After dealing with depression, anxiety, and weight-related disorders for years now, I finally sent in the forms to North York General Hospital, and now I’m due any day for a psych evaluation.
This is hard for me to admit. But it’s necessary–it’s been necessary for a while–and I’ll be felched with a goat straw if I let anything get in the way of living life like I should.
A lot - a lot - of people have some form of mental illness, myself included (clinical depression and ADD since about age 7; wasn’t diagnosed till age 16). It is awfully hard to admit, but hey, it’s not your fault. I got help, and I’m so, so glad I did. My quality of life in the past year has been way better than it’s been the majority of my life so far. It takes bravery to get help, so a big pat on the back for ya. Good luck.
Hey, if it helps, you’re FAR from the only Doper with mental health issues. You can search on depression or anxiety or bipolar or any number of other words and find many posts about Dopers sharing stories of their trials and tribulations with mental health problems.
This sounds like fawning for attention, doesn’t it? But I really did need to get this off my chest. I feel embarrassed about talking to someone, then horribly uncomfortable, then I end up in tears just thinking about it, and I’m not sure how to feel. I know it’s healthy and helpful and that the professional will work this out with me, but it’s a visceral reaction–instinct–more than anything else.
Welcome to the world of the functionally crazy. As AFG rightly points out, we’re not really crazy, even if we feel like we are from time to time. I admire you for facing your problems and choosing to do something about it. That’s the most important step.
Just bear in mind that you are not alone. There are plenty of us here to lean on, so lean away. You are a very kind-hearted person, and I’m sure I’m far from alone in offering whatever support I can provide.
I think the **majority ** of humans, at one time of their life or another, go through mental illnesses ranging from the mild to the severe. Some people never even notice, they just remember the really hard time in their life when they were always sad, or the times they felt harried and rushed all the time.
Sometimes my mind feels like its the dream sequence from Twin Peaks, except with Robin Williams as the midget who talk backwards, and he won’t shut up, and then the two old people from Mulholland Drive come running in and chaos ensues.
: Hug now involves ALL front surfaces from knees to necks :
–pat pat pat–
–stroke–
: Kythereia is squirming :
Welcome to the family! Nothing wrong with admitting to being crazy. I always considered my psychoses to be on par with bed-wetting when it comes to the humiliation associated with the disorder. But if you don’t address the problem, you continue to wet the bed…or at least believe really strongly that someone is wetting your bed and blaming it all on you as part of a highly complicated government plot involving scalar weapons, woodpeckers and, yes, goat straw.