Jascot
08-08-13, 02:36
This is a long story and it's hard to know where to start as I don't know what is relevant and what is unrelated but I'll give it my best shot.
I believe I suffer from what I can only best describe as some sort of anxiety or paranoia (not using medical definitions, these just seem suitable words to describe my feelings).
Such feelings began around the death of my first Grandfather when I was roughly 11 and developed further when I was approximately 12 if memory serves me correctly. It was a difficult time for me and I suppose the first time I was ever really exposed to a real sense of mortality. I always recall having a sense of dread prior to at least one of their deaths, I feel bad for this but I can't remember whether it was my Grandfather on my Mother or Father's side who died first. Anyway, one of my Grandparents died following a struggle with cancer. I knew it would happen and it filled me with dread as I anticipated the news of his passing and yet I had no emotion to express upon receiving of the news. I felt a kind of emptiness but looking back this felt like the first time I ever felt uncomfortable with feeling emotions and even more so: expressing them. The last time I saw my Grandfather was when he was at a hospice towards the end of his struggle. I recall trying to avoid having to see him because i was scared of my own emotions. I managed to hold it together while in the room with i'm but the second I stepped out of the door I broke down crying.
I cried uncontrollably at both of their funerals despite earlier not being able to feel anything at all following the initial dread that preluded my knowledge of their death and the act of expressing emotion in front of people filled me with shame. I don't know how long after their deaths that my feelings of anxiety first started but it was no more that a year later; i recall on some occasions trying to talk to my Granddad as if he were looking down at me from heaven often while hiding in bed, crying (i no longer believe in an afterlife or god).
It sounds ridiculous but the last thing my Granddad told me was to get a haircut and this has always stuck with me. I took the comment to heart. It was such a petty thing but those were the last words i heard from him towards me before he died and i think that has relevance to my experiences that were to come.
I don't know quite how my feelings developed to the point where i began self harming both physically and mentally but this began when I was between 13 and 14-years-old. I couldn't take any form of comment or criticism or negativity, no matter how small. Of course, combined with my inability or fear,almost, of expressing emotion I wouldn't react to it at the time, but I'd feel it hit a nerve within me. I'd keep the feelings bottled up inside of myself where they'd often grow out of control; my mind twisting and distorting what I'd been told or had said to me into far more vicious and insidious jabs. I'd hide these feelings until I was alone and then let them out, my own voice inside my head tearing me to shreds over some of the most insignificant things. I would bully myself in this sense until I was in tears and often pull at my own hair or hit myself in the head with my fists. At one point I wrote all the things I could hear being said in my head on the ceiling above my bed so that It was the first and last thing when i woke up in the morning and went to sleep at night. At the very worst points I did resort to cutting although funnily enough my own self-disgust at the act and what I had resorted to drove me to try and sort myself out.
As the years progressed I found it increasingly hard to make friends and socialise which at the same time drove me to become increasingly dependant on the small number of people i'd actually consider friends rather than simply people I knew. Much of the feelings I've already described stayed with me until I was 16-going-on-17, inspired by various other pressures such as fears that my parents' relationship was deteriorating and my inability to ever meet my own self-expectations.
Another silly little event that sticks out for me happened while on a walking expedition as part of a national award (DofE). It came the point for me to navigate for my team (the job of navigation had to rotate within the group) and yet I felt i didn't have the trust of anyone in the group. I eventually had to had over navigation to someone else but inside the feeling of failure and low self-confidence was eating me up. For the rest of the expedition I had to distance myself from the rest of the group, In my mind everyone in my group detested me; I felt physically sick and as on verge of breaking down. It sounds stupid I know but this is a lot more typical of the sort of feelings I've had since (the past 2-to-3 years). The mental and physical self abuse has gone but I'm constantly tortured by a belief that many of the people around me, even those closest to me, family and friends, actually hate me or talk about me maliciously behind my back and such thoughts can be triggered by the most inane thing such as someone not responding to a text message or IM. I'm often scared to go out alone and as pathetic as it sounds; find my eyes tearing up when I am alone in a public space. This particular aspect may have been a result of being assaulted in a public space when i was 14. I felt that I had gotten over a lot of my issues in recent years but a occurrence that took place about a month ago has dragged me almost back to the point I was at 3 or 4 years ago however the voices that taunt me have been replaced by feelings of pressure, emotional weakness, dis-empowerment, panic and being trapped. I've broken down recently in the privacy of my own room quite frequently over the last 3 or 4 months in prior to the event which hit me hard recently In which I lost a close friend (not death). These feelings can come suddenly and unannounced although tend to almost only ever happen when I am alone or feel that way. Recently I've felt uneasy and anxious almost all throughout the day. I'm scared to get a job as I fear interaction with people who may be rude or say something that could result in me breaking down yet at the same time I'm under pressure from my parents to find work (I'm too scared to talk to them about all that I've expressed above because of my discomfort at expressing emotions) so feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. On top of this I'm very much confused in terms of my sexuality and because I find it so hard to build relationships with people due to the levels of trust i need to build in people i know before I can feel comfortable enough to develop greater feelings for them. I often feel as if i am in need of a great deal of physical comfort such as cuddling simply due to my need to feel as if someone is there for me - luckily I can find this in my parents although truth be told I feel it is time i grew up a bit and found someone else I could gain this sort of comfort from. Recently i've been finding great comfort in both music and it cutting the inside of my nose with my nail to give myself nose bleeds as a way of calming myself down. I'm somewhat in denial as to that being self harm as i've always had a sensitive nose and it requires no real effort to cause myself to bleed from there.
I'm an 18-year-old male. I'm too scared to talk to my parents about the above but at the same time i feel like i need to do something. I'm too scared to see a GP, almost as if i won't be able to express my true feelings accurately enough and for him to tell me that i don't have anything wrong with me. It sounds selfish but I just want to be able to help myself, this is no way to live and I feel caged up by my own inhibitions.
Can anyone relate? What does this sound like? Depression, Anxiety? I want to know so I can start to help myself. I think me writing this confession is one of the first steps towards doing just that. Especially as I plan to share it with some of my close friends and open up about myself to them through it.
Thanks for putting up with this wall of text.
I believe I suffer from what I can only best describe as some sort of anxiety or paranoia (not using medical definitions, these just seem suitable words to describe my feelings).
Such feelings began around the death of my first Grandfather when I was roughly 11 and developed further when I was approximately 12 if memory serves me correctly. It was a difficult time for me and I suppose the first time I was ever really exposed to a real sense of mortality. I always recall having a sense of dread prior to at least one of their deaths, I feel bad for this but I can't remember whether it was my Grandfather on my Mother or Father's side who died first. Anyway, one of my Grandparents died following a struggle with cancer. I knew it would happen and it filled me with dread as I anticipated the news of his passing and yet I had no emotion to express upon receiving of the news. I felt a kind of emptiness but looking back this felt like the first time I ever felt uncomfortable with feeling emotions and even more so: expressing them. The last time I saw my Grandfather was when he was at a hospice towards the end of his struggle. I recall trying to avoid having to see him because i was scared of my own emotions. I managed to hold it together while in the room with i'm but the second I stepped out of the door I broke down crying.
I cried uncontrollably at both of their funerals despite earlier not being able to feel anything at all following the initial dread that preluded my knowledge of their death and the act of expressing emotion in front of people filled me with shame. I don't know how long after their deaths that my feelings of anxiety first started but it was no more that a year later; i recall on some occasions trying to talk to my Granddad as if he were looking down at me from heaven often while hiding in bed, crying (i no longer believe in an afterlife or god).
It sounds ridiculous but the last thing my Granddad told me was to get a haircut and this has always stuck with me. I took the comment to heart. It was such a petty thing but those were the last words i heard from him towards me before he died and i think that has relevance to my experiences that were to come.
I don't know quite how my feelings developed to the point where i began self harming both physically and mentally but this began when I was between 13 and 14-years-old. I couldn't take any form of comment or criticism or negativity, no matter how small. Of course, combined with my inability or fear,almost, of expressing emotion I wouldn't react to it at the time, but I'd feel it hit a nerve within me. I'd keep the feelings bottled up inside of myself where they'd often grow out of control; my mind twisting and distorting what I'd been told or had said to me into far more vicious and insidious jabs. I'd hide these feelings until I was alone and then let them out, my own voice inside my head tearing me to shreds over some of the most insignificant things. I would bully myself in this sense until I was in tears and often pull at my own hair or hit myself in the head with my fists. At one point I wrote all the things I could hear being said in my head on the ceiling above my bed so that It was the first and last thing when i woke up in the morning and went to sleep at night. At the very worst points I did resort to cutting although funnily enough my own self-disgust at the act and what I had resorted to drove me to try and sort myself out.
As the years progressed I found it increasingly hard to make friends and socialise which at the same time drove me to become increasingly dependant on the small number of people i'd actually consider friends rather than simply people I knew. Much of the feelings I've already described stayed with me until I was 16-going-on-17, inspired by various other pressures such as fears that my parents' relationship was deteriorating and my inability to ever meet my own self-expectations.
Another silly little event that sticks out for me happened while on a walking expedition as part of a national award (DofE). It came the point for me to navigate for my team (the job of navigation had to rotate within the group) and yet I felt i didn't have the trust of anyone in the group. I eventually had to had over navigation to someone else but inside the feeling of failure and low self-confidence was eating me up. For the rest of the expedition I had to distance myself from the rest of the group, In my mind everyone in my group detested me; I felt physically sick and as on verge of breaking down. It sounds stupid I know but this is a lot more typical of the sort of feelings I've had since (the past 2-to-3 years). The mental and physical self abuse has gone but I'm constantly tortured by a belief that many of the people around me, even those closest to me, family and friends, actually hate me or talk about me maliciously behind my back and such thoughts can be triggered by the most inane thing such as someone not responding to a text message or IM. I'm often scared to go out alone and as pathetic as it sounds; find my eyes tearing up when I am alone in a public space. This particular aspect may have been a result of being assaulted in a public space when i was 14. I felt that I had gotten over a lot of my issues in recent years but a occurrence that took place about a month ago has dragged me almost back to the point I was at 3 or 4 years ago however the voices that taunt me have been replaced by feelings of pressure, emotional weakness, dis-empowerment, panic and being trapped. I've broken down recently in the privacy of my own room quite frequently over the last 3 or 4 months in prior to the event which hit me hard recently In which I lost a close friend (not death). These feelings can come suddenly and unannounced although tend to almost only ever happen when I am alone or feel that way. Recently I've felt uneasy and anxious almost all throughout the day. I'm scared to get a job as I fear interaction with people who may be rude or say something that could result in me breaking down yet at the same time I'm under pressure from my parents to find work (I'm too scared to talk to them about all that I've expressed above because of my discomfort at expressing emotions) so feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. On top of this I'm very much confused in terms of my sexuality and because I find it so hard to build relationships with people due to the levels of trust i need to build in people i know before I can feel comfortable enough to develop greater feelings for them. I often feel as if i am in need of a great deal of physical comfort such as cuddling simply due to my need to feel as if someone is there for me - luckily I can find this in my parents although truth be told I feel it is time i grew up a bit and found someone else I could gain this sort of comfort from. Recently i've been finding great comfort in both music and it cutting the inside of my nose with my nail to give myself nose bleeds as a way of calming myself down. I'm somewhat in denial as to that being self harm as i've always had a sensitive nose and it requires no real effort to cause myself to bleed from there.
I'm an 18-year-old male. I'm too scared to talk to my parents about the above but at the same time i feel like i need to do something. I'm too scared to see a GP, almost as if i won't be able to express my true feelings accurately enough and for him to tell me that i don't have anything wrong with me. It sounds selfish but I just want to be able to help myself, this is no way to live and I feel caged up by my own inhibitions.
Can anyone relate? What does this sound like? Depression, Anxiety? I want to know so I can start to help myself. I think me writing this confession is one of the first steps towards doing just that. Especially as I plan to share it with some of my close friends and open up about myself to them through it.
Thanks for putting up with this wall of text.