Tried so much without help. Help!!!

I am new here. I have been treated for depression and anxiety for 21 years and up until a couple of years ago it was somewhat under control with occasional breakthroughs of deeper depression and anxiety. This past year I have become treatment resistant and the depression and anxiety have taken over my life. I have tried many meds with either no luck or intolerable side effects (abilify). I am now on brintellix. And have started lamictal as an add on. In the early stage of titration so will be a while to see if I get the relief I need from the lamictal. I pray everyday for strength and healing I guess I have some strength to battle for so long but I often feel my prayers go unheard. I have to keep fighting for me and my family but I just feel so hopeless and desperate and pained The emotional pain makes my body hurt all over too which is also hard to handle. I would give anything to start feeling even semi normal!

i know what it feels like to feel like prayers go unanswered. i have been very angry at god for a long time now because i have not got better. you dont mention if you have panic attacks or not but in case you do, i will tell you how i manage them as well as my anxiety.

a way to stop panic attacks is to relax. it is physically impossible to panic and relax at the same time. you dont even have to really relax. just fool your brain into thinking you are relaxing. imagine as if you just did a meditation or had a massage and all your muscles have turned into limp noodles. just let them all go. this will stop the panic attack. you may have to do it a couple times over your first tries, but when i started doing this it ended the attacks and soon i never had a panic attack again,

i have this thing called an anxiety meter that i visualize in my head. it goes from 0 to 10, 10 being the worst anxiety ever. so when i am anxious, i see where the needle registers on the meter. then i do breathing exercises until i get it down to a four. which is manageable for me. sometimes i see a knob on the meter and i will manually turn down the meter to four so i can calm down faster. practicing this enough, all i have to do now when i am anxious is say dial down, and i can calm myself.

i hope this helps some. take care

Thanks for your reply. I do t have panic attacks. Just constant depression and almost constant worry and anxiety. It is so frustrating and though I try to remain hopeful I often feel like I just can't do it anymore. I have a wonderful and patient husband and 3 loving caring young adult children and have to keep trying for their sake as well as mine. But it often feels like more than I can handle. Feeling terrible almost everyday is more than anyone of us should have to spend our lives. Losing hope

Hi lapaull, I have no easy answers, I am in a similar place to you (without the children). When life feels intolerable it's hard to hang on. I try to remember that if I hurt myself I will probably harm those who care about me more than I can imagine. They need you for who you are. I try to remember a quote from a German thinker which roughly translates as ' When, through a person, a LITTLE more goodness and love,a LITTLE more light and truth come into the world, their life has had purpose' (capitals mine).
I hope I'm not just talking rubbish to you. My prayers are with you as we both try to find our way.

have you tried ECT?

Lapaull, I'm in the same boat as you with the exception that my three kids are teenagers. I too have a spouse who seems to have infinite patience. She's bewildered whenever I thank her for that.

Fizzyo, I couldn't agree more. I can't resist adding this:

My therapist once told me she's lost three patients and treated numerous survivors who were struggling in the aftermath. She said families are often irreparably damaged. Awful, of course, but hardly surprising. Then she said something that hit me right between the eyes: "You can almost predict the dissolution based on when it (the tragedy) happened."

Whether studies back up her observation I have no idea, but it sure rang true. Ever since, whenever ideation threatens to pull me under, her observation pops into my head. Not by any conscious effort, it just bubbles up unbidden. "OK, so this is unbearable," says the voice in my head. "But if you put an immediate end to it here's what will happen..."

I imagine a small asteroid slamming into the ocean. My wife and kids live on a near island and are of course devastated. They struggle for years, their lives permanently altered. But the damage hardly ends there. My extended family on far shores suffer, too, along with everyone who ever knew me, the damage varying only in degree. Future generations won't escape, either. The internet will make sure of that.

A melodramatic metaphor, perhaps, but there it is. It seems to me that if my current state is the "new normal" and I have to put up with it until the end of my natural life, the sum of all the pain from this day to that will be nothing compared to what all those innocent people would suffer. I believe most of those who lost their battle had a similar thought at some point. The notion that they "gave up" (or worse, "were selfish") is inconceivable to me, and frankly infuriating.

If the above is long-winded or over the top please accept my apology. (If that comes across as an awful "if anyone was offended by what I said" not-pology, the fault is entirely mine.)

Thank you for sharing your experiences.

This is so cool, thanks for posting this