Just want to b happy!

[pink17]

Im having one of my feeling low days today,i have been ok for a while now,medication helping and i have even been on 5 dates with a guy,we seem to get on well,but i think im getting my hopes up too much!Im wondering if im more interested then him,just dont know!Just keep thinking happiness isnt something that shouldnt happen to me,cus something always goes wrong and i get hurt.

[alias_kev]

I noticed you'd had no replies and so thought I'd try and throw a response in. Hope you're feeling a bit better than you did yesterday. You didn't quite say if you were feeling low in a depressed way or with lots of anxiety/fear, but I'll assume you mean depressed. I say that as I tend to get peaks of anxiety more than of depression.

It does seem quite common for people to get this crushing depression for a day or three, even during their apparent improvement overall. It also seems to erase most of their sense of progress until it weakens again, which leaves them feeling very very down when really its just a glitch in a real period of improvement. I'm not sure if its the original condition, uneven effects from the medication or a reaction to new outside pressures. It can be quite frightening at the other end of a message, so it must be ghastly to have.

Well done really (or good luck) because your post sounds pretty logical (if sad) compared to some stuff I've read! I think a few characteristics may be playing with your mind:

First - Negative Anticipation. your feeling quite a bit better and some good things are happening, including this guy. Good things can be a challenge for us sufferers because its easy to worry about them ending. Some people go as far as to avoid nice things so that they can't go wrong, or reject a partner so the partner can't reject them! To my mind this is something we have to really learn to fight. You are expressing a similar feeling "happiness isn't something...". Unless you are some evil person, which seems unlikely then saying that isn't fair to you!

Second - Insecurity. There is a bit of this inherent in almost any relationship, let alone a new one. After all we don't live with the other person 100% for the day and we don't know at all what is going on their head. Anxiety sufferers can therefore project all sorts of negative interpretations on the other person's behavour and thoughts, and that's just in the present, in the now. If we let ourselves dwell too much on the future, well as anything can happen we naturally tend to assume the worst. I suspect the best we can do is to react to what they are saying and doing now and a bit of what we think/hope they might do/be in the future. Its sort of accepting the uncertainty but avoiding letting it be an insecurity. Third - Wishful Thinking. Sometimes as sufferers we let our hopes take over completely. So we assume the new job/guy/girl/car/pet/etc is the thing that will be amazing or even make everything right. Sometimes we do that in the face of all the evidence. This can be dangerous for us emotionally because if the reality deviates from our expectations we get clobbered. Its also why some people throw themselves into a relationship or perhaps even into a bottle. The irrational assumption is that this one will be better! The trick is to balance the hope that this will be better against the real evidence in the now. So if your guy is nice, is friendly, treats you well then that is brilliant as it is! Fourth - Uncertainty. This is really revisiting 1, 2 & 3. Something which I find very hard and I think many anxiety sufferers do is uncertainty. The problem is that the real world is full of quite a bit of it. We have a habit of avoiding that by pushing our ideas and thinking to extremes - the irrational beliefs that CBT talks about and tries to alter. So we might assume that you're bound to get hurt so why bother, or what if he does not feel identically (yet!), or what if he's mr perfect. The flaw is that all these ideas are too extreme. We can try and turn it on its head and say: "it might end well and anyway the journey is nice", "what's wrong with liking someone anyway", and "maybe he's a good friend/relationship for now".

I realise this is all a lot easier to write than do. Boy don't I. I hope that maybe its helped to project your thinking along more positive lines, and to help you recognise the crazy things our heads come up with.

[pink17]

Thank u for your advice!!was really kind of u!helped me alot!im feeling lots better now,so must have been having one of my down days!thanks again and i hope u r well x