Mental Health Thread • Page 485

wife works in the medical field so she gives me all my flu/covid shots and this is exactly how she treats me lol

 

I have tons of tattoos and getting those I have no issues but when I get blood taken I freak out for like a week before and work myself up and then it takes like 2 seconds and I’m fine.

 

sounds like she just brought out the inner strength you don’t even know you had!

 

No way, fuck her.

 

The polar opposites of the internet

 

Haha, I’m just very sensitive to medical trauma and shitty nurses/doctors after everything I’ve been through.

 

i hear / see you there.

 

I'm with you there

 

I am so overwhelmingly disappointed in our world, mostly my country, for being so unimaginably stupid and lacking in empathy. For physical and mental health issues I have to seriously consider leaving now.

I'm so ashamed of humanity.

 

last time I got blood taken the nurse missed my vein and it did not feel good. She joked about it.

 

Another night of feeling and being lonely, crying myself to sleep wondering if I’ll ever be enough. Wondering if I’ll ever get my happily ever after.

 

2-part question for any of you who are or have been in therapy:

Without getting too personal, unless you want to, what (finally) made you decide you needed to go see someone?

And how did you go about finding a therapist?

 

1. Travel anxiety (for the most part) made me act like an asshole and would cause arguments with my wife on basically every trip we took. I would get this feeling/plan in my head of how things would go (the drive, the hotel, the food, anything I set expectations of) and when it would go off plan (the plan in my head I wasn’t directly communicating with my wife) I would spiral.

I also had a pretty rough upbringing that I feel *pretty* well-adjusted from that comes up in therapy but it isn’t really the main focus

2. Found a specifically non-religious therapist on psychology today’s website and turned out that he was a classmate of my wife’s therapist and she spoke highly of him

 

It has been incredibly helpful for me just to have someone to talk to and work through my anxieties and feelings with regarding basically everything. I also was put on a small dose of lexapro about a month before I started therapy which I think helps a lot.

 

I didn’t see a therapist until I was in my late 20s and had a severe bought of depression that almost hospitalized me. I really wish I had gone sooner. I was on some meds for a while but never found the right ones but feel good about managing after a few years of intense therapy and now just regular sessions and meditation practices.

 

Oh man I have this (probably to a lighter degree) but it never came up as something I could work on, I always just thought of it as I hate traveling and would rather staycation. Did you get any tips or practices that help that you’d be willing to share?

 

First time was when I was so depressed that I didn't leave bed for two weeks and was vomiting any time I tried to eat anything, second time was just due to the stress of being in college. It's always a good idea to go to therapy tbh, pretty much every human could use some help here and there. I've been procrastinating for far too long to find a new one though.

My parents found the first therapist and he was honestly the best one I've ever had. Second one I found through Google, but she unfortunately stopped taking my insurance

 

@Victor Eremita Not any real specific practices. More so just looking deeper into why I let things get to that point and why I have trouble letting go of the wheel so to speak. I would just be so dead set on what I thought was going to happen and I was unable to pivot

 

I started therapy in the winter/spring of 2019. Fall to winter of 2018/19 I was just…god I don’t know how to describe it. I felt like I was losing my mind. I occasionally described it like it felt at times as though a part of me I’d buried deep inside of myself a long time ago was clawing its way up to the surface and looking around like “whaaaaat the fuck did you do to us? How did we get here? What’s going on? Why did that thing happen and you just never talked about it…to anyone!”

I went on what felt like a weird apology tour I couldn’t control where I was texting my wife these manic diatribes about how much she meant to me and what an awful piece of shit I’ve been over the years and she would be like “…are you alright? I love you, we’re good. You’re fine. What’s going on?” And then I’d start doing that to other people, some of whom I hadn’t spoken to in years and it was like I couldn’t make it stop. I started playing old songs I hadn’t listened to since childhood and opening the floodgates to memories I’d locked away and I would just cry all the time. I remember one night specifically where I was driving home from work late at night and this song was playing and I could not stop sobbing so I pulled the car over to the side of the road because I couldn’t see and said out loud to no one but myself, “I think there’s something wrong with me!”

I started to feel like I was ideating a lot about death and that scared me because it was way too familiar and took me to a very dark place in my memory I didn’t like to go to. I just felt like day to day I could not function until I finally approached my wife and said, “I think…I need to talk to someone. Do you think it would be okay if I tried therapy?” She was immediately so supportive and said she felt I would benefit massively, which I have. The fact that I even felt the need to ask if it would be okay if I started therapy was a whole thing in and of itself that was instilled in me from childhood, which I’ve also had to work through.

It always felt like a switch in my brain just turned on (or maybe off) one day and was like, “can’t handle existing anymore. We gave it our best for a while. That’s not going to work anymore though so, until you get help, we’re just going to spiral out of control now.”

 

Therapy has been crucial for me in managing anxiety and depression

 

1. I had a massive panic attack that I thought was a heart attack and wound up in the ER for several hours. Then had such bad anxiety about having another episode that I just stared at my phone, googling every single little "symptom" and twitch and twinge i felt in my body with 911 ready to dial in the middle of the night for weeks. I was a recluse and didn't want to spend any time with my wife or dogs or friends and barely worked because I was so focused on it happening again. Went to my PCP to ask they start me on medication for the panic attacks and they were insistent that I also start therapy as well. I'm glad they did otherwise I would have just stuck to the medication and never actually worked on improving my mental health and coming up with tools and resources to help me cope with the long term problems.

2. I have mental health coverage through work so I found SonderMind and they matched me with a few therapists that took my insurance and they called me to set up an interview to see if we were a good match. I picked one and started that same week. Went for about 2 years and it literally changed my life. if you're even thinking about it, if you can find the right therapist, it's 100% worth it.

 

1. I had severe anxiety in high school that led to physical tics that cost me all my friendships. My mom had me get EEG testing and everything else under the sun. Mental health in my family is never talked about, so my family doctor at the time suggested I see a therapist and my mom was hesitant at first. But it opened the door for recovery.

2. A referral from my family doctor at the time. That counseling center eventually mysteriously shut down, so I had to Google a new one, which I currently go to.

 

I get my insurance through the ACA. I specifically picked a plan this year bc it said therapy only had a $20 copay so I thought ok I can afford a few sessions a month maybe. I called before scheduling just to make sure and they said “yeah no, it’s actually $55” so looks like another year without therapy!! Love to be poor in this country. It’s great!! And I found a therapist who supposedly has a sliding scale for how much they charge based on your income but of course as soon as I brought that up they were magically no longer accepting new patients. Truly can’t win!

 

have you tried one of the telemedicine places to see if they have anyone available with your insurance? i think growtherapy.com is one place that does that....