Mental Health Thread • Page 269

In my personal opinion, I never see why people freak out so much about those things. Granted, my school never did those things but honestly, I would care less about what people I hadn’t talked to or seen in over ten years would think about my current life. I’ve lived a hell of a life since high school, I’ve got to do things I’ve day dreamed about and have many memories and stories to tell. More importantly, I grew as a person when many of my classmates didn’t. I know you feel down about your life right now but it won’t always be that way, you’ll get to a better place. I’m in a similar rut and it bums me out too sometimes, but honestly? Those people aren’t in my life, those people didn’t join me in the good times or were there for me in the bad times. Their opinions and views don’t mean shit to me and never will.

I guess what I’m getting at here is don’t let the thought of being around people who haven’t been in your life for ten years get you down. I mean, y’all probably not ever see each other again after that anyway.

 

Wanna put my head through the wall. I have crippling self-doubt in my relationships. I was doing so well for weeks, got drunk with friends last night, and I’m now I’m lying on the floor staring at the ceiling and assuming it’s all gonna come crashing down on me soon. I feel sick I’m so anxious.

 

My depression is getting to me lately. I don't want to do anything, and I'm feeling worthless that I will get no where in life.

 

I'm not brave. I care too much what people think and I'm passive and anxious and beat myself up for it. I don't want to be a coward. I want to be strong and advocate and stand up and not shrink back.

 

I feel like a worthless fucking failure. Everyone I know seems to have their shit together and I still can't get a job that'll pay me any sort of money. I present a radio show once a week and recording for that is more or less the only thing that gets me out of bed. If I didn't have that I wouldn't have fucking anything, and even that's probably destined for failure because I've never been able to get anywhere in life and I've no reason to believe that will ever change. I feel so inadequate compared to my friends, peers and family and am so fucking sick of struggling through every week just to rinse and repeat the next one. I've started drinking more often than usual because it's the only thing I can do that helps with the pain my depression causes me. At the best of times I don't feel anything at all and happiness seems like a distant memory. I don't even know why I'm alive, to be completely honest. I just hate myself and my fucking aimless life so much.

 

Therapy has already proven useful, went for the second time today and my psychologist used a word I can't believe I've never heard before - catastrophizing - which is basically assuming the worst to a pathological degree. And this is so 100% me it's an attack. I'll be thinking a lot about this until my next session.

 

@K0ta thats awesome to hear! I found my first few therapy sessions so eye opening, especially for learning terms for things like unhelpful thinking styles that I was using all the time

 

I'm in a weird position where I don't work with my therapist on a professional level much but it still feels like we're colleagues. sometimes I feel like she is venting a lot about mental health in this area and stuff she wouldn't say if I wasn't a colleague and I agree with her on all of it, but sometimes I feel like it takes a lot of time in the sessions. I wanna be like OK BUT LETS TALK ABOUT ME lol. I think this is partly my fault too tho because I take so much prodding and prompt to talk that I'm difficult to.... Therapize I think idk

 

Thank you! It really is interesting and humbling in some ways to think I have it all figured out and I can still be surprised by what I don't know lol.

My anxiety also manifests itself as physical symptoms and it's so hard to deal with. Being conscious of your breathing is so important, because it's easy to breathe very shallow or not breathe at all which just snowballs those physical symptoms. I try to remember that the physical symptoms are real and the manifestation of a response my body is having, which is helpful just to remember that it's not "crazy" but truly physical. Stay hydrated and take time to do the deep breathing like you are. Try to identify what is causing the anxiety if you can, and if possible deal with that situation. Now anxiety doesn't always work in rational ways that are clear to us, so it's not always possible to figure out why we are a feeling a certain way.

In those cases I often reach for media/music that is calming or distracting for myself, for instance certain songs/artists or TV shows/movies are guaranteed to just put me at ease. As I have gotten older I realized I medicated with media A LOT as a kid, and my obsessions with certain things were almost certainly a fixation on suppressing depression/anxiety and it helps! I'm not saying this is a fix but it is a coping strategy that is better than many alternatives.

Is there anybody at work you feel comfortable confiding in? Sometimes simply saying "I'm anxious" to a safe person who knows how to deal with you in that moment and being able to ride it out with that person is helpful. It could mean them sitting quietly with you as you breathe or trying to talk through and identify what is causing that feeling in that moment.

If you're in a place where you can't access those options, try stepping away from your desk if you can and going to the restroom or a quick walk and focus on your breathing. Often a change of scenery is helpful to break the cycle that often accompanies anxiety and becomes almost a positive feedback loop, so by moving you help alleviate some of that pressure.

As somebody who gets bad digestive symptoms from my anxiety I have also found that following a healthier diet really helps as a long term solution. I have found a more elevated mood and less physical anxiety symptoms by eating better/less processed foods. Be careful with caffeine/nicotine, as a former smoker I can confirm that smoking with an anxiety disorder actually just makes it worse. Not sure if you smoke but it is something consider if you do! Or if you drink coffee/tea because caffeine can also bother the stomach and make anxiety worse. Also exercise is a great way to alleviate anxiety as a preventative measure if you're able to!

So yeah hopefully you can find something in here that may help. Dealing with anxiety is unfortunately a constant struggle (for me at least), and as mine has been quite severe at times I found I really had to make hard lifestyle changes to deal with it. Hopefully this doesn't sound preachy because I only mean to talk about my experience and things I have discovered over time, some of these things seem obvious but it took me so long to figure it out!

 

Thankful for this thread

 

I will definitely second this. I recently decided to open up about my struggles on social media with friends and family and this is a small part of a much, much longer post I’d written:

“In therapy I have learned that my process for handling emotion has become a three-act structure. First come the thoughts down the factory assembly line, indistinguishable duplicates of each other until I assign them a particular value. For me the value is almost always inherently negative. It’s then that these thoughts become feelings. Imagine for a moment, my therapist told me recently, that you are a bouncer at a nightclub and your job is to allow only those on the list to pass through. At first you’re diligent, strictly adhering to the list, but as the night wears on you start to slip. You’re getting tired. You make exceptions for the patrons based on surface level assumptions that you deem to be truth. Eventually, before you have any time or ability to do anything about it, the club is overrun.

There is no more space for anyone.

There is no more space for you.

You are no longer in control.

My feelings have now formulated into the final step in which they take action. Those that know me typically refer to me as quiet. I don’t necessarily want to be that way. Sometimes, when I am in a room full of people, some friends, some family, I can see and feel myself drifting away while I watch those around me carrying on in conversation, wishing I could just open my mouth to speak. It’s often then that I suddenly find myself physically alone. Somehow, against my better judgment or desire, I have sequestered myself. Sometimes it morphs and manifests into a form of self-destruction.”

I’ve been learning a lot about meditation, defusing, and stopping myself from getting lost inside my head when the negative thoughts consume me. One of the harder methods has been allowing it all to cut deep for about thirty seconds, with the worst thoughts at the forefront, and then to begin saying “My mind is telling me I am worthless” (or whatever the thought may be) for as long as I need. Then I move on to “I am noticing that my mind is telling me I am worthless” and I repeat that until I feel like I’ve successfully created some kind of distance between myself and the negative thoughts I’m drowning in. It helps but I am constantly fighting it. Learning that my mind has created these defense mechanisms under the guise of “self preservation” when I am actively trying to change has been a weird revelation. It’s easier to stay with the pain I know so my mind holds me back and weighs me down even though it’s only hurting me. My therapist has also been teaching me about the Observer Self vs the Conditioned Self and how the Observer Self, or the true self, shuts down and goes into a self induced coma in the face of trauma in an attempt to preserve your true self from harm, which has been fascinating and deeply upsetting.

 

Oh god this was absolutely 100% me too! It seems so obvious on its face now that I’ve been actively dealing with things, but I was completely oblivious to it before. Lately I’ve been going back to certain songs I used to fixate on at specific points of my life when I was at my lowest and...wow. The lyrics all have a VERY specific commonality to them and I just sit there stunned. It was the only way I think I knew how to subconsciously help myself when it felt like no one would listen or understand. I know that’s kind of a universal thing for so many people, but I just didn’t see or understand exactly what I was seeking out when I was in the midst of it all.

 

It's amazing really because like you said it does seem so obvious, but when you're in the midst of it and don't have the vocabulary to understand what is happening it's just purely instinctive. It's just this desperation for what works to calm the storm and there's no consciousness behind it at all. I do the same thing, where I go back to things I used to watch/listen to to try and figure out what was captivating about it and it's actually really insightful to understand the kid I was and maybe how it influenced the adult I am now.

 

oh do some people not immediately get back on their self hating bullshit after therapy lol

 

Sometimes I can ride the high for an hour or two and then when something actually happens I forget every technique I ever learned and just go right back to dealing with everything the wrong way.

Now after my session this morning I I'm aggressively researching catastrophizing so I can feel personally attacked all day because of how viciously on brand it is and maybe feel seen by that but also now have to contend with thinking of this behavior in these terms for the rest of my life.

Probably mostly depends on the day/moon phase.

 

This is great, gonna try to adopt this habit

 

Thankfully two of my closest friends work at the same office as me so I have support here when I’m feeling anxious.
Stuff like eating healthier and exercising have been on my list of things to fix forever lol
Thanks so much for this long and detailed answer

 

When it works, it really works and I always end up feeling like I’ve just snapped out of some trance I was in before like “wait, what was I doing?” It’s so strange to look behind me and see exactly how my mind has mapped out a pathway to isolation and how well worn that path really is.

 

I know sometimes it might be hard to recognize in those moments when to reach out, but it's so great that you have safe people there so even if you have to write yourself a sticky note please remember to talk to them and help them understand what you might need in those moments so they can better help you. Always here to help if you ever want to talk!

 

There's a big difference between whether a feeling is valid and whether it is true. All feelings are valid simply because that's the way you feel. You can't always control that. You can, however, control how you act on your feelings. While your feelings are valid, they may not be true. They may be a result of interpreting the situation incorrectly, or they may be inappropriate for the situation.

For anyone that might need to hear this today.

 

I'm gonna find out in a few days if I'm fostering this kid and idk. I'm oddly not nervous? I feel confident I can parent this specific child and I'm even kinda excited?? Idk like it might be nice to focus on something that isn't my own work or existential crisis. I'm of the attitude that if it works out then it works out and if it doesn't that's cool too, but it is weird that I likely won't know until the day he'd come live with me. Which u know is that foster parent life, but I'm v planful so it's weird

 

I need to get off my ass and find a therapist. Have less than of month left of my prescription and going to see my doctor after 3 months of not looking for a therapist probably won't end well for me.

Today was a good day at work since getting paid to essentially watch the WWDC is never a bad thing, but my brain was still on its bullshit throughout the day with suicidal ideation at times. Sigh.

 

My friend has what she calls a “magic book” on living with anxiety, and summarized a bunch of it for me, figured I’d post it here cuz I know some of you need to read this:

At the end of the day, all people are uncomfortable to some degree with uncertainty. It’s a survival instinct. It’s normal. Anxiety, on the other hand, is when that natural aversion to uncertainty gets out of control. Lots of people have this problem (like yours truly). Lots of people who have this problem are also people who are naturally oriented toward problem-solving; we see the world and all of its situations as problems that need solving and working out. Unfortunately, when the outcome of something important is uncertain, that feels like a problem you should be able to solve. We try to “solve” it by spinning through all the possible outcomes, and *particularly* the worst case scenarios. It’s like the more you go through it, the better prepared you will be should they materialize. But it’s important to remember that anxiety is not a feeling that is connected to the present moment; it can only exist in the past (going over something that’s already happened) or in the future (worrying about something that might happen). But in the moment, if your worst case scenario comes true, you won’t be anxious - you might be disappointed, scared, hurt, etc, but all that anxiety you wasted your time on leading up to that moment will not actually prepare you for those other feelings. They’re unrelated. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that anxiety is your brain tricking you into thinking it’s working toward solving a problem, but really you’re spinning your wheels and doing yourself a disservice. Getting comfortable with uncertainty is much healthier and more productive.

And another thing to reflect on is that anxiety only tends to manifest when there is something so important to your life or identity or goals or whatever that is at stake. If you didn’t care about this job and life change you’re going through, you simply wouldn’t be anxious. The bad feelings are inextricably linked with the fact that you’re working toward making a positive change in your life. You’re on a difficult learning curve and doing something meaningful and so the stakes feel high. This is actually a good thing. It’s a positive thing that you care enough to be anxious, even though it’s manifesting kind of perversely - the reality is that you care a lot because you’re making healthy and exciting changes. The example they use in the book is of the agoraphobe, who wouldn’t feel anxious alone in the countryside if they didn’t really want to be living in the city. They would just happily avoid other people. But if they care about being in a city environment (maybe because they have a job that requires them to be in the city), then they might accept and endure their anxious feelings in order to enjoy that meaningful part of their life/identity. In other words, we only experience anxiety when something important is on the line - otherwise we would just avoid the thing causing the anxious feelings and carry on happily. The fact that you have anxiety means you’re enduring the discomfort of some uncertainty in order to achieve or experience something important to you.

Takeaways: anxiety is normal, natural, but won’t assuage your disappointment if you fail. It just wastes your energy now.

You are working toward something important to you and that is GOOD! You are good. This is good.


Always remember friends: YOU ARE GOOD

 

I want to like this many times.

 

my friend’s gonna lend me her magic book! I’ll be sharing any future wisdom I learn with the thread of course