tired, lonely and depressed

[kirstenmonica]

Hello,
ive been feeling so down with my agoraphobia lately, not being able to sleep, appetite not the best and just damn right down.
Anyway, the last few days ive not been able to shift thought about ending it all. My friend gave me some temazepam the other day to help me sleep, it didnt work. ive found myself slowly taking more & more pills each night, few temazepam, few nytol and few co codamol, just hoping to sleep and not wake up. waking up for me is the worse part knowing i have to go through it all again. So this morning i woke up , and ended up speaking to my sister about it all. She called the Mental health team and they came to see me , and its safe to say they havent exactly helped ( they just said theyll get me some therapy as soon as they can) i still feel exactly the same as i did this morning even though i told them everything and tried to be as open as possible.

what im trying to say is i dont know what else to do , im so scared im going to harm myself but im 22 and i just cannot carry on living like this. if theres anybody out there who has any suggestions as what to do or has/is in my situation please message me
thanks for reading
xx

[Annie0904]

You can and will get better but it does take time. The therapy will help you but it is just unfortunate that we always have to wait for it. I think you need to go to your GP as soon as possible and tell him/her how you are feeling. I have been were I just thought I couldn't go on any longer but there is light at the end of the:hugs::hugs: xx

[Tufty]

Hello Kirsten,
Well done for speaking to your sister about it and getting it out in the open. Unfortunately there isn't any magic that the Mental Health team can do, it is a question of letting time pass but you need to do whatever it takes to help yourself now, do not wait for the therapy to start. It does sound like you may need medication other than night sedation, tempazepam can have a depressing affect and shouldn't be taken with Nytol, are you taking an antidepressant?
There are some good suggestions in the top tips section of this forum to help with depression - try to incorporate some.
It does sound like you're at rock bottom and the only way is up, and there is an up and normal life ahead of you, you may not be able to see it now but I assure you there is. Anxiety leading to agrophobia is a debilitating and depressing disorder but it can be overcome, I was agrophobic for 9 months and became very depressed as a result, I too had input from the mental health team with limited effect.
What worked for me was a combination of things including antidepressants, planning to do things and pacing myself - even if I didn't feel like doing something and didn't enjoy it - I did it anyway. I read everything I could about panic disorder, CBT and agrophobia, did relaxation and breathing exercises, starting taking vitamin supplements and exercising (indoors). If I had the internet back then (this was 10 years ago) this forum would of been an excellent source of help.
I slowly recovered, it was hard work but the agrophobia and depression disappeared, I can safely say I am not agrophobic now, I have no worries about going anywhere, even flying abroad. I still have anxiety and panic attacks but I will not let them affect my life to the extent it did before.

Please try to find hope in this message because there are always ways to recover, I remember waking everyday thinking 'oh no, I've got to do this all over again', it's not you talking, it's the depression taking over. I believe you cannot fight anxiety and depression but you can work at managing them and make them have less of an impact on you.

Finally, sorry I know it's a long one, being scared that you will harm yourself if a good sign, if you couldn't care less you wouldn't be scared so that's a good starting point. You want to get better and therefore you will x
Sam

[Cocomademoiselle]

Sending you thoughts and lots of hope. Did the mental health crisis team put you on any medication or a plan of management ? Will they be visiting you daily or weekly ?

[kirstenmonica]

hi people, first thank you all for the advice, it makes me feel better just knowing theres people out there and im not alone.

Annie, i can't get to my gp because of the agoraphobia, but the mental health team told me theyd call for me.

Sam , im on paroxatine , have been for 3 years now but its not working. Thanks for sharing what you have been through its nice to know people have come out of the other side and helps me believe this isnt it for me.

coco, thank you, no they havent put me on any meds but they said they'll be in touch with me regarding therapy and talking with my gp etc

xxxx

[Annie0904]

Ask your doctor to visit you, mine does home visits as I can't always get to the surgery x

[Bill]

A couple of old threads of mine which I'm hoping will give you hope or at least some comfort.:hugs:

Wiping the Memory



Picture walking towards a door. When you reach the door you take hold of the handle and slowly turn it. As the door opens, you observe a table standing in the middle of a room which is totally covered with beautiful scented flowers.

After standing a while to admire them, you leave, closing the door behind you.

However, you can't stop the memory of them so the next day you can't resist going back to view them once more. Still this isn't enough and every day thereafter you feel drawn to this room to see them again and again.

One day though, you walk up to the door just as you have countless time before but when you open the door, instead of seeing the flowers, you are suddenly confronted by a swarm of bees that begin to attack you.

You run as fast you can to escape them because you feel so terrified of them.

This experience though has had such a frightening effect, that every time you even just think about going back to see the flowers, you start feeling panicky because all you can now think of are the swarm of bees and the fear you felt rather than the beautiful scented flowers you once couldn't resist seeing.

However, you now also begin to worry about the anxious symptoms you experienced. You begin to convince yourself that these feelings aren't just because of fear but that there must be something seriously wrong with you. You now feel incapable of even attempting to get out of the house.

One day though, you pluck up the courage to go back to this room but you still feel very fearful that the bees might still be there waiting for you but you also now fear experiencing the fear and the symptoms the fear produced . However, upon opening the door, the flowers are once more there to be admired but instead of being able to enjoy them, you suddenly begin to feel panicky and have to run out again even though there are no bees to be seen.

Every time thereafter you attempt to see these flowers, you still feel forced to run because of the panicky feelings you still feel.

Only after a long period of time once you've convinced yourself that the bees really aren't coming back, are you then able to enter this room as before to admire the flowers without feeling fear of the bees or the fearful symptoms they produced and therefore without the need of having to escape.


Now picture the room of flowers as life before anxiety.
The bees as too much stress.
The fear that creates the symptoms that too much stress produce.
The health fears that the symptoms produce.
The memory of feeling fear that now creates worry.
The worry that now creates memories which induces the same panicky symptoms.
How wiping the memory can help get us back to where we were before our first panic attack.

Bear in mind though that you cannot expect to extinguish a frying pan fire unless you turn the gas off first! Where there is too much stress, panics will still exist so only by finding ways to reduce stress can we effectively begin to overcome panics.



Fear of living



Just something I've been thinking about recently which I thought I'd share to see if others can relate with it.

Have you ever woken up on a Monday morning feeling extremely anxious without being aware of actually thinking anything? Could it be explained purely by the fact that you're dreading going to work and the stress involved at work all week?

What if you don't work but still feel very anxious?

What if you feel the same anxious feelings Every morning whether you work or not?

If so, why when you're not actually aware of thinking anything?

Is this you?

This is what I've been thinking about and this is my theory...

Actually I think there are 2 issues going on which go hand in hand which are both caused by our personalities.

The first issue are Panic Attacks. They first occur when we are feeling overstressed in our lives. Maybe it's a build of pressure or simply just a bad day but once we expereience one attack, we then become afraid of experiencing another attack. They create a "fear of "Feeling" fear" so that when we wake up each morning, our subconscious thinks for us without us realising. For instance, if you're walking along and find a huge hole in front of you, your first thought isn't about falling down it because instinct takes over telling us to stop. We don't actually think anything. It's a learnt response to a known threat to our safety. The fear of feeling fear caused by panics also therefore becomes programmed in our minds so that we wake up with a habit of fearing them and getting through the day ahead.

However, not everyone experiences actual panic attacks and yet they still wake up every morning feeling extremely anxious. This I feel is the second issue. Whether or not we suffer panic attacks, we find every day an effort to get through because we know somwhere along the line we'l be facing fear. This fear could be created by something read in a newspaper, something heard on TV or radio, whilst we're doing something such as simply going out, doing the school run or shopping or even by frightening thoughts that won't leave us alone because all these things stress us.

In other words, whether we experience panics or wake feeling afraid of facing the day for other reasons, we wake with "a fear of Living" because life to us means danger and risk in whatever we hear, see or do. Fear rules our lives.

Then I thought, why do we fear living so much and why do we find living so stressful? Why can't we just wake looking forward to each day?

This is where we come down to our personalities. We're sensitive which mean everything we experience affects us more than others. We're also often "born worriers" so we worry about everything! This worry then creates self-doubt so we then qustion our own thoughts and abilities which then means we find each day an effort because self-doubt then causes us to feel anxious because we feel so uncertain. I think we're also born insecure which also creates this feeling of needing comfort and reassurance to make us feel safe.

All these things then make us feel "trapped" by our own fear of living. We cannot control life or make life safe so living fills us with fear which we cannot escape because living means taking risk.

This is why we need to learn to accept life for what it is. Bad things happen which cause hurt and pain but they're just a part of life. We cannot be "perfect" because we're only human. Perfectionism causes rigidness and tension because we won't allow ourselves mistakes which I feel maybe all connected with this need to feel safe.

However, there is one quality which I feel connects everything - Confidence. How many of you would say you're a confident person and therefore don't fear living? If you fear getting up each day then I would say that you're probably lacking confidence either because of the way you were born or because you've suffered bad experiences which have knocked you back.

Although I feel we need to accept life for what it is, I also firmly believe that if we don't build self-confidence, we will always struggle to cope with living. Confidence is Key. With confidence in our own abilities we will feel we can overcome anything. A sportsman is often accused of being arrogant but if he doesn't believe in himself, he will never win because nerves will rule him. I find that myself. If I'm feeling confident things work but if my confience is lacking then I don't believe in myself so more often than not things don't come off.

Someone who is confident will only need meds if they lost their confidence or if they suffered from depression. Meds ease our symptoms so that we feel more confident in ourselves. They are a substitute for confidence.

So the question is how do we build confidence? This is where I was listening to this darts player the other day. I found his attitude an inspiration! He simply said "Never give up" and "Practise". In other words, to overcome anxiety we need willpower and determination but we also need the knowledge and experience to learn the "right" techniques for our particular fears, and as we overcome each fear our confidence builds, our worries lessen and our anxious feelings ease because we start to believe in ourselves.

I realise that when someone is feeling very ill with anxiety it can feel extremely difficult to pull ourselves out because anxiety destroys our confidence so the future is filled with pessimism but I feel with the right help, even with meds to provide that bit of extra confidence we need, it is possible to wake up looking forward to another day in our lives.

If we give up, we give up on hope and hope will give up on us.

Anyway, just some thoughts.:hugs:

[kirstenmonica]

Thanks Bill, this is a great read and makes alot of sense , thank you :hugs: