedophile or that he abused his daughter . . . ugh. Aaaaand he was actually my boss when we started going out; we were going out mostly because I was taken by surprise. What an exemplar history with men I have!

I was chatting with my neighbour down the way earlier and she randomly, casually mentioned that she once made out with this guy when she was on a school holiday in Aruba (i.e., before she was 18) and two weeks later he was all over the news for killing eight people. Now he's in prison in Peru. ****ing weird.

To me, all the sex is just funny. I don't get why people would want to do it, so I really don't get why the suggestion of doing it would make me want to buy things/watch things/do things. In my world, ripping off all your clothes and rubbing your naughty bits on something is just incomprehensible.

Hehe, that's sweet!

Uhmmm explain the connexion between fetish and asexual?? Totally not in to that. I want a nice guy to hug and cuddle but who will keep his tackle in his trousers.

I can give them agency powers and everything! They can bind me in third party contracts!!

And Newtus is brilliant with words!! Could do fantastic things with them if she wanted.

And right when I freak out about compulsive and relentless over-achieving, they post this on the guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...liver-burkeman

I'm not vegan anymore, but I still don't eat a lot of meat. It just doesn't sit as well on my palate. And I just recently discovered I'm allergic to milk, so hah! But the recipe is pretty simple. You just take a can of chickpeas (or boil them yourself), either mash them up manually or put them in a food processor until they're at a nice consistency, then add mayo/miracle whip/vegan mayo made with soy, a small amount of vinager & soy for a slightly "fishier" flavour, then as much salt, pepper, & whatever you wish! I personally like to put red chili flakes on pretty much everything. Lol
We all have some hits & misses. He bought me a really pretty corset for my birthday once, though! I still have it, but I need to have the boning mended.... But I can say, I've never been with someone who ACTUALLY killed anyone. Not that I'm complaining!! Hahahaha I'd prefer not to run that risk.
LMFAO I honestly can't blame you. I'm not big on porn & when I watch it, I can't help but laugh... But I think most biological functions are either funny, weird, or downright gross. I have a hard time thinking of myself in terms of being "human". It confounds me!! We have all of this potential in our minds, yet we haven't figured out a different way of going about things yet? There aren't any shortcuts? Though, I have heard about a drug they use in sperm banks that can make a guy spontaneously ejaculate a couple minutes later. :P
Yeah, it really is. Confounds the hell out of me because I approached him with all of the problems I was aware of at the time, once I could tell things were going to get real. I basically laid it out like, "I am a nearly emotionless bipolar mess who has cheated on everyone I've ever been with. I like you & I don't want you to have the wrong idea of me. It isn't going to be easy. Are you ready for this?" Hahahaha!! My honesty serves me well, for some reason.
I WISH I KNEW WHY. That's not even relevent, but it's for some reason on there... Then again, I saw a lot of people who went on that site just to poke fun at weirdos! And the forums are really active. The only downside is the overwhelming amount of genitalia & unsolicited messages from people... XD
And I agree... She's hilarious. And thankfully forgives me for my unexplainable slip-up even while she was fully distressed. That was quite kind of her, lol!

Oh I HATE mayonnaise with a passion reserved only for the devil.
Sucks you're allergic to milk . . . cheese is God's gift to people.

I dunno, whenever I see an erection I just think the guy looks so proud of it. Like . . . . congrats dude, you're pointy. You can even count all the way to 1 with your crotch. Get over yourself.

That's proper disgusting.

Wow! I think most boys would run away. I wonder if I should try that. "Oh by the way I'm a psychotic, stressed-out, angry ***** and we're never going to have sex. Shall we have a second date then?" Haha. I can't see that ever working in my favour.

Any amount of genitalia is overwhelming.