Anxiety, Depression, and Guilt. What Can I do?

Hey Everyone,

     Well this is going to be the first time I've really ever posted anything on a dicussion board about anything personal, so it may not be as clear as possible.  I'm going to try and be as forthright as I can here, as I've never been able to do that with anyone in person, including councillors.

      Anyways, for the past few months I've been suffering from an absolutely roller coaster of ups and downs.  I've been like this my entire life, generally in a good mood ([almost] always on the outside anyways), until someone says one negative thing towards me (my actions, ideas, work, etc.), or until I said something and was actively ignored or responded to with criticism (especially if it was something I was having trouble getting the courage to say).  Hit any of those triggers and I drop into a pit of introversion and extreme social anxiety for about 20 to 30 minutes, at which time I've generally slowly pulled back out of it and re-engaged in conversations.  This is a lot more prominent with members of my family (the closer they are to me the harder it hits), and doesn't effect me in the same way with my peers.  

    The high's and low's I've been experiencing lately don't necessarily seem to be brought on by anything, rather I seem to transition between the two.  There is a half decent amount of middle ground, however I'm generally very positive about everything when in a normal mood.

    These high's and low's are generally defined by the following characteristics : 

         High : 

           + Feel incredibly optimistic.

           + Feel very proactive, and have lot's of energy (especially mentally).

           + Feel as if I want to self-improve, achieve, and plan out how I'm going to do it (very hard to describe.  I'm an incredibly ambitious person if that could have anything to do with this).

           + Unbelievably outgoing and postive.  I can bring anyone from the depths of hell to back to planet earth and positivity within minutes.  It's an incredible feeling, almost intoxicating.

           + My problem solving skills go through the roof.  Everything seems to be within my reach.

        Low : 

           - Either incredibly sad, or completely emotionless.

           - Hopeless

           - The future that I'm always so excited to realize becomes grey, and I lose all motivation.

           - Little to no self worth.

           - Frequent contemplation of the idea of suicide; I haven't actually considered it for over 18 months (before that I was living with my Mom and didn't look forward to the future, my only goal was to make money and move out).  Once I get to thinking about actually being gone, what I'm going to miss, how badly I wanted to achieve all of my goals, I realize I really don't want to do this.

           - I will think back through the last 12 months, recall every event that I regret happening (whether I was involved or not), and convince myself that it was my fault. 

           - Overall I'll just feel incredibly overwhelmed, incapable, and inadequate.  

           - I feel like I have no real skills, and that no one could possibly ever make use of me.

           - I feel like I have a massive (false) sense of entitlement, and that I take everything for granted, and have begun to hate myself for it.

          Making the transition from low back to middle ground is generally very difficult for me unless I am completely alone.  

          I'm not sure how much my background will matter here, and I'm not sure anyone will actually want to read this entire thing, but I'll give a brief recollection of my 17 years and 4 months on this earth.  It will probably be a lot longer than intended as I'm good at rambling, so feel free to skip down to the bottom.  You may also notice I tend to pick out unnecessary details and somehow miss the general theme.  I guess it's just my flawed way of story telling.  Unfortunately intial years are based on what I've been able to extract as truth from everything both sides of my family have told me (which unfortunately directly contradict eachother more often than not).

  I pasted the background bit into Word and it 5,142 words, so I put it on a text website so that you wouldn't have to scroll through it all if you didn't want to read it.  http://justpaste.it/background5142

     Now, as promised that was likely some sort of rambling record, and I apologize for that.  If you actually read the entire thing, I can't express my gratitude for you taking that amount of time out of your day just for me.

     Anyways on to what I am asking for help with.  

      Lately I've been suffering from anxiety attacks (I've had them before just never with any consistency, and never more than one in a row), which I don't think are nearly as bad as what others go through (I've never felt that I was going to die, and I usually don't get physical pain in my chest), however are starting to interfere with my daily life.  Just today I lost a bunch of money, and knowing how important every single dollar is right now, I started panicking.  Before I knew it I was hyperventilating and having a full on Anxiety Attack.  I was completely depersonalized, and had absolutely no control over myself.  I cancelled all of my plans with my Mom (I'm currently in Vancouver), and finally collapsed on the floor of my room shaking and hyperventilating still.  Once the first began to subside I would notice the change and somehow another would begin.  My Dad kept telling me to stop because it wasn't a big deal but it was like listening to a TV playing in the background.  Upon a lack of immediate response he started losing it on me which just made things worse.  After about 45 minutes of this, I was calmer, but I felt this feeling through my back, neck, and the back of my head that wasn't quite like pain, but was almost painfully uncomfortable.  Kind of like a less painful version of when your leg falls asleep for a while and is waking back up.  I soon after fell asleep right there on the floor for several hours.

     I woke up in one of my typical lows, except with the added benefit of feeling incredibly embarassed and ashamed of the way I had acted, and regretting missing out on my plans.  I had a similar attack just before I left for Vancouver a few days ago.  The idea of being stuck in between my Mom and Dad again (not only do they have different logic, so I can never justify why I'm saying yes or no to my Mom about things, and I have to lie to her about my Dad's work schedule and how everything is going up north) just set me off for about an hour.

     The other big one is depression, which has been causing me to just feel empty, emotionless, and completely unmotivated at times.  Whenever I am feeling depressed I generally slip into my lowest of lows, and stay there for hours.  I have very unfortunately timed and unpredictable mood swings as well.  I don't cry at all, I don't really cry anymore unless I'm having a really bad anxiety attack, then I am susceptible.  I also derealize quite frequently and for extended periods of time (days / weeks).  I'm not sure if either of those things have anything to do with depression but might as well include it.

       The other part of this that is really interfering with my day to day has been my irritability lately.  I find the smallest things annoying.  That may just be withdrawal though.

      The rest of it is feeling guilty for absolutely everything, and being embarassed about a lot of things with my parents.  The guilty part is a little easier to understand, but the bit about being embarassed?  All of my friends seem to be fine telling their parents that they drink, or anything else, while I can't even stand the idea of telling my Dad I want to start lifting weights.  For some reason I find that embarassing.  I've literally had to tell him that we're getting a home gym for him just so that I can use it when he's not there.  Lots of other things like that too.  If he asks me something about a girls appearance, I always give a neutral answer (i.e. She's really hot would be responded to with, she's ok).

      And lastly, I haven't had an appetite for months (this was while I was high as well.  I always thought that would solve the problem but it never did). 

      I'm really not sure what to make of all of this, and I've just been carrying it around with me in my head, thinking about it all constantly.  I'm sorry to be dropping all of my problems on you guys, but I really hope I can get at least some form of advice to try and better myself.  Even if I wanted to see a councillor for this, the town we live in only has a travelling one who comes for 3 days every 12 weeks, and we're almost 500km from the nearest town.

   Well that is all.  I just sat down and wrote this without really thinking about it so I'm sorry for how unorganized it is, and how little sense it might make.  Of course I didn't cover a lot of the things that bother me, but this isn't a councillor to whine to it's a discussion board.  On top of that it's now 3:45AM, and I've only gotten a few hours of sleep in the last couple of days, so I'm probably not entirely coherent.

I truly appreciate you taking the time to read this, and want to give you my thanks in advance for any help you may be able to give me, I'm willing to do whatever it takes, as the only coping mechanism I have right now (which I discovered about 8 or 9 years ago) is to, depending on the situation, punch the steel slab on top of my desk as hard as I can a few times, or do the same except with my head.  It started with my head, as I'd feel too guilty to handle it and just hit my head off of something and I'd somehow feel better.  Cutting myself (never with a razor, I've used everything from sharp plastic to steak knives) doesn't help nearly as much as the blunt pain.  Not sure why that is either.

    Look at that I managed to ramble in my closing statement.  Here's another instead : Thank you in advance everyone, and I can't express my gratitude for your reading of these last 1,773 (6,915 with the story) words.  Best wishes.

P.S.  I was told by someone to get screened for PTSD, however I was told by my doctor that it's only possible to get PTSD from a life-threatening event.  If you have any input here I'm more than happy to hear it.

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