Yet another Doper with depression issues checking in.
I have problems with depression too. It was very bad in my teenage years,for reason I will not elaborate on here. I went through about two years of therapy to pull myself together.
Back then, I thought about suicide and cutting myself. A lot. I haven’t had too many situations of that lately…well to be honest twice in two years- when my nephew died and recently when my IRL friends threatened to stop speaking to me over my relationship with SP.
In the first case,the death of a child I considered a son,I could understand why I felt the way I did and work through it.
In the second case, I was being asked to choose between my friends,who I love and the man I love. Again, I could figure it out and find a way to handle it. BTW…that issue’s all cleared up. Once they (my irl friends) realized how happy SP makes me and how he’s not going to hurt me-if anything he’s more protective of me than they are, if that’s possible…they were cool with it.
Sorry to ramble…just wanted to let you know that you’re not alone. Things will clear up for you. Keep up eith the therapy and if you need a kind ear, you can email me.
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*Originally posted by Francesca *
I’d like to share with you a site that helped me a lot in my darkest days - Bodies Under Seige. The email group has several hundred members and there’s a huge amount of information and support there for people who self-injure and/or are recovering
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I’ll second this. I was on the bus list for a couple years, and it really helped me a lot to have contact with people who knew what I was going through. This site also has a lot of information about self-injury and about other resourses. Anyone who’s dealing with self-injury should check it out.
Fabulous! Good for you. This may sound weird, but I admire you for being able to explode. And to make her pay attention. I am also feeling mired down by depression and hampered by the passivity of my therapist. I know for a certainty that the one thing that I really need to do is have a major eruption that will send us both out of our safe, complacent hidey holes. This, however, requires that I first help myself by letting go with her and I’ve been too much of a chicken to do it.
This sounds like a good start. Hold onto feeling, Turpentine.
I have never gone through with an attempt, but planned several. The last time I was feeling a lot like you described – basically nothing. Soulless. Emotionless. It allowed me to come up with what seemed like a completely “logical” (i.e. un-emotional) reason to kill myself. Looking back, that mind set scares the shit out of me. What saved me at the last minute was a call from deep inside, yelling “DON’T KILL ME!” I guess I finally prodded my hibernating soul seriously enough to make it protest. Loudly.
So now I’m trying to get my soul to tell me why exactly I should live. I know it has a reason, but so far nothing has filtered up into the conscious part of my mind. Right now I’m just trusting there is a good reason and trying to find a way for it to become clear. (I hope it does before the next wave of depression and despair hits and I do something final.)
Best of luck with the medication. I hope it gives you the help you need.
Yeah. Speaking from experience, I can say that feeling bad is still better than feeling nothing.
Coming from both a family and a personal history of depression, I’ll add my voice to the “been there, done that” crowd. Although I’ve never cut myself, there have been a few instances of biting my fingers and arms (not to the point of drawing blood, but just enough to feel pain). It’s not a situation I wish to find myself in ever again.
Fortunately, I have been blessed with a very supportive group of friends and family, who have helped me to get through the bad patches and out the other side. Things get better, I can assure you.
My reason was always “Things will probably get better, and if they don’t, you can always kill yourself later.” And if you procrastinate long enough, it eventually becomes a non-issue.
(I wish I had an appropriate happy/sad/wry smilie to put here…)
LOL! Don’t know why that struck me as funny, but it does in a poignant sort of way. Yes, I’ve been doing that procrastinating thing too, and it must be working because I’m still here.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I’ve done some cutting too. I think I did it to just feel something, anything of the anger and pain I had locked inside in a tangible way outside, not being able to feel it on an emotional level. Does that make sense? The therapy I think has helped let it out in a different way. In any case, I haven’t felt a need in about a year.
Wow… it’s nice to see so many who have had the same problems and experiences as me.
I’ve had a lot of what were thought to be situational problems since 1994, when my son died. I’d go from therapist to therapist, staying as long as my insurance would cover the visits. Once or twice, the shrink would tell me that I was OK, that I didn’t need counseling anymore. So, I continued to wrestle with the mania and the depression.
This past spring, I moved down to Texas from Minnesota. One night, I was home with my parents when we got into an argument, during the course of which I blew up. And I mean, I blew up. Doors were slammed, obscenities were shouted, and I went into the bathroom and slashed my wrist. Not badly enough to kill myself, but enough to cause pain and bleed. I still have those scars on my wrist.
The following day, I left San Antonio for Houston. I stayed in a hotel room for about a week, till I ran out of money. I called the local VA hospital and spoke to a social worker who got me hooked up with a women’s shelter, where I’ve been living for the past two or so months.
Those two months have been a blessing. I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist who took a complete history and diagnosed bipolar disorder, and put me on the appropriate medication, which seems to be helping quite a bit. I don’t experience the same highs and lows anymore. I’m also seeing a psychologist to work out some grief issues that arose from the death of my son. I’m also back to attending AA meetings regularly and am meeting and talking to women.
There’s still a lot about my life that I’d like to work on, but that’ll come in its own time.
Good luck, Turp… it sounds like you’re on the right track.
You might have seen me post in other places about how I was suicidal in my junior year of high school and for parts of other years in it. I also occasionally become suicidal (mainly at night when I think deep thoughts), though it doesn’t normally last more than a few hours or a day or so these days.
That year (1997-8) I would lay in bed at night, listen to oldies, and (among other things) wonder why the people in my life were such utter fucks, what I had done to deserve what they gave me, and contemplate my own suckiness. I graduated to thoughts of mutilation (myself and others), elaborate schemes designed to ridicule or publicly degrade other people, and eventually to killing myself and/or various other people.
Mostly what prevented me was the fear that I wouldn’t succeed. I had the plans for it . . . I’d picked out trees while on walks (for sports and such) that would support my weight and had branches that were sufficiently above the ground. I knew where to slice on myself to cause not much pain and a relatively quick death. I’d even considered CO2 canisters, but thought someone might see through the window and catch me not-quite-dead.
The rest of what saved me was coming home from school, at which point I was still suicidal. I got on Zoloft and that helped things dramatically (along with me not being in such a ridiculously harmful environment as school was).
I don’t recall being suicidal while on Zoloft. I got off it in my freshman year of college, when I figured I wouldn’t need it. I still manage not to kill myself (the suicidal thoughts aren’t as . . . unavoidable and central as they used to be), albeit for what may seem to some of you as pathetic reasons: I don’t want to punish my parents (with my death) for things that are not their fault. There are also people on here I wouldn’t want to hurt by killing myself. And I am not about to give any amount of satisfaction (with the announcement of my death) to those people who were my personal hell in high school.
Suicide is never, in my experience, boring. And if someone feels your OP is boring they are personally and cordially invited by me to go shit on a fork.
As for the quality of the writing . . . if we get the message (and I would guess we did), it’s good enough:)
I can’t give you stories about actually trying. But I can give you lurid details in email if you’d like (I’d prefer not to risk scaring the Teeming Millions any more than I might already have).
Oh, regarding cutting: I’ve never cut, but I have jabbed forks in my arm and knives, too. I also periodically punish myself for bad things I’ve done by sticking my fingernails in my arms or some other place. And yes, it does feel good.
Turpentine, the thing that really resonated with me and my recent experiences was when you said you just haven’t been feeling much of anything at all.
I’ve been depressed for most of my adult life, to one degree or another. I’m sure that I would be dead without my meds. My sister committed suicide 6 1/2 years ago, my father’s brother committed suicide, as did his mother. This depression stuff is powerful.
I don’t want to go into a lot of details, but I’m starting to remember pieces of my childhood that I’ve repressed for more than 20 years, and it has thrown me into the worst episode of depression that I’ve ever had.
The strange thing this time was that I didn’t feel depressed, I just didn’t feel at all. I have a fabulous therapist, and a new psychiatrist who started me on a different medication (serzone, if anyone is interested). It took a while to find the right dose, and then I woke up one day and suddenly I had my self back. I can think again, I can see colors again - I hadn’t even noticed that colors were gone.
I’m writing this, and it’s difficult, because I want to add to the group telling you that you’re not alone. I also want to encourage you to give the meds a chance. Meds don’t solve problems, but they help restore you to yourself so that you CAN deal with problems. Please feel free to email me if you want to talk about anything. Hang in there.