Anxiety, depression, mood

[nwish-iejd]

1. I’m experiencing really high anxiety and moderate depression lately. I’ve always had anxiety since I was 10 so it’s been almost a decade of me dealing with it. Though I have never been diagnosed with either depression or anxiety I feel like I greatly have them. I have experiencing depression for the last 4 years that fluctuates in intensity. I don’t want to get mental health treatment because that’s really expensive and I simply don’t have the money for that. I feel hopeless and so lost in my life. I have no direction, no goals to look forward to, my anxiety is always on, my sleeping and eating habits are horrible from it. I hate my job that I work while I’m at uni, and I don’t even think my uni course is for me. But I don’t even know what to do with my life so I’m just doing it. On a deeper level I have past trauma that has not been addressed and I just feel alone even tho I have people around me who love me. I used to self harm a while ago but I don’t anymore but sometimes when my anxiety is really high I feel a lot of self hatred and feel the urge to do it. My mood is also just out of whack, I experience periods of feeling extremely high and then I have a massive crash, but I was just told that that’s just my mood swings from being a female with a period. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to deal with feeling this lost and helpless. I feel like I have no control over my life, I feel like I’ll never amount to anything. I feel like a burden, I feel like I self sabotage a lot, and I get irritable and angry quickly. I just feel like a mess and these feelings have been exacerbated this year particularly in the last few months 

[Sophie_M]

Dear nwish-iejd,

Thank you for posting about your concerns in our helpful and supportive forums.

We understand you have been struggling with mental health issues for several years. You have been concerned about trying to find mental health support because you are concerned about the potential costs involved.

nwish-iejd, we would like to encourage you to call our support service on 1300 22 4636. You will be able to talk with an experienced mental health specialist who should be able to help you find local services.

We feel confident that some of our very caring community will find your thread soon. Several of our members have had similar experiences, so may have some thoughts for you.

Warm regards,

Sophie M.

 

[therising]

Hi nwish-iejd

My heart goes out to you as you've been managing so hard for so very long. I think it's not until we're further down the track after having made some progress in self understanding that we can look back, in hindsight, and come to realise exactly how hard we've worked without a lot of the support it takes to make our progress easier. Never underestimate the hard work you've put in while you've managed to raise yourself to this point.

I should say, when I refer to 'super sensitive' it's a compliment. While sensitivity gives you the ability to sense so much, super sensitivity is a ramp up of that ability. There are a heck of a lot of challenges that come with such an ability, one I wonder whether you have. When you can sense what your nervous system is doing, sense your thoughts putting your body into a hyperactive state, sense the moods of other people, sense a lack of guidance and support, sense a growing need for change, sense people or situations bringing you down, sense dismissive comments or shut downs that do the opposite of opening up constructive conversation (such as the period comment) and so much more, you could say you have the ability to sense just about everything. If someone was looking for and expert at sensing or getting a feel for something or someone, they'd come to you. Btw, completely understandable if you were to say 'I don't want this ability based on it making my life hell on earth'. When you can sense what's angering, stressful, depressing, fearful etc it can definitely feel like you're living in a kind of hell, that's for sure. I should add there are ways of managing the ability to sense just about everything.

I'm so sorry you've had to face a trauma which has led you to such incredible upset. It's so unfair when we're left to face what we should never have had to face. If you're feeling the deep need to address the trauma, while it can no longer be tolerated, is there someone close to you that you feel could help you through it, helping you make better sense of it and the ways in which you could further address it? If the need to address it is growing stronger, could this be a call for you to finally tackle it in new ways? Of course, there are some things in life we just can't do alone.