Posted , 4 users are following.
So 7 weeks off work and now on 40 mg citalopram and I'm still stuck.
The thoughts of overdose are dogging me and each day I'm fighting it but I'm even dreaming about it now so no escape. I pray for peace and an end to this hell and yet no answer. When will this end ? I want my life back !
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richard89308 Crazycat
Posted
Richard
Crazycat richard89308
Posted
boing333 Crazycat
Posted
- Have you considered that the medication is not working, and that regardless of what medication you're taking, nothing will make your life better?
Medication doesn't push people out of the door and make them change anything. I'd speak to your doctor about guided self help rather than medication. Also ask to be referred to a doctor who has the necessary training to be able to deal with those who suffer from psychiatric problems.
Crazycat boing333
Posted
I have been referred to the mental health team again ( appointment next week) but what I have found is unless you have a serious mental health diagnosis or a break down they seem to be very dissmisive of depression and anxiety. To be honest dreading going to be told " well you look ok " like last time and not sure how to approach it. Sorry I've waffled on
boing333 Crazycat
Posted
Consider viewing my thread titled 'To medicate or to not medicate' - there may be some answers in that.
Like you I've spent years on medication. I've developed a loathing for the services and have a deep rooted cynicism too boot. Thankfully, I've been 'clean' of medication for years. How I get through the depression? I completely let it consume me in every way possible. Why? Because in doing that, I become stronger.
Picture this - a man/woman is being whipped and tortured at the post for something they didn't deserve, and they know that regardless of their protests, the punishment will continue.
The torturers whip the man/woman so severely that they develop whip marks on their skin; cuts, lacerations. The wounds are deep but they heal into scars. Once healed into scars, the pain from the torture becomes more bearable because the skin has hardened and calloused in such a way that they no longer feel the punishment.
Depression - once accepted - is bearable because it is not killing you. It is punishing you, yes, but it is not killing you. How long you stand the punishment is entirely up to you but the longer you spend accepting it, the stronger and more hardened you become as an individual.
No therapist will tell you that. They work aimlessly for a cure even though there isn't one. They cannot stop you from being whipped, so to speak. I would teach you to accept it and learn from it; draw power from it. The saying is, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. The depression doesn't make you kill yourself - YOU do that. A weak person does that. A strong person will learn to accept it and become even stronger in the process.
Crazycat boing333
Posted
boing333 Crazycat
Posted
My situation - I live with my partner (who is pregnant) and I'm self-employed. When I become depressed, it's often down to anxiety; the be all and end all of my diagnosis is 'anxiety' and the depression is symptomatic of that. Alleviating the anxiety is one thing; finding clarity when otherwise my head is disconnected is the challenge, but when it overcomes me, I begin to feel depressed. How I deal with that is, rather than say to my partner, "you're going to have to call the crisis team because I'm 5 seconds away from putting that kitchen knife into my throat" (actual words spoken by me once upon a time to somebody else when I was younger and more stupid), I simply take myself out of the situation and for my partner, she will see that and say "I'm going to leave him alone for the next couple of nights".
Quietly concerned, of course, but she'll know I'll work my way out of it in my own time because - maybe it's just me, I dont know - of my survival mechanisms. I've spent 15 years coping with this almost completely by myself and in doing that, I've developed my own tools that require real strength to be able to utilise. She understands that. She accomodates that. She doesn't often help with anxiety (in fact, actually creates it most of the time) but when I'm depressed, she knows to let me work my own way out of the labyrinth inside my own mind.
mark01943 boing333
Posted
A weak person does that. Sorry but that is total rubbish. It's all very well saying a strong person is this and that, but the fact is some are not that strong........so does that make them weak? No it doesn't, it makes them human.
I am very anti drugs, but not everybody is as string as you or I, and it helps them on the path to where they want to be, let them walk it
boing333 mark01943
Posted
It doesn't. Like a gun that kills another - it takes a human to pull the trigger; their own free will and determinism. Why they pull the trigger is not important; what made them do it is not an answer anybody can give; it's simply a way of justifying something and giving a name to an act of human freewill that comforts others when otherwise it can't be justified. 'Depression killed him' - no, HE killed himself. Humanistic psychology teaches us to admit responsibility, and it's not the fact depression killed him, it's the fact an individual wasn't strong enough to face depression as a concept and decided to opt out because it was easier. Therein lies the weakness.
Depression is the illness that determines which process you go through in order to alleviate it's symptoms. The effort you put into it determines which path you follow, as I found out. Submitting to the will of the GP (often) or the psychiatrist (only if serious, and usually necessary) without raises the question - 'just how strong are you as a person to be able to make your own decisions; to ask questions?' and 'just how weak must one be to say that the solution to a problem is death?'
So yes, I am saying a weak person kills themselves rather than finds inner strength to try and get better.
mark01943 boing333
Posted
If you kill yourself you are not weak. FACT.
You can't come on here and make judgements about people you don't know. There are people on here who will have lost someone to this illness. They are not weak. You or me are not here to give judgement on them.
Leave those thoughts to yourself. We are here to offer support and help and advice, not to tell people what they are or are not. They are your OPINIONS and you are welcome to them, but keep those opinions to yourself, they could be VERY hurtful, this is nit the place fir that
boing333 mark01943
Posted
Justifying suicide as viable option is deeply irresponsible. Saying depression killed an individual relinquishes responsibility from the individual's act, which he or she committed out of his own choice - the wrong choice. FACT
Is submission synonymous with weakness? Yes. FACT
People submit to the will of GP far too frequently in my opinion and do so out of desperation more than anything. At that point it's entirely up to the GP to describe the necessary precautions in taking such medication; how this medication is not going to sort out their 'life's problems'; how that medication can cause dependency if the patient does not use his or her strength to sort things out.
Etcetera
What's dangerous is the fact these drugs are often prescribed by people with no training in the mine (mind?) field of psychiatry to people who are currently tiptoeing their way through it on the basis that these patients have a “chemical imbalance”, which begs the question, empirically speaking, can a GP properly determine that without actually conducting the necessary tests that prove an individual has a “chemical imbalance”? They cannot because the process would be too time consuming.
I was told that I had a “chemical imbalance” once upon a time. I didn't, of course. I just needed to re-examine my life and make some decisions, and most importantly I needed the right guide to help me.
I never found that guide.
So it was necessary for me to find my own way and choose my own path. There were times when suicide cropped into my mind, of course. What stopped me? Hope, ultimately. Hope that tomorrow will be greater so long as I know, deep down, that my life and what I do tomorrow depends on what it is I 'create' for myself, and that takes inner strength.
So you say, “some people aren't as strong as you” - no, that's submission again. That's you admitting that you are weaker than I, and I won't allow another human being the chance to say that. I'm no stronger than you are or they are. We are all as strong as each other.
Strength comes when one can see that another individual, another human being, has been at the point they're at now and somehow managed to come out the other side. What that is, is proof it can be done.
I am a human; I hurt just like you and anybody else does. What I haveas an advantage over a person who struggles, that is different, is something called 'tools', and these tools make the job of climbing out of my own personal seven circles of Hell a lot easier when I'm pushed into it. These tools are inside every human being; it just takes strength, self-discipline and patience to develop them into working and practical objects.
All the while, though, people take medication, the less time they spend developing these tools for themselves, and the longer they spend submitting to that, the weaker they become in the process.
boing333 mark01943
Posted
Basically, if you say to me “we might be the same but I'm going to kill myself because I can't find it in myself to create these tools”, I say that's a weakness. I'd say that's submitting; or rather, admitting defeat.
When people can look at an example and see that it can be done, with proof (in the fact I'm still alive), but don't find that inner strength to try and find these tools for themselves, I consider that weakness.
Fight or flight. Basic human response.
Suicide is flight.
Life is fight.
Hope is worth fighting for.
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