I don't have the energy to fight this anymore!

Hi girl

I'm so sorry to hear that you are still struggling with this demon called depression.

Please, please, if you are having suicidal thoughts or thoughts of self harming then go straight to your nearest Accident and Emergency department.

They will not turn you away for doing so.

Grab your coat and bag and get yourself off to hospital - you are seriously not well that the moment and trust me they would much prefer to help you before you do somthing out of desperation or worst still if they have to try and save your life and fail.

You have made such a huge step posting of your feelings on here - muster up the strength and walk into A & E and ask for help - they will help you.

Please take care

lots of cyber hugs

Melbixxxx

Hi Melbi

thanks for advice, haven't plucked up courage yet. not sure if I will - don't want to bother them. Just not sure how I am going to cope until my gp appoint on Tues. am ok if around other people, have to put the mask on and pretend but when i am on my own it is driving me mad, just random thoughts of what I could do. it was the first thing that came into my head when I woke this morning. Part of me seems to be able to function but gets swallowed by the blackness and pulled into the never-ending pit.

I am meant to be working various shifts at the pub for the next 8 days and feel i can't let them down, especially as they think I am ok, but really don't know if going to be able to cope.

to be honest i think i am too scared to take your advice, i don't want to lose my freedom, but i don't know what else to do.

Hope you ok

girl

Hi girl

Please do not worry about losing your freedom. They will help you! Yes, they may suggest a few days in hospital, just like they would anyone who isn't well but they aren't going to lock you up and throw away they key.

Do try and keep your shifts at work going though if you can, as you have said, you feel you cope better when around people. Depression at the best of times makes us feel extremely isolated and lonely even in the largest of crowds.

If you feel the shifts are too much for you to cope with right now then let them know and go off sick. No one would expect you to work with the flu, so why be expected to work when suffering a severe bout of depression.

Decide which you feel you would benefit from the most - working or not working.

You have to treat your body with the same respect you would treat it if you had any other illness and allow it the time it needs to recover. Keep telling yourself you are ill - not mad or crazy - ill! You will get better but it can takes weeks/months and even a year or 2 in some cases but no matter how long that dark tunnel is, there is a light at the end of it and you will be here to see it.

Try and make yourself go for a couple of brisk walks each day, I know that sounds easier than it really is but if you can manage to do that you will have made a start on the road to recovery. I now love my walks, I always go alone as it gives me time to allow my mind to think about whatever is in there - sometimes it will race and jump from one thing to another, sometimes I forget what I was thinking and wonder how the hell I got onto thinking about something else but hey - it does help!

Also keep posting here. It doesn't matter if you ramble and post word after word after word; Day after day after day, it really does help.

Stay strong sweetheart

love

Melbi xxx

HI there Girl x

I have been in so much pain lately due to my condition and sometimes it is so painful I have all sorts of negative thoughts :oops: as I am sick and tired of feeling this pain!!!! I think though if you have something to focus on then you can have gratitude for your own achievements, like even going to work you think to yourself \"I did well tonight\" or as I make hand made cards and even though my hands may not function properly I think to myself \"wow\" How good was that, I made it all by myself!

I felt alone and isolated and so I set up a support group for other sufferers and so now I feel I have some self worth!!!! In the past I have even thought about getting a dog as when my husband is at work I can have some kind of companion to cuddle up to as they greet you with a welcome that makes us feel happy when they greet us? but anyway that was just a thought I had, my two year old keeps me focused at the moment!!

I would continue with your job like Melbi says as it will give you a sense of achievement and along with this just think of the pay cheque you will get as I feel when I am feeling very low retail therapy helps too :cheerup:

I do hope you start feel focused soon xxxxx

Kind Regards

Hi Girl,

I have found it difficult to decide what is a consequence of the medication and what is a symptom of depression. With the help of a very professional good listener psychiatrist we were able to pin which was what and I am on the road to life beyond Citalopram.

You said, \"... don't want to bother them ..\". Being \"bothered\" by patients is their life's work. Putting on a mask for others is a common way of dealing with the present, but it defers a decision which most of us are unable to make at the time, hence the mask. Enter the doctors and the prescriptions, and the effects.

Please don't give up on yourself. At some point I had to accept that I suffered with depression, then decide I needed to do something, then think what, then act. It wasn't easy or quick, but it is a process which will lead you back to a fulfilling life. And you may make a wrong turn here and there, but please seek help, don't feel stigmatised because you suffer with a condition which is said to affect almost everyone at some point, and keep testing yourself against the new directions you take. \"Is this medication making me feel better?\" \"I feel lousy. I haven't eaten properly in days, and I don't want to talk about it!\" Hear warning bells on that one, and seek an appointment to address it. Use the appointment to emphasise that you are not there because you have nothing better to do, you are there to pick their brains and seek a way through your situation.

There are many caring contributors to this forum who know exactly how you feel, who can help with a comment here or there or some practical pointers, from experience. And please keep posting here.

Kind regards,[/quote]

thanks guys

it iasn't like i don't know they can help but some how it is a lot harder now than when i was ill the first time - i guess age and stuff has something to do with that. I just remember a couple of my friends who were sectioned and i don't want that to hapen, everyone thinks i am doing so great but if only they knew the truth.

i so nearly called people today but decided agasin they wouldn't want to listen, i guess that is my fault due to bad experiences with the medical proffesion in the past.

i hope i don't wake up tomorrow thinking the same thoughts but i can't count on it, seems to stick with me whatever i do. made it through work this evening though, double shift tomorrow so lets see what happens ehh

Hi again,

Work can be therapeutic. If you did not have your work, what else would you like to do? Apart from the need to pay your bills, what would you really like to come home to after work? What things do you like to do, what places would you visit if you had the time and could afford to go?

I spend a little time every day thinking about where I want to be in 90 days, 12 months, 3 years ... After 6 weeks of doing this, I found that I looked forward to digging into my imagination and wondering what is possible. The answer is, just about anything is possible, if you decide you want it, and are prepared to devote some time to really imagining how you would feel if you already had it.

Girl, depression is so common today that perhaps the people you did not call have some of the same feelings. Would you call one of your friends who was sectioned, and talk to her? She may offer sound practical advice.

My concern for you is that if you can find no way to talk about it, and you don't feel like eating properly, and you work double shifts ... there is a downward spiral inherent there. You are obviously highly valued as an employee and part of the reason the business is successful. You are popular with the patrons too. So you are not a waste of space. And trust me, \"normal\" people have the same thoughts.

It is common for we who suffer with depression to find it difficult to enunciate our positive points, because they appear hidden to us. Yet I have read 500 words or so about you and can say with some precision, I think, that you are a hard working, well-liked, responsible girl with a ready smile who does not complain and who appears up-beat to others. And I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist, just a fellow traveller.

But you need a little professional help to find your way through this. Keep trying to find that help, keep asking questions, which will become more informed as you go, keep smiling at work, and please try to eat something, even if it's only an apple between meals.

You can do this. xx

Hi Breezman

thanks for your comments, you described me quite well there.

my main job is actually as an artist but i haven't done anything for months. not even sure i will be allowed to take my 2nd year of a residency as i haven't fulfilled my obligations during my first year. there is no point to anything if that is the case. really quite scared about that, but not, it seems, enough to bring me out of this.

woke up today thinking about how to do things that i shouldn't - again! today seems to be one of the can't stop moving days,which made work interesting. at least not many people in so didn't have to explain self, although a few questions asked about the brusies on my arms. worried not going to be able to do anything soon. meant to be going with my mum to cornwall this weekend - scared that i am going to be like this then and what she will say about brusies, new scars and the loss of weight for starters.

seem to spent all the time either scared, paranoid, anxious could carry on for ages but i think you get the drift. only thing that pleases me is when i don't eat. yesterday i had hardly anything, although plenty of empty calories in the beers i had. (yes i know that can't have helped with my moood today but i got to a point yesterday when i really din't care and said sod it!) Today i have been better as haven't eaten a thing yet, still not hungry and anxiously moving all the time so that is my achivement.

hope you ok and thanks to all of you for your comments

Ah, an artist. Is that graphic art, advertising ... ? I am an accountant, and well I remember the pressure when I was at uni. In my first year, 6 weeks before end of year exams, I was several weeks behind and was working more frenzied for less result. A mate called in (to Canberra), and I took 3 days off while riding our motorbikes round Canberra, and showed him all the sights. I didn't think about my uni work, because I hadn't seen him for several years.

When he left, I found that I got more done in 3 days than I had previously achieved in a week. I had allowed myself to get ground down and could not see a way to address it. By leaving it completely alone for a long weekend I started fresh, and it saved my year and probably my entire course.

But even if you don't finish your residency, so what? I did Sociology as one strand in my degree, and I wish I'd majored in that subject. I studied Accounting because it offered a meal ticket, but my advice to my kids, was, \"Do what you love. The money will follow.\" I found some units (economics!) in my Accounting course were so bland and colourless that I could read a paragraph so many times I could recite it. Yet I couldn't care less about the academic argument as to the benefit of hoarding guns or butter. My point is, most degree courses I have looked over have several units which are both compulsory and stultifyingly boring, or just not immediately relevant to the course. It seems the board of studies includes these units to broaden the education, but then many students therefore aim at 50% +1 mark, which negates the benefit. Doesn't it?

I suggest to you that you are defining yourself in other people's terms. Never ever allow someone else to define your value in your mind. You are a unique individual, with unique talents and gifts possessed in your combination by no other person. And if the course you are studying is not getting you where you want to go, make a decision. Is it worth doing those units you dislike intensely, so as to gain the degree? Or is the degree not worth a crumpet because it does not actually stretch you or increase the use of your talent? Is it not what you thought it would be? (They never are, exactly) Can you imagine yourself in five years time, doing your work and building on your study?

If not, think seriously about what you don't want to spend the next two years doing. If you're in a hole, stop digging! On the other hand, if you think you might be able to restructure your course so as to drop two units this year, pick up an extra one next year, or change the focus of your course by dropping a strand completely to take on another, why not ask the faculty admin if you can do this? If you ask and they say no, what have you lost? I can tell you that you will gain much more than you lose in any event, because you will have done something towards changing what is to what might be.

It concerns me that you say, \"there is no point to anything ...\" This is a warning buzzer for Life. Please, please seek professional help. There are caring professionals going to work every day, whose aim in life is to offer help to those who need it. Girl, you need professional help. I could not have got through without help, which came in the form of a GP, a psychologist and a psychiatrist, all of whom listened, asked questions, made suggestions, and discussed the what if's with me. I had lost my family, business, mobility (broken knee), and could not organise myself well enough to drink a cup of coffee I had made. With professional help I was prescribed Efexor, which was horrendous, then Citalopram, which worked for me. Like you, I didn't eat, even when I had cooked I just did not feel hungry. For months I dwindled while becoming mora and more apathetic. I went for days without showering, not even wanting to get out of bed! The worst time for me was January-February 2007. I was in an impenetrable fog, just coul

hi breezman

had more than an apple last night! a friend offered to take me to see a room as i have to move, i offered to buy him some food and he accepted on the condition i also ate. Because i don't let people down and i knew he was hungry i had a chinese takeaway. Felt bloomin awful afterwards - but he wouldn't leave (knows i have had eating disorder in the past and on the way there again now). Ended up not having a bad night and went to sleep feeling almost positive. :!:

i am a glass maker/artist and actuallly finished my degree last year (with a first). I was put back on medication 2 an a half years ago, having been 'fine' for about 10, studying prob had something to do with it going wrong again. the residency is at the art school i went to and i work with the students in exchange for the use of facilities. there is no way i can make my work otherwise. Well that was the plan but as i haven't made any work for months or helped the students i certainly haven't fulfilled my contract, hence being worried about my request to extend for another year.

I am meant to be doing a design show in september but don't really have any work for it, trouble is i am able to talk to people about what i am going to do but when it comes down to being able to do it the motivation (or anything for that matter) just isn't there. i am a husk of me, no longer looking forward to stuff, not caring how i look, i can't face washing myself, haven't washed any clothes for ages etc. at least the not eating is making me lose weight - exactly how my eating disorder started last time i was ill.

trying to find that bit of optimism i had last night but not really working. thinking i am not good for myself when on my own, far to many thoughts of dangerous things happen then. oh well, have gp appoint later so will see what happens.

What motorbike did you have?