I have a feeling quite a lot of us are dealing with depression/anxiety/fear/ADD/other mental health issues. They crop up regularly in the rant and whine threads, sometimes in the Fitness and Health thread,... I thought maybe it would be sensible to have a thread dedicated to this? It may make it easier for some to ignore posts that might trigger them when they're feeling vulnerable, or might make it easier to find something with an uplifting message or find posts from others suffering from similar issues, etc to try and pool 'm here a bit instead of having them all over the place.
I've personally been dealing on and off with depression for years, took antidepressants for a while back in...err.... 2010-2012 or so? After our wedding last year, I've sort of fallen back into a bit of a pit. We're not having children, so...between now and retirement I don't really have any big life events to look forward to anymore, no plans, no long term things to think about or anticipate. Sure, I hope I'll get to travel a bit (but while "big long holidays every year, seeing the whole world!" has been our plan, and we started out strong with Mexico and South Africa and New Zealand, this...just isn't happening. The last 6 years or so we haven't really gone anywhere exciting, always short nearby vacations just to relax because we don't have the money and/or energy to go on long adventurous vacations or COVID or whatever), but nothing "big". Buy a house, get a job, marry....And then what?
So as I've been slowly going through the motions, I just don't have any energy for anything outside of work. But since I work for a big soulless corporation, it's not like I'm getting a lot OUT of that, either. It just drains my energy and leaves me....A couch potato in the evenings. Social calls are either obligations or dinner parties with friends of my wife, sometimes trying to get together with my friends but.... While I usually enjoy these things once I'm there, they're exhausting and I spend days/weeks with building anxiety. My wife has to drag me to them, which is tiring and unfair to her as well. So we end up going less and less, which of course isn't doing either of us any favors either - she absolutely needs social interactions and get-togethers, they recharge her batteries. Me...I don't game anymore, I'm trying but I don't really read anymore and when I do it's out of a feeling of obligation towards myself more than out of desire, and mostly pulpy YA stuff at that. So, I've now got an appointment scheduled with a doctor at my usual practice (it's a group practice so I don"t really have one "fixed" doctor I go to for the regular stuff) to talk starting up antidepressants again. Which is, of course, giving me stress and anxiety like you wouldn't believe - my experience in the past hasn't been great. But I have to tell myself it's a step in the right direction.
And on another note, the past weekend has been....rough. Something I've never experienced before. Thursday evening and night was spent between nightmares and lying awake with continuous, unshakable feelings of dread and doom. Not just "scared" or anywhere near my normal depressed feelings of self-doubt, self-deprecation, worthlessness etc - really a feeling that at any time I'd get called up and I'd find out my mother was dead, or my wife, or something like that. Approaching doom is really the only way I can think of to describe it. All Friday I spent feeling like that, incredibly scared, crying my eyes out out of fear and terror, with pain all over my body, headaches and more. Friday night I took some anti-anxiety and muscle relaxant medication (we had from when my wife had a burnout two or three years ago) which helped me at least get some sleep, but I spent the whole night sweating and twisting and turning. Saturday I was still anxious and scared and incredibly sensitive to any kind of sensory input - couldn't bear light, sound, etc so my wife finally forced me to go to the doctor on duty who....Gave me some painkillers for the headache, something for my bowels (I had diarrhea as well, though that doesn't really matter for this thread) and sent me off home. Sunday was spent much the same. Monday I went to a doctor at my normal practice who prescribed some more anti-anxiety and pain killers, did some more tests and took blood and all that, wrote me off work for a few days, and sent me on my way again. We're now Wednesday, I'm still wearing sunglasses to watch TV, still can't bear any really loud noises but it's much, much better than it was, and while I still have some physical stress signals (quick shallow breathing, elevated heart rate) it isn't as bad as it was. Working from home tomorrow, I guess I'll be using sunglasses and turning down the brightness of my screens and hope for the best.
So, yeah, between "spiraling into depression" and "suddenly a new type of anxiety attack that rendered me physically incapable to do anything for 3 days", I'm doing not so great. Though, to be fair, I'm not at all feeling suicidal, which is where I was a few weeks ago - genuinely thinking maybe just driving my car against a bridge would be the easiest and best way out for everybody - so I guess that's some sort of progress.
How are you all holding up?
I've personally been dealing on and off with depression for years, took antidepressants for a while back in...err.... 2010-2012 or so? After our wedding last year, I've sort of fallen back into a bit of a pit. We're not having children, so...between now and retirement I don't really have any big life events to look forward to anymore, no plans, no long term things to think about or anticipate. Sure, I hope I'll get to travel a bit (but while "big long holidays every year, seeing the whole world!" has been our plan, and we started out strong with Mexico and South Africa and New Zealand, this...just isn't happening. The last 6 years or so we haven't really gone anywhere exciting, always short nearby vacations just to relax because we don't have the money and/or energy to go on long adventurous vacations or COVID or whatever), but nothing "big". Buy a house, get a job, marry....And then what?
So as I've been slowly going through the motions, I just don't have any energy for anything outside of work. But since I work for a big soulless corporation, it's not like I'm getting a lot OUT of that, either. It just drains my energy and leaves me....A couch potato in the evenings. Social calls are either obligations or dinner parties with friends of my wife, sometimes trying to get together with my friends but.... While I usually enjoy these things once I'm there, they're exhausting and I spend days/weeks with building anxiety. My wife has to drag me to them, which is tiring and unfair to her as well. So we end up going less and less, which of course isn't doing either of us any favors either - she absolutely needs social interactions and get-togethers, they recharge her batteries. Me...I don't game anymore, I'm trying but I don't really read anymore and when I do it's out of a feeling of obligation towards myself more than out of desire, and mostly pulpy YA stuff at that. So, I've now got an appointment scheduled with a doctor at my usual practice (it's a group practice so I don"t really have one "fixed" doctor I go to for the regular stuff) to talk starting up antidepressants again. Which is, of course, giving me stress and anxiety like you wouldn't believe - my experience in the past hasn't been great. But I have to tell myself it's a step in the right direction.
And on another note, the past weekend has been....rough. Something I've never experienced before. Thursday evening and night was spent between nightmares and lying awake with continuous, unshakable feelings of dread and doom. Not just "scared" or anywhere near my normal depressed feelings of self-doubt, self-deprecation, worthlessness etc - really a feeling that at any time I'd get called up and I'd find out my mother was dead, or my wife, or something like that. Approaching doom is really the only way I can think of to describe it. All Friday I spent feeling like that, incredibly scared, crying my eyes out out of fear and terror, with pain all over my body, headaches and more. Friday night I took some anti-anxiety and muscle relaxant medication (we had from when my wife had a burnout two or three years ago) which helped me at least get some sleep, but I spent the whole night sweating and twisting and turning. Saturday I was still anxious and scared and incredibly sensitive to any kind of sensory input - couldn't bear light, sound, etc so my wife finally forced me to go to the doctor on duty who....Gave me some painkillers for the headache, something for my bowels (I had diarrhea as well, though that doesn't really matter for this thread) and sent me off home. Sunday was spent much the same. Monday I went to a doctor at my normal practice who prescribed some more anti-anxiety and pain killers, did some more tests and took blood and all that, wrote me off work for a few days, and sent me on my way again. We're now Wednesday, I'm still wearing sunglasses to watch TV, still can't bear any really loud noises but it's much, much better than it was, and while I still have some physical stress signals (quick shallow breathing, elevated heart rate) it isn't as bad as it was. Working from home tomorrow, I guess I'll be using sunglasses and turning down the brightness of my screens and hope for the best.
So, yeah, between "spiraling into depression" and "suddenly a new type of anxiety attack that rendered me physically incapable to do anything for 3 days", I'm doing not so great. Though, to be fair, I'm not at all feeling suicidal, which is where I was a few weeks ago - genuinely thinking maybe just driving my car against a bridge would be the easiest and best way out for everybody - so I guess that's some sort of progress.
How are you all holding up?
