Battles

Omg i didnt realise how long a post reply i just wrote took! Oops! It took me this whole hour 😵. I didnt mean to not check back in such a long gap!!

I hear ya with the how to word it... lets see if i can ask some (optional) questions that might help with framing it?

@MissGremlin

If you were "feeling yourself" - how would that look? 🤔

Would it mean that you felt optimistic for the future? And wanting to live a long and full life?

..or other things?

@AlwaysMyself I'm not quite sure. It's hard cos right now I don't see a future (I'm safe), I don't have any hope of things changing or getting better.

I'm trying to get help/support so that maybe there's a way to get past this point but it's hard and everywhere I turn I'm let down. The hope of a that group of people helping me find support has gone cos I never heard back from them, it's just another let down. Yet somehow I keep trying, I've got another service to ask my doctor to do a referral to when I see him tomorrow. But at what point am I allowed to give up, what point can I just stop trying and allow myself to rest and just accept things the way they are? It's exhausting and frustrating, each time I'm let down it takes a little more from me and I don't know how much more i have left to be taken.

Like I said I'm safe and I'm still trying to get help/support but I'm exhausted and I'm struggling.

Aha, yes i hear you @MissGremlin . This thinking is no stranger to me either. It is so hard eh! Its not that we *want* to experience life this way, it can just be so hard to believe it can be different.

Can i ask how long its been like this for you? Feeling the depression/anxiety/etc.

Its ok not to say also. Im sorry that i have forgotten!

I dont ask this in any form of judgement or comparison, just curiosity. I guess I am wondering whether or not you can still recall how things felt before these things onset? When you did feel life was good enough?

I'm disappointed with those people/team that didnt get back to you. ☹️. I tend to feel when that happens that it causes more harm than if they never offered to help initially. To say they will try to help, and then let you down by never following up with anything. Can I be angry at them on your behalf?

Are you open to treatment options such as TMS? (for TR depression, but can also be targeted for anxiety too if both are experienced)

Or trying different medications that might work better?

I dislike that any treatment cannot be guaranteed to help/work, and can have side effects too. I always wish i knew what would work so that i could just put the effort into that one thing without having to try so many other things and be disappointed and discouraged by it not helping!

@AlwaysMyself yes exactly, it's so hard to believe it can be different and if it was what that would/could look like.

As for how long, I've had depression/anxiety since I was a young child (around 9 years old) and i can't recall much of my childhood other than traumatic events. So I can't remember when life felt good enough or even remotely ok which actually really hurts.

That's just it, if they'd never rung or never offered to help then I wouldn't have got my hopes up and ended up hurt again. You can be angry at them on my behalf, see i can't even be angry at them, I don't have the energy for it and i just turn it back to being my fault somehow.

I have to be careful about treatments cos of my epilepsy and heart condition so I'm very limited.

Medications are completely off the cards after both previous and recent experiences with severe side effects.

Hey @MissGremlin I just wanted to check in since it sounds like these thoughts are sitting heavily with you tonight. You are definitely not alone in having those thoughts of finding it hard to visualise how things might look different when you have been feeling like this for a long time. Dealing with this for a long time can be so tiring as well and thinking about change when you are already exhausted is a lot.

Taking steps to continue to seek support, to talk about how you are feeling, to keep safe despite things feeling exhausting and hard I think is really brave! It’s sometimes hard to know what this might look like for ourselves, but hopefully there will be some space for you to hold onto those supports and safety but also have space for some rest (emotional rest or physical rest, whatever that might look like for you).

I really like the questions AlwaysMyself has brought up tonight! Sometimes I find reflecting questions like this helpful for figuring out what I do and don’t want things to look like or what I want to move towards

Take care, be gentle with yourself through this.

Thankyou for checking in @NightHedgehog, things are sitting heavy tonight but I'm safe at the moment.

It is really hard and the past couple of days things have really kicked it up a notch so I'm glad to have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow or later today technically.

I'm doing my best to be gentle with myself and having my puppy by my side helps to keep me grounded.

Hope you have a lovely night.

Snap @MissGremlin ! Those words around no memory of early childhood (and thus also pre-depression) could have been mistaken for my own! 😅 but i am sorry this has also been the case for you ☹️. I was 11 at clinical-level onset of depression. But apparently there were signs of distress/changes to my mood/MH from even 7 or 8, but hindsight eh. At least i had a good year when i was 10yo i think 😊.

Epilepsy and a heart condition would unfortunately rule out a lot of the neurological treatments, darn it. 😭. I wish though when things were this severe that they could consider it on a risk-assessment basis if you wanted to though. If its a low-ish risk of problems then you could make informed choices because it could be a less-risky option than *not* treating the depression effectively.

I have to go to sleep now, but i am going to keep thinking on how i can best support you. And of course you can also tell me if you have ideas on how too 😊🥰. I will always be here to listen of course - thats a given!

Walking this path together, yeah?

@AlwaysMyself i am going to head off to sleep also so I will reply more to this post tomorrow.

Thankyou for your support and yes we will walk this path together.

Night night sweet ❤️

Sorry I tapped out last night @MissGremlin @NightFury. I just had to.

I hope you both got some sleep and today is a little kinder to you.