I've been spiraling downward for several weeks, and thinking almost obsessively about suicide... Which is as simple but also as far away as driving 5 minutes to the gun shop which is open most of the time. passing the instant background check In 10 minutes and walking out with a gun (which I did back in 2018 and this is how I know how simple and quick it probably is to do again). I sold it back several months later after sleeping in my car for most of several weeks with the gun in the trunk.
The same anxiety that is keeping me stuck from doing the things in my job in my life that I need to, I believe keeps me from going through with it and pulling the trigger. That, and I can't quite get over what it would do to my kids and those I'd leave behind.
But I cannot continue like this in this state of returning to burnout and exhaustion and overwhelm and fear and misery. It feels like that's all there is. I have reverted to this again and again and again since at least 2008. I've tried dozens if not hundreds of different treatments of all kinds, many of them more than once. I'm just f****** exhausted and I can't do it anymore.
And I have looming deadlines. I've been neglecting now coming to and running out of money and I just want to leave. I just don't want to have to face and deal with this pain everyday. What seems like all the time with nothing to even look forward to except more of it. God I want out so bad and hope I can figure out some way to trick myself into having the courage for just long enough to end things today.
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Gandolfication
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Hi. I feel you. The only thing that's been keeping me here is my 14 year old son. I've also tried everything out there including ketamine, TMS and ECT. I've also been hospitalized. And this has gone on for 30 years. So I completely understand understand. The best thing I can say is think of your kids. If went through with it it would devastate them. I am very close with my son. I could not Imagine not watching him grow up. Use them as an anchor if you have to.
I also tried ketamine and TMS and other exotic treatments.No benefit.
Yah, I love my kids. I can't imagine shattering them in this way either.
But I'm f****** dying inside and in the body as well. I can't stand to be awake. I'm not functioning. I'm letting down my clients and everyone around me. I'm going to lose my law license any day and or be sued, and I have nothing. No savings. In debt. Nothing. This is no kind of life worth living
Get onto crisis line and talk to them please. You have to get psychiatrist or counsellor and talk to them about everything! Let it out but refuse to let it control your every thought. Work is part of structure of life but so was school/college but you get through it one day at time. You are supporting yourself and family and it makes huge difference. You just need to think of days off for mental health book it now or take holiday or get doctor to write letter that you have this essential time for your mental health. See if pyschiatrist/doctor/counsellor can give you this time to sort yourself out.
I really do feel like I have done all that. In 2010 I checked myself into a hospital for 5 days voluntarily and had that experience.
I've participated in mental health support groups wherever I've lived.
I have called the 988 crisis line. any number of times.
And I suck last week off of work basically.... Although this was not good or healthy. I work for myself as a solo attorney.
I just can't make things work. This has been 16 years now.
It's not a temporary problem.
All I have done is worked on it. I had a COMPARATIVELY good stretch for a couple years, while I made extraordinary efforts, more consistently than I usually have been to complete mindfulness-based stress reduction classes work with my former law professor turned therapist, engage in robust personal growth and self-help program, including exercising every morning at 5:00 a.m. 6 or 7 days a week for the better part of 2 years. Yes, it helped in many ways, although during this time my marriage ended, I lost two more jobs including leaving from serving as the magistrate presiding over our mental health court, And really pretty. Basically, I just couldn't find a balance or void the sort of All or nothing anxious and intense feeling that just leads to continual burnout and exhaustion.
I've been saying enough is enough off and on for 10-15 years.
I wish I would have had the courage to do it long ago.
I need it now like Samson in the Bible or something
I hear you, I've done it all too. The DBT classes, residential treatment. I also feel like I can't go on. There are days im so suicidal i have sobbing fits all day. I have pictures on the wall at work of my son and sometimes that brings me back. I have a job I can't believe I still have. If I actually make it to the office its a major accomplishment. But staying home gives me no respite either. I have panic attacks all day bc im not doing anything. I'm still married, miraculously, we're in couples therapy but it doesn't look good. Are you on meds or have a therapist now? All I can say is, I've pulled through using sheer willpower and trying anything I can find. Including 2 months in the hospital. Waiting for new meds to come on the market. You can do this. If I can you can.
Hi Gandolfication, don't do it, don't hurt yourself. This is one time where not taking an action is a great thing.
I admire all of you who carry on for others. I think this is an honorable and respectable life, but that does not mean it is a peaceful or happy one.
Have you done more intense psychadelic drugs than ketamine? I feel like the only escape from ourselves is to have a paradigm shift.
I think your drive and will so succeed is admirable and has taken you this far, which is a beautiful thing and makes it easy to go back to. It also has you suicidal. I think we have to change the way we think.
A bankrupt, homeless father is better than a dead one. Please realize this, please realize that being present is much better than successful and absent (you could debate this but this is my point of view). I think that perhaps the best legacy for our children, the best thing we can teach them, is how to fail. Entrepreneurs fail all the time, there is no shame in that! There is no shame in a failing business! The only real failure is to quit trying. I am just here writing text, I know I can't give tangible support, but I send hugs and compassion.
You are not a failure. Going bankrupt or being sued or losing a home does not mean you are worthless. ☮️
Have you ever tried to reach out to David Burns himself for therapy? I think that you are eloquent and could perhaps make it to him. Apparently he does free work.
I am so sorry you are in such a dark place Gandolfication. It is hell. The only way out is to keep going. Keeping going doesn't have to be the same going as now, it can change. ❤️
Please, please, please call a crisis hotline. You never know if the person you talk to will be able to get across a different message. I feel for you, but please don't give up. Try a different therapist. The one thing that is guaranteed in life is change. I will be thinking about you and praying for you.
Have you gotten a precise diagnosis? By which I mean not only the particular type of mood disorder but also what's causing it? The cause also may not be just one thing -- it can be biochemical, environmental and behavioral all at the same time.
Once you have that down, some combination of medication, therapy and coping skills will then be in order -- but not before; you have to know where the shooting is coming from before you can shoot back.
For whatever it's worth, it took me many years to arrive at a solid, stabilizing combination of medications and coping skills. Trazadone works wonders for night time anxiety and duloxetine helps a lot during the day.
In my next post, I'm going to cut and paste something for you that I wrote for someone else in here a year or two ago. You can sift out whatever doesn't apply and also maybe others reading this thread can benefit from it. The focus is on coping skills with a brief addressing of the spiritual angle at the end.
For about 14 years now, I've had a diagnosis from multiple psychiatrists and psychologists of Bipolar II, more mild in that it only involves hypo (mild) mania, not full-blown, and is characterized more by depression. Although I've questioned this of late, it still is the operative working diagnosis. I also was just finally, formally diagnosed with ADHD (although I have treated for this somewhat over time. I've treated these things with a veritable phalanx of good, evidence based therapy, working with good clinicians, quite a few mostly good support groups, and a smorgasbord of medications and other more exotic treatments, e.g., Ketamine trials, before it was hip, TMS (a waste of time and money for me), and psychedelics - interesting, although at best, mixed and only passing benefits, though I'd like to explore some of this more. Recently, this week, I listened twice to a video by a good jr. psychologist I like on YouTube, called Toxic Shame and the Addiction to Self Improvement (see the irony there?).
Medications just haven't produced any discernable benefits for me, although after 20 years, I keep trying them. I'm deeply cynical about them, but just made an apt. with my psychiatrist for next week.
Interesting side note (at least for me), that I find myself currently to have both a psychotherapist who is my former law professor, and a psychiatrist who also graduated from my law school a well (and is treating me for free). That has to be about a million to one odds, and I feel crazy lucky about that.
As promised, here it is, with the OP's comment first in italics:
***
So I'm just looking for what hows say about their anxiety and depression. I've been battling anxiety and depression for 19 years now. I've have highs and very low lows. I talk to a therapist once a week and I've been on every anti anxiety medication there is and it does help but I always wonder will it get better? Will I battle this the rest of my life and if so how do I cope when it feel like the world is out to get me and anxiety seems to run my life?
***
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, I mean 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 in large part 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!!!
that's good. It also jibes with one good point I tried to hold onto from this jr. psychologist woman Heidi Pribe's YouTube Videos I watch whenever I can, mostly recently, Toxic Shame and the Addiction to Self Improvement, she was talking about dignity and self neutrality in terms of, it makes sense how I ended up in the position I'm in, and it's okay. Accepting and respecting even the parts of myself I want to commit to changing. I think it's a very ACT-consistent approach, and one I have immense difficulty adopting and actually applying to myself in practice.
I said to my therapist in a message ahead of an appointment later this afternoon, that after losing my all-important (immersive evangelical Christian) faith in 2010, I still don't feel like I have a clue what to do about the void that no longer having much notion of even a secular savior (whatever that means), lending to a lack of motive for life and things.
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trying to push through! 
Courage
Just trying to get though the days
Trying to move on
Im trying to pack up my dreams and I can't breathe
