Trying to find the drive to help myself.

[Wicks]

Hi, 28 year old male, I've been grappling with depression for years but in 2020 I finally suffered a full mental breakdown and completely fell off the rails, my Anxiety and Depression spiked and I completely shutdown.

I've been seeing my doctor who has been supportive, spoken with friends and visited 2 different Psychologists to try and fix myself and yet I find myself sitting in my room, wanting to go outside, wanting to see my friends, wanting to lose weight and eat healthier and start my journey of fixing myself and yet...I don't.

I can't pin down an exact reason why, speaking with my Psych and GP, family and friends I know I have the support and the tools I need but I just don't end up doing anything to try and help myself.

Lately I've been getting frustrated at myself because it almost feels like I'm not at the wheel, I know I should socialize and yet I actively mute my chats and hide from my friends, who I know want to support me any way they can, I know I should do something creative that I enjoy like painting or playing video games and yet I'll stay in bed all day or just stare at my desk top, it just goes on and on.

I need structure but I struggle to commit, I make plans and then ignore them or cancel them, I need my friends and yet for some reason I push them away, I sometimes feel that I don't want myself to feel better, that I don't deserve to be happy and I just don't see a point to trying to fix it anymore.

I'm really not sure where I'm going with this post or what I want out of it, it's all just kind of coming out onto the page at this point, but I guess, do other people feel this way? Where you know what you have to do and you just don't do it?

[ecomama]

Dear Wicks, a very warm welcome to the forums. I'm really glad you're here. 

High five because TODAY you did some thing to improve your mental health, you JOINED the forums! 

Congratulations and well done, I mean this sincerely. This is BIG. 

Your post was so honest and so full of intelligent self reflection. I admire your honesty and courage in your post. 

I truly think this day is your first day of clearing that fog. 

Do you think some times we see depression as this massive thing, so nebulous, so intangible that it seems impossible to tackle? Let alone truly understand? 

Can we also turn this thinking on it's head? 
Yes we can! 

Break it down. 
Into tiny steps, because one step, maintained, is a step towards better mental health. 

Research tells us that self-care is the one thing that can improve all aspects of our health. 
I'll give you some and if you like, you can choose ONE to do now or tomorrow. 
EG brush your teeth OR
make your bed OR...?

Instead of thinking "I need to lose weight". 
You can say to yourself "I'll make a healthy breakfast", start with one meal a day. 

Having goals is fine if the goals are ATTAINABLE. Breaking them down helps. 

Having some thing to look forward to every day or each week or even in 6 month's time helps too. 

We're so happy to have you here, 

Love EM

[Sophie_M]

Hi there, Wicks

Thank you very much for choosing our forum community to belong to! We are grateful to have you with us. 

The path through breakdown and recovery is an incredibly hard one to describe to any who haven't been through it, but you have captured one of the hardest tasks of it all amazingly - the act of trying to get the recovery started. 

There are many reasons this can be the case: The "wall of yuck" - when the overall task of repair and recovery seems so huge that even thinking about it seems overwhelming and impossible to achieve; the 'value defeat' when the experience of depression seems so ingrained into us now that trying to do anything contrary to what the depression tells us seems impossibly alien; and of course, good old neurochemistry - Dopamine and Serotonin play key roles in turning thoughts, ideas, and intentions into actions we perform, and when the brain is all washed out of either or both, the bridge between wanting to do something and the action occurring is easily broken, and the gap feels terrifying to jump. 

Having supportive medication prescribed for you might be a big step - but so is breaking everything down into its smallest parts: Don't go exercise - go for a walk around your backyard. don't play an entire video game - play 5 minutes of a video game. Don't tidy your room, pick up once piece of clothing and put it in the wardrobe, etc. 

Very soon the brain begins to get a little surge of dopamine and realizes that if it can do 5 minutes, it can do 10, and if it can do 10, well it might as well do 30! and if it can do 30..... might as well do the whole thing.

Don't be ashamed if you need medication support while you start the journey Wicks, and also don't be ashamed if moving from a tiny step to a bigger step takes weeks. The intention of the journey is moving toward something new, not taking 20 steps at once.

Please remember that if you need us, you can call 24/7 - 1300 22 4636, or click here to webchat with us!

We are proud of you for taking the step of communication and help-seeking Wicks - don't stop!

Regards,

Sophie M. 

 

[Petal22]

Hi Wicks,

Thanks for joining us here on the forums.

Im sorry you are feeling this way, I understand it’s hard.

Im sorry you had a full mental breakdown this in itself is a very debilitating thing to deal with our minds just seem to go blank when this happens and for us to get it going again we need to plan little things that we want to accomplish….. write your self a list of the things you want to do the next day the night before.

Something as simple as going out to a coffee shop to buy a coffee or just going for a short walk……. Each time we can accomplish something we can cross it of the list this way we can build momentum from the things we have written on the list and accomplishing these these will lead us to feel better about ourselves.

Slowly build on these things….

I understand that you know what to do but just don’t …….the trick here is to just try each day to do something on the list….. this has to come from deep inside you a “ want” to progress and move forward.

Recovery is possible just keep building momentum.

[geoff]

Hello Wicks, I totally commiserate with how you are feeling because this can happen all of sudden, even though you know you haven't been feeling well and when it does you can't do all of these at once, 'wanting to go outside, wanting to see my friends, wanting to lose weight and eat healthier and start my journey of fixing myself' because thinking about doing them all, only makes the situation worse.

You need to cope with each one separately and sometimes we can't actually pin point the reason why we feel like this, because one thing leads onto another so quickly it all comes at once.

Let your doctor and psych wade through your concerns and appreciate how you are feeling one week may be totally focused on something else the next week and there is no harm in feeling like this, every week/day is different.

Geoff.

Life Member. 

[therising]

Hi Wicks

I feel for you so much as your frustration and disappointment come through so clearly in your words. To not be able to see a clear way forward for a number of days is one thing but to not see it over a period of a couple of years or so points to one of the most challenging aspects of depression - endurance. I've found the endurance factor and all the work that involves can further fuel depression at times.  

To be able to see or to be a 'seer' is a powerful thing. With such an ability, you can see your way out of just about anything. While you can be stuck with an inability to see, for some reason, I believe it becomes vital to find the next best thing...someone who can see for you. By the way, you can be surrounded by 99 people (including friends, family and professionals) and not one them can see exactly what you need to do to get out of where you are. They can offer dozens of solutions or options but none of them strike a chord, none of them feel achievable. Then there is the 100th person who comes along and blows your mind. They see exactly what you need. Whether it involves step by simple step, which they may help you through, or something so out there it leads a whole new part of you to come to life, you realise the one thing missing was the most inspiring person you've ever met, the person who has led you to be more conscious than you have ever been before.

While in a depression, it can feel impossible to see what will make all the difference. Sometimes all we can see is the same old stuff that plays out and maybe even see or imagine that's the way it's always going to be. Wondering whether you've always had a pretty good imagination but it just feels kind of 'broken' these days, in a way. Of course, the exhaustion that can come with depression and anxiety really doesn't help in fueling things in constructive ways. If you do happen to feel pretty exhausted, seriously low in energy, do you think raising people's awareness in regard to the energy factor could help make some difference to you?

[FitBoy]

The host of a podcast I was listening to the other day expressed a pretty intriguing viewpoint about personal enthusiasm. There are essentially two categories of humans. People who discover their passion and stick with it their entire life are known as "Jackhammers." There are also "hummingbirds," or persons, who have a variety of interests throughout their lives. They switch between several passions, and this realization that it's totally fine to not have just one passion or cause for which you would give your life made me. As long as you give your all to the passion you now have, things will start to make sense and perhaps you'll discover THE passion or