I’m Trying

But it really doesn’t feel like it. I go to the appointments with my psychiatrist and therapist. I got the results of a gene site test and am on an antidepressant that’s supposed to help me. I am trying so hard to follow my therapist’s advice, but it always feels like I’m being dishonest or cheating at his little assignments even though I’m trying.

And I am getting better. I’m already miles away from where I was. I’m going to the grocery store tomorrow with my brother. I went to the laundromat last week. I am getting better, but I still can’t envisage a future where I’m anything more than a burden. I can go to the grocery store or laundromat, but only with my brother, I still work myself up into a panic before every therapy session. I can make myself go to therapy, but the idea of an online interview where I have to tell someone that I am a 30 year old that has never really had a real job. Whose teeth are really fucked because they couldn’t leave the house. I can’t imagine that reality.

Of course, a reality I can imagine even less is getting a job outside the house. Learning bus routes or learning to drive, which makes my palms sweat just thinking about it. And interacting with people out in the world and dealing with judgment and, again, I’m a 30 year old whose only work experience is a very brief stint at a Dairy Queen (which I never got paid for and was too anxious to keep asking to be paid) and an accounting internship that I didn’t even finish because eventually I got tired of having panic attacks in the bathroom.

It’s early. I’ve been on new meds for less than a week. I just have no idea what the path ahead is going to look like. I can’t imagine anyone hiring me. I can’t imagine being able to work without the panic attacks. I can’t imagine not being a burden.

Things Did Not Go As Planned

To catch up with me; I’m a 30 year old unemployed agoraphobic who dropped out of school and is living with her brother. I also have major dental issues for a lot of reasons, mainly at this point the agoraphobia. So. That was not how anything was supposed to go.

Years ago, I had an internship. It broke me, I think. The realization that I was working so hard for this degree for a job that I physically/mentally couldn’t do. I went to my first day of classes my senior year. I remember it well, which is a rarity. I impressed a professor. I had a class with a boy I had had a crush on the previous semester and he seemed as excited as me about that fact. I then got into the car where my mother picked me up and had my normal panic attack about how I was going to do any of it. All of it was normal. What wasn’t normal was the next day I just didn’t get out of bed. Nor the next day. Or the day after that. And that was how I dropped out of college. I genuinely don’t remember if I eventually did any of the official stuff. My guess is no. And I just continued to not get out of bed, basically. Put in a move from my mother’s to my bother’s for reasons I really don’t want to unpack here. 7 years of doing nothing. I wasn’t even bored. I was just tired. Talking was too much most days.

I’ve started speaking in the past tense and that is because some of these things are changing and others I have faith will. I’ve started seeing a nurse practitioner and a therapist through telehealth again. It already feels different. Being medicated makes such a difference. And my nurse practitioner even ordered a gene test which will show what medicine works best. The results of that are pending. I have not looked into when that test was invented because I do not want to know whether it’s something that should have been ordered when I was 18 at the doctor. And I chose a male therapist even though I was leery, but he’s so great too. He was the one that wanted me to write again, though he wants me to focus on narrativizing my life so you may find that here at some point. I think I needed to get this part out first.

I’m trying. I went to the grocery story with my brother. I went to the laundromat. I wrote a semi-cohesive blog post. I’m going to make things okay.

The Big List of Pleasurable Activities

So my therapist recently recommended to me “The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook.” It originally intended for people with BPD, but I was assured it would help my major depressive, obsessive compulsive self. I’m only a few pages into the book, but there is this giant list of pleasurable activities to do that I found very exhaustive and useful, some of which I never thought of before. I’m going to bold the ones that either work for me or that I now want to try. I just want to make this list available to anyone wanting to read. So it goes:

• Call a friend
• Go out and visit a friend
• Invite a friend to come over to your house
• Text a friend
• Organize a party
• Exercise
• Lift Weights
• Do yoga, tai chi, or Pilates
• Stretch
• Go for a long walk in a park or someplace that’s peaceful
• Go outside and watch the clouds
• Jog
• Ride your bike
• Swim
• Go hiking
• Do something exciting, like surfing, rock climbing, or kayaking
• Go to local playground and join or watch a game
• Play Basketball, golf, bowling, billiards, or hit a tennis ball against the wall
• Get a massage
• Get out of your house, even if you just sit outside
• Go for a drive
• Plan a trip to a place you’ve never been before
• Sleep or take a nap
• Eat Chocolate
• Eat Ice Cream
• Cook your favorite dish or meal
• Cook a recipe that you’ve never tried before
• Take a cooking class
• Go out for something to eat
• Go outside and play with your pet
• Give your pet a bath
• Go outside and watch the birds and other animals
• Find something funny to read
• Watch a funny movie (start collecting funny movies to watch when feeling down)
• Go to a movie theatre and watch whatever’s playing
• Watch TV
• Listen to music (compile a list of happy music to listen to)
• Go to a sporting event
• Play a game with a friend
• Play solitaire
• Play video games
• Go online and chat (7 Cups of Tea)
• Visit your favorite websites
• Create your own website
• Create a blog
• Join an internet dating service
• Sell something on the internet
• Buy something on the internet
• Do a puzzle
• Call a crisis hotline and talk to someone
• Go shopping
• Go get a haircut
• Go to a spa
• Go to a library
• Got to a bookstore and read
• Go to your favorite café for coffee
• Visit a museum or local art gallery
• Go to the mall and people watch
• Pray or meditate
• Call a family member you haven’t talked to in a while
• Learn a new language
• Sing or learn how to sing
• Play an instrument or learn how to play an instrument
• Write a song
• Turn on loud music and dance in your room
• Participate in a local theatre group
• Take photographs
• Sing in local choir
• Join a club
• Plant a garden
• Work outside
• Knit, crochet, or sew-or learn how to
• Make a scrapbook
• Paint your nails
• Change your hair color
• Take a bubble bath or shower
• Work on car, truck, or motorcycle
• Sign up for an interesting class
• Read your favorite book
• Read a trashy celebrity magazine
• Write a letter to a friend or family member
• Write things you like about yourself on a picture of your body or draw them on a photo of yourself
• Write a poem, short story, movie, or play about your life
• Write in your journal or diary about what happened to you that day
• Write a loving letter to yourself when you are feeling good and keep it with you to read when your upset
• Make a list of 10 things you’re good at when you’re feeling good to read when feeling down
• Draw a picture
• Paint a picture
• Masturbate
• Have sex with someone you care about
• Make a list of 10 people you admire and want to be like-it can be anyone real or fictional throughout history. Describe what you admire about these people.
• Write a story about the craziest, funniest, or sexiest that has ever happened to you.
• Make a list of 10 things to do before you die
• Make a list of 10 celebrities you would like to befriend and why.
• Make a list of 10 celebrities you would like to have sex with and why
• Write a letter to someone who has made your life better and why
• Shave your legs and wash your sheets
• Do your makeup just for fun
• Use a sheet mask

Invalidating Mental Illness

So my doctor and I finally found a medication that kind of works. I’ve been getting out of bed more often than not, I’ve had some okay days where I didn’t consciously want to die, all that good stuff. After 4 years and so many combinations I’ve lost count, I found something that did something. I’m still getting panic attacks and all the anxiety symptoms, which is to be expected. I’m also getting really restless, even more than usual, but I looked it up and it’s a side effect of one of my medications, but I think getting out of bed is worth it.

Now all of this has been really odd for me and there have been a lot of things to think about with this development, but the most pronounced part is realizing just how much I had invalidated my depression because medication didn’t work. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but we all have that voice in our head that just goes, but what if your faking? what if you’re just lazy? The fact that my depression was virtually impervious to medication really messed with my perception of said depression. My mind could rationalize, well if the condition does not get better when you treat it, maybe the original condition is in question. And the problem is, that sounds rational. To my mind at least.

But now I’m confronted with a form of treatment that is doing something and there are so many emotions that go along with that. Anger, that mental illness has taken and continues to take so much control over me and my life. I can’t really sustain anger so it very quickly turns to sadness over the lost time, even though I know that by feeling sad about it I’m just wasting more. Guilt, I will always feel guilty. So much regret. A sense of why me that threatens to overwhelm me at times. Hopelessness because this is such a small step, yet it feels so huge to me and I wish that weren’t the case. I have so far to go and it’s like asking me to do a triathlon after 5 consecutive marathons. I’m exhausted.

One of the the strongest emotions I feel is fear. I’m terrified. Terrified the medicine will stop working because that happened once. Terrified that this is the best it will ever get. Terrified that maybe it will get better and I will have to find a way to put the pieces of my life together when I’m not sure they fit. I’m just scared all the time. And it’s tiring.

I guess that’s the emotion I feel most. Tired. I don’t want to be doing any of this. I don’t want to try to get my life together because it’s a fucking mess and there’s no reward and I don’t have the energy.

My therapist talked to me about how I have a tendency to think myself out of a good mood. She says that I should just take the good days and try not to question it. I take issue with that. I don’t think anything is real if it can’t hold up to questioning so if my mood can’t then it wasn’t real to begin with. She made an argument against that and it made sense and was all well and good, but it doesn’t actually change how I feel about the subject. Why should I be in a good mood when I have all of these things I should be doing? And if my good mood is the result of a medication, is it really mine?

What Do I Have to Lose?

So when I went to my first appointment with my new therapist I had to set a goal and yadda yadda. My therapy goals keep getting sadder every time. This time was: I would like to wake up and not regret it. Now we had a whole session talking about things that I’ll get to later (apparently I’m much more obsessive compulsive than I thought), but at the end of the session she asked me to think of objectives I would have to achieve in order to achieve the main goal. They were as follows:

1. Stop being afraid to enjoy things
2. Learn how to enjoy things.
3. Learn how to feel excitement instead of dread
4. Sleep better
5. Fully accept that this is my life and I have to actually live it
6. Turn off my default want-to-die
7. Address and overcome the fear that I’m always going to want to die regardless of mental illness.

The first few are pretty self-explanatory, but the last few have been a source of dwelling the past few weeks. It started with thinking about number 5. I realized I spend my entire life with one foot out the door hoping to get run over by a truck. I mean, as of writing this, I have blown off a date with a guy that I actually like because I just don’t see the point of it. I don’t see the point of any relationships and it’s probably because I hate planning a future that I don’t want to have.

The real problem came with number 7. I think I have successfully discovered my deepest fear. She asked me once what I had to lose by getting better and that’s it. What if I get to a place where my depression and anxiety and ocd are minimized and I still want to die? There has never been a point in my life that I have been glad to be alive. Not even a second. So how would I ever be able to extend any sort of enjoyment of life. I didn’t think I had any hope, but I was wrong because that’s what I have to lose. If I ever ‘feel’ better, but am still me, the me that hates everything and wants to die and sees no point in relationships then i’m just fucked. That’s it. There’s no hope for the next 60 years of miserable life.

This all probably ties into my fear that I’m doomed to an unhappy existence due to my lack of a belief in a higher power coupled with my deeply existential and annoyingly introspective mind.

I brought this up to her, but she didn’t really say anything to alleviate the fear. What is there to say?

Tipping Points

So the last few times I wrote, I was writing about how I kind of felt in-conflict with my therapist (John) because he believed I didn’t need medication and, though I wish that were the case, I disagreed. When faced with this dilemma, I decided to give him a chance. I mean, I had a summer with no responsibilities ahead of me and I could afford to try it his way and see if I could see his point. Well, summer is over. It has been for about ten weeks for me and I’m now seeing a new therapist and on a brand new antidepressant and there are a few reasons for these things. The main is that my first day of the new semester was a tipping point. I would know. I reach a new one about every week.

Now, during the summer I had not been good. I’d been so anxious I honestly didn’t know what to do, still wanted to die, and had the full gamut of depression symptoms. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, or go anywhere, or get out of bed. The thing was, it didn’t really matter. I had nowhere to be, except therapy and that was only once a week. It was why I was willing to give his idea a chance.

The first day of school was a both a wake up call and the nightmare I would usually want a wake-up all from. Nothing I could write could really explain just how bad it was. I went from class to class constantly on the verge of tears, I was shaking, I was dizzy, I wasn’t actually hearing anything anyone was saying because the anxiety was making everything seem really far away, I had a migraine, I couldn’t stop thinking about the future and how much I don’t want one and how much of a failure I am and how I was so fucking trapped I couldn’t stand it. The list goes on. When I finally got in the car, I had a full panic attack because for the first time in a really long time I just didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know (and still don’t) how I was going to get through this semester. And my brain took it even further because the car I got into was my mom’s because i can’t drive and I’ve never really had a job and  I can’t imagine a time where I will be able to hold down a full time job so even if I can get through this semester, what then?

I’m just not a functional human being. I can’t even fake being a functional human being anymore. And that’s what it came down to. I’m not functional. I gave John 4 months and I still couldn’t see an end point where his method would start to help me function. I wasn’t expecting to be cured, but I realized that I’m at a point where I need medication to function because I can’t do it on my own and while talk therapy is an important part of my feeling better in the long run, in the interim, I just need to create the chemicals that will make me get out of bed in the morning more often than not.

So once I realized that I couldn’t take John’s route, I realized I needed to change places because he was kind of adamant against medication and while I could have continued to see him and just sought medication elsewhere, I couldn’t really imagine going to therapy when he would know that I’m not really following part of his instructions. A fresh start just seemed better even if it meant repeating the same process yet again.

Therapist or Me: Who Knows Best??

So I’ve started seeing a new therapist. I’ve seen him 3 times so far and I honestly don’t know what to think. I just know that, as of now, it’s not helping.

To start, I like the guy. I think he’s a good therapist.

The thing is, therapy with him is the most movie-version of therapy I’ve ever tried. By that I mean, my previous therapists didn’t involve laying on a couch or talking in depth about my childhood. Every therapist and psychiatrist I’ve ever had has concluded that my depression and anxiety are caused mainly chemically. But with this guy I’m on a couch talking about my daddy issues and he shows no desire to get me back on medication. I don’t know how to feel about it. The more I talk to him, the worse I feel and I’m not really sure why.

Basically, we haven’t talked about my depression at all. He hasn’t even really recognized that it’s a thing. We’ve focused on my anxiety. He thinks that my anxiety stems from my childhood, which is fair because I’m sure part of it does. He brought out the whole Parent-Adult-Child thing and said that I’m a well-adjusted adult so the child is the one feeling the anxiety.

Now I have problems with that on a few levels. One, it just sounds kind of hokey to me. But also, calling the adult-me ‘well-adjusted’ really fucked me up. Like, if I’m so fucking well-adjusted why can’t I handle, oh I don’t know, anything? Also, let’s say he is right. How does any of this help me? Okay, the child-me feels neglected. I had a more fucked up childhood than I thought. How does that help me stop feeling so anxious I’m dizzy? How does that help me find a way to function? And say that’s the cause of my anxiety and it somehow gets miraculously fixed, I’m still a major depressive.

I guess a part of it is I’m a little upset that he hasn’t mentioned recommending me to see the psychiatrist and I don’t want to be upset at that. I don’t want to want to be back on medication. But in my experience, therapy hasn’t helped at all whereas medication has made at least a slight difference. It didn’t fix anything, but some of it helped even a little. And right now, I don’t think I’m in a place where I can wait to see if therapy makes even a slight difference because in my experience it doesn’t. I am not functioning well right now. I have absolutely zero responsibilities at the moment, but I still am unable to do even the most basic task. I can’t wait while he tries to get through to ‘child-me,’ but what other choice do I have? I can’t leave because I haven’t even given him a real chance and I do like him. And just because he’s different doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

But in the mean time, I can’t sleep, I don’t eat, I am literally vibrating to the point that my entire legs are swollen, I have constant migraines, and I can’t focus on anything. And I am constantly on the verge of a panic attack which is really fucking exhausting, especially when you aren’t getting any sleep. This isn’t exactly the relaxing summer everybody keeps telling me I needed.

I did try bringing up the fact that I wanted to be back on medication, but he just kind of blew it off. I’m so tired. I honestly don’t know what to do at this point.  I don’t want it to seem like I think I know better than him because this is his job. But it’s also my life and I’m not living it right now because there is constantly an elephant sitting on my chest.

 

This Didn’t Help

So it’s almost 4 a.m. so of course I’m on the verge of a panic attack. I really don’t have the energy for it tonight so I’m going to try and put into words what is bothering me in the hope that it helps. Spoiler alert: it won’t.

So I’m currently filling with anxiety over several things. I’m not sure which one is worse. I do know that forcing myself to think about it is causing me so much anxiety I’m dizzy so excuse any typos. Everything is blurry.

One thing that is troubling me is that I’m pretty much a failure of a human being. I am 21 years old. I don’t have a job, I have screwed up about 3 semesters of school to the point where it is kind of ridiculous that I even went, I have never been in a serious relationship and I don’t see it happening any time soon, I don’t drive, I barely leave the house, I still haven’t registered for class in the fall because I can’t go to my school’s portal page without having a panic attack, fuck, I can’t even sleep right.

So yeah, that’s a thing. And I can come up with excuses. If you’ve read any of my other stuff, you know I have plenty of reasons, but doesn’t everybody? Everybody has issues. It seems like I just can’t handle mine. God, my head is killing me.

The thing is, I have nothing to worry about really. I have no responsibilities right now. It doesn’t matter. I’m drowning in anxiety and dread to the point that I have literally injured myself by being jittery. I’m miserable, I can’t concentrate on anything, and I can’t fucking sleep. If I can’t cope with this how can I cope with actual life? I’m basically a child right now, except a child has better coping strategies.

I just don’t know what to do here and therapy is doing the opposite of helping, but that’s a different entry.

 

What the Fuck are Emotions?

So my therapist has stated that he thinks that one of my problems is that I tend to see certain things in black and white terms. While I will expound on different philosophical ideologies for hours and be fine living in that grey area, in some places I like something cut and dry.

One of these black/white dilemmas, he says, comes in the form of logic vs. emotion. He says I seem to choose logic every time. I immediately went on the defensive (in a friendly debate way) by stating that:

1. The world would be better off if we were more logical. I mean, look at the POTUS. Donald Trump is the result of too much emotion. I guess the rebuttal for this  (though he didn’t call me out on it) is that there are plenty of emotional liberals who do great things driven by emotion. My counter is that from a utilitarian sense, logic trumps emotion
2. I also stated that clearly I don’t choose logic every time because I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder and anxiety is often highly illogical
3. Last, the only emotions I feel are negative so if I allow myself to actually feel emotions I think I would be paralyzed by just how bleak my life outlook is and would be even less productive which I don’t think is actually possible.

What he was trying to communicate was that it wasn’t black and white. That there is a way to let my emotions in without loosing the logic. But what the fuck are emotions? Do I let them in ever? I mean I must because, as I’ve stated, I’m an anxious mess and I feel things like guilt and sadness and dread and all that fun stuff. It’s why I know I’m not a sociopath. I hate myself too much to be.

So I’ve ended up just googling things like “how to identify emotions” of “what are emotions” and making absolutely no progress.

Am I an emotional person? I cry sometimes. I feel miserable a lot, but really I often just feel detached. But do I actually feel detached because I still feel anxious. I just lose the ability to connect with anyone around me. I don’t start feeling like I don’t exist or that this life isn’t real (it’s as real as anything is).

I’ve read studies the imply a positive correlation between anxiety and detachment.

But what the fuck are emotions?

That definition tells me fuck-all. My natural instinctive state of mind to anything is anxiety. Or guilt. Or dread. And one of the fucking examples is she was attempting to control her emotions, I mean, don’t I do that? I compartmentalize them until there’s nothing but humorous detachment left, but that’s not healthy nor is it helpful.

So how the fuck does someone allow themselves to feel the proper amount of emotion when their only emotions stem from a mental illness that is inherently illogical?

I think what he thinks will happen is that I will start magically feeling positive emotions, which just doesn’t happen. I’m not always detached, but when I’m not I’m completely useless drowning in my own self pity and insignificance.

As much as I would love to think that I am and as much as I love philosophy because it must be logical, I’m not a logical person. My anxiety and depression make me illogical. So how can my problem be that I choose logic over emotion? None of these are rhetorical. If you have an answer I’m all ears.

Can You Be A Happy Nihilist?

So I’ve been stuck in a youtube vortex for the past 48 hours and a part of it is this channel that discusses the philosophy of various pop culture items and as I was watching the guy talk about how existential Rick and Morty was and he started citing Camus, I was suddenly kind of paralyzed by this question.

Obviously, Camus would say of course it’s possible. He says that once you accept how insignificant humans’ existence is you have three options: ignore it, kill yourself, or embrace what he calls “the absurd.” He proceeds to explain that he really only supports the last option and you shouldn’t kill yourself and you can only distract yourself for so long before it catches up to you and yadda yadda yadda (sorry Camus)

But will embracing the absurd ever actually be enough to achieve any semblance of happiness or will it just breed this sense of ironic detachment where everything is funny because nothing matters? Am I supposed to believe Sisyphus was ever actually happy or anything close to it while pushing a boulder up a hill every day?

Now it’s 2 am and I am not a philosophy major, but I do think about existence to an obsessive degree. I am also extremely unhappy as you know if you’ve read any previous post. I’ve never really looked at those two facts as inherently interconnected because I’ve always convinced myself that if I fix the chemical imbalance that is the root cause of my mental illness, I’ll have a shot at being “happy” (the fact that I think the word happy should be put in quotes doesn’t bode well).

I’ve always told myself that there are plenty of nihilists in the world. It doesn’t even have to be nihilism. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a nihilist. I think if I truly was a nihilist I wouldn’t feel the need to write a fucking blog post about it because the act of writing and publishing this kind of implies some level of meaning. Let’s just look at atheism, or existentialism in general. There are plenty of people who question the meaning of life and can’t turn to religion for the answer so there must be a way to be self-aware and happy. (I do say can’t and not won’t. I can’t choose to believe in a higher power. If I did it would end up in more of a Pascal way because I can’t give myself faith in something I don’t believe to be true).

But what if that’s not the case? What if the only way to cope with the inherent meaningless of life is to ignore it until you can’t anymore? If that’s the case, I’ve reached my ignorance threshold at the ripe age of 21 so I had a good run, I guess.

Sometimes I think that humor is the best way to cope. After all, we need to embrace the absurd, but I find that any humor to be found has an extremely dark and almost manic edge. I would know. That’s my sense of humor. I had my first appointment with a new therapist today and I found myself telling him about how I spent my 21st birthday in the psych ward and they gave me a little individual cake, but no candle because I might hurt myself and the day after I got out I find out the only therapist I ever liked was leaving. I was laughing as I told him this because it’s just so melodramatic that if you wrote it in a YA novel people would say it was trite and unrealistic. I was laughing because it was so depressing that the more it compounded the more absurd it became and the funnier it was. Even though I was laughing, that experience truly fucked me up. I still get nightmares about it.

But isn’t that what Camus was asking us to do? Look at the absurd. The depressing fact that humans innately search for meaning in a universe that doesn’t give a shit, and laugh at it. Even if you laugh, that laughter, that acceptance that nothing matters is really just another form of ignoring it and Camus will tell you that ignorance doesn’t work. You’ll still get nightmares about it.

People can say that you create your own meaning through family, or friends, or charity work, or fucking Rick and Morty, but aren’t these just distractions? We know that distractions don’t work.

I’ve started to really question if I need religion to ever truly find any form of contentment and that’s a problem because, as I stated, I can’t make myself believe in a higher power.

This has been a rambling mess of probably inaccurate philosophy so I’m just going to quit while I’m behind. Maybe I’m just making it more complicated than it needs to be, though I can’t imagine how that could possibly be true. Fuck, I need to go find a distraction.