Wolves at least don’t slip drugs in your orange juice!
Hey folks. I just got home. I’ll write actual responses later, right now I just wanted to make it known that I’m alive. Woke up feeling like absolute shit hours ago, haven’t had much sleep lately. Right now I have a headache too painful to let me sleep, applying heat, it should ease in a little while. My best friend is staying over for a few days, she left school because they deemed me safe enough to leave the hospital this morning only on the condition that I have someone with me. Smart doctor. I’ll be fine. Will be back when I;ve had some rest.
I know that was addressed to the OP, not me, but … it applies to me, too. Like 'mika and a whole bunch of others here, I’ve had to cut toxic parents outta my life. It’s like getting rid of poison ivy - unpleasant, but you’ll be glad when it’s over with and/or will regret not doing so and letting it take over your whole place. We can sympathize, and advise if needed.
tucks a blanket over Imago’s shoulders, leaves a glass of water nearby, tip-toes back out of the thread
My goal as a parent is to not have my kid-to-be (due 8/13, and kicking me) agreeing that she would have been better off being raised by wolves 20+ years from now. Everything else is gravy.
For those of you who do have toxic parents: it’s not your fault, and there’s nothing you should feel ashamed of or guilty about. There is nothing you could have done, or not done, to make things better. You probably do (or did) feel shame and guilt, since those are favorite tactics of toxic parents, but they are the ones who should feel ashamed and guilty, not you. Someone who gave a kid psychiatric meds not prescribed for that kid to make the kid more compliant has plenty of cause to feel ashamed and guilty.
You shouldn’t feel bad about not being able to get along with them, either. Most of us would find it hard to get along with someone who harps on our faults and says we are a worthless sack of shit. We might also question the point of trying to get along with someone who does things like that, family or not. Just because someone shares some of your DNA doesn’t mean they get to treat you like shit.
Feeling somewhat better now. Headache gone. It’s amazing the difference a few hours of sleep can make. I’ll probably be more coherent after a few more. Thanks you guys for keeping an eye on me in this thread & being the most supportive anonymous strangers ever.
Agree that I would’ve been better off with wolves.
Glad to hear you’re feeling better. Take good care of yourself.
extra blanket
fresh glass of water
Glad you’re doing better and have your friend there. Rest well.
Okay. I’m back and decently rested. I think. I don’t want to talk about either of my parents for a while, to use book metaphors- that chapter is finished.
I have no idea where I’m supposed to expect things to go from here. This is because last time I was checked in for suicidal thoughts, over a year ago, it was at an entirely different hospital because I was still under 19. The doctor there put me on some kind of longass waiting list that ended with me going to some sort of community counsellor who had no idea what she was doing. She would talk and never listen, then ask me questions I couldn’t answer. But the issue was a lot simpler then. This whole crippling fear of being in a position where a reasonable person very well might kill themselves and not having the tools to do so is actually a relatively new expression of my anxieties. New as in a few months.
So this time, like last time, there was some kind of referral sent out that I know nothing about. Last time I got a call sometime after that (weeks? days? My memory is shot to shit) telling me where to go and just the name of the place and counsellor I was being sent to. No call yet, but hey, it hasn’t even been a day. I’m not honestly in any rush. The longer I have to think the better I’ll respond to treatment, I think. Honestly there is so much professional and politically correct bullcrap in the vocabulary of every last person I spoke to the whole time that I still have no idea how anything works. Hah. Going to make a great paramedic, right? :dubious: So I don’t know when I’ll have news on that.
Though this:
might be a good idea, because you know, so much of my identity rests on being Ms. Proactive. Um, so. I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which of course is in Canada, which is on Earth, which is in Canada. Sorry, I’ll stop with the childish jokes now. Must be a rebound from the downright apocalyptic amount of depress-you-to-death neurotransmitters I must’ve had in my system between the OP and the hospital.
By which I mean to say that, even though I know logically there’s no reason to be ashamed of feeling the way I did, I do feel the need to state that I’m usually nowhere near as bad as I clearly was there. And there’s definitely a hint of irrational shame there, but hear me out. I’m usually quite good at talking myself down from near-panic and such, which is part of why I was arrogant enough to think I could avoid a second run of the dreaded counselling gamut. What you’ve seen here is my lowest point of the past seven years or so, at least from a purely anxiety/depression/whatever this is standpoint, and it’s completely changed my perception of who should be going to therapy and who shouldn’t.
And (once again in my own defense :smack: sorry folks, I’ll stop blustering in a minute I swear) I should probably point out that willingly stepping into a hospital and telling them what I was thinking- an act which garaunteed I wouldn’t have a chance to hurt myself if I suddenly had reason to- basically amounted to facing the whole enormous crippling fear at the heart of that whole low point. Not that that means I’m doing great or I don’t need help or anything, because it sure as hell doesn’t mean any of that, just that people in general are a lot more resilient than I think most folks give themselves credit for. Er. What I’m really saying is, my best friend compared the size of the (metaphorical) balls it took to do that to planets. So ah. Think of that next time somebody knocks Canadians for being gutless :p. Sorry. I said I’d stop joking. This is all terribly awkward because I can’t deny that I feel like a complete and utter insect for no reason other than the echoes of my dad’s “Suck it up!” speeches from before I cut him off haven’t faded yet and joking is my way of saying, “Please don’t throw rotten tomatoes and/or rabid squirrels at me.” So, ya know, just. Admire the balls and don’t sneeze or I might go run and hide behind the couch?
I hope I didn’t just make a complete ass of myself. That’s way too much to edit out in ten minutes if I realize I’m coming across way worse than intended.
Well. It’s more than just the spine-stripping speeches. I would never, in my right mind, involve somebody else in my suicide plans. I guess the overarching theme of this whole damn thing is I’ve been utterly shocked by how out of my right mind I was, and still am, and just damn, I don’t even know what solar system my right mind is in. I’m serious, I don’t know how I haven’t accidentally worn my boots on my head yet, and I think a sincere thank-you is in order for those handful of you who took the time to point it out with the right mixtures of gentle and blunt to get through to me. And that’s what I’ve been waiting all day to be able to string words together to say. So thank you. Like, a lot. And then a little more. And major gratitude hugs to anyone of ya who likes them. And holy crap, sorry it took me so much rambling to finally spit that out.
As you can probably tell, I keep sleeping for a short while and then getting up and wandering around the apartment and coming back here to prattle again. Waking up from the most fucking awful nightmares, and that is a very old thing (symptom? Habit? Pattern? What do I call this?) for me. Anyone know what to do about that? My best friend has been whatever the atheistic equivalent of a godsend is, she’s ridiculously comforting and never makes fun of me for it. But I’m one of those unlucky people who has a sense of touch in dreams, which is just my luck. And being very knowledgeable on the subject of just how much pain the human body is capable of experiencing, I keep having these horrible “Aaaaaaah the pain, somebody shoot me!!!” dreams. And nobody ever shoots me, of course. Er. I think I’m just being whiny now. Either that or someone’s gonna tell me to start a separate thread in GQ or something for that.
Um. I’m going to stop for now before I do make an ass of myself, if I haven’t already.
Hey, glad you’re doing better. No-one’s going to expect you to be perfectly coherent right now, and personally I’m a fan of bad jokes. (Rabid squirrels are cute!) 
You’re totally right - for someone who is afraid of not being able to end their life quickly if necessary, checking in to a hospital is an act of supreme bravery. I hadn’t put that together before you pointed it out. Good work. You have no shortage of courage. You said they’re probably going to refer you somewhere - are you going to follow up on the other places you called before checking yourself in as well, or wait for the hospital’s referral first? I’d at least keep their info on hand in case the hospital sends you to someone unhelpful (again).
As a paramedic, you’ll probably get sent to help people in mental distress. You’ve seen first hand how confusing the whole thing can be, and how much people will need a friendly face to guide them through. You’ll be good at that. You’ll learn the vocabulary in school.
Sorry to hear about the nightmares. I’m afraid I don’t have any sage advice there, just a damn-that-sucks.
I’m sorry you’re going through a tough time, Imago, and am glad you’re feeling better. I do hope you’ll follow through on getting the professional help you need.
The unprofessional help and advice you’re getting here actually belongs in our advice-giving forum, so I’m going to move this thread there.
twickster, MPSIMS mod
I do hope you get better, Imago. I was in your shoes once – my life had fallen apart for some very real reasons, and after enduring as best I could for several months under horrible stress, my brain finally just went, “You know what? I’m tired of trying to figure out what’s a threat and what isn’t, and ultimately guessing wrong. I’m just going to simplify this shit and assume everything is something I should be terrified of.” And then on top of the real bad things, I was also doing things like bolting upright whenever anyone made any sort of noise outside my window, and not coming fully awake until I was already on the other side of the room slamming on the lights. A lot of the time I wasn’t actually panicking over something; rather, I panicked, and then my brain went frantically searching through my environment to find something to explain the feeling, and oftentimes it settled on something truly bizarre. I managed to half-wake myself during a power outage once with the terrified thought that it was so horribly quiet outside because the world had ended and I was the only person left. It made no sense when I came to all the way, but it took a while to get my heart to stop trying to thud out through my rib cage.
It may take you a while to find a good counselor. Based on how they started off with me, I can only guess that most people come in convinced that they’re panicking over reasonable things to a reasonable level, and will actually defend their utter terror of things that most people don’t think about twice. It really throws them off if you go in saying, ‘look, I realize this isn’t rational, but that isn’t making the panic attacks go away, what the hell do I do about it?’ In one fell swoop you’ve just edited out that whole gaining insight part of therapy, which is at least half of what they normally do, and a lot of them are just lost at that point and can’t find their place in the script anymore. Just go in and lay everything out as best and as frankly as you can, and if you find one who doesn’t look at you funny, KEEP them!
A psychiatrist, or an ER doc if you go back there, may give you a short course of sedatives to fix the immediate problem . Not sleeping is a big thing, and if you’re not sleeping well it’s probably making the rest of it ten times worse. (Note: You probably already know this, but if you go into the ER reporting panic and insomnia and wanting a psych eval, they will take you quite seriously. However frazzled you think you look, you look worse. When I went I think they were shocked that I managed to get there under my own power.) I know you don’t like medication, but try them at least. Stuff like lorazepam and alprazolam are very short-acting; if you hate the way they make you feel, all you have to do is go to bed. By the time you wake up, your body will have cleared it, and you’ll never have to take another one again. I haven’t had very good experiences with SSRIs myself, but a lot of other people have, and there are entire other classes of drugs aside from antidepressants that can be used for panic disorder. Ask about beta blockers – they’re officially used for hypertension, but off-label small doses are sometimes prescribed for panic disorder or just temporary stage fright.
Good luck. If you want to know more about what I did when I had pretty much the same problem – including the crazy relatives – feel free to email me. miss.arabella.flynn@gmail.com
Realistically, they are probably either going to refer me to someone they didn’t know I’ve already been to, or get lazy/stuck and refer me to someone I’ve already found unhelpful. So I’m definitely following up on the other places I called once shit opens again on Monday. There’s one clinic that’s open on weekends that I called today, answering machine message, I’m supposed to wait for a call back now.
I do hope I’ll be good at that, you’ve got a point. Though someday I really need to be able to explain why I’ve got my sights set on a profession defined by erratic hours, urgent situations and heavy lifting to the admissions interview panel, lol.
Eek! Good to know.
Actually, come to think of it I remember one doc giving me what I suspect was just plain old diphenhydramine in my mid-teens. The same stuff people take over-the-counter for allergies. It didn’t do much in regards to waking up rested, but it sure knocked me out.
Probably best to avoid beta-blockers though. Might get in the way of training for the paramedicine fitness test of doom. If I’m wrong about that, which I may be, I wouldn’t be adverse to giving it a chance. So we’ll likely find that out soon, when I hear from the student practice that fills the role of family doctor for me.
In the meantime, how often and how recently have you tried talking about the climate change deal with people? You said that very few people know about it because you didn’t feel like the response was positive when you did try talking about it; did you give up? I would bet, as a short term thing, that you feel better while you’re writing posts about how terrible you felt a little while ago than you felt a little while ago, because when you’re describing it for another person you’re outside of it – on their side of it – for a little while. Which is really important and good, because from the outside it’s so easy to see that feeling bad is its own independent phenomenon and not just a fact about the world.
You defended yourself and gave yourself credit for doing a good job with your feelings when you were talking to something (us or your friend) other than the toxic echo chamber in your head. I would guess that you’re a lot more charitable toward yourself when there’s another person involved because rationally you think you deserve it, and you expect other people to react to and confirm rationality in a way that you don’t expect your anxiety to do. Why wouldn’t that same process work in the medium term, not as a solution for the actual climate change problem, but as a solution to your fear about the climate change problem?
You know Jimmy, that’s a damn good idea.
I think to a degree I did give up on it, but it’s more that most of my social connections have been severed in various ways over the past few years and I haven’t managed to forge new ones. I have a lot more difficulty admitting vulnerability to someone face-to-face than on the internet, but I could bite the proverbial bullet for a while until I got more comfortable being open about it.
You know what, screw obstacles. I could probably start with asking my best friend to introduce me to some of her acquaintances. And maybe next time a coworker asks how I am I’ll consider being honest. Work my way up to it.
Thanks man.
Diphenhydramine and diminhydrate will both do that to you. Unfortunately, if it doesn’t, you can’t really up the dose – it’s hard to outright poison yourself with it, but a slight OD will make you feverish, twitchy, and altogether very uncomfortable.
The doctor eventually gave me alprazolam for aborting panic attacks when I wanted to stay awake, too. They tried lorazepam first, but they couldn’t get the dose down low enough that it wouldn’t just flatten me and have me laying there snoring for the next 8-10 hours. A quarter milligram of alprazolam was sufficient to make the physical symptoms of a panic attack stop without also making me useless. Since I had no history of substance abuse, had two roommates to keep an eye on me, and looked like a complete basket case, they just gave me a small bottle and told me to take them PRN, no more than every six hours, until I could find a permanent doctor to handle my case. And since part of the problem was that I was unemployed in a particularly bad part of the country, the attending apologized that she couldn’t get the dispensary to give me the bottle for free.
Good news. Someone cancelled their appointment- I’m seeing a psych in a few hours.
Eh, mental illness will do that kind of thing to you. Complete with making you feel irrational shame about it once it happens. Don’t worry about it.
I’m admiring the balls. They’re almost as big as your dad’s ignorance in thinking that “suck it up” is a useful thing to say to someone experiencing a mental illness. Not quite, though, because that’s pretty colossal, as ignorance goes. Anyone who thinks that does not have an opinion worth listening to on the subject of mental illness, any more than a member of the Flat Earth Society is worth listening to on geography or astronomy.
I might sneeze, though. Damn allergies.
Don’t worry about whether this means you won’t be able to be a good paramedic. Telling you you will never be able to do something you really want to do is another thing the messed-up, anxious, and depressed part of your brain loves to do. That doesn’t make it true. The whole point of getting treatment is that you aren’t going to be like this most of the time. Everybody, including paramedics, has bad days.
I don’t know about laws in Canada or Nova Scotia specifically, but the admissions interview panel may be forbidden by law from asking questions about your mental health history. In the US, discrimination against people with disabilities is illegal, and mental illness is generally considered a disability. In any case, it’s not information I’d volunteer if I were you, unless you find a way to work it into your elevator speech about how you’d be a good paramedic.
One reason I didn’t get help for my mental issues long before I did was that I thought having a record of mental illness would be career-limiting. It hasn’t been.
Also, remember, you have value even if it turns out you can’t be a paramedic. Just like I found out I had value even if I couldn’t be an astronomer. If it does turn out that you can’t be a paramedic, for whatever reason, what will happen is that you will mourn the loss of that vision of your life for a while, then you will find something else that you can do. Maybe even years later, you will sometimes think about what things might have been like if you had gotten your dream job. That’s normal. If everyone who isn’t doing their dream job were to kill themselves, I suspect that would be a majority of the population of the world. We managed to deal with not being able to get our dream jobs, you can too, if the need arises.
I wanted to add: being a paramedic is NOT the only job you could ever hold down and enjoy doing. I used to think that being an astronomer was the only job I could ever have and enjoy.
There’s this myth out there that there’s one and only one perfect job for each person. It’s kind of like the idea that there is one and only one destined perfect romantic partner for each person. The myth goes that, if you find this perfect job and perfect partner, you will be happy, and, if you don’t, you will be miserable. It’s not true. People who are doing their dream jobs don’t love every day at work. People who are doing jobs other than their dream jobs are not miserable every second of every day. Being happy doing a job just isn’t that black and white. Everybody who has ever had a job has liked some aspects of it and not others, and has had some good days and some bad days.
I’m not sure who this myth is worse for: the people who never get their dream jobs, or the people who do. The people who never get their dream jobs think they can’t be really happy unless they do. That’s bad enough. But the ones who do get their dream jobs find out in pretty short order that there are some parts of that job that they don’t like. Then they might end up questioning whether they’re really suitable for that job, or (since this is their one destined job) any job. That sucks, it really does.
If there were a job that some people liked doing every part of, it probably wouldn’t be necessary to pay people to do that job. We generally don’t have to pay people to play video games or watch TV, for example. If people do get paid to do a job, it’s probably because there are aspects of it that people only tolerate because they get paid.
There’s a related myth that each job has one personality type that is suited for it, and everybody who differs from that personality type can’t have that job. It doesn’t work that way. Every job has a mix of different personality types, with different strengths and weaknesses, different likes and dislikes, working in it. If this were not true, there would probably be a lot less conflict among co-workers than there demonstrably is. See the Pit, especially mini-rants and work rants threads, for several hundred examples.
Combine these ideas with the idea that people are defined by their jobs, or the related idea that people who work low-status or low-paid jobs are worth less as people than people in higher-status jobs (quite pervasive in American culture, not sure about Canadian culture). Then you get a really toxic mix. You can get the idea that you are worthless as a person because you aren’t really suited for any job.
See these ideas for the lies they are. There is not one particular job you are destined to do. In any job you get, there will be parts you like and parts you don’t. There is not one single personality type who would “make a good X” for any profession X. People who work high-status or high-paid jobs are not inherently worth more as people than people working lower-status or lower-paid jobs.
Not to worry! I was making a throwaway crack at not being able to decode professionalese, that’s all. Picturing a paramedic who doesn’t know what CPR stands for or something. 
And though I wouldn’t even want to imagine voluntarily bringing up my mental history to anyone who has anything to do with anything so important as that, I can say based on some of my best friend’s classmates who are going on to be counsellors, corrections officers, jail guards, EPAs (the people who feed & clean the severely mentally challenged), occupational therapists, leaders of non-profit organizations etc that legally, even if I had something much rarer and regarded as more severe than anxiety/depression/whatever this is they probably couldn’t bar me out because of it.
In reality I think I’ll be a damn good paramedic, anxious/depressed/whatever it is or not. When it comes to short-term stress- “This dude has two minuites to live if I don’t move fast enough” I deal lot better than I picture the average person doing. I learn quickly, I would think I’m good at handling difficult people, I’m not bothered by gaping wounds, etc.
If it does turn out that for some reason or another, I’m out of consideration (I think I’d have to lose a leg or something for that to happen, but anyway) I actually have several other options I know I’d at least look at. I think you can still go into embalming and funeral directing with one leg, or I might just bite the bullet and go drag myself through the two bachelor degrees required to teach high school English. Be some kind of bleeding heart human rights lawyer and subtly use the missing limb to win the sympathy vote, you get the picture.
I do admit I’m practically falling over myself to get in to school as soon as possible right now. For one, it cuts the chances of my being tossed out on my butt for the rent being way late down by quite a margin. But this is a job I’m genuinely excited to do, and at this point I’d bet having anything to genuinely to look forward to and work toward is a very good thing.
Having lived with (and posted on here a few times) with anxiety and panic attacks I can say I feel your pain! Especially with the “just get over it” or “its all in your head” advice I used to get. Like I dont KNOW its all my head, where else would it be? Its a mental condition dumbasses.
But time and committing to working on it does make it better (and some zanax when needed), you are not bound to your issues forever you can be better, feel better, and get past it.
I have found tho that the one thing that always trips people up with these types of issues is the notion of a “cure”. You can never really be cured of anxiety and panic issues, but what you can do is understand what it is, and how to move past it quicker and easier as time goes by so that a single stray thought that causes panic doesn’t leave you curled in your bed for the next week or more.
It does help to come to places like this and realize “hey, i’m not alone” because in the middle of panic/anxiety/depression sometimes the worst part is thinking NOBODY understands what you’re going through and your alone. You’re not alone, and plenty, plenty of people understand. I would bet a small fortune that in any given day you walk by/interact with dozens of folks with the same type of issues you have but since we dont carry signs around with us you just wouldn’t know.
Stay tough, stay strong, stay positive. It does get better…not always easier mind you, but it does get better.