Therapy Fatigue

[Boston001]

Can anyone relate?

I've been talking with therapists once a week for years. For years now I wake up every day worried about my situation and want to find a way to become self-sufficient. Because of my agoraphobia and panic attacks, I've been unable to work in the only career I can earn a living wage and be self-sufficient. For the moment, I am safe but sometime soon my 90-year-old mother is going to pass away and I will be homeless. It's a symbiotic relationship, I care for her by cooking, cleaning, and all the things she needs to keep her out of a nursing home and she provides me with a roof over my head. Classic case of a grown man living in his mom's basement. I've run the gambit with SSDI appeals and they say I am not disabled. I've tried getting minimum-wage jobs just for the cognitive therapy aspect of it but it never lasts more than a few months before the panic attacks start, simply because I can't handle the stress of working with willfully cruel co-works, customers, and condescending management staff. This is all where my chronic depression stems from, ( My Situational Awareness ). My self esteem is junked, motivation is getting so hard. My state appointed social worker has been no help.

Even now sitting here writing, every therapy session, every time I think about working on myself, It's like picking at a scab that never heals, and there is the guilt we are all programmed with "Stop feeling sorry for yourself, just pick yourself up and stop being a coward, You're just being lazy work harder and you can fix yourself" Therapy Fatigue, I just sit back and watch the days, weeks, months, years slip past, knowing that all the future has for me is old age, poverty, and sickness. I can't even give up and institutionalize myself because I've been in those places and that is a living hell for someone who is tuned to pick up on other people's stress and emotions. And that would totally destroy my mother's last few years of life.

Well, rant and ramble over.

[Weatherwoman]

I noticed that no one has replied, as yet, & when I read your post, I just felt a connection knowing that I have felt very similar for a long time. I took care of my Mom on & off for a very long time. I did not live with her, but had to take the bus from my apt. often bringing bags of my stuff over to her house, stay for a couple of weeks, then back to my apt. & on & on. I did have a job, but had to keep leaving to care for my Mom. My Brother & Sister-in-law helped some, but, actually they were more of a pain in the you know what --long story. I could barely keep my job which did involve nasty supervisors, terrible mgmt., etc. Had A Lot of stress from work & caring for my Mom. Barely made ends meet. I have suffered from Panic Disorder, OCD, GAD, depression for many years, and had & have A lot of therapy. Fast forward to the present. I am now "older" in poverty (live of my Soc. Sec. which is very low), but BTN, and in Nov. of 2022, my Sig. Other of 27 years passed away. My Mom passed in 2020, I am probably much older than you, but my advice is to keep trying. One of the best books that helped me a great deal with Panic Disorder is Hope & Help for your Nerves by Dr. Claire Weeks. There are other books out there, Utube tapes re. anxiety, this Health Unlocked where you can get lots of help & useful ideas. I am struggling, too, we all are on here, and many others. Perhaps group therapy may help as you are "burnt out" on individual therapy! I wish you the best.

[Boston001 in reply to Weatherwoman]

Thank you for your reply and sorry for your loss, I know firsthand there are no platitudes that can be put into words 🥰. And thank you for the book research to look up. I'll stop here, not because I don't appreciate you, but rather because I would spend the better part of the day continuing the conversation. As I get older I'm getting better at identifying my rabbit holes lol

[Weatherwoman in reply to Boston001]

Ok, thx for reply.

[Boston001 in reply to Weatherwoman]

Another commonality that we share that I have taken note of is that we both have been diagnosed later in life. I don't know if it's a positive thing that I now have a label to hang on it. But now I can point to it and say I don't have a defect in my personality and a lot of other people suffer from the same thing. Similarly, I have tinnitus in my ears that I have had my entire life. But it wasn't until I had a conversation one day with my then-wife, (In my 40s) that I realized that tinnitus was a thing. I thought everybody had these sounds in their head and when I began to describe it to her she was like "no what? not everybody hears sounds in their head". It was kind of mind-blowing to have a revelation like this so late in life considering how often I have been evaluated, for them not to have found this issue before is amazing. You see in grade school I was diagnosed with dyslexia and what they now call ADHD.

[Weatherwoman]

Oh, boy --Too Much -- I have had ringing in my ears for -hum, like sixty years! No doctor that I have talked to about the tinnitus knows the cause, and I don't dare (now) consult "Dr. Google," on anything as I will become more of a "mess!" I find that when I am more anxious, the ringing/hissing gets louder. I am So used to the noise in my ears/head that it doesn't bother me like it used to. My Sig. Other had ringing in his ears, too, from time to time, though. It's not that uncommon as I've read a few articles about it. Yes, being diagnosed later in life has made my anxiety, etc. more protracted. Looking back, I am sure my OCD started when I was a child, the Panic Attacks in my early twenties. By the time I was thirty, I could only work part time due to fatigue. I say to young people today, that if you have to have a "mental illness" (I call it a nervous illness --don't care for the term "mental,") anyway, if you have to have a mental illness, have it today. In the "dark ages" way back when, there was NO decent therapy, NO books, NO medications like they have today, and NO one talked about it. You just "sucked it up," and mostly kept it all to yourself. Anyway, at least, the Stigma has let up some (still there) but nothing like it was. I don't want to dribble on & on ("Rabbit hole"), but just that you are Not Alone & I understand. What to do now, how do I, you move forward. I am not burnt out on therapy --just have to find one who can help, at least some. I am now "seeing" a Grief Counselor (online) who is helpful, I go to an OCD Group once a week --a hybird --in person, or online (I alternate), I have a Grief Support Group online. Keep in contact with friends, some meds., get out when I can (Pandemic really increased my Anxiety)! The thing is, and this is the Hard part --we have to make the changes (even if "baby" steps) to live the kind of life that we SO deserve even if it's late in life. It's Damn Hard -- I know.

[Boston001]

You're not kidding there, Boomers and Generation X, we just hid our feelings and our problems, any sign of weakness was a bad thing to remain silent about. I refer to us in therapy as the "Denial Generation".

I've learned in retrospect from years of therapy that my anxiety and panic attacks started when I was in grade school. "The powers that be" identified me early as being "not like all the other children". And during a crucial part of my childhood social development, I was removed from regular classroom activities and put in a small classroom with special needs children (The island of misfit toys). The resource room children were not allowed to interact with the rest of the children in the school, we had a separate lunch table, we were driven to school in vans (The short bus kids), we did not participate in any kind of sports, and all the activities that teach children how to interact together in large groups we're taken away from us. There is a long and complicated back story to this, but in short, I had to endure years of physical and mental abuse by the staff and teachers of the school system (All authority figures). This set me up for the perfect storm as an adolescent. When I did finally start making friends they were all drug users and drunks and to seal my fate my father was killed by a drunk driver when I was 15. Turns out that is the perfect recipe for undiagnosed PTSD, general generalized anxiety disorder, chronic depression, and agoraphobia.

But there is a brighter side to my story. In 1984 and 85, I went to tractor-trailer school and then mechanic school, dumped most of my drug addict friends, met my wife in 88 and I was a highly functioning depressed, anxious, and agoraphobic family man for 20 years until my marriage started to fall apart. That's a complicated back story too. The agoraphobia and panic attacks got so bad I lost my job and was unable to be a truck driver or ever go to job interviews. That's when I reached out for help and discovered for the first time, hey, general generalized anxiety disorder, chronic depression, and agoraphobia. My wife was like "that makes sense now, all these years I just thought you were an asshole blowing off the holiday family events" 😆.

Fast forward to today, my wife moved out and we split officially 8 years ago, not divorced but have no reason to talk to each other anymore, the kids are adults and moved away. My Mom and my therapist are the only people I have regular conversations with. Before the pandemic, I used to try and get out now and then, go down the seawall and listen to live music on Saturday nights, and try and have conversations with strangers, but yes the pandemic has been detrimental to my agoraphobia.

I think it is awesome that you are taking the initiative to advocate for yourself. finding support groups is an important step in the right direction. So many folks from our generation simply give up.