Hi, I don't really know what I'm expecting to gain from this site but I found a link suggesting it might help.
So I guess i'll just start back at the beginning and work up to current events.
At 12 years old I was sexually and emotionally abused by my boyfriend - he told me it was normal and that everybody did those things but we had to keep it all a secret because it was nobody else's business.
This went on for 2 years before i confided in my best friend (who got my parents and police involved before the situation got any worse). However by that time I had started self harming and developed a hatred for myself: how could I be so stupid? was I not good enough for a normal relationship? Is it my fault he's like this? Am I over reacting? He seemed great at first, why did he change? I'm the only new factor, it must be me, right?
These thoughts and urges to harm myself eventually calmed down quite a bit after meeting a new boy who eventually became my boyfriend. We had a really good relationship together and he helped me to build my trust in people again, I'd almost forgotten about how awful i'd felt in the months prior to meeting him.
Fast forward to my GCSE exams and here's where I crash again. I started to lose all motivation to do anything and stopped speaking to my friends, even speaking to my boyfriend at the time became a struggle. I was sleeping all the time and yet still tired when I woke up. I'd take naps and binge eat at every opportunity i'd get.
Eventually my school work began to pile up and i was confronted by my teachers - this induced my first panic attack. I didn't know that's what it was at the time, I just remember I couldn't breath, my chest felt so tight and my brain felt like it was in sensory overload.
Thanks to my Aunt, I was sent to the GP by my Mum after this episode; despite my dad suffering with severe depression, my mum always has and always does assume i'm being a drama queen whenever I get panicked or irritated.
The GP wasn't my usual doctor but diagnosed me with anxiety and told me to take at least 2 months off of school to recover, she put me on a dose of Sertraline but didn't really explain about side effects, how long I was supposed to take them for or how to alter/stop the doses.
A few weeks later I go back for a checkup on how I'm doing with the tablets - this time I see my usual GP. He seems almost outraged that i'd been given Sertraline at 16 and told me to stop taking them as soon as possible. He gave me a prescription with enough to last a couple of weeks but being as uneducated as I was, I stopped taking them all together that night.
It wasn't until very recently that I discovered you are supposed to gradually decrease your tablets and slowly wean yourself off of them. As I'm sure you can all imagine, I hit a real big low during this break away from school.
I ended up taking nearly half a year off of school (right before exam season...) which obviously didn't help with my anxiety. My actual grades ended up being lower than the ones I was predicted I now presume as a result of my time off - although at the time I believed I just wasn't smart enough and that my teachers were just giving me higher grades to make me feel better out of pity after the aforementioned incident.
Luckily for me I still managed to get into the courses I was looking for at college: ICT, Computing and Physics - all three of which turned out to be very heavily male dominated subjects.
It was around this time that my new boyfriend and I broke up - we were going to different colleges and it just wouldn't have worked. After the break up I received a bombardment of "I can't live without you", "I'm going to kill myself" type messages. Great. Out of guilt I got back together with him and we tried to stick it out for as long as we could.
Needless to say this drove me back into my pit of despair. The self harming started again, my music taste changed to heavy/aggressive and depressing type music, everything I wore was black and covered me from head to toe. I'd keep myself to myself and decided that I was the reason both of my (ex) boyfriends had turned psycho so the world was better off not knowing me. I wasn't yet to the point of wanting to actually kill myself, but rather isolate myself.
I made no new friends, I cut ties with my old ones and I struggled to even speak with my family.
My mum picked up on this and insisted I visit the GP again.
My mum and I have never had a very solid relationship - we clash a lot. We'd always argue to the point she once pinned my by my throat to a wall because 'how dare my child speak back to me like that?'. I never meant to back chat, I thought I was being a reasonable adult and was trying to compromise... I've always been quite mature for my actual age.
The GP said that on top of my anxiety, he suspected I had depression. I was put back on to sertraline for a while. I soon began to feel stable... but too stable. I wasn't feeling down anymore but I wasn't feel happy either. Everything was neutral regardless of its importance. My sex drive disappeared completely and that put a huge strain on my relationship with my boyfriend.
I stopped taking my tablets all at once again and surprise surprise... the crash hit.
I went to the GP AGAIN during this crash and cried my eyes out in front of them, i explained how I'd felt and what i'd done and they instantly pointed out that i was supposed to come off of them slowly if that's what I was going to do.
I took sertraline on and off for a while to get me out of the slump and then went on a stubborn strike of "I shouldn't need medication to feel normal". For a while, this mentality worked. But slowly it all crept back.
Panic attacks, over sleeping, low libido, no motivation.. Then all of a sudden the overwhelming fear that nothing I could do was good enough. Random fits of rage and tears. It was all too much - back to the GP I go!
This time it was a totally new GP, this one told me I was too young for anti-depressants and that I should try a therapist instead. Going to the GP was frightening enough for me and I couldn't even tell my own parents how I felt most of the time - how on earth would I speak to a therapist? I thought the GP had gone nuts! She reluctantly put me on a new antidepressant: citalopram.
While citalopram did make me feel quite a bit better, it also made me eat a lot. By a lot I mean I was hungry all the time. I was probably consuming 3 or 4 times my usual calorie intake, on went the weight and down went my self esteem.
So i take another trip to see the doctor, a different one yet again who told me to try mirtazapine (have I spelled that correctly?) .
This anti depressant probably worked the best for me, I felt great on it. I could still get sad but it was just sadness nothing more - who ever thought that being sad could make you happy? I did end up sleeping quite a bit on these (and missing some classes at college, woops) but it was a compromise I was willing to make for the improvement of my mood.
I also found that I was unable to go out drinking while on these tablets, consuming any alcohol made me feel absolutely terrible - again this was something I was willing to come to terms with.
All was going well until another argument with my mum arose. She told me that I was aggressive and irritable and it was all because of my tablets. I was made to stop taking them too but apparently they were my last option.
It's been nearly 2 years since I stopped taking tablets all together and I can honestly say that the only thing to have kept me going is my dog. I was allowed to keep a puppy from the litter, I was so excited and this distracted me from most of my bad thoughts.
I've been trying to stay on top of everything using Koda (that's what I named him) as my float. He'd be my go-to during panic attacks and thoughts of self doubt. But now I fear that even he isn't enough.
My dad's depression has gotten even worse recently and he has become suicidal again (he attempted suicide when I was a newborn but thankfully he was found in time) and my months health has been depleting too.
She suffers with Lupus SLE and is riddled with a whole alphabet of other diseases and problems as a result of that. I am her main carer and spend as much time as I can helping her out. She is very independent so easily over does things and makes my job much harder.
About a month ago she was rushed into hospital with suspected anemia, I'd spent weeks telling her to visit a doctor but she refused. The hospital say they just need to run tests, but tests turn into a week long visit and my mum was almost at death's door. They pumped her full of steroids and she is now home making steady improvements physically. However mentally she's cracking and wants to stop taking all of her medication. My mum is 37 years old and she see's her life as over.
Growing up i'd always looked up to my dad and leaned on my mum for support - but with those two pillars breaking I dont know where to turn.
My younger sister (18) causes drama at every chance she gets and disrupts my sleep on a regular basis after coming in at 3am from a night out with her boyfriend. This lack of sleep makes me feel so run down and irritable. On top of that you can't have a conversation with her without her getting defensive and starting an argument, she's a rogue in the house and mum and dad both hate seeing their daughter become a stranger.
I can't turn to my parents because they've got enough on their minds.
I can't turn to my sister because she isn't mature enough to hold a conversation like this.
I can't turn to my work colleagues, gossip travels fast at work.
I can't turn to the doctor because they told me mirtazapine was my last option.
I can't turn to my friends because I pushed them all away at the start of college (2 years ago) and I'm not close enough with the new ones i've made to share such a heavy story.
In addition to this it feels like all of my lifelines/floats are being stripped from me. My dog limps on and off, the vets don't know what's wrong and can't diagnose him - i'm seeing enormous future vet bills. My current boyfriend (boyfriend #4, #3 was from Italy but we only lasted 3 months and I was called heartless at the end of that one) is looking to move to a university that's too far away to travel and see him regularly. My mum is going to end up killing herself and I fear that my dad is heading that way too. I've been told my pet birds are too noisy and i'm being made to get rid of them.
I'm not sure what i'm looking for or what this site actually provides but I must admit that typing everything out has made me feel a little more at ease. If you read through all of that - i'm sorry for the essay and thank you for taking time to do so.
I'll end this here for now and see what occurs.
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[ I'm new ] I don't know what to do, Depression
I don't know what to do.
I Don't Know What To Do.
I don't know what else to do...
Don't know what to say
