Venting thread that still excludes eddy (2)

[Imralu]

I'm really fucking depressed. I can't find anything to look forward to or to distract my mind with right now. I haven't slept at all tonight. I've just been up all night crying and trying to distract myself with Facebook but it's only made it worse. Like, right now I just feel like I'm the most worthless piece of shit and I'm never going to sort my life out ever again. I know intellectually that's not true, but it hurts to much to try to keep telling myself that I don't fucking suck.

[jal]

Travis, Imralu, I'm so sorry to hear that! *gives virtual hug*


JAL

[Travis B.]

Imralu, that really fucking sucks. I do not know what to say that could help - I know there is nothing that could help me, e.g. - but these things are temporary, even if they feel like they will last forever (as with me, even tomorrow seems too far in the future, such that I feel it will never come around), even though I know saying that does not really help.

[Imralu]

Thanks, both of you. It was a pretty big crash because I've been holding a lot of stuff lately I guess. I started to feel numb. I had an appointment with my counsellor and by the time I left my house, I was so tired I could hardly see because my eyes were malfunctioning. The session with my counsellor was good and then I felt fine again. (From February, he's doing a Praktikum and cutting down his hours drastically and if I can continue seeing him at all it'll be max once a month.) On my way home, it rained and windily graupelled on me and then it snowed for a bit and I enjoyed all of it. I slept for about six hours in the afternoon/evening. Hope you're doing well, Travis.

[Travis B.]

Things later in the day today have not been as bad - there are less of the make it stop now thoughts and the utter hopelessness - but I really have no idea how tomorrow is going to be - my mood is not predictable across a single day, much the less multiple days.

[jal]

The session with my counsellor was good and then I felt fine again.

That's good to hear.

(From February, he's doing a Praktikum and cutting down his hours drastically and if I can continue seeing him at all it'll be max once a month.)

So do you have a back-up plan?

windily graupelled

Heh, that sounds so poetic :). Had to look it up in a dictionary :).

Things later in the day today have not been as bad

Also good to hear. Let's hope it stays that way (or gets better).


JAL

[Imralu]

My dad tried to call me today and I've crashed again and I can't stop crying

[jal]

My dad tried to call me today and I've crashed again and I can't stop crying

I think we can all agree your dad's an asshole. Too bad he can still get to you like that.


JAL

[Travis B.]

My dad tried to call me today and I've crashed again and I can't stop crying

That really sucks. Could you change your phone number and not tell your dad?

[Travis B.]

My therapist appt was not very productive, due to being far too depressed to really work on anything. I barely spoke for most of it. My mood has lifted a bit since the start of the appt, but I am still quite depressed to say the very least.

[Pole, the]

When my holiday break started, I promised to myself I would catch up with my university projects after the New Year, but since Sunday I haven't been able to force myself to do anything productive so far. :/

It's not regular procrastination. I blocked my Facebook feed. Now I waste time on reading mails about the history of C, documentation of functional languages, programming subreddits and writing replies on StackOverflow, instead of working on studies stuff.

[Travis B.]

When my holiday break started, I promised to myself I would catch up with my university projects after the New Year, but since Sunday I haven't been able to force myself to do anything productive so far. :/

It's not regular procrastination. I blocked my Facebook feed. Now I waste time on reading mails about the history of C, documentation of functional languages, programming subreddits and writing replies on StackOverflow, instead of working on studies stuff.

That still sounds far more productive than what I am capable of doing. I wish I could do things like that, rather than devoting all my time except for time that I must get things done at work to posting on random forums and like.

[Imralu]

My dad tried to call me today and I've crashed again and I can't stop crying

That really sucks. Could you change your phone number and not tell your dad?

That would be a lot of effort (and unnecessary spending) and wouldn't really bring anything. My parents still live together somehow. (She's slept in a chair in the lounge room in the main thoroughfare of the house for about 15 years rather be in a room with her rapist. Most of the time she pretends that this is fine.) As of last year, I'm kind of financially dependent on my parents again. I was deadset against the idea and would sooner have become homeless than accept the money my mum was offering - it was getting too much for me and I wanted to cut off contact with her again but wouldn't have been able to live with the guilt of hurting her, and my counsellor told me the radical idea that there was a middle point between the extremes - that I could set a boundary with her. It was pretty much unthinkable for me and, plagued with guilt, I wrote her a long email basically saying I can't be her therapist anymore (without saying I was her therapist). After that and then a pretty ugly back-and-forth email argument that we had about a week later, she seemed to accept it.

About a month later, she offered me money again and I didn't understand why at the time but I felt like it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to accept it. (I honestly didn't understand why my attitude had changed but my counsellor said it made perfect sense and when I still didn't get it: it would no longer feel like a client paying for therapy but just a mother helping her son. Mind blown.) So, basically, the money she sent me (which she kept secret from my father) has only been used for my insanely cheap rent plus my travel insurance (which I'm still extending) and the money I get from teaching German has allowed me to eat and stuff like that. I also got some money for doing work for a friend although most of that had to go towards a sign language course that was the reason he offered me work in the first place.

In November it got a bit weirder because my mum convinced my dad to send me some money for my birthday as well as her sending me some secretly. I saw that my dad had written happy birthday on the message that comes with the money and it made me feel like shit. Like, I'm such an ungrateful shit. (So glad that awful Dutch guy who called himself "sir" is not here anymore because he'd say that's precisely what I am.) My mum wrote me this long email about how my dad's slowly beginning to understand that he was kind of a bastard and that I should accept the money and not feel bad about having no contact with him. Apparently he's even realised that it's not OK to verbally abuse my mother anymore and he pointed out to her one day that he hadn't shouted at her for a month. I can't say that I will never speak to my dad again but I'm really not ready to now. (Although he's 76 so it might be never again if it's not soon.) He sent me money for Christmas too, and so did my mum apparently, but I haven't checked yet.

This morning was, as far as I can remember, the first time he has tried to call me in 2.5 years. (Maybe not accurate. I hardly remember 2015 at all.) It got me thinking about why. Has something happened to mum? Does he want to check if the money has gone into my account. Is he trying to reach out because it's just occurred to him that it's sad that one of his adult children moved to the other side of the world and stopped speaking to him? I put this all out of my head for a bit after the initial panic when he called me but I suddenly found myself crying about an hour later and I think I cried pretty much constantly for two hours.

[Imralu]

My dad tried to call me today and I've crashed again and I can't stop crying

I think we can all agree your dad's an asshole. Too bad he can still get to you like that.


JAL

It's weird, there's a part of me that felt like I should defend him from that statement because he's not the literal worst father in the world... Not to defend HIM but just so that I don't get any undeserved sympathy. I've grown up with my mum telling me he's not perfect but he's better than how her mother was to her. "At least he loves you boys. My mother hated me, but your father does love you - he's just got something wrong with him and he can't control himself but he doesn't mean to. And if I left him and married again, no man would ever love you as much as he does." (When I came out to my mum, years later, she asked me if I had seen that as a challenge. *eyes roll out of head and over horizon*) So, like, I sit here feeling like a fucking hypocrite taking his money and complaining about how horrible he is or was and the worst of the stuff he did, he did to my mother. I kind of feel like I don't have a right to complain because I should count myself lucky that he sends me money and hasn't cut me out of his life like worse parents do. And, like, I know he didn't try to call me to get to me like this. In fact, all of his abuse came from selfishness and a lack of empathy, not seeing the point in reigning in his impulses, not from deliberate cruelty. I can't say that my mum was really right about him loving us because he proved himself capable of refraining from hitting us as soon the it had legal consequences for him - and even in the absence of deliberate cruelty, I don't want to define that complete uncaringness to us as "love". So, although I grew up hating him - and it's hard not to hate someone who you know scarred up your mother's cervix so bad over many years of rape that a gynaecologist once called the police on her behalf - I alternate between seeing him as a cartoon monster and "not that bad" as I was always told as my mother tried to justify not leaving him. Basically, I don't know how I'm supposed to feel or what I'm allowed to feel and I can't do the "feeling nothing" thing anymore. It's like I've pulled out the cork and it won't go back in and I'm just a bubbling chaos of emotion... and look at the shit I'm writing, I'm such an entitled millennial (says my brain). Fuck, I just want to turn all of these thoughts and feelings off.

[jal]

he's not the literal worst father in the world

Well, he didn't kill you or anything, so I guess you're right. But really, I can of course assess his fatherhood only by what you've written about him, but as far as I understand, he's mostly if not entirely responsible for the shit you're in, so in my parlance that counts for being an asshole.

so that I don't get any undeserved sympathy.

But when is sympathy deserved? Does anyone ever "deserve" sympathy? I mean, sympathy is something you get when you're having a bad time, but typically because you can't help it. So the only reason for not "deserving" sympathy would be if getting it would be outside the norm of not being able to help it, in your case meaning that somehow you're responsible for the shit you're in, which we all know can't be the case as afaik no-one can be responsible for their own mental problems...

he proved himself capable of refraining from hitting us as soon the it had legal consequences for him

Well, you've "diagnosed" him as a narcisist before, so that makes sense - narcisist only do things for consequences they want, or to avoid consequences they don't want.

I saw that my dad had written happy birthday on the message that comes with the money and it made me feel like shit. Like, I'm such an ungrateful shit. (So glad that awful Dutch guy who called himself "sir" is not here anymore because he'd say that's precisely what I am.)

But what would even be ungrateful? He ruined your life, now he gives you money, money you can make good use of. Money can't repay what he did, but it's welcome, right? (And that Dutch guy was a serious troll and/or a religious fanatic with twisted ideas of morality and justified punishment by a cruel father figure, so let's indeed be glad that eikel isn't here anymore.)


JAL

[Travis B.]

To me I would see it that the money does not absolve your father of anything he has done whatsoever, and it may just be necessary to accept the money, and accepting the money does not mean that you have to feel any differently about your father than if you did not.

[alynnidalar]

Personally, I think it's perfectly reasonable that your dad might be trying in some small ways to clean up his act, and yet you still want nothing to do with him. A few small overtures of improvement do not make up for the terrible things he's done. I can see how even a small attempt can feel like a big deal when it's coming from someone who hasn't even done that in the past, but a terrible person becoming slightly less terrible still has a loooong way to go before they're a mediocre person, let alone a decent one.

I'm reminded of a friend of my mother's--the friend's stepmother was abusive and treated her just horribly, compared to her biological children, yet suddenly at the end of the stepmother's life, she wanted to talk to her and say she was sorry or whatever. My mom and I were talking about it, and my mom pointed out that even if the stepmother was totally sincere in her apology, that doesn't change the fact that she treated her stepdaughter horribly, with negative lifelong repercussions on her mental health, financial situation, etc., and that her friend shouldn't feel obligated to go talk to her stepmom just because she was dying or whatever. The way she put it was that she thought her friend should only go if her friend legitimately thought it would help herself (to have some sort of closure, even if it was just to say, like, "you were an awful stepmom but it's good that you have in some meager way recognized it. Now we can never talk to each other ever again."), not just if it would help her stepmother, who probably only was scared of dying and wanted absolution, anyway. (Apparently the stepmother had pulled the "oh I'm so sorry now let's talk about how horrible you are" thing in the past, to boot.)

[Travis B.]

I am finding it really annoying and awkward when my dad asks me how I am doing over the phone when calling me to make sure I am awake in the morning (my parents know I am not doing great these days), as my parents are in Illinois right now (I am horrible at getting up, even with multiple alarms). I do feel that my dad does not really understand, unlike my mom. (My mom is a semi-retired therapist, and has her own mental problems even though these days she denies that she does.) I also don't like feeling interrogated about how I feel - whereas my mom generally would not need to ask in the first place, as she can tell from my voice alone. So I would much prefer it if he left me be rather than inquiring into how I am doing - it does not make me feel any better whatsoever anyways.

[Imralu]

Well, he didn't kill you or anything, so I guess you're right. But really, I can of course assess his fatherhood only by what you've written about him, but as far as I understand, he's mostly if not entirely responsible for the shit you're in, so in my parlance that counts for being an asshole.

[...]So the only reason for not "deserving" sympathy would be if getting it would be outside the norm of not being able to help it, in your case meaning that somehow you're responsible for the shit you're in, which we all know can't be the case as afaik no-one can be responsible for their own mental problems...

Thanks. Yeah, I know all of that in theory, intellectually, but a lot of the time I feel like I don't actually have any legitimate mental health problems, that I just suck. All of that fucking bullshit motivational crap that people spout and post everywhere, shit about happiness being a choice and all of that - it really fucking gets to me and gets incorporated in my critical inner voice and I know that I get no sympathy from people that buy into that tripe and there are a lot of them. This is why I find it really bizarrely validating every time a professional tells me I've got severe depression. My counsellor told me last year that I'm unusually messed up compared to his normal clients, and that my problems go unusually deep and that he was out of his depth and it had made him ask himself some difficult questions about his role in my case. On the one hand, I suppose that's kind of scary - to know that the only person I can really get help from at the moment is out of his depth, but on the other hand, it felt like a fucking hug. It was like he was saying to me "You're not an idiot, It's all real and you're allowed to feel that way," and that fucking hurt in itself because it allowed me to have some empathy for myself, and I discovered last year, that it actually hurts less to hate myself than to try to be fair to myself because hating myself and thinking I'm an idiot is just normal. I'm so used to it that I didn't even notice that that's the main way I relate to myself. Anyway, he also told me that I'm unusually analytical and open to exploring my psyche and quite dedicated, never missing appointments or anything (which he called brave but I don't feel brave - I'm used to how much it hurts, I'm just scared if I stop fighting for a moment that it's going to finish me) so I'm basically the perfect candidate for intense forms of therapy like psychoanalysis, which don't work for everyone, and he thinks, I will one day be OK. So there's that. Anyway - I basically find that the only people who I don't feel judged by are people who have themselves had some kind of mental health struggle, or who have at least spent some time on this topic and a good part of my brain writes that of as me being an idiot and being so fucked up over things that I completely trivialise in my head.

(I wish had a magic wand to give some douchebags a temporary case of severe depression just so they fucking see that no amount of positivity can win against a brain that's turned against itself ... there are no quick fixes. You have to work through everything and it's harder than anything else I've ever done, but on the outside I just look lazy and soft.)

Thank you to everyone else who replied about the money and guilt thing. I don't have the energy to write any more right now but it was appreciated. Again, things I know in theory but I'm very good at making myself feel guilty. It's my superpower. Hearing it from other people helps ground me a bit and gives me more ammo to fight my bastard brain and make it be nicer to me.

[Travis B.]

I have been in the opposite spot that I for the longest time had the view and had been told that my problems are purely biological, and for that matter was once told by a therapist that meds are all I needed. I never thought that my problems were not "real", but I had for a long time thought things would be okay as long as the meds worked. It has only been recent that I have had the view that I do have problems that are not mere biology accepted by my treatment team, or that I have problems that are biological in origin but which the main means of treating them will be through therapy (largely because I cannot take antidepressants, so my OCD cannot easily be treated except with therapy, and because I have major underlying problems with motivation regardless of mood for which the only real treatment available is therapy).

[jal]

Damn, I sprained my ankle this afternoon running too fast off a flight of stairs. It hurts :(.


JAL

[Travis B.]

Damn, I sprained my ankle this afternoon running too fast off a flight of stairs. It hurts .

Ouch!

[jal]

Ouch!

Indeed. Luckily I could sleep relatively well last night, and the doctor has checked it and nothing's broken, so this'll just be sitting with the leg up for a week or so and then some mild exercise regime to get it working again...

Imralu: "I basically find that the only people who I don't feel judged by are people who have themselves had some kind of mental health struggle" - I'll consider myself the exception to the rule then (or do you feel judged by me as well? Because in that case I should improve my communication!).

Travis: "it does not make me feel any better whatsoever anyways" - I can imagine, though it probably does show they care about you at a certain level.


JAL

[Imralu]

No, I don't feel judged by you at all, Jal. I was generalising, I guess. Hope you're keeping your foot up and being waited on.

And this is more something for the mixed emotions thread, but all of my mental health stuff should go here I think: Turns out I almost definitely have anxiety as well as depression. I've started to suspect it for the last couple of months after relating a lot to what people have said about anxiety in some FB groups im in but the kicker was at my counsellor's the other day. We were talking about what it is about looking for a job that I find so hard - even just mentioning the topic made tears come out instantly, but talking more and more about it, I got so worked up that my counsellor did a breathing exercise with me to get me to calm down, which was a first, and I couldn't even do it the first time ... it threatened to turn into uncontrollable sobbing and I actually felt like if I didn't hold everything in, it would turn into one of my disassociative screaming episodes. My chest physically hurt and I felt like I might burst. I managed to take one deep breath and that was enough for him. I was able to calm down but only because he managed to pick apart my worries and tell me it's all OK. He was like "This is not just depression, you know. Depression doesn't do that to people." It was only just afterwards that I realised he wasn't just teaching me breathing exercises to use outside (which I can google myself anyway) but saw that I was going off the rails and did it to bring me back.

Now, what's kind of funny about this is when I think back to all the times I've been to a doctor, talking about depression, they've asked if I need anything to control my anxiety and I've always just been like "No thanks, I don't really have anxiety, just depression." Like, I've only had a handful of panic attacks and two of those were side effects of antidepressants. I just kind of thought what I have is normal - not like "everyone has it" normal but like it's normal for me with my personality flaws and depression and psychological issues. I kind of thought anxiety was this big Other Thing that other people have but I don't. I've only gone as far as to admit that I have "social anxiety", which I defined as something very different from people who have Anxiety. I talked to a friend of mine in Australia and she was like "Wait ... you didn't know you had anxiety?? It's kind of obvious. Like, you avoid kitchens, are afraid of driving, swimming, sex, and sometimes you're a prisoner in your room ..." I just always thought I'm just an idiot. It's like with depression - I tend to think it's not actually a thing and I'm just being weird, but over the years, through many different episodes, with diagnoses and working with various professionals, I've gradually been able to believe it's just a thing that I have, not just me being an idiot ... but anxiety has never gone through that process with me. It's actually kind of funny how I was kind of in denial about it and I feel relieved in a way - again, it's validating. I'm not just an idiot and there's room for improvement. So, if and when I get to see a psychiatrist, I'll mention that as an issue and maybe I'll get something to control it too. *shakes head at self with disbelieving smile*

[Pole, the]

I got my hand burned when I was checking if an oven was on.

I am an idiot.