Nothing works

I am done. I want to give up. I am 48. I need to conquer my fears, severe anxiety and depression, complex ptsd, trauma, obsessive debilitating constant fear of aging illness dying, relentless impending doom. Incessant worries about my health every second. Terrified of the future. Cannot function at all, I just want to be there for my kids and be present, enjoy, have peace, feel safe, and look forward to life instead of being terrified of everything all the time. I have tried soooo many things for several years but NOTHING works at all. I have tried all medications, inpatient, partial hospitalization, residential, ECT, TMS, hypnosis, stellate ganglion block, meditation, exercise, everything. No idea what to do. I cannot go on another day like this. I have constant feelings of suffocating impending doom every second like I will die any day now. Is there anything that can help? Please, i cannot live like this one more day. I am begging you. I need this to be gone as soon as possible. Please, please help me. I cannot bear living with this one more second. There just seems to be no solution. I always feel in danger and dreading the future constantly. Every second I am consumed with an intense fear of aging and of dying. I do not know what to do. I wish I could find proper relief. I never am able to relax, enjoy, or have any peace. And I know it is inevitable and useless to worry and irrational but it will not let me go one bit!

I am so very, very sorry for the horrific ordeal you are suffering and have been suffering. It is the most heartbreaking situation I have ever read about here on the Forums. Just absolutely heartbreaking. I can't even begin to imagine what you have gone through and are still going through.

There is a procedure, a procedure of last resort called a bilateral cingulotomy. Only a few hospitals offer it. Two I can think of are UCLA and Columbia University Medical Center. I don't know what the success rate is of the procedure. It has risks and can cause short term and long term side effects. As you can imagine, it is a very, very controversial procedure. To be honest, I don't know if I would have the procedure, assuming I met the qualifications for it, if I was in the same situation as you.

Wish I knew what to say that would be helpful to you. What a terrible and agonizing burden you bear. Reading your post brought tears to my eyes. Just utterly heartbreaking!

I relate to your post strongly. It feels like everything around me is falling apart...the walls, the ceiling, the floor. There's no safety and no stability. Your cry for help really touches me. If I had any ideas I'd share them. I'm so sorry. One thing I can say is that you are NOT alone.

Something that helps me...I actually have experienced some of the dying process with my disease. I am doing better, but we are all physically mortal beings. I like this quote from the song "Thank U" by Alanis Morrisette: "How 'bout not equating death with stopping?" I find this song useful when anxiety is getting the best of me. I find it helpful sometimes to sit with and acknowledge my fears, bring them into a place of acceptance. Accepting there are things beyond our control but we can control ourselves. That is our power. Living in the moment helps, too. I've been working on changing my perspectives and accepting the things that I simply cannot change.

I was facing my mortality at the age of 34. I am fortunate to be alive. I thought I would be more afraid than I was when I was given the diagnosis, but I found more peace than I did fear when facing the potential destruction within my illness. I wrote a lot of poetry. Drank a lot of tea. Found purpose in my life. Having a purpose plays a big role. I don't know if you're someone with a creative outlet, I don't see that as something you've tried yet. Why not try writing or doing a form of artwork? Stories, journals, poetry, whatever. If you can't draw (drawing just takes a lot of repetition and practice), try painting, an adult coloring book, ceramics, photography, abstract art, collages, sculptures, graphic design, making jewelry, flower arrangements, gardening, baking, cooking. Or music? Playing an instrument, singing. I'm not sure what creativity suits you but I feel like we all have it within us. Sometimes my creative expression is the one thing that keeps me sane or from giving up on life.

Have you tried spending time in nature? Everyone has their thing in nature that helps the most. Some find peace by rivers or bodies of water, some in the mountains, others in gardens, or on nature trails. I think when all else fails, nature has a way of healing or bringing someone peace. Sometimes taking long walks alone (also good for your health).

Lastly, I don't know what your spiritual beliefs might be. But I have found surrendering my worries and fears and troubles to a higher power helps me a lot. One time I was so stressed I was awake for about 48 hours, I decided to give the issue I was obsessing/ruminating about to my higher power. My rationale: I needed to sleep, so someone else can work on this for a while. Maybe come up with a solution if I can't. After that, I was finally able to pass out because I stopped thinking about it. If this isn't your thing, set a mental boundary, "I am mentally setting this aside for now, so I can come back later with a fresh mind." Then let it go.

I am deeply empathetic with your struggles. I know what it's like when your mind is a place of Hell, tormenting you with anguish, suffering, and chaos. You are not alone.

@darkfeary (((safe hugs))) I'm so sorry you are struggling with treatment-resistant depression. The best support you can get right now would be speaking with professional counselors and licensed crisis counselors at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (if you're in the U.S.). Their number is 1-800-273-8255.

Please don't end your life. Please don't give up.

You might want to explain all your symptoms (including what sounds like anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure) to a psychiatrist as well as a psychologist. If you have a therapist and/or psychiatrist, please reach out to them and leave them a message. Also consider checking into a treatment facility, depending on your insurance. You can go in voluntarily, which gives you the option where to go ahead of time. If you go involuntarily, meaning, via ambulance or police, they will put you anywhere. But even that's better than the alternative.

You are not alone in the struggle. And maybe treatments in the past haven't worked, but there are professionals out there who are working on how to treat treatment-resistant depression. There are newer methods out there, which might sound scary initially, but it might help. Consider all of them and get a few opinions before making a choice.

Hang in there.

Also, I'm a year younger than you and fear dying a traumatic death, aging alone, dying alone, etc. I may not experience as severe of symptoms as you, but have you also considered writing down some details about your systems and where you think those thoughts and feelings originated from? This way, you can help your treatment team help you better.

For example, it sounds like you've experienced medical traumas in the past. As a child, I had experienced medical traumas repeatedly, in addition to physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, witnessing domestic violence, witnessing natural disasters, experiencing homelessness and poverty, experiencing school bullying, experiencing racial traumas, and more. All of those things add up over the years whenever I got retraumatized in hospital settings, therapeutic settings, workplace settings, and relational settings.

Although Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped me to see where the sources of my triggers might have stemmed from, and what my immediate reactions were (my automatic thoughts coupled with my automatic feelings to both the situation and my automatic thoughts), I still struggled with the "coping skills" to cognitively restructure that which was "distorted." Why? Because ongoing trauma triggers, such as pandemics, what's in the news, racial traumas, and relational traumas in intimate partner violence/domestic violence is not in the past, and is very much real - not a distortion. Until I sought help from someone who understood present-day traumas that are ongoing, I felt like my laments and fears were minimized, which invalidated my reasons for treatment.

I then reevaluated what I wanted out of treatment. It wasn't just for my painful feelings and fears to go away, but it was also for a sense of justice when I never received any justice in real life. It was for receiving validation and a "this isn't right what happened to you and what continues to happen to you."

As for medical traumas, witnessing a disabled parent or sibling or extended family die, or witnessing them suffering long-term before their death, might be a vicarious medical trauma in the past coupled with a form of child emotional neglect (the lack of explaining to the child that the child should not have been adultified, parentified, or exposed to those situations without comfort and good explanations from the parents). Additionally, if you were constantly in and out of the hospital yourself as a child (as I was and my sister was), then all the things you experienced and/or witnessed may be bringing about the triggers in today's traumatic pandemic, today's ageism, and today's ableism. As harmful as racial trauma is, so are age-based traumas and disability-based traumas. People stigmatize the disabled, the mentally ill, the obese (which can stem from both physiological metabolic disorders related to hormones as well as from neurological and/or psychological disorders, including sleep-wake disorders), and the elderly. They devalue them in society, and such traumas are ongoing and valid.

If that is anything remotely comforting for you to know, then I hope this helps validate both your current please for feeling at your wits end, but also for the lack of justice that ensues and depresses as well as oppresses minorities in these particular classes. As we age, we are more prone to stigma, mental illness, physical disabilities, obesity, and ageism. Age therefore becomes somewhat of a depressing notion, instead of a noble one of survival, positive accomplishments (e.g., establishing a legacy to leave behind), etc. When you've been alone most of your life, the world becomes a scarier place because of your lack of support and protection through that support. Being alone makes us more vulnerable - no matter what we're struggling with, so it comes as no surprise that our fears become heightened when alone.

Finding support from others who struggle similarly as you will help a little - maybe not a lot, but definitely a little. Having online contacts here might not cure what you're going through, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

Finding support through your primary care doctor, your psychiatrist, your psychotherapist, and/or a neurologist/neuroscientist will also be helpful. Even if they keep trying different meds and treatments, and even if that gets frustrating and retraumatizing at times, it's still a step in the right direction toward managing your symptoms. You pick small tools here and there that work, and you chuck the stuff that doesn't. When nothing works, you make a list of things you've tried, and you write down why it didn't work, what your reactions were, what you were trying to treat or your clinicians were trying to treat, and why you don't benefit from it. Making this list out will not only help you identify what hasn't worked and why, but it will also help your treatment team to also consider what hasn't worked and why.

There might be ongoing research out there for treatment-resistant depression, but it also sounds like you have specific phobias, anxiety, PTSD, and a history of some sort of medical trauma. It's the "medical trauma" that often gets negated by society, in particular those who have been desensitized by medical traumas when they are themselves experiencing vicarious trauma through their jobs - like doctors, nurses, paramedics, ICU staff, ER staff, and even psychotherapists, psychiatrists, etc. If they've been desensitized and don't have your disorder, how can they possibly address or even validate medical traumas? But it is real and a thing.

So look into all that, and if you have the energy, make a list to help you help others with helping you better.

I hope this makes sense.

Hang in there.

Thank you so much for your insight and suggestions. I do feel completely alone. I am by myself all day long every day. And I am someone who needs other people around and does better in crowds especially not feeling safe alone anymore. I used to be fine hanging out by myself but I am terribly lonely and scared now. If my mountainous anxiety would subside even a little bit, I would be able to focus on other things to help me. Lately, I cannot find the right treatment or meds so I feel like I am constantly on edge just trying to make it through every second hanging on for dear life.

Did the pandemic bring up these feelings, or did you have these feelings before the pandemic?

Do you know the source of your trigger(s)?

If medications aren't helping, have you considered seeing a talk therapist (psychotherapist, social worker, MFT, LPC, etc.) to help you figure out when these thoughts started and what triggered them? That might help if you receive CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) or some other talk-therapy treatment to help you cope with these negative thoughts and your resulting anxiety.

When I used to be on anti-anxiety meds, they only helped relieve the heart palpitations and body tenseness, but they never stopped my thoughts. In fact, my thoughts worsened for some reason, and I also dissociated. Over time, I was weaned off of anti-anxiety meds (benzos) and instead learned how to use coping skills and alternative resources to reduce my anxiety.

Some of my coping skills entailed a certain form of CBT for trauma.

For example, when I had the automatic thoughts of, "I'm going to die a premature death, or I'm going to be tortured and retraumatized in life," which made me feel the emotions fear, anxiety, panic, hopelessness, and depression (among other feelings), which also affected my body (somatic responses such as stomach aches or headaches or feeling tense), I tried to figure out what was going on at the time I had these automatic thoughts with resulting feelings/emotions and somatic responses. Sometimes I could identify the trigger, and sometimes I couldn't, due to my dissociative disorder. But if you don't have a dissociative disorder, you might be able to figure out what you're triggered by more easily. For me, it was a combination of triggers (before the pandemic), such as men who I worked closely with that week and whom reminded me of my past childhood and early adulthood abuses, where my life felt threatened. It was also my PTSD and being hypervigilant to the dangers around me, including my willfully watching or reading the news all the time.

Last year, I felt really threatened when the pandemic hit, and when I thought all these divisions and my own loneliness from the world meant that I would die being hated, tortured with ventilators, and alone. I was terrified for months, and I was feeling suicidal but also afraid of the spiritual threats I received in the past about feeling suicidal. None of that helped me calm down, and I panicked a lot.

But my T and the many calls to the crisis line (same number for civilians and veterans, by the way, except veterans press 1 I think) helped me to get validated for my feelings, find safe things in my environment, find safe ways to reach out to others online (especially when we were on lockdown), find safe resources to help me with my needs (like the local mutual aid groups that were previously on Facebook or certain websites), find safer news stations to listen to, and find better coping skills (like limiting my time reading/watching the news, and learning to pause and breathe, and learning to pace and contain). My T allowed me to email her, too. She didn't respond to my emails all the time, but she would read them and discuss them in our sessions. After about six months, her schedule cleared enough to see me twice a week. Since Fall 2020, I've continued to see her twice a week online only. I missed seeing her in person, but I'm too afraid to see anyone in person. I'm afraid that I will give them the 'Rona and get them killed. But that doesn't mean I don't want to see anyone. I'm miserable in my apartment and being alone and house-bound for 19/20 months now.

I keep telling myself positive affirmations, such as:
* I can always make new friends.
* These feelings will eventually pass, as long as I keep using the coping skills to help me overcome these feelings.
* I have internal strengths that I can use to help me through these rough times (such as trying to be optimistic, and being resourceful in finding resources to help me - such as the crisis line and my T).
* I have some social support, and I can eventually find people I can trust and feel close to when I'm ready.
* My apartment is safe.
* The resources available to call or email are safe.
* My T is safe.
* There are medical and scientific advancements that help us to survive, heal, and improve our quality of life.
* There are protective factors like resources to help connect us with others in our local areas, higher education, and hobbies we can find with others who have similar interests.
* There are protective factors like being able to call 9-1-1 for help when there is an emergency (unless you are a minority and fear police brutality, which is another issue altogether, but a real one in certain jurisdictions, sadly; but even then, there are victim's advocates and other advocates who can help in even those times).
* I can improve my social skills so that I can make more close friends in the future.
* I am worthy of being liked and loved.
* I deserve to be safe.
* I deserve to be happy.

You can make your own list of affirmations, as well as your own list of things you find safe. That's part of coping.

You can also journal and try to find your triggers. When you find your triggers, you can also use CBT or other coping tools to reframe what triggered you, such as, the memories of the past do not mean that I'm in danger today. Or, if I'm in danger today, I can find tools that help me me safe. With the guidance of a professional, such as a talk therapist, you can learn these coping skills. It may be hard at first, but it gets easier over time.

Our negative self-talk means self-sabotaging our happiness and self-harming our way through a life that we would otherwise deserve. It's understandable why you would feel these fears, and it's good to be cautious when in danger or feeling threatened. However, it's also good to find safe things so that we can take a break from constantly being on guard.

I couldn't have learned these things without therapy/counseling as well as social supports that helped me with some of these things.

Your feelings are valid, and you're not alone in the struggle (even if you are lonely and live alone). There are resources that can help you, and what you feel now is temporary (even though society constantly and subtly reminds us about age, ageism, and medical problems, medical stigmas, etc.). The best way to fight structural violence that triggers our own sense of safety is finding a validating and trustworthy social support network, being an advocate or finding advocates, being empowered with others who are standing up for their rights to safety and inclusiveness, etc. When you feel belonged in multiple areas in life, you don't feel so alone.

Hope some of these tips help you to find help and receive it.

(((safe thoughts and safe hugs)))