Tag: hopelessness

surviving depression

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression

I know what you are going through. Sometimes I think that everyone would be better off without me. The only thing that is keeping me alive these days is my word to my therapist that I won’t go through with my thoughts. The pain of living is just too much to bare right now. My therapist often asks me how I get through this. There is a quote that I keep telling her that I got from one of Kay Redfield Jamison’s book, “Only one option left, to suffer”. She is my inspiration as she has bipolar disorder, tried to kill herself, and is one of the leading researchers/teachers of the disorder. I know it doesn’t make sense to suffer all the time but millions of people out there do it everyday. We few that are in this group do it every day, though it is most difficult and we come from different backgrounds and sections of the world. I know it sucks, but the trick is to realize when we feel this way, it is NOT our true selves, it is the disorder that is talking. I know we all feel like scum of the earth for no reason other than for being allowed to breathe, to be something called alive that we wish we didn’t have to be. One reason why I have read so much about depression and there are a lot of good books out there, is that you have to know the disorder, understand it, then you can know what to do, sometimes when it isn’t hitting you on the head with a 60 lb hammer. Sometimes knowing the demons is better than not knowing them. I know that it isn’t always easy when our physical bodies wreck our lives and we are no longer feel apart of the human race because our b&b are not functioning and we have physical pain that si driving us insane. But things aren’t always going to be this way. One of the books that I had read said that suicide is complete in 10 minutes and if you wait out those ten mins, you will survive. The same thing goes for depression. Though instead of 10 mins, it’s more like 10 days or more. But it doesn’t last. Eventually it lifts, and we return to “normal” functioning until the next episode. The HARDEST part of this fucking disorder is that we forget that we have survived the worse of it. Every time we are stuck in an episode, we think it is for the first time, that we are NEVER going to feel better, ever. I am telling you that you are. No matter how hopeless you feel right now, tomorrow might be a better day and if it is not, least you survived today. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll be here for you. Count on it.

About the mood stabilizers, I suffer from bipolar depression, which is a little different than major depression. I sometimes have periods where I am really hyper, don’t sleep, eat, think I am on top of the world, talk excessively, and can’t stand still. These periods don’t last too long, maybe a week or two, then I either have a period of being normal and/or crash big time. I take Trileptal for it and it has helped some with the Cymbalta. Trileptal is an anti-convulsant that is used a “mood stabilizer”. There are other drugs that are used, but you should be seen by a psychiatrist for evaluation. Most GP’s don’t have a clue about psychotropic meds and it isn’t a good idea for them to play around with it if you don’t have the diagnosis.

another depressing day, sort of

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, Chronic pain, depression

Not having a great day. I had a crappy session with my therapist. We talked about the violations issue and she apologized. She had no idea that her nosiness was hurting me. We talked about having to set boundaries now where I only show her what I want her to read. I just hope that she can stick to them. I am so used to people trampling on me that you would think I am used to it by now. But when it is someone you trust, like a therapist, it kind of throws you out of whack. I still feel down about it and I hope that I get over it. But it’s so hard because I feel so hurt. I cried today for whatever reason, like sobbing hard. I can believe that my therapist would do this, it is just her nature to be nosey. But I told her we have to put a damper on what she reads. I know what I write can be seen by anyone on the internet and she should have the same rights as anyone else. But sometimes I just don’t want her to read what I write. If it something that she needs to read, I always send it to her via text message. Seeing as I no longer see her in person, I think this method has worked pretty well until now. I really think that just her excitement over finding my blog really is what caused her to go over the boundaries without her thinking through about what she was doing. Hell, one time she called me a fucker without thinking about it. We joked about it and she apologized about it. I could tell she felt bad about it. But this time I am not getting that same sense. Maybe I am just too hurt this time to feel her apology. And she knows what my life was like with intrusions left and right. As she put it, it was like she just charged her way into my room without knocking first, which essentially is what she did.

I think I am just down because I have not been able to leave my house since the Bon Jovi concert on Saturday. I did way too much standing and dancing but I had to because there were these two goons in front of me standing for most of the concert so when I sat down, all I saw were their backs. Then I had a marshal standing next to me who stood the whole time with his hand on his hip. It was so annoying. So when I did sit down, I had an elbow in my face. I had a good time. The music was awesome as usual but the sound sucked. I couldn’t make out the words to some songs, especially his new music, which I don’t have yet. I plan on getting it soon.

I have been in bed mostly all weekend and today and still my ankle/foot is acting up. I made it to my sister’s apartment on the first floor to make myself a cup of coffee. My first cup since Saturday. I hope I am able to go out tomorrow. I need to borrow my sister’s car to do some shopping before she goes away for camping. I was invited but I can’t do anything but sit and if I try to do a hike or something I am going to be laid up anyways. It just wouldn’t work for me.

I know I try to write every day so I am sorry for the few days I have not been able to write. I have been hit with the flare up and between sleeping off the pain meds and just being wonky from the meds, I had no inclination to write. Then I got hit with depression and it just killed my writing muse. But hopefully I am back now and won’t miss anymore days. I might make up some with posting twice a day with another paper or two. I have been thinking about it for a while now. I just published the one on therapists who panic when they hear suicide. My muse friend wants me to write one on relationships and suicide but I don’t think it would work. I have always told myself that I wouldn’t kill myself over someone. It just seems silly to me but people feel that they can’t go on unless someone is in their life and I get that. What they don’t know is that they can go on without them. Sure it hurts as hell in the beginning but as the song by Sara Evans says “you get a little but stronger” every day without them.

Today I got an email from a person that runs a Master’s degree in counseling program and she wanted to use my site as a resource for the program’s students. I feel so honored to have her choose my website. I hope that it helps future clinicians.

Today is my second day on my 4th week with the patch and guess what, I got my fucking menses. Though I don’t know how bad it is. I just had some bleeding. I needed this like a hole in the head. Now I know why I have been so down and listless the past few days. I also been getting wicked suicidal urges on and off the past day or so, which the damn menses causes. I don’t know why the bleeding always messes with me but I swear if I ever do attempt to kill myself it will be while bleeding. Just when I thought I could wear my boxers with confidence, this shit happens. I am beyond devastated but I told my doc I would stick it out for three months and at the end of the three months I will try something else. I can’t be having my menses while trying to transition. It just sets me back and makes me wish I was dead.

hospitalizations

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, CES, chronic physical pain, depression

Feeling a little bit better today, not as gloomy. I still feel depressed however. I just can’t seem to get away from it. I wish the highs would return. I miss them.

I am the worst grilled cheese maker in the world. I tried, again to make one and burned one side while didn’t cook the other enough so it was soggy with butter. Or maybe I just put too much butter. I don’t know but I suck at making this meal. I even burned my gums because the cheese was hot. OUCH. I don’t think I will be making anymore grilled cheese any time soon. I’ll just have my mother make them! LOL

I am close to making a milestone with my blog. I got another 30 or so views to go before reaching 10K. If I do this before Thursday, I would be happy, least for a little bit. Thursday marks the one year anniversary for my blog. I am kind of excited that I will have 10K. I have been giving updates on my facebook page with the countdown and also with my Midnightdemons facebook page. I even got to reading my own blog because as I have said before, I don’t always remember what I write. Even when naming a blog I have to go through the search to see if I named a blog this already. I have over 300 blogs to far so it is hard to remember sometimes what I write.

Right now, I am working on another paper for Cauda Equina Syndrome (CES). I have noticed that a lot of people find my blog using search terms for CES. I think it would be a great idea if I had a fact sheet or something to tell beginners about this or those that have been newly diagnosed. It can be very terrifying to get this diagnosis and sometimes people just don’t get the care that they need or worse, don’t get diagnosed at all. I won’t go into specifics about the condition but if you are reading this and want to know more, go to http://www.caudaequina.org to learn more about this devastating condition. I have been living with this for twelve years and through my support group, have learned to live with it better.

Today I am supposed to go out with a friend to the movies. He is an eye doctor and works where as I am disabled and don’t work. The last few times he has paid for the movie tickets and I just got the popcorn (which can sometimes be as much as getting the tickets!) But this time I am short on funds. I have just enough just to get my Ativan prescription filled and then that is it for the next week and a half. I will be totally broke. I find it totally humiliating that I am again without cash funds for the third month in a row. I have tried budgeting this time and it didn’t work. When my check comes in, I have bills to pay and food to get. There usually isn’t a lot left over. I might have to cut my Starbucks fund but then I NEED my coffee and need to get out of the house so I can’t really cut my fix. The whole money thing is depressing me. I wish I was still collecting the long term disability but I owe them because I didn’t know you can’t collect SSD and LTD at the same time. So the money I was supposed to get, they are taking until my balance is cut off. Which will be in about twenty months from now, in which time, I probably will be off it. I don’t know what I am going to do then as there is no way I can afford to pay them with my SSD. I guess by then I can start working part time somewhere and have a little extra but I can’t do that now, especially when I am having splits and psychotic symptoms.

I have my meeting with my therapist tomorrow. I am kind of glad I do. I just am having a rough weekend. Thoughts of killing myself are still in the back of my mind and I so want to go through with it. I am just so tired of fighting with myself every day on trying to keep myself from going through with it, tired of putting on a “happy” face so my family doesn’t know I am depressed. Just so tired in general. I know I probably should be in the hospital but they will just kick me out in a few days if not two weeks. It’s really hard to stay past that length of time. The insurance just doesn’t want to pay. I get letters from my insurance (while in the hospital) that “Dr. so and so thinks you should be discharged but if you feel like this is wrong and need further care, talk to your attending doctor for an extension.” I’m like, really?? I am in the hospital and you send these to MY HOME. How am I supposed to refute what you are writing. Though my favorite is when these letters arrive AFTER discharge!! It is comical though not really. Not like I want to really stay in the hospital but I think some time there is beneficial. I don’t have to put up a façade every day like I do when I am home. I can sleep most of the day without it being too disruptive. But I would be lost if I didn’t have my games and my cell phone with me. I guess that is why I fear going in the hospital. I don’t want to lose access to my phone. I would hate not having music because I don’t have a separate MP3 player. It is my phone. I would be so lost without listening to music while in the hospital it wouldn’t be funny. And then trying to have a check in with my therapist would be impossible. I have had that happen to me one hospitalization where I couldn’t get a hold of my therapist and my therapist couldn’t get a hold of me because the floor phone was busy. I hated that. And the only reason they deny you using your phone is because it can take pictures. Like really? I am going to take picture of this place or a fellow inmate? For what? I am not the idiot that has to post 90 thousand pictures on Facebook or twitter or Instagram every single day. I use my phone for its use and for checking email. Sure I will be on twitter and Facebook but it will just be on MY status updates and not someone else’s. I won’t say that John smith is having a bad day and took a nutty and had to be restrained. That is not my place to. Though I did have one hospitalization that a patient actually kicked down the metal door of the unit. That was scary. He was a BIG dude. I was scared of him. He was kept mostly sedated for that reason after that. He was also psychotic. But now that I am thinking about it, so was I. He kept talking on his ipod thingy or maybe it was his phone, I don’t know. But only he was allowed to use it and the rest of us wasn’t. Totally not fair!!

So I guess that is why I am resistant to going in the hospital. I won’t have my cell phone to listen to music and make calls, check emails, and play my games. Seems right to me!

coffee and therapists

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, psychache, suicide

Went out for coffee today. I didn’t feel like it but I forced myself to. I gave myself an incentive, that if I went I would get something sweet. I usually just get my coffee and maybe a sandwich, if I am hungry. But today I really wanted something sweet so didn’t need that much incentive to get a coffee cake. I like that the baristas are getting my order down pat. I don’t order anything fancy, just my favorite flavor, which is now Kati Kati, grande size but in a venti cup. This is so I have plenty of room for the half and half. I also put in several packets of sugar. I need my coffee sweet, which is why I usually don’t get something sweet.

I did accomplish something today and that was finishing the book why do people die by suicide by Thomas Joiner. I had an autographed copy but lost it on the train the first week I read it. Much to my sadness. The book was good and I learned a few things that I hope I retain. He is a cognitive therapist so he focused on that during the strategies for dealing with suicidality. I really liked the book because it not only dealt with personal experience (his dad died by suicide while in grad school), he also listed empirical data to back up what he was talking about. I am a research geek so I tend to like stuff like that. He also used terms that put people that couldn’t understand the technical stuff into words that people could understand, like how neurotransmitters interact. It was a very interesting book. I also bought another book that he wrote called Myths of Suicide, which I hope to read after I finish reading Lincoln’s Melancholy.

My reading voices are back, thank god. I can’t seem to focus unless they are there. I got a comment from my psychotic while reading blog and this person said that she only hears her voice while reading. I find that so interesting. I never hear my own voice. Unless my voice is male sounding, which I don’t think it is, not yet anyways. But then I do have enlarged ventricles in my brain that cause the voices. Not as large as those found in schizophrenia but enough to have a radiologist comment on it. I had the MRI the first time I was hospitalized when I was sixteen. They ran a bunch of tests on me the whole time I was there, from cortisol suppression studies to psychological tests such as the inkblot. I remember how much paperwork I had to do for the MMPI, the Minnesota Multiple Personality Inventory. I hated that. I did that more than once over my lifetime for various studies I was involved in. It is a LONG inventory. I am glad it is not used in clinical practice, unless you go specifically for psychological testing. It would make for a long afternoon or morning.

I have been feeling self-harm urges the past few days. I don’t know why that is. I just have the urge but usually distracting myself or listening to music helps. I have not cut in years and I like it stay that way, though I still have my “kit”. Even though I don’t use it, I still find it comforting to have it around. I also have been getting urges to overdose but these quickly pass as I just can’t do it in my house. Symptoms of my illness.

The dreaded nerve pain has come again. I really tried not to stand too long while waiting for the bus today to get my coffee. I tried not to jiggle my foot in a way that I know would upset it later. But I did do stretching exercises while I was on the phone with my therapist so maybe that is why it is angry at me. I never know what will make it upset. It’s like an untemperate, abusive person. You just never know what will set it off. The cold. The heat. Wearing socks. Not wearing socks. Moving it this way versus that. It’s a never ending battle. I am so sick of it. I am tired of hurting. And nothing helps curb the pain. My pain meds can only do so much, which is knock me out most of the time so I can sleep. But that is only for a few hours. Once the meds wear off, I am screwed. I wake up and sometimes it take a little but to register that I am awake before the pain starts. Other times it is because I am in pain that I wake up. My sleep has not been good the past week. I keep waking up between 0230-430 in the morning. No matter what time I go to sleep, I always wake up during those hours. If I fall asleep before ten, I am always up four hours later. I can’t stand it. I usually play my games or check twitter. If I am bullshit, I might write another blog or journal if I don’t feel like opening my laptop. Sometimes, I try reading and usually that works to put me back to sleep, unless I am in roaring pain. Then I just stay up until the pain meds kick in to knock me out again while withering in agony.

This week’s AAS blog is about finding a therapist that won’t run away or panic at the mention of suicidal thoughts. I want to laugh and say, have you read my therapist blog? I have had ten therapists run away from me soon as I mention that I have had suicidal thoughts in the past or been hospitalized because of them. Course I am hospitalized frequently so that doesn’t help my case. I have been hospitalized at least eight times since 2008. My last hospitalization was last June. So it has been a year but if these damn voices don’t stop, I might have to go back in. The voices and being suicidal doesn’t mix too well. But getting back to therapists, they can be tricky. I kept on being referred to another therapist, who would then refer me to yet another therapist. Before I knew it, I had ten within a month’s time. I finally gave up and stuck it out with my current therapist, even though I don’t see her in person frequently. I think I will see her next week. I will try and get my sister’s car.

I know why therapists don’t want to take on suicidal clients. They don’t want to be liable. They fear malpractice. They even fear losing the client. But I believe that despite this, with the right treatment, therapists can see suicidal clients. It just takes a little bit of courage and trust, a lot of it. Not only on the therapist’s part, but also the client. The client also needs to have a trust in the therapist that they aren’t going to be dumped in the hospital every single fricken time they get suicidal. The therapies out there that help are by David Jobes, CAMS and by using his suicide status form. Also using the Aeschi model helps. Knowing why the client wants to kill themselves says a lot. By not allowing the client to share his story, he gives his therapist a reason to distrust him. I do hope that there comes a day when graduate schools are mandated to have some kind of suicide preventions/treatment protocols in their curriculums. It shouldn’t be up to the therapist’s own style of interviewing that should be dependent on their suicide knowledge. That and the use of no-suicide contracts should be discontinued as long as something like CAMS is in place or the QPR by Paul Quinnett. I forget what QPR stands for but it is a useful resource.