Help me help myself

[sadgirl95]

Hello everybody. My name is Kelly and I'm turning 20 this year. Posting something this personal is quite a big step for me as I have been struggling with social anxiety as long as I can remember as well as manic depression and severe depressive states. I don't often talk about these things as I find it difficult to trust people and I often find myself feeling very frustrated and confused towards myself in how I'm feeling and with my disorders.

I have been feeling extremely suicidal as of lately and over the past 18 months, sitting here thinking about this now makes me wonder how I have managed to make it so far.

I have tried several different medications and have seen several psychologists and nothing seems to help. 

I'm feeling very under pressure to live like everybody else, get a job, be happy, etc, but I can not do that right now and nobody can seem to understand that.

It scares me to think that I could make a mistake at anytime and lose everything.

My aim of posting here is to hopefully meet some people who are struggling in similar ways and share stories.

I do not have many people that I can confide in and that leaves me feeling lost and alone all the time.

 I see myself as a lost, angry, sad individual and as well as a lot of you I would really like some people to confide in and share things with.

Its difficult to find someone who really understands you sometimes and I am out of ideas so this is an attempt to reach out. 

I am really struggling with everything lately and I don't know how much time I have left.

 Thank you for reading, it is much appreciated x

Now to hover over the "post this thread" button until I'm brave enough to hit post.

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[Neil_1]

Dear Kelly

Welcome to Beyond Blue and may I say a huge well done to you on coming here and providing this post.  As you quite rightly say, it can be a huge effort to not only come here but then to type away, expressing how things are, getting it down on, well, the screen (as opposed to paper) and then, yes, “hitting the send button”.  But you did and that is a major positive step you’ve produced.

Also it’s great that you’ve been trying different meds as well as different psychologists – and so many of us know these feelings, feelings of frustration when we go to a new psych and we unload and then for whatever reason it turns out that they don’t seem to the ‘right fit for us’.   But Kelly, as I said, yes it is frustrating, BUT you’ve got to dig deep here and keep on trying – trying different ones, because when you do find that psych who you have a repour with, it makes an incredible difference.  I went years of searching till I found the psych that I see now.

The same can be said with meds – but these are just two arrows in your quiver of methods for attacking your mental illnesses.  We need to seek out lots more arrows to better arm ourselves to get through each day, each week, etc.

Coming here is brilliant as everyone here is a friend in a very very large community.  There’s no judgement here, just advice, guidance but above all else, 100% support.

But out there in our everyday lives the seeking out of like-minded people is very difficult.  And as you may have experienced, people who don’t suffer from this, for the most part, just do not understand what it’s like.  How can they?   It’s hard enough for us to try and come to terms with it, let alone for someone on the outer.

With regards to getting a job, being happy – oh wow, isn’t that just how the regular Joe Citizen’s of this world respond to us.  Go on, get yourself a job and for goodness sakes, be happy!  You can’t handle that at the moment and good for you to stand up to them.  Keep doing that.

Kelly, I’m just about out of characters, so I’ll send this now – I did want to write lot more, but I’ll be back again.  Would really love to hear from you again.

Neil

[BenD]

Hi Kelly,

My name is Ben and I'm turning 23 next week. I have experienced and continue to experience social anxiety and depression.

It's really great that you managed to post on here. It's hard, especially if you have a deep mistrust of what other people think. It feels like communication is mechanical, and that you are always second-guessing yourself.

Kelly, reaching out for help is the right thing to do. It takes a while to learn about who you are and what you require to function. Some people on these servers have been going over that learning process for 50+ years, and they are immensely helpful resources for people like us.

As Neil said, it took years for him to find the right psych; I was so frustrated with the lack of good counseling advice from uni that the final professional I met got a list from me of everything that was wrong with their system and everything they immediately need to improve. It is immensely frustrating, tiring and worst of all depressing.

But, those baby steps eventually keep going until one day you are doing something and you realise "wow, I've come a long way". There are still ups and downs, but because you know what you are dealing with you can handle them.

Kelly, you've done a great service to yourself by posting on here. It was really courageous of you, well done.

Now a bit more about yourself, do you work or study? Do you play any sport or musical instruments?

Looking forward to hearing back from you 🙂

Ben