Jump to content

Recommended Posts

So... I have been hospitalized five times in the past 3 months with 3 suicide attempts. I have become deeply depressed and chronically suicidal. I have tried psychoanalysis, CBT, DBT, mindfulness.. My problem is that I'm fearful of committing to any type of treatment. I don't know how it will feel to get better. I am diagnosed with OCD and I'm ruminating about what my psychiatrist has been telling me. All positive and helpful stuff, but I can't shut the thinking off.

I am tired of being tired. I am constantly so TIRED! I don't know how to get past this depression. I am on medication, I can't tell if it works, but it probably does. Has anyone gone through this before? I'm just miserable and don't want to land in the hospital again :(.

Link to comment
Guest HeadAboveWater

I have been there... and slowly coming out of that dark place. I have been entrenched in obsessive thoughts and urges for nearly 8 months, suffering with depression caused by the thoughts and suicidal ideation. I haven't attempted suicide but I have self harmed and spent what seems like everyday of the past 8 months sleeping 15 hours a day. It is horrible to be so stuck. I am now feeling like something is shifting, like I am breaking free from all of this. I'm still quite worried about all of the thoughts and urges and not completely sure if I am getting better but I do know that something is changing. I feel like I can see the OCD clearer and how it is working inside of me, I can see how the thoughts are false (most of the time I can see this). Compared to when I was almost convinced I was a disgusting, evil person who should just kill herself.

I totally know how it feels to not only be so physically tired but emotionally and mentally exhausted, as well. It is hell on earth and it feels like it will never end. Follow the advice of your therapist. Do not engage in compulsions and don't ruminate. Do not self-loathe, instead, focus as much as you can on doing things that you love. I think eventually clarity will come and it will get easier. You have to give OCD less power - don't play it's game. Try to gain more knowledge about how OCD works and its patterns. You have hope!! Also, maybe talk to your doctor about your medication if you are not sure if it is helping.

Edited by HeadAboveWater
Link to comment

Thanks HeadAboveWater!

I'm glad I'm not alone in this cycle, but am happy you are slowly getting out of it. I'm so curious when it's just going to get better. Will it be like a snap of the finger? Am I going to have to change my thinking? I wish I had a solution to my problem, but SI continues and my urges are out of control. Now I'm thinking about quitting therapy all together because it's too hard. I don't feel like I can go through with it. I am trying to convince myself that being miserable is okay, I have to learn to live with it. I can't help, but to ruminate. I can't control it. My mind subconsciously goes there and I don't even realize I'm doing it. I am hopeless at this point and feel like "getting better" will never come. I want to just give up already.

Link to comment

I have lots of OCD traits, but currently it's all pure obsessional thinking mainly about my therapy. I just go over and over and over my therapy sessions, I am obsessed with the commentary that goes along. I get stuck on certain sentences and say them over and over again in my head. I feel with this the entire day and it's been going on for months. I can't think of anything else. I am full of distortions like should statements or minimization, disqualifying the positive. I'm so overwhelmed that I just want to quit so many my ruminations will fade.

Link to comment

I had become actively suicidal in early July. I took myself to the local casualty department (ER) instead of doing what I was planning to do. It was the best decision I've ever made. I was immediately put under the care of a crisis team. With the crisis team, I first tackled my depression, which had been present for over 6 years, using CBT. It was incredibly successful in quite a short time, but the crucial thing was that I committed 100% to the therapy. I viewed the depression as my enemy, as a parasite draining my energy and spirit. I got angry at my depression. I saw it as a thing to be defeated. It was it or me and I wasn't going down without a fight. I did the things that I agreed to do, with the CBT psychiatric nurse during sessions and as homework.

Within a couple of weeks, I was able to challenge thoughts, beliefs and behaviours that had held me down my whole life. It was a revelation. It was empowering and liberating. The road since, back up out of the pit, has been a slow and steady one, but it is going in the right direction. With the depression being tackled, my OCD and PTSD decreased in severity and intensity.

I am now undergoing CBT for my OCD (which I've had my whole life), which takes a different form to the CBT for depression. It is tough and challenging, but bizarrely rewarding too.

It takes a leap of faith to put the fate of your mind in the hands of a clinician, but it is a leap worth taking. You'll be doing the majority of the actual work, with the clinician subtly guiding, steering and encouraging. It is your victory to grab, but you must commit to it in order to succeed. It's OK to be getting better for "selfish" reasons. It's OK to be getting better for the benefit of others too. I'm only part of the way along the path to being the new, better, happy version of me, but I'm glad to be even this far along. Happiness is something I never allowed myself to have before. It is a new and good experience.

It is a fight worth fighting. Don't let the mind parasites win. You're more and better than they are. :-)

Link to comment

PJM, that was very inspiring. I can sense your passion through your words. You really want to get better and aren't giving up, that's great. I used to have that passion when I first started therapy a few years ago. As my therapy has progressed through OCD or depression, things have gotten worse. I know the saying things have to get worse before they get better, but this is insane. The mind parasites are winning and I don't even know how to begin to fight them. I am hearing that you really had to commit, which I agree is necessary. Although, I can't mustard up the courage to fully give anything my all. I am afraid if I try, I might fail. I don't want to fail and be doomed to be like this the rest of my life. I hadn't even recognized the rumination has being OCD until I was writing to somebody. It was an eye opener. Now the question is: what am I going to do about it? The problem is that I have ZERO motivation, and OCD is running my life along will major depression. The next time I make an attempt, I will be successful and I deep down, don't want to die. Right now I see it as my only feasible solution. I can't get out of this might frame, I'm stuck in a cycle of destruction. I am thinking about taking a break from therapy, maybe pushing all my thoughts away will do me some good. I am afraid though that this could be a major mistake and could push me over the edge. I want to be able to engage in therapy, but my subconsious just doesn't let me. I'm totally stumped.

Link to comment

Hi J,

I feel similar, & as if 'burnt out' with all of the overthinking. It is like OCD & depression are draining the brain of the exact same chemicals needed to make depression & OCD better.

It clearly is not easy, but please try & have faith in your doctors, & try your utmost to go along with the treatment that they recommend!

You are a very attractive & intelligent young lady who is unwell, & I am sure it will all come good in the end! Try & reflect back to happier times, & how you used to enjoy your running & so on, & is there anything you can do with family & friends to occupy your mind with better stuff?

All the best.

x

Link to comment

jballan, you need to work on those cognitive distortions of yours. You say you're afraid to try because you might fail and end up feeling this way for the rest of your life. Well you're going to end up feeling this way for the rest of your life if you don't try. The missing piece is that you might try and succeed.

Link to comment

I do a few extreme sports, one of which is snowboarding. It has taught me a few lessons about life, the most important of which is, if I don't fall over sometimes I'm probably not doing as much, seeing as much or having as much fun as I could do. Yes, I do wipeout spectacularly sometimes, but I get up again with a grin, clear the snow out of my goggles and carry on. No harm done. There are worse things than wiping out while snowboarding, for example not snowboarding. That would be awful.

It's OK to fall on your ass sometimes. It shows you're trying. And this is from someone who has a HUGE fear of being embarrassed in public places, absolutely HUGE. You just pick yourself up again, acknowledge a small, minor, temporary defeat and put it behind you.

In the past, my perfectionism and fear of failure have been crippling. I've just curled onto a foetal position on the floor and conceded defeat. This was the biggest failure of all. If I can now accept small failures or imperfections, it's possible for anybody to.

Take one small step forwards with conviction. Praise yourself for taking that one step. If you fall on your ass, pick yourself up again, say, "at least I took the step forward" and take another small step with conviction. Nothing worthwhile is easy. The depression is enveloping you like a heavy blanket. Look up. Make a tiny hole in the blanket and let the smallest ray of sunshine through. Enjoy that tiniest of glimpses of light for what it is. If you can make one tiny hole in the blanket, you can eventually make lots of little tiny holes in the blanket, until the blanket is threadbare and falls apart. The small victories eventually add up.

Hope this helps and doesn't just sound like motivational bullsh*t. :-)

Edited by PJM
Link to comment

Felix: Thanks for your kind words. I hope it does end up being okay. I just have these moments where I go stand on a huge cliff thats about 15 minutes from my house, I sit on the edge and think about jumping. I think one day, I will have a really bad and just jump. I am scared of my urges because I can't really control them.

PolarBear: You make a good point, I can't succeed if I don't try. I keep thinking that I am just not in the right mind frame or am ready. My psychiatrist the other day said I needed discipline, that hit me totally wrong. I took that as a complete criticism. .She also said I was impulsive, but I don't think I am anymore than the next person. She didn't even mention my OCD because she thinks thats lower on the list of priorities. If only see knew how much I ruminated over her. I guess thinking about past sessions is the obsession and rumination is the compulsion. Thank's for saying that though, I do need to work on those distortions, maybe do some rational responses and rewrite them like 100 times to recondition my brain. Maybe, if I am motived..

PJM: Thanks for the great post. It was very inspiring. I can tell you have overcome quite a few things, with your great outlook on life that probably took a while to develop. I used to think like that. I used be very aware that failure is just a small piece of success. That you must move forward to truly become the person you want to be. Failures are just lessons that make you grow. I don't know what my deal is with failing. I haven't really failed at anything to hard my entire life. We my most recent defeat was doing poorly on my MCAT (medical school admissions test), that destroyed my confidence. Since then (June) I have been really depressed and one bad thing keeps happening after another. One of my good friends committed suicide the other week, that made me feel horrifically guilty and a wimp for not going through with it myself. I feel like a coward. I am going to try to start with a baby step... not sure what that step will be though. Maybe waking up and engaging in life everyday at a certain hour and do mood logs. That might be too much though.

Link to comment

Any small step is a good one. For me it was brushing my teeth. My depression had become so overwhelming that my self hygiene was non existent. The depression had superceded my conditioned tendency towards hyper-cleanliness. I had become a source of contamination, another reason for keeping myself away from the rest of the World. When I took myself to the hospital in final desparation, I stood in the carpark until the triage nurse came out to get me, partly because the hospital was a huge source of contamination, partly because I was a source of contamination to others.

The following day, one of the first things the crisis team got me to agree to was brushing my teeth. Such an insignificant, daily thing, but I had to psyche myself up massively for an hour to do it. I was sweating profusely and crying as I brushed my teeth. After I did it, I jumped around the bathroom in victory. I had done one thing. And my teeth felt great. I spent the rest of the day psyching myself up to have a shave and a shower. That evening, clean again, I felt like I had been reborn. Such insignificant things, but I was flipping the finger to depression. It was a good feeling.

Thinking back on it now, it is shocking to me how low and unlike myself I had become. The 'me' in me had almost disappeared. Depression is as insidious as cancer.

I use a mood recording app on my phone called iMoodJournal. It's good because you can add text and hashtagged words like #Ruminating or #Happy, so you can track your mood over time and also your mood associated with each hashtagged word. It has been invaluable in tracking my progress and feeding back accurate information to my counsellors. I don't have to think, "how was I feeling last Saturday?", I can just look at the charts on the app and see. It is incredibly motivating and rewarding when that downward track on the graph finally turns the corner and starts the slow climb back upwards.

Link to comment
Guest imalright

Hello x

I'm not as experienced as the other users in terms of advice....but I just wanted to sag 'hello' and I'm wishing you well.

I suffered depression temporarily for around a month when I first got poorly. I'll never forget it! A tip a GP gave me was to go do something enjoyable, even though I had no motivation or desire to do it. Before doing it, he told me to rate how much I'd think i would enjoy it on a scale of 0-10. 0 being absolutely no enjoyment and 10 being complete enjoyment. I would always rate things at 0 because I was depressed and anxious and didn't want to do anything. However, once I'd forced myself to do an enjoyable thing, GP told me to rate my actual enjoyment on the same scale.....every time it was well above the zero I suspected it would be. Mostly 7/8/9. After doing this activity a few times, I taught brain that I always ended up enjoying stuff I dreaded so just go do them!

That really helped me and got my out of a dark place xx

Link to comment

Felix: Thanks for your kind words. I hope it does end up being okay. I just have these moments where I go stand on a huge cliff thats about 15 minutes from my house, I sit on the edge and think about jumping. I think one day, I will have a really bad and just jump. I am scared of my urges because I can't really control them.

Hi J,

I too live about 15 minutes away from tall cliffs, which sadly also happen to be the UK's most notorious suicide spot. It even has people regularly patrolling the area in the hopes of talking potential jumpers out of jumping.

I do hope that you keep your doctors fully informed about sitting on the cliff edge & your thoughts!

Do you have any pets J? I wonder if getting a dog might keep you distracted, & offer a bit of company, but also keep you committed & motivated.

Thinking of you!

x

Edited by felix4
Link to comment

PJM: I have heard similar successes from people I have been in the hospital with. I've been trying to brush my teeth, but it's so hard! I'm glad we can relate. I don't know how to force myself to just to it, it seems impossible. I thought about writing a note on my door that said go brush your teeth, now! Maybe that would get my mind moving toward motivation. Small steps are key, I just have to remember that. Thanks for the reply. Oh, also the mood app seems pretty cool. I might try something like that. It seems like great reassurance when needed and just to keep yourself stable as well.

imalright: Thanks for the response: my psychiatrist has told me the same thing many times, but I don't ever participate in the tasks that are suppose to be enjoying. Instead I isolate or get caught up in an obsessional thinking pattern :(. Not sure how to change that pattern. Maybe I should ask for help somehow and get an accountability buddy. I'm glad that tip worked well for you! Perhaps I will get there to someday... soon I hope.

Felix: Wow, that would be a nightmare! Living that close to the most popular suicide spot. I would have probably given into the urge by now. I haven't told my doctor about sitting on the cliff yet. I don't want to be sent back to the hospital. I didn't like the hospital and they put me on a 14 day hold, after a 5 day hold. It felt like I was there forever. That was only one of my hospitalizations. Yikes.

Link to comment
Guest imalright

I think........i think you just have to force yourself to do it - actually just do it. Recognise you're caught up in a cycle and just break it. I.E - say to yourself - 'stuff you - I'm anxious and feel low but i'm gonna do it anyway'. Once you focus on something else, the thoughts just disappear :)

If you happen to be passing near Manchester (you never know!) and fancy a go - we can do it together. As a test haha!

Take good care!

Xx

Link to comment

Felix: Wow, that would be a nightmare! Living that close to the most popular suicide spot. I would have probably given into the urge by now. I haven't told my doctor about sitting on the cliff yet. I don't want to be sent back to the hospital. I didn't like the hospital and they put me on a 14 day hold, after a 5 day hold. It felt like I was there forever. That was only one of my hospitalizations. Yikes.

Hi J,

It has a bit of a bad press due to this sad fact, but it is not as dark as perhaps perceived, & it is actually a very beautiful scenic place which is visited by many.

How about explaining your thoughts & actions to your doctor, but also making it very clear why you have been so reluctant to mention it sooner! This is hard to explain, but I think if the doctors knew these two facts, then it could be key to getting better, & a bit like part of the jigsaw was previously missing! There is always the chance of being hospitalised again, BUT you never know, they may well agree with you that hospitalisation hasn't been helping matters, & offer you entirely different outpatient treatment!

Good luck with Imalright's suggestion! Breaking the cycle & distraction are definitely the way forward.

x

Link to comment

PJM: I have heard similar successes from people I have been in the hospital with. I've been trying to brush my teeth, but it's so hard! I'm glad we can relate. I don't know how to force myself to just to it, it seems impossible.

I imagine the successful outcome. I think, "man, just think how smooth and shiny your teeth will feel. It'll take five, maybe ten minutes maximum and then it's done and your teeth will look great. You'll be able to make yourself smile". Thinking about the difficulty of doing the daunting task itself makes the hill harder to climb. If your head is filled with the images of success, the task itself is easier to do. Part of my CBT for depression was forcing myself to look in the mirror and smile at myself, not grimace. I felt like a pillock smiling a weird fake smile into the bathroom mirror, but eventually I found it funny and spontaneously laughed, then smiled at myself. I no longer hate my own reflection, but it took persistence, lots of tooth brushing and lots of weird fake smiling.

I still retch and sweat before doing my company's quarterly VAT (sales tax) return. I'm a creative and it's the least creative, least fun bit of running my company. I have to psyche myself up, envisaging the sense of achievement I'll feel when the tax return is done. I hate doing the tax return, but I do it. It's no big thing really, but it's dull as ditchwater. I put on '90s dance music while I'm doing it; it motivates me to keep ploughing through the spreadsheet and receipts.

Link to comment

Hello there jb I'm very deeply sorry to hear how you've been doing&certainly hope you can get better asap :original: .Can I please ask what meds are you on right now? I'm wondering if they're really helping,or taking time still or need an increase or an addition perhaps?.Maybe you need something for your anxiety if you aren't on anything right now? :original: .

Link to comment

Itsalright: So, I got up the other day and went for a jog in the first time since a marathon in June. I only went a couple miles, but I was thinking of you just do it. Thanks for the advice, sense then I have been getting up and trying harder.

I still haven't returned to therapy, maybe it's a good thing, or maybe it will just hit me soon and make me worse. I hope not though. I have gotten some really good advice though, thank you all.

PJM: smiling everyday in the mirror? That sounds like torture to me, lol. I would think "Wow I am such a faker." How do you get over faking it until you get it. I have a hard time lying to myself.

ACE: I am taking 60mg prozac, 15mg BID Adderall, L-methylfolate 15mg, risperidone 3mg, trazadone 150mg, valium 10mg prn at night

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...