I called grandpa to ask about dad. Turned out more objectives changed regarding my traveling because of granma - one time they tell me saturday, friday, saturday, sunday, and grandpa doesn't know either. And i just wanted to see If he's okay and to calm me a little and he started talking about history and how the whole country is damned because of the turkish slavery 1493-1878 and the communism 1945-1989. I was ment to be depressed before i was born. And i will die like that. During these times, People here were abused, traumatized, brain washed, enslaved, real bulgarians were killed and abused by invisors, aristocracy and inteligence were killed out, elite was destroyed, all intelligent people were smashed. I was brought in a damned country, in a damned world, in a damned family. Me and my country and this world had potential but it's in ruins now. I'm a ruin. I couldn't even have a walk without need of writing 2 posts. Because i feel so alone and scared and i want to talk with people outside this hell. I'm wounded, i can't keep pushing. Ik it's probably dumb to be sad over slavery that happened in 19th century but i'm so weak. Well human rights are human rights. Even America had problems with this. But they solve them quite better than us. We don't even realise we have a problem that is killing us slowly. Made 98% of the people here dumb and soul less and the rest 2% either depressed or immigrated. And i can't even go to the next city, what comes to immigrating. This mess happened before me and will go on after me. I'm just another. I don't even know what i am. A mistake.
My whole country is damned: I called... - Anxiety and Depre...
My whole country is damned
It sounds like your family dynamics have undermined your mental health again and your mind has gone into overdrive. Do you have any strategies which help to reduce overthinking e.g. meditation, mindfulness, music, reading, colouring, breathing techniques? Anything that helps you to de-escalate the "fight or flight" response would be good for you to focus on at the moment.
You're right. I actually go on walks for this but it Ended like that. And i like gaming but it reminds me of the guy that played me. I guess i will try to meditate. I listen to guided meditations somethimes. I can't cope with this fight or fight mode. Always there
Guided meditation and walking both sound like very good ideas. Keep trying different things like that and hopefully you'll notice things starting to settle down again, but it does take time. Go easy on yourself and try to be gentle and nurturing towards yourself.
Thank you. I'm trying to do a face mask now and it's working as good grounding
That sounds like a great idea and I'm glad to hear that it's helping. I've just been reading your bio on here. How long have you been studying psychology for?
I'm 3rd year. Ppl be like "How can you be a psychology student and struggle yourself". But actually it helps me understand deeper
I bet it's a very interesting course? Is it helping you to learn more about things which influence your own mental health and things which help and don't help?
Actually we're stuck on really dumb stuff, sometimes i get triggered, sometimes i'm feeling too anxious and foggy to study and do my tasks properly, and not learning anything helpful at all espessially with the online classes. But it gives me purpose, social contact, perspective, meaning and is my passion so i love it. It's keeping me on this planet. They say that during the major we will study the important things and i'm thinking what major to pick and what to do for the final exam next year.
Sorry to hear that it's not so interesting at the moment but it's good that it gives you purpose, passion and social contact etc. How long is it till you start doing a major?
1 year and a half. I'm scared. I feel like my bachelor years were stolen from me. I want to go back
You'd like to go back and do so me of your bachelor years again?
Yeah
Is that because your mental health has made it more difficult for you to learn as much as you would have liked to so far?
Yeah. I have this terrible brain fog and triggers. Also too busy dealing with family to study. Just because i'm online they act like i'm free. Like i'm not a prority. And i have no energy or focus to study. I dissosiate. Or my mind drifts off to my problems. Or a problem happens. Or someone wants me to do something. I have unimates who completely abandoned and even dropped out because they weren't feeling mentally okay. My friend was in a mental hospital for like 2 months, i had to send her all the notes. For psychology students, we do be pretty much struggling.
It sounds like there's been a lot going on and you've had a lot to deal with. You've done really well to keep going though and to do as much studying as you have done, despite everything else that you've been coping with and it's important to recognise your achievements, as well as the challenges that you're dealing with. Unfortunately nobody is immune to mental health issues and that includes psychology students as well as qualified healthcare professionals. Mental health is a learning journey for many of us.
Well said 🙌👏
From what I understand, you are not damned! Even in Old Testament times, the Bible says the soul who sins is the soul who dies (I am paraphrasing here!) God loves you, plus you didn't commit this sin. No one is responsible for what their foremothers and fathers did. Walk in peace and know that God wants you to be free of this false guilt. Oh, and you are not a mistake. You are a part of God's plan, and you don't have to believe lies anymore!
I would like to meet you at the swings! That helped you SO much the other day when you went to the swings at the park. Pretend I'm on the swing next to you, and we're just talking away, and laughing at silly stuff! 🙆♀️💜
There's no denying that the gutting of whole societies by the Communists immediately upon taking power had and has lasting effects. The Katyn Woods Massacre was no anomaly, it was repeated in every Eastern Bloc country, particularly in Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century and and in many Asian countries in the second half. It got so sick and crazy that in Cambodia, you were considered an "intellectual" if you just wore glasses and you were marched out to the Killing Fields.
The idea was to cut off both the head (societal leaders, e.g., politicians, artists, writers, professors, historians, priests, rabbis, military/police officers, or anyone who stood out somehow and could be considered a threat to create a counterrevolutionary movement) and the roots (traditions, culture, knowledge of history) of a people to leave them helpless, confused, disoriented, rudderless and just generally collectively infantile. The intent was to make the people easier to control, and it worked.
These initial bloodbaths were followed by what some historians refer to as the Permanent Terror: (a) periodic purges whenever things weren't going well economically (which was pretty much all the time) where entire groups of people were scapegoated for the problems and demonized, from the Ukrainian Terror Famine of 1932-34 to the Great Cultural Revolution in China in the mid 60's, and (b) the permanent fear just of talking frankly to friends and even family members because one of them might turn you in to the secret police. A miserable environment for mental health; lifespans were shortened this way even without bullets.
(This is not to say that the world was exactly paradise before the Communists -- your point about the Ottoman occupation of Bulgaria being just one example -- but when they came, it was out of the frying pan and into the fire.)
THE POINT of this quick peek at history is just my attempt to show that, to the extent someone in America so far removed from all that can, I feel you. It's horrifying stuff to read about, with an added chill these days because it seems that increasingly in the West, there are far too many people willfully ignorant of all that history who want to give that failed ghastly experiment another try.
***
That reminds me of a humorous description of modern life in the West and in America in particular, called Turner's Creed (by Steve Turner). Written in the 70's or 80's, most of it still applies today, and some that didn't seems to be making a comeback in Ukraine. I like to call it National Enquirer theology. (In case you don't know, the National Enquirer is a supermarket tabloid that especially in those days was very sensationalist, focusing on celebrities, horoscopes, the occult, UFOs, people who found an apple or potato shaped like Hitler, etc.) It's hilarious but it has a chilling ending.
But I won't end with you on a dark note -- my next post will have something I wrote called the Depressive Manifesto to rally your spirit, which seems to have helped some folks in here.
Anyway, here goes Turner's Creed:
We believe in Marx, Freud, and Darwin. We believe everything you do is OK, as long as you don’t hurt anyone to the best of your definition of hurt, and to the best of your knowledge.
We believe in sex before, during, and after marriage. We believe in the therapy of sin. We believe that taboos are taboo.
We believe that everything’s getting better, despite evidence to the contrary. The evidence must be investigated and you can prove anything with evidence.
We believe there’s something in horoscopes, UFO’s and bent spoons.
We believe Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammed, and ourselves. He was a good moral teacher though we think his good morals were bad.
We believe that all religions are basically the same – at least the one that we read was. They all believe in love and goodness. They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.
We believe that after death comes the Nothing. Because when you ask the dead what happens they say nothing. But if death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsory heaven for all excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn.
We believe in Masters and Johnson. What’s selected is average. What’s average is normal. What’s normal is good.
We believe in total disarmament. We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed. Americans should beat their guns into tractors. And the Russians would be sure to follow.
We believe that man is essentially good. It’s only his behavior that lets him down. This is the fault of society. Society is the fault of conditions. Conditions are the fault of society.
We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him. Reality will adapt accordingly. The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth. We believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought.
(pause)
If Chance be the Father of all flesh, then disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear:
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Child Pornography Ring Cracked!
Rape Victim Clinging to Life!
Youths Go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man worshipping his Maker.
It's just too terrible...
Here it is -- it was originally in response to someone really going through it and I figured I had some tips and advice how to deal with depression and anxiety. Depending on your diagnosis, some of it may not apply to you necessarily but you can sift that out.
***
THE DEPRESSIVE MANIFESTO
Some pretty solid advice I've seen in here so far. The most critical thing is to never, ever give in to the idea that your mental illness is anything like a reliable indicator of the truth about the world outside your head. Once you understand that it's a lie, it becomes far less powerful because you become much less afraid of it. Fear that it will come again will often make it come again.
In my view, the people at greatest risk of suicide are the ones who start to believe that the whole world is hopeless and pointless, not just their own situation, meaning that in their minds, there is nowhere for them to escape the rising floodwaters even if they can get out of their heads for a moment. At that point, you're in a tailspin that's hard to pull out of. I almost ate a pistol in '94 because of it.
Something that really helps me is remembering that the moods do come -- and go. Just remembering that largely de-claws the lacerating despair that may be slicing and dicing me at the moment because I know from long experience that it will go. Yes, in the moment it feels like I have been in this nightmarish mood from eternity past and will be in it forever, but it will go. In remembering that I immediately feel significantly better. But again it is absolutely critical that you believe that there is goodness and worthwhile-ness in the world outside your head. Because it really is there.
Another thing that may sound stupid but really works for me is that just scrunching up my shoulders or allowing my face to sink into a grimace is a trigger. I start to get anxious and my stomach starts to boil. (Your physical posture really does make a big difference in your mental state.) But if I force myself to relax my face and shoulders, the anxiety will go away almost every time. Subconsciously I'll start to scrunch and grimace again and the anxiety returns, but again I force my face and shoulders to relax.
You may have to repeat this process about 50 or 100 times until it goes away for an extended period, so DO NOT be discouraged if it doesn't work right away. After a while this and other 'tricks' become second nature and you're able to judo this thing almost absently, like flipping a light switch or flushing the can. There will still be bad days but there will be fewer of them and on average, they will be less severe.
Some have said to focus on things that produce good feelings in you to push out the bad. You have probably heard this a lot but again, this is solid advice. Different things work for different people but I love looking at pictures of fall foliage, just hypnotizes me. In person is ideal but you can do that any time of year on line, lots of great fall picture sites. Maybe a favorite restaurant or some happy memories. Or going to the hardware store and feeling the constructive atmosphere -- positive things you can do with tools and parts and nails etc to fix something at the house or maybe a hobby or project -- that runs so contrary to the sense of futility this illness stuffs down your throat. Anything that gives you even 5 minutes away from the bad thought patterns is a point gained; it's 5 minutes you weren't feeding this snake. That matters because mood disorders rarely if ever stand still; they are either getting better or worse, depending on your behavior and attitude. Once again, it will be difficult at first, but once again it will become second nature after a while.
Last but not least, these things and all the other solid advice I've seen in here are coping skills -- or more to my point, weapons. DO NOT be passive and hope this illness will go away on its own, it won't. You must stomp the head of this snake day in and day out, because you are in World War (original poster's name), a war for your soul -- and the souls of others (more on that below).
This means you must be willing to fight and fight hard, which means you must believe you have something to fight for. You do. Friends and family and -- get this -- others who are as sick or sicker than you and me, who you don't know yet but who will die by their own hand if you give up now because they will never get encouragement and advice from the voice of experience -- you. God will put you in the path of people new to this illness for this reason, as he has done with me. He will make this illness, yes, worthwhile...
If I sound like Patton in front of that big flag, so be it. When you're up against an enemy as cunning and deadly as mental illness, you need to be a rabid rottweiler with stars on its shoulders. FIGHT!!!
Thank you for the detailed advice. It's real. When i'm in my state, my face goes numb. And yesterday i disturbed the thoughts by decorating, it helped me to not feed the snake because it's an issue of mine. It's really hard to know what is real and what is the illness. When should i just distract or do something. When should i just calm or it's real and calming is just gaslighting. But in my state, even though the problem is real, i can't do nothing, it's out of my control. Rn i just have to survive, the rest probably i could do nothing about it. Once again Thanks for the detailed advice
It is sometimes difficult to know what's a real situation and what's just in your mind. And even with what's just in your mind, it's hard to be sure what's psychological and what's psychiatric.
Don't worry about whether the effect is just gaslighting -- again, time spent away from the ugly thought patterns is time of healing, which is quite real. The positive thoughts and memories are about very real things, which in turn are from a very real creator...
Yeah, thanks
Just so you know that I battle some serious mental illness too and therefore sympathize a great deal with you, here is my own story. Yes, it's another long-winded epic post but it might be of help:
I have always been vulnerable to melancholy feelings as far back as I can remember. As best I can put it together, it seems to me a combination of biochemical vulnerability and unintentional neglect on the part of my mother. She says I never cried as a baby or toddler. Not 'rarely', she corrects me, but never. My brothers were normal, crying when they were supposed to, which meant to a new mother with all the pressures of being in essentially a shotgun marriage, meant that she thought I was okay and naturally paid attention to the other two. She is racked with guilt about it to this day but I tell her that it couldn't be helped. How was she supposed to know?
I would often have feelings of painful self-consciousness as a boy, like that creepy feeling you get when you hear your voice on a recording, but much stronger. I remember two periods of depression in the 80's, one in '82, when I would hear the sad guitar lead to Bob Seeger's "Down On Main Street" that would play in my head over and over. Things seemed pointless and hopeless. That period went away after a few weeks, then returned in '88, a lot over my inability to even get dates, never mind find a wife, on top of a hopeless crush on a movie starlet.
Then in December of '93 it returned to stay, bringing a very nasty friend with it -- nameless anxiety (GAD) that made it so difficult for me to sleep that many nights I never even slept a minute. Every time I would be on the verge of falling asleep, a shot of adrenaline would wake me up again. The harder I tried to sleep, the worse it got. This would happen over and over all night. It was winter with a balky heater in my apartment but the sheets would be soaked with sweat.
I would try to go to work the next day and struggle through, my head like a boulder that I couldn't hold up. Yet if I tried to take a catnap at breaktime, the same problem. Anxiety over the possibility of another sleepless night, with no-one to talk to about this problem, an ever-increasing sense of isolation and futility had me in its undertow. I would feel lacerating despair by day but even then, as I told some, being at work was break time for me because when I got home and the sun started to go down, I would shudder when I passed my bedroom door because I knew I would have to go into that torture chamber again.
Many nights I would get just enough sleep to function, but on those nights when I was shut out, the next day I would have to ponder whether to go to work. Sometimes I called in sick and was wracked with guilt for not showing up, and then anxiety because I knew I couldn't do this very often without losing my job. I was thinking there was no such thing as 'better off' anywhere in the universe, because said universe was pointless and rotten through with futility. So I would look out my back window that overlooked the Toyota of North Hollywood backlot, staring blankly at all those cars, wondering why there was a Toyota of North Hollywood. Why there was this apartment. Why there was a me. Why there was anything at all. The perfect suicide tailspin was beginning to turn...
Soon I was seriously, very seriously, considering getting a gun and eating it. Soon after that and a few more horrible nights, I went to a wooded area next to a freeway on-ramp and said what I thought would be my final prayer. I then remembered a supernatural experience (that I am also willing to talk about if you're willing, but will leave it aside for the moment) 12 years earlier that gave me the greatest hope to battle this illness, and which also, I confess, makes me look like the pinniest of pinheads. But I don't mind talking about it.
I was not cured in that moment and am not to this day -- BUT...I am still standing after 28 years. I have developed a lot of coping skills, have gotten effective medications and good church friends to cut through the isolation undertow and many other things. There are still bad days but their frequency and severity is, on average at least, far lower. Life is still very much worthwhile. Most of all, the Lord has made my illness worthwhile by putting me in a position to help others like me.
Thank you for being so honest. You're so strong
You're so strong...
Absolutely NOT.
I will now make the opposite case -- that you're actually stronger than me. What follows is one last epic-post cut and paste, about my direct encounter with the Risen Lord (how appropriate on Easter Sunday) back when I was 17 (40 years ago this June). This is the supernatural experience referenced above. Grab some coffee, a sandwich and some chips, 'cause here it comes:
***
In June 1982, I went on an overnight camping trip into the White Mountains of New Hampshire with a man named Sam Woolums. He was a member of an obscure Christian sect. I didn’t know him for very long before this trip and he moved away a few months later. I say that because I suspect God sent him into my life for just a little while so that he could somehow facilitate the supernatural event that took place in our dark tent that night.
He was in his 30s. He was a very smart, intellectual but very humble man, quietly passionate about Jesus. He also believed in meditation, kind of Eastern style, legs crossed on the ground, palms up. I was 17 and full of interest in sports and other teenage boy pursuits, and though our discussions about theology were intellectually stimulating to me, that’s all they were. The heart, the commitment, were to come much, much later.
I can’t remember if we cooked or ate prepared snacks, whether we explored the woods for a while or had arrived with just enough time before dark to set up the tent. I don't remember anything before night came. But I remember very clearly being in the tent with darkness so complete that I really could not see my hand an inch from my face, the kind of darkness where you begin to really wonder if your eyes are open or closed.
Sam decided it would be good if we meditated. I was ready to just go to sleep. Do we have to, I grumped in my mind. Plus though I’m supposed to have some sprinkling of Seneca or some kind of Iroquois blood, my knees just couldn’t take sitting what we used to call “Indian style”. They were barking at me and my mind was as far from a ‘spiritual’ state as it could be. I wanted plain, earthly creature comforts and to be unconscious for about 10 hours right now. I was in no way prepared for a direct encounter with the king and creator of the universe. Even less for my reaction to it.
The next thing I knew, I was suddenly surrounded by a soft but brilliant white light. I say soft but light like this from an earthly source would have made me immediately put my forearm over my eyes and lower my head and maybe even given me sunburn. Yet I had no trouble keeping my eyes wide open, as if I was still peering into the dark.
Then I saw these yellow-green vines hanging in the light, with no visible means of support other than the light itself. They hung there for two, maybe three seconds. Then I saw me, in a robe made of light, smiling and running into the arms of Jesus. He was a head taller than me and looked more or less like you would think he would, except that not only his robe but he himself appeared to be made of light, like his features were drawn on a light bulb. I was the same except that I remember my hair being so, so red, like an ‘autumn copper’ if there is such a thing. He received me with great joy.
And that was it.
The whole vision lasted somewhere between five and eight seconds. I remember looking to my left about 45 degrees where Sam was (it was once again blacker than black in the tent) and calmly telling him about what had just happened. I don’t think he saw it with me or even knew what was going on. I don’t remember him saying anything about it but I do remember him laughing sort of nervously, like he was very surprised and yet that he suspected something unusual might happen.
I now think that was the whole point and purpose of the camping trip. He got orders from above to take this kid out in the woods so this would happen, though he had no idea what would happen. As I said, he moved away a few months later. He was transferred by his sect, to Atlanta I think. I never saw or heard from him again.
My reaction to this event was and remains a far greater mystery to me than anything inside or outside the universe, including God himself or anything about him. As it ended, I thought, well, that was kinda cool. WHAT??? The King and Creator of the universe just paid you a personal visit, and that’s IT?? That’s all you got??? Are you BLEEPING kidding me?!?
I don’t remember any conversation after that. I only remember the next morning getting up and as we started breaking down the tent, the sunlight seemed to form sort of a blurry cross coming through the trees. At least it could have been interpreted that way, it also could have been coincidence, there was nothing special about the sunlight or anything else in that moment. But that’s when I started to behave more normally and get scared. I remember freezing in my tracks and thinking, whoah…what’s gonna happen now?! But nothing did.
The very next day my first episode of severe depression began. As I mentioned before, I had a few ebbs and flows of it before it finally settled in to stay in late ’93. And in that moment in the woods by the freeway onramp, I remembered that night in the tent. I had drifted away from God, the church and had fallen into an isolated, self-absorbed life and hadn’t given God much thought. I had all but forgotten that moment – again, a mystery that is so humiliating because it makes me feel like the biggest, most ungrateful pinhead in the history of the universe.
But now the time bomb of realization finally went off – Jesus comes to visit me the day before an illness that would one day nearly take my life to make sure that didn’t happen. The gratitude and rejoicing finally started to pour out and I felt great relief. Yes, God was and is real, and though there is still much trouble and pain ahead, I could face it. It was back to church and I have not left since, nor will I.
Pinhead that I am, I am his, and he is mine. Forever…
***
For you, Real_Me, the reason I say you are stronger than me is because I had no chance of surviving my mental illness without this event to encourage me and finally convince me that we are not just accidental constellations of atoms with no meaning, purpose or hope. If you have not had such an experience, apparently God doesn't think you need one to keep going. But feel free to hop on mine...
Zhangliqun, thank you for your posts. I have been a lurker here for a couple of years, but never post or comment. Thank you for helping Real_Me, and in the course of doing that, helping others like me. You indeed have a lot to offer from the burdens that you have borne and continue to bear. All I can say is that it is the work of Good to take something meant for Evil and use it for Goodness sake. In this world, we are ALL under attack by the Evil One. May God bless you for your service. Please keep up the Good work!
Count it all joy here on Easter Sunday...
You can honor history by trying to make the future better. Every country has problems and every family has their own dynamic. I grew up extremely poor and often went to bed hungry. But I have remembered that and done my best to help so others don't experience what I did. I have watched my children grow up and accomplish goals I didn't. So do your best. Take care of yourself and do something every day just for yourself. The sheet mask you mentioned is a great example. You are stronger than you realize and one person can make a change in the world.
Thank you. And you're so strong
Not always so strong but I keep trying.
Same and good job!
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