Getting back up again...

[Quietlife]

Ive just started seeing a psych again after many years of trying to deal with anxiety and depression on my own. I was first diagnosed with anxiety and depression when I was 18, and put on medication, but I think it was present since early childhood. I  always felt scared, useless, in the way and there was always a sense of dread that something terrible was going to happen.

I am now in my 40s and I just am so fed up of dealing with this. I seem to coast along for a while and manage to achieve things,  fit in and keep on an even keel, but then it just rears its ugly head again, and I become bleak, desolate and feel worthless and as if everyone can see this just by looking at me. I have started so many jobs and then left because I feel so stressed and hopeless, when I feel like this, I am afraid of the world, and I just want to be home with my kids and not have to face anyone.

After years of this, I feel so stupid and pathetic and guilty that I cant achieve my potential or my goals..I hope that CBT can help me to sort some of this out and I can start living each day, not 'braving' every day. Its so exhausting!

Thanks for listening. It really helps to know that I'm not alone. I hope that whoever is reading this knows they are not alone either.

[Chris_B]

Hi quietlife,

Thanks for joining the forums. It's really great that you're starting to get help again, and that you're wanting to reassure others that they're not alone.  You've been through this before, so you know the steps you need to take to climb out of the hole, even if right now you feel like crap.

Dealing with anxiety and depression throughout your life does feel a bit like walking through a forest and tripping over a vine every ten minutes.  It does get tiring after a while, it makes you frustrated and angry.

When I saw my psychologist this week, I talked to him about this exact same thing; his response is that we need to work on 'preventative care'.  What things can be put in place to make sure you are enjoying life and staying well so that it's less likely you'll fall down the hole, or if you do, that you can bounce back easier?  

CBT is a great method of therapy, it's good for the negative self-blaming thoughts you're having.  I would also advise talking to your psych about building resilience.

Hope you'll keep posting here, everyone here has been through is dealing with anxiety, depression or various mental health issues and sharing our experiences together is a big help.

best
CB
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Online Community Manager

[geoff]

dear Quietlife, we do have a tendency to try and overcome our depression by ourselves, believing that it can be achieved, and we get so far only to hit a brick wall again and again.

You may want to call it by having a relapse, small or big it doesn't matter, as there are certain problems that are always hidden in our mind, and these concerns we never seem to overcome, or they aren't solved or sorted out, so bang, we get depression again.

It has happened to me many times, because I never had the confidence nor the strength to stop it from happening.

I'm sure that most of us have had depression and I'm talking about many years ago, but we never believed it to be associated with this illness, and just believing that we had 'growing pains', so I take myself back 54 years when I had OCD and this is included in having depression.

There are periods when everything is OK and our life just rolls on, but then we hit the wall again, and take two steps backwards, so maybe CBT might be able to sort all of these hic-ups out and then to try and stabilise our mood. Geoff.