I agree with you there. I suffer from depression, always have done since I can remember, it runs in the family (Christmas dinner is just a barrell of laughs... ;)) and a lot of my worry is what I'm doing to my family and friends.
I'm a pretty frank, open person and the type that hates those head-tilting, sympathetic looks, but my depression totally hit a new low this year when my other half and I lost a baby due to anencephaly. I'm totally not equipped to deal with sh*te like this at all. My problems are that I don't want to go back onto medication (I've had a few different ones prescribed over the years) because I don't want to become dependant and I don't like the kind of numbness they can bring on, I tried seeing a therapist several times, but it never helped any, but I need to do something because I can see how much what I do and what mood I may be in affects the people around me.
As anyone like this knows, you get good days, you get bad days. Tomorrow I might wake up and feel like I can do anything. Or I might wake up and want to stick my head in the oven. On those days, there's then the extra stress of putting on the game face so my mood doesn't affect everybody else. I have good friends and family and my other half has been a diamond through everything but, for instance, I know when I go visit him and I'm having a bad day and sit there and cry or stare into space for hours on end, there's nothing he can do, he feels useless and, let's face it, it can probably get pretty annoying for people in his position...

Disorders are just a cowards way out of being an asshole without having to admit to it.

I've recieved quite a few bumps to the head during my life, the worst bordering on quite severe. I have a reasonably good ability to completely immerse myself in something. My GF can't get any sort of response from me if I'm writing on the forums for example. It's not such a bad thing, but I sometimes wonder if the two - my ability to shut out the world and my accumulated brain damage - are related, hehe .. :p:

When I was a teenager, I also suffered from general anxiety disorder as if that somehow describes well the particulars of my difficulties. Anyways, I understand now that it came from a lack of control and I managed to battle all that. For example way back then, I was a bit scared of driving in cars or sitting in the middle of a row in the cinema, situations that were hard to escape. Eventually, I managed to turn the tables on my fear. I told myself something along the lines of "right fear, you don't like me driving cars, do you? Well guess what, it's not your show, it's mine, and I'm gonna drive cars whether you scare me or not - right now!". Turning that into a general principle in my life gave results real fast.

What I learned then from working with myself emotinally have helped me later in life, for example when I lost much hearing in my right ear and got permanent tinnitus from a silly rifle accident :rolleyes: I'm still somewhat of a worry wart, but I am capable of suppressing it (until I get kids I'm sure). The fear which was once great sometimes manifests itself, but it's usually a tiny squeaking voice in the back of my mind. If I notice it, I can still turn the tables on it. For example when I decided to move up to the arctic, a had some fearful distorted thoughts like "suicide rates are really high there, it's dark 4 months of the year, you might get scared up there!". I mentally replied with "Oh, so you wanna stop me moving to the arctic, do you, fear? Well, guess where I'm gonna go, you sucker!"

I also think part of what gets me through is that I'm an optimist at heart. Sometimes when I worry, I also think that I exaggerate my problems. So what if I have a little tinnitus for example? Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison and look at what he accomplished when he was released. People with bigger problems than me get by just fine. I'm gonna do fine as well, that's a promise to myself.

I would like to say at the end that growing up has helped a lot. Getting to know myself and the world I live in and becoming more comfortable with all that. Studying science helped as well. When I was younger, I had a distorted fear that my life would become an uncontrollable mess. It hasn't and I've learned that I've been capable of dealing with life's bumps in the road so far and that gives me confidence for the future. Some of you who have it hard now will find that out for yourself soon enough. :)

Nah, I'm quite happy to admit I'm an utter asshole. I'm just super lucky and am officially mental to go with it :)

Why are so many "disorders" here? I thought I was the only "disordered". Not a "fountain of mental illness" but... well, I really don't know why I'm talking about this here, http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3...e4053small.jpg but among other things, there is something specially insidious to me: A f***ing sleepiness, consequence of a so-called atypical depression. I wonder if someone else suffers or have suffered the same thing. I personally can't express with words how frustrating can be, but I think Charles Bukowski did it better than anyone else. This can give you an idea:

OCD here but my parents don't see it as such a big thing that I need to go get psychiatric help.

Also pretty sure I have some weird phobia where anything medical, anatomical, or surgical makes me get really anxious and tense. Reading this thread has actually made me pretty uncomfortable. Maybe that just goes hand in hand with the OCD thing, I dunno.

Man, it's cool to hear you pretty much overcame the anxiety. For me, it didn't start manifesting itself until more recently (within the past 7 years or so) and regardless of how much I try to psych myself out, I can't manage to push myself down to a baseline in new stressful situations. While it's 90 percent an inner battle that isn't perceivable to anyone else but me, it still seems like an insurmountable obstacle to try to convince yourself of how something is irrational when you already know it's irrational. It's like you literally have to reshape your brain and the chemical reactions that happen inside it in order to gain control of the thoughts and fears, because simply knowing they're not real isn't enough.

I read up a lot on this sort of thing and it appears as though medications are only temporary resolve, and where the real change happens is repeatedly facing your fears and learning how to deal with them therapeutically until they no longer exist. It's just really hard to do that on your own, which is probably why group therapy is successful enough to be standard.

Although compared to generalized anxiety I probably fit more into the social anxiety category, I think it's worth it to note your success in the matter as a basic template for how to deal with a lot of these types of issues and it's really commendable that you did it on your own.

Thanks Freebase :)

For me, it wasn't so much using rationality. I think that to your mind and body, becoming worried or scared in situations that have scared you before isn't necessarily irrational because even if the situation is harmless, you do have unpleasant experiences with it from before. I know some people are scared of spiders. If I had had a spider problem then, I think I would've been scared of getting scared when I met a spider if you know what I mean.

What helped was refusing to let fear control me so I would choose to do things, knowing very well that they would cause anxiety. Often, it would go better than I feared and even if it didn't, at least I was deciding what to do, not my fears. I externalized it in a way and refused to listen to it. It gave me back the control that the anxiety had stolen away from me. It took some time, but not long after I had actively started fighting it, I won just about every battle I had with my fears.

The change and the realization I could beat it didn't just happen out of the blue, though. For a long time, it was such a common feature in my life to be fearful, but then one day I was super excited about this IRC bot I was compiling and setting up .. nerdy, I know :p: Still, later that day, I realized I had been so absorbed in what I was doing that I had forgotten about my anxiety. I had pretty much had a normal day! From then on, I knew that it was possible to have a life without fear, so I mentally grabbed a hold of the problem and actively decided to do something. I told my parents and even my teacher about how I felt which helped quite a bit and then I started battling it on my own. I went to a psychologist once and he said I was already well in a recovering stage where I would come out of it on top, so he didn't think I would need more counselling then.

He was right :) I think once you figure out the right way to battle it, there's only one way I think which is forward.

I'm quite the opposite. I'm too ****ing polite in RL for my own good.

Ah, I see.
So it wasn't so much about controlling the fear itself as it was gaining control of the actions affected by fear.

Certain fears I have, like heights (being crippling... PARALYZING fears) I have no desire to ever want to lose, as I view it as anything but a handicap considering my lifestyle and aspirations... as I won't be needing to jump off of anything high or climb any skyscrapers any time soon... but others do affect my life in certain situations.
The problem is that the more I introduce myself into those situations, the more the fear becomes associated with them and it creates a negative feedback loop that seems counter-productive to the idea of therapeutic exposure, so I stay away for fear of making things worse until there's a better solution.
For me, that solution is alcohol... which is a magic elixir that completely transforms me into a normal person. It's obviously a dangerous position to be in... but to me, it's one damnation or the other, and the decision is far, far too easy to make.

Yes, but I think controlling the actions made it easier to also control the fear mentally. It gives you some kind of edge and it changes your situation as a victim of your fears into something else which probably has important mental ramifications. I think actively choosing to do things which are scary has the power to break that negative feedback loop you mention.

Anyways, I agree that fear is a natural reaction and not always "wrong". I don't like great heights either. I mentioned I am a bit of a worry wart still ;) and I think that also has to do with me learning that there are consequences for actions. I no longer feel a great need to endanger my health. I'm now the sort of person who would get scared if I ever ate fugu fish sushi for example. :p:

If I think it's irrational, I try to do it anyways and then deal with the fear. If I think the fear is justified, I listen to it so my relationship with it has sobered up and become a bit more balanced since those 10 years ago. The important thing to me is it's not a major feature of my life anymore. I expect that will change when I have children one day, though. ;)

Hehe... Yea I suspect children are going to turn things upside down.


P.S...
Check the reported posts.

Yes, exactly! A lot of people still think that autistic people just flap their arms, click their tongues and are savants who can play a Mozart piece on the piano after hearing only once. Yes, there are autistic people like that, but it is a very small percentage of the total population of people with Autism Spectrum Disorders. My brother, who is 11, is on the higher-functioning end, almost Asperger's. He is 3 years ahead of kids his age when it comes to reading and writing. He knows how to pronounce difficult words correctly and he is a good speller and he uses the correct syntax most of the time. He is several years behind his classmates with conprehension, though. If you got him to read a Harry Potter book, for example, he would have difficulty summarizing the story if you asked him to do so.

I remember last year, my grandpa was saying all kinds of stuff to my mother about autistic people and "how he (my brother) will never, ever even go to high school and you can forget about university. He will just end up living on the street or something like that." Those were his exact words, and I know he comes from a different generation when they didn't understand autism so those people just ended up in institutions and hospital psych wards and the like. But it upset my parents terribly and they didn't speak to him again for a few months until my grandma passed away last fall.

Tore, I'm happy that you have been able to control your anxiety. I have the same general anxiety disorder (I think I posted that early in the thread) and am working on ways to control my anxious feelings. They were much worse when I was younger, because I didn't know how or where to channel those feelings, but now that I'm older the onset of symptoms has greatly decreased. I sometimes go for days or even weeks at a time where the anxiety is gone and it's such a liberating feeling. I was never on psych drugs, and I don't ever want to be. Yes, they can help a little but they're not the "miracle cure" that most people think they are.

I just have some tendencies.
But I have been getting somehow further from it with time.
When I was young, I didn't talk till I was 5.
In school they would think I was mute and deaf, as I wouldn't react with the teachers'.

Plus, I was totally obsessed with Maths, and logical explanations (which would make me lose track of time, trying to realise why the human skin gets red at times, and blue at others -an example).
I have gotten a perfect score in Maths since the age of 7, and on my weekends I used to wake up at 7 AM to do some extra maths exercises.

Then it hit me at the age of 17, I realised that Mathematics are very constricting, and got myself interested in Literature and Philosophy (Too many events related to the number 7).

^Let me know if you're really good with statistics too. I might need your help. ;)

I LOVE statistics and I love graphs (and of course lists)!
I got one, showing the evolution of books read by year / time :p:

As for maths, I haven't done much ever since I left school. Although I miss it at times, I just keep myself busy trying to work out some easy equations in my head.

Wow, that's horrible but I wouldn't resent him for saying those things. Like you said, it's just the generational gap... disabled people in the past were basically locked away from public.

I've done my share of stats but mostly in stochastic modelling and decision analysis which probably isn't terribly useful to you. You should ask Vanilla - it's her major ;)

I had a similar reaction when I was 18, in my case after I was raped. It took me several years to stop being angry with myself, stop feeling worthless, and instead feel stable again. The experience and my reaction made me much more empathetic with others who have been violated in some way, resulting in them feeling self-loathing and choosing risky behaviors.

Someone I love is dealing with bipolar disorder, as well as psychosis (losing touch with reality, kind of like living in a dream, I think). The drugs have bad side effects, but living without them produces worse results. Luckily nothing like the Parkinson's disease reaction has happened...that must have been horribly scary, Paloma! I didn't know such a severe side effect was possible.

One area of recent research on depression and bipolar disorder that I've been reading about is whether increasing one's intake of the fatty acid DHA helps reduce symptoms. DHA is a fatty acid found in large amounts in the brain (and retina). Some studies find DHA helps. You can buy DHA that has been purified from algae, which is nice. Our bodies synthesize DHA from the essential fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid, an omega-3 fatty acid (in ground flaxseeds and canola oil)...but some people's bodies are not able to do this conversion well so may benefit from eating DHA supplements.

I'm sorry, Tea Supremacist, about your baby. I had a cousin whose fetal baby died at 5 months in utero...she was a little girl...and her death was very hard for my cousin to handle.

Depression...I've got quite a few friends who deal with depression. One self-medicated for a while by smoking marijuana. Others took Paxil or Prozac and tried cognitive therapy to help practice altering their thoughts. I think it really is hard to imagine what depression or anxiety are like unless you experience them. I think people sometimes don't understand that our thoughts and feelings aren't always "under our own control."

The only disorder I've had...that is, a troubling psychological state that didn't result from a life event...is some mild anxiety attacks. I had the first one a couple years ago, and have had one or two per year. Knowing what they are helps.

The first time I had an anxiety attack was at night: I woke up, my heart racing, feeling like I had to breathe in deeply but couldn't catch my breath. I didn't know what was wrong. I thought maybe I was going to die...I felt light-headed and not normal. Fearing I might fall if I walked, I crawled out of the room to find someone to tap awake so that I wouldn't have to die alone, in case I did die.

The second time this happened, I had done some research and suspected an anxiety attack, but I called an on-call nurse to discuss symptoms, and she said it did sound like an anxiety attack and I should tell my doctor, which I did. Now I know to remind myself that no one dies from anxiety attacks, take relaxed breaths, and remember that it will pass.

Im REEEEEEEALLY mentally unstable. And I think too much..I could probably win a nobel peace prize for my theories..

I have fairly poor social skills. Also I think I might be bipolar (although I can't say I know too much about it) because often during the space of a day I will be really happy and hyper in like the afternoon but feel really depressed in the evening, for no apparant reason.

:(

This could stem from or get worsened by a poor diet as well, for example one where a generally infrequent intake of food is dominated by quick carbohydrates. ;)

Not saying I have a great diet but what I eat at around midday/early afternoon is pretty much the same as what I eat in the evening. And also I'll often feel happier in the morning, before I've eaten anything, so I don't think it's down to diet all that much, although I might try improving it anyway.

I relate to a lot of what people have said here, and was a bit surprised by some of the "revelations".

I'm just another speck on the wall here, many have complained about how I feel towards myself.

I'm absurdly insecure, quite anxious, and in the end just absolutely pathetic.

I'm afraid of everything, but I suppose those mind numbing cliches that are failure, rejection and being perceived negatively would be the major, or more general ones.

Just as I'm typing this, I feel like a shallow, self-absorbed twat whose "issues" or "disorders" are merely a figment of his imagination; who just wants to feel special or smart and tricks himself into these stupid fucking attention grabbing character flaws.

I complain a lot about what Zagarbal mentioned, a general, incessant sleepyness, and then couple that with constant worry or anxiety.

I think too much about things I shouldn't give a flying toss about, and then I worry about thinking about these things because I'm trying to fit in or feel special, and then I worry that I'm a blithering idiot with absolutely no personality, who constantly seeks ways to avoid being vulgar.

What the fuck am I doing anyway? This is just another bloody way of seeking attention or comfort, and in the end, no comfort or attention will ever satisfy or genuinely comfort me.

I suppose I should just accept myself and try hard to overcome my fears, like tore did, and I must say I was immensely impressed. But in the end, who am I? I've no idea. How can I exist properly if I don't have anything to fall back on? Then again, I'm afraid of what I'll find out.

Teenager hell, I suppose; here I am sounding like a vulgar cliche from an insipid soap opera. Atleast I'm too lonely to complain about girlfriends...Oh wait, that's not really a plus.

(I cannot stress how much I loathe myself for writing this up right now, I wish my story was as interesting as some of the regular members')

Hey, everyone feels like that sometimes, and sometimes you just have to vent it. The internet is nearly the perfect place to do it. You shouldn't be so hard on yourself, you seem like a pretty smart guy from what I've read on this site. :)

Huh, I think we might be the same person... :)

No matter what the issues, whether it's grief (perhaps my main issue), stress, anxiety or just general teenage angst, it's still a problem. I know I'm a self pitying, whiney cow a lot of the time but I've also worked out that that's just the way I am. For now, anyway. I'm lucky I've got a partner that's really supportive and a good network of friends and family, but it doesn't change the way I feel sometimes. And maybe it never will. It's sad, but I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that things might not be so great for me, that we might not get another chance at having a family and that I may well lead a semi-miserable exsistence for the forseeable future. From what I can see, Tore is a lucky, strong person in that he is able to pull himself out of his problems (be it on his own or with help from friends and family), but some people just aren't designed like that. It's nothing to be ashamed of that you can't do this sh*t on you're own.

And Dr Phil moment over. There was my good advice of the day...

So i took this personality disorder test and, it would seem that there is a considerable amount wrong with me.

Disorder | Rating
Paranoid: High
Schizoid: Moderate
Schizotypal: High
Antisocial: Low
Borderline: Very High
Histrionic: Low
Narcissistic: High
Avoidant: Very High
Dependent: Very High
Obsessive-Compulsive: Low

Ha nice thread!

One of my worst character traits is that I am an obsessive control freak - one of my best friends now hated my guts for about 3 years before we became friends. We used to be lab partners in science lessons, and I would never let her do anything in case she got it wrong or something... I was such a bitch to her!

I'm also ridiculously insecure about anything and everything, regardless of how irrelevant it may be :confused:

Thanks for the kind words.

Your depression or general lack of well being seems much more justified than mine, judging from your last post.

I'm glad you're surrounded by people who support you. I just fear that in my case that won't help at all. No one can help me, I've got to pull myself through, just like tore seems to have done.

And yes, we do seem to share some similarities (I dont know which smiley to use in this situation...).

Thanks for the Dr. Phil moment, heh.

Yeah, I'm like that, too. Most of the time it's no big deal, but there are times when it gets really bad and I just can't possibly function properly.

Nobody's reason for feeling like that is any more or less justified than the next person. Some people's brain just work in different ways to others. And tbh I've always suffered from depression, I was just unfortunate in having an event that made it worse, that's all.

Pulling yourself together is easier said than done no matter what the situation. As much as I have a lot of support, it's still quite a bit easier to talk to people out of the loop sometimes, so to speak. As mentioned, having a rant on the internet, no matter how self pitying you feel doing it, can be a good thing.

You're quite right.

Have you really just given up, though? Settled with the idea that however good your life is going to be, you're always going to be disappointed and/or miserable?

Perhaps not given up totally. Just got used to the fact that this is who I am and there's not much I can do to change it. Don't get me wrong, I don't wallow around 24/7, there's good days and bad days. I've just learnt to deal with the inevitibility that the bad days won't ever go away, no matter what I do. I've always been a pessimist when it's come to myself though.

Would you say you're optimistic when it comes to others?

Because I sort of have that feeling.

I'm a pessimist when it comes to myself too, and I really, really feel like telling you it's all going to be OK and that you can't give up and all that jazz, whilst knowing I'm not really following what I'm preaching.

Oddly enough, you never struck me as an anxious person. Then again, I've been told I come off as pretty self-assured (I'm pretty sure I'm making up words now).

Anyhow, anxiety, major problem. I'm getting better at dealing with people, but I still feeze up at inappropriate moments...not sure if anything can be done about it cept try to be with lots of people....

I know what you mean. It's a lot easier to feel bad for people and want to help them rather than helping yourself. I don't know if I'd say I'm optimistic towards others. I'm honest. And if I think they're just being p*ssies then I'll tell them. But because I (and sh*t loads of others here) know what it's like to go through bad depression I kind of have a sympathy towards those that are genuinely having a tough time. I'll never sit there and say "Don't worry, it'll all be fine" because it might not be. It might be something more than teenage angst or whatever, or, on the flip side, you might look back in a years time and think 'what the f*ck was I whining about?'. I'd rather just try and give something helpful for the short term and say 'try and keep your chin up'. It's a massive cliche but talking to someone, even if it's just to vent and you get no advice from it can be a big help. No matter who you're talking to. As long as it's someone patient enough just to listen.

And nobody ever practises what they preach!

You're quite right, I don't even know what else to say.

'Nuff said really. Sh*t happens. And when it does there's always rum and cigarettes!

Some of you got some crazy problems.


I've got OCD, some days worse than others. An example would be that I'm typing and my left pink hits the "Shift" key...if I'm having a fit I have to hit a similar key (space bar, caps lock, etc.) with my right pinky, even though it serves no actual function to what I'm doing. Or if I'm walking down a sidewalk and I touch a fence or something with my right hand, I need to turn around and touch the same spot with my left hand, and make sure that it happens the same number of times.

I'm also an agoraphobic. I've grown up in this area my whole life, and I'm terrified to leave it ever. Started when I was about 10 or 11 and my parents got divorced - I remember my mom took me and my little sisters to visit relatives up north and I was just terrified for some reason, and ever since then any time I've had to leave this stretch of land (this city and the surrounding area down to the coast) I've been terribly nervous. It's curtailed in recent years, though the last time I went on any sort of trip was 2008.

Damn, man, you must escape Philly.

I definitely, definitely know you what mean here. I really wish I could know when I was gonna have a good or bad day beforehand. It just sucks cause I'll be by myself for a couple days and then someone will call me out of the blue to hang out. Then I try and get all excited and happy and fun but then I'll still feel the same and I struggle to try and hold a conversation and since I have a lack of a social life it's not like I have much anything to say. That's usually why when I try and bring something up someone usually says "ohh yeah I think you mentioned that to me before".