Catharsis

[Caleb_Crawdad]

Hi

 I guess I'll get straight to it.

I'm a 20 y/o male and I think I could do with some help. When I was younger I lived with my mother and my two sisters. My mother has a lot of issues in her past that still plague her to this day. She never really had a good relationship with her family as far as I can tell and decided to move us across the country and change our family name so that we could not be found. We moved around a lot; always a new school, a new house. When I was 8 we moved states again.

When I fourteen I started to feel very rotten. I started staying home some days and not handing in work at school. My sisters and I would ask my mum questions about our fathers and our family and it would always end up messy. When I was 15 I left home to live with my sister oldest sister who had left home the year earlier at 18. She had finished year 12 and started working and I was still in high school. Each month that went by this rotten feeling intensified and each month I found myself attending school less and less and  submitting work less and less. High school had finished and I had just scraped by.

When I was in college this pattern repeated itself, gradually intensifying. I would only attend two or three, sometimes one day a week. The days I didn't go I would sleep until 5:pm and stay up until 5:am. Then I would only attend music class. Obviously this lead to failing college. After college I moved in with a friend who went to university and I started a TAFE course so that I could get a better job. Self destructive pattern: rinse and repeat. 

When I was 18 I found out my father had passed. I felt rotten to the core. My girlfriend left me and I stopped talking to most of my friends, the ones that I did talk to I was convinced that they thought I was a joke. I formed a drug dependency and went to the doctor looking for help. I was going to see the head headshrinker but I didn't have the money and so I left with the GP telling me I looked like a healthy young man (even though I told him about the drugs) and a prescription for some mild anti-depressants. I took them for a couple of months but didn't feel any better for it and didn't feel any worse for it when I stopped.

A couple of months later I moved states again with a mate and started studying. I study online and am inside most of the day but recently I have started falling back into old habits.

Sorry for the essay, just thought context might be handy. I would just like to feel better.

Thanks

[Neil_1]

Hi there caleb crawdad

Welcome to Beyond Blue and I really DO thank you for your post – as you mentioned the context might be handy – yes it is and as we have with so many new posters, sometimes we get just one paragraph and then have to ask loads of questions, but at least you’ve spieled a great deal, which is awesome.

It sure does sound like you’ve had a fair battle on your hands for a lot of your life – and it really ain’t that fair to be having to battle when you’re just a youngster, but you’ve had to do that through school and that obviously can take a big effect on you;  very understandable.

From what I can gather, your options for support from family members would be very low, I’m guessing;  although how are things/your relationship with the older sister who you lived with?   Although, you appear to not be living close to her now anyway?  

I think what’s definitely needed is for you to get some “proper” professional help.   It was a great and positive move by you to seek out your own GP to go too, but it really disheartens me to hear stories like yours where they, for all intents and purposes, give you a quick once-over, prescribe you some tablets and let you on your way.

On this site, Beyond Blue have provided a list of GP’s that can be searched for;   these GP’s are all very experienced in dealing with mental health issues, depression, anxiety, etc;  and from that, they would be best placed to provide you with proper care and support;   and to give you appropriate referrals if they see fit to do so.  What I would be doing is to take along the tablets that were prescribed to you (if you still have them – or at least, if you can remember what they were) to tell the GP what you took earlier.

Caleb Crawdad – by the way, awesome name – I read that and thought, ok, this dude’s name is Caleb, he likes crawfish (although from what I can gather, that’s an American term) and he’s a dad.  How did I go with my guessing?

Would love to hear back from you.

Cheers

Neil