Just think of me as terminally ill

[stilldreaming]

I always wished society could understand my depression in that way. It's not fair there's only one country in the world that's able to do this. Well, it's not fair that I don't live there I guess.

I understand I am supposed to continue suffering because what I want to do would (will) hurt others. But if they don't care about my pain and misery, it makes it harder to empathize with their feelings.

I'd always considered my depression to be financially-related, and I suppose I still do. I have such limited earning potential, I'll never pay off my student loans let alone save anything for retirement. I have spent so much on therapy, I'm on medication, and sure, it's all helped. Just not enough.

I think of it as carrying a really heavy backpack, one too heavy for me to bear. Therapy and medication and all that, has reduced the load. Perhaps 200 pounds was removed from my back, but if it's still 50 pounds beyond my limit, that's still 50 pounds beyond what I can bear. And yet I am told I must continue to do so, because of others' feelings.

I'm sorry, but no. For over 15 years now I've severely struggled. There should be limits on how much stress, anxiety and unhappiness someone should have to bear. I have no intention to pull myself up by my bootstraps, simply because how far I can pull myself up, is not very far. I work for a low hourly wage, and it's all that I can deal with. I can't cope with stress, it affects my rational thinking and abilities too much. So trying to upskill and hustle my way to a better job and situation is impossible. The very thought is exhausting and depressing beyond belief. Just let me sleep forever instead. Please.

To spare my family (well, mother), I would ideally make it look like an accident. I suppose that means jumping (so as to look like an accidental fall) but all the more famous / likely cliffs in the area, well that would attract a lot of local news attention. Plus might lead to people trying to ruin the area with fencing and signs and whatnot.

So, gentle reader. I suppose that just leaves strangulation, doesn't it? The other method often discussed here (SN), well anything with chemicals I have to assemble, I just feel like there's too much opportunity for me to fuck it up somehow.

The thought of no longer being so tense all the time, it always instantly relaxes me. Has done for years. No more insecurities. No more work stress. No more clenched jaw. No more worrying about retirement. Bliss.

 

[Lifessocruel]

I'm sorry you've been through such hardships and yes it definitely does feel like a terminal illness, for me the onset to suicidal feelings was rapid and it feels I'm carrying a tonne of weight on my back.
I had it all a great business which i loved and earning a good wage but money can't buy me happiness. I still have the business of course but I'm an empty shell with no motivation.

 

[stilldreaming]

I'm sorry you've been through such hardships and yes it definitely does feel like a terminal illness, for me the onset to suicidal feelings was rapid and it feels I'm carrying a tonne of weight on my back.
I had it all a great business which i loved and earning a good wage but money can't buy me happiness. I still have the business of course but I'm an empty shell with no motivation.

Since I've kinda always been suicidal my adult life, knowing I can't hack it - well it's made me realize, how it's all just a quirk in brain chemistry, isn't it. Some people are born this way, and we end up thinking a certain way under (I suppose) conditions of stress or whatever triggers us. If we're lucky, conscious intervention (drugs, therapy etc) can help realign our brain activity into more healthy patterns.

Other people, well my husband once said he didn't at first believe it, that other people didn't secretly feel like we do. Just human nature, to assume that everyone thinks and feels like we do, of course. But some people genuinely go through life without contemplating suicide no matter bad things get, or have to have something to trigger it.

I'm glad you at least had a good life until a certain point, though I'm very sorry you're here now. I don't mean to pry, but have you tried professional help? Professional help doesn't always work of course, but you know despite what others might say about this website, but people here, I'd say most of us genuinely want everyone to live and be content. Or shall I say, speaking for myself at least, for others to be without debilitating mental (or even physical) pain. Which is hard for most people to understand why that might involve suicide as the kindly option, but it's not always natural to understand others' perspectives I guess.

Thank you for the reply. I hope you're reasonably okay x

 

[Lifessocruel]

Thanks and I did try professional help but i was only given drugs and whilst that helped and got my out of an extremely dark place i fell so far fast that its impossible to come back. But depression is definitely beatable because i suffered badly with it a few years ago that was ironically due to no job or money, but having turned it around to set up a business which I'm proud. I guess after you've been through hell once you're always going to be on the vulnerable side, but then i was only early 20s then and the brain is still developing and it is more resilient. I should have been set for life and i felt so comfortable but physically injury and health problems started last year and the treatment i had made my mental health bad and then i was a ticking time bomb. I just couldn't deal with stress like i used to. I was a hypochondriac but now I'm the opposite. Lifes just a game and it went checkmate against me.
I still do sports ect but i don't really get any feeling anymore. Im gonna try ketamine to see if that helps

 

[FuneralCry]

I'm sorry you are suffering. Of course people who have never had depression will be unable to comprehend what it is like. It has the potential to be very debilitating. It's why we need a right to die, people should not be expected to suffer for decades. We deserve an option of a peaceful way out on our terms and we should not have to resort to unpleasant methods that could go wrong. It is perfectly understandable the way that you feel as I think as humans we can only take so much. I see quality of lives being more important than quantity. I hope you find the peace you are looking for.

 

[stilldreaming]

Thanks and I did try professional help but i was only given drugs and whilst that helped and got my out of an extremely dark place i fell so far fast that its impossible to come back. But depression is definitely beatable because i suffered badly with it a few years ago that was ironically due to no job or money, but having turned it around to set up a business which I'm proud. I guess after you've been through hell once you're always going to be on the vulnerable side, but then i was only early 20s then and the brain is still developing and it is more resilient. I should have been set for life and i felt so comfortable but physically injury and health problems started last year and the treatment i had made my mental health bad and then i was a ticking time bomb. I just couldn't deal with stress like i used to. I was a hypochondriac but now I'm the opposite. Lifes just a game and it went checkmate against me.
I still do sports ect but i don't really get any feeling anymore. Im gonna try ketamine to see if that helps

So at the risk of sounding like one of 'those' people, but have you considered trying other therapists and psychologists? Was just reading earlier on reddit how someone, him and his wife went to couples' counseling and the counselor after a few sessions flatly told his wife that he (the husband) was correct and that she (the wife) was in the wrong. This made him feel elated and think therapy is AWESOME! (him and his wife worked things out) His next experience tho was negative as the person just wanted to push pills on him.

I think in the mental health field, it's like well customer service for something like a government agency. You have to keep trying again till you find someone who a) cares enough to help and b) has the expertise to do so.

Or maybe it's like tutors / teachers, these are people who usually get into the field for the right reason but sometimes get burned out real quick. I am considering going in for more therapy myself tbh, but it just seems like such a potentially expensive road to nowhere. You've gotta 1) find a therapist you click with 2) give them several sessions to get to know you / your situation...easily a couple hundred trying to just get started. Then, it could take weeks to start meaningful change, months to feel like you're getting somewhere.

I had a health problem derail me for years actually, it is something that I really really really brood on, the 'what if'. What if I hadn't gotten it, what if it had been caught years earlier. I do truly believe if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't be on this site, but who can say, right?

If you do feel like giving therapy another go, I'd highly recommend you make it clear off the bat that what you're interested in is (I take it) stress management techniques (or whatever you like). I read an article years ago in the NYT by a therapist, who castigated his entire profession. "When will you be done with therapy? When your therapist's vacation home is paid off" is what he wrote. He took talk therapists to task for being focused too much on just soothing patients by letting them vent, instead of focusing them on action-oriented steps for specific issues. (Though he did acknowledge that for some patients for some things, sometimes just a sympathetic ear is best for their situation and needs)

I too feel like I just can't take stress. I am tired of trying to manage myself, constantly reminding myself to relax my shoulders and face. (just had to do it now!! gawd) I'm night and day better than what it used to be, but it's still just too much. And, it takes so little to overstimulate / stress me out. How can I ever succeed, like this? I can't.

Congrats on starting a successful business tho :) Whatever else, at least you have that :)

I'm sorry you are suffering. Of course people who have never had depression will be unable to comprehend what it is like. It has the potential to be very debilitating. It's why we need a right to die, people should not be expected to suffer for decades. We deserve an option of a peaceful way out on our terms and we should not have to resort to unpleasant methods that could go wrong. It is perfectly understandable the way that you feel as I think as humans we can only take so much. I see quality of lives being more important than quantity. I hope you find the peace you are looking for.

Thank you very much for your kind words. I'm sorry you're here too :(

There are so many people at the end of their rope. It's not fair that we're expected to soldier, just because our debilitating depression and anxiety are invisible. Just because other people don't want to accept our choices.

On the one hand, it's natural that people be anti-suicide. The impulse to live and propagate has existed for as long as life has. By choosing to die, we are going against almost 4 billion years of evolution. And yet, clothing, cellphones, space travel, heck even consent - all of it is entirely unnatural. What's the point of a prefrontal cortex if we can't go against so-called 'natural' instincts if it will be better for the individual, and even society.

I hope you can do something nice for yourself, you're very kind x

 

[Lifessocruel]

Thanks, well i thought about doing therapy but it wouldn't help me much because there isn't really any issue that i need addressing like I have a great business ect other than the fact that I want to end it because I'm so numb from ptsd due to a sudden serious health event and I was never offered any therapy by the good old NHS!
It's like I'm already dead, I probably took on too much doing what i did alone and yes it was pressure but i enjoyed it. Sometimes fortune doesn't favour the brave and I wish I'd just kept my life simple! Because sometimes a simple life without as much money is better. If you gave me 100 million right now it wouldn't change my mind on cbt. Well it was good while it lasted. The repetitive nature of my days and nights just laying in bed is torture which is why coming on here gives me a way of escaping i suppose and clearly it's interesting finding the best and most peaceful way to go.

 

[stilldreaming]

Thanks, well i thought about doing therapy but it wouldn't help me much because there isn't really any issue that i need addressing like I have a great business ect other than the fact that I want to end it because I'm so numb from ptsd due to a sudden serious health event and I was never offered any therapy by the good old NHS!
It's like I'm already dead, I probably took on too much doing what i did alone and yes it was pressure but i enjoyed it. Sometimes fortune doesn't favour the brave and I wish I'd just kept my life simple! Because sometimes a simple life without as much money is better. If you gave me 100 million right now it wouldn't change my mind on cbt. Well it was good while it lasted. The repetitive nature of my days and nights just laying in bed is torture which is why coming on here gives me a way of escaping i suppose and clearly it's interesting finding the best and most peaceful way to go.

Have you looked into therapists that specialize in treating PTSD? I know it's pretty tricky getting counseling on the nhs, I looked into it years ago to try to help my husband (he hails from your country). I'm sorry I don't remember the details :(

I'm sure I read an article a couple years ago talking about an experiment with I think it was LSD that was dramatically helping people with ptsd...I think it was former combat soldiers (my country likes to create people with ptsd, so you'd think we'd be better at treating it....) They said that the lsd helped them because it made the patients more trusting with their therapist, and the relationship between therapist and patient hugely determines the success of the therapy.

Aside from that, there's a rather interesting This American Life I listened to a couple years ago, here's what it says: "What if someone told you about a type of therapy that could help you work through unhealed trauma in just ten sessions? Some people knock through it in two weeks. Jaime Lowe tried the therapy—and recorded it." https://www.thisamericanlife.org/682/ten-sessions

One of the most vexing things is that there's always studies and such coming out with great treatments or ideas, and then......nothing. To a certain degree, I know patients can advocate, eg I know someone who asked her psychiatrist about potentially taking I think it was lsd for ptsd, and he said she wouldn't be a good candidate for it but suggested something else.

For the record, I do think Americans are shockingly over-medicated, and there's this huge desire to take a magic pill instead of treating the root cause. That said, there are some people for which some pills do help, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. If some pills can help balance the brain chemistry and help with quality of life, then why not. (Tho I do need to stress: Americans need to realize that the level of stress we live with is not normal and could be easily alleviated by changing our policies and priorities a bit but that's another rant for another day)

 

[Lifessocruel]

That's good information and yes i told them about it but again big waiting lists and time is not on my side, the sad thing is once I've been in this mindset its very hard to change back and think the way i used to. I haven't helped myself by going out getting drunk, yes it provided me with an escape for a few hours but long term makes things so much worse. I'm holding on but apart from my Family what the hell am i fighting for? My brain has suffered irreversible damage, I'm selling off my possessions just to keep on limping like this, It's like the doors have all slammed shut for all possible escape routes. We're just waiting for the hammer to fall! I know exactly where i went wrong but we can't go back. In some ways i was fortunate to come out of my last depression through the eye of a needle so the 8 years ive had have been a bonus.