Posted by fallsfall on November 28, 2003, at 11:23:57
In reply to Re: Today, posted by geri122 on November 28, 2003, at 10:33:45
Geri,
I'm glad you made it through yesterday, and that you want to live. We really want to help you to live. You don't have to be in this much pain - there are things that people can do to help you.
I know that you don't want to talk to your parents, or to have them find out how you are feeling. I don't know exactly what is going on between you and your parents - if you want to explain it a little more? You did say that you think that they think that you are just looking for "attention" a lot, but I don't remember much more than that. [I have 3 kids - girls who are 20 and 15, and a boy who is 18. I hope that they think that they could talk to me, but sometimes it is hard for parents to know what is going on with their kids.]
When you were posting on Psycho-Babble you sounded really depressed and like you wanted to find some help, but didn't know how or couldn't get the courage up to actually get the help you need. But when you started posting here you started talking about death - and that is a dangerous step in depression. I know that there have been times when I've sort of been in a trance thinking about hurting or killing myself, and sometimes it was really hard to get out of that trance - even though I didn't want to die at that time. Sometimes people end up doing things that they don't intend at times like that, and I'm just afraid that even though you really do want to live that you might not be completely in control of yourself all of the time. So I'm afraid for you - and you need to take this seriously.
If you reread the first post that I wrote to you, it talked about the time when I was completely hopeless and thought that nothing could possibly change. At that point, I looked at my life and how I was feeling and I said to myself that things couldn't get any worse. That is when I was able to start considering things that I wouldn't even think about before. If things couldn't get worse than they were, then maybe if I took some chances that had always seemed to risky to me, I wouldn't be worse off than I already was. For me, I couldn't imagine living without my therapist - she was what I thought held me together. Once I really recognize, however, that things couldn't get worse I thought that getting a different therapist couldn't be worse than how I was already feeling.
I think that a lot of your resistence to getting help is because you don't want your parents to know (if this isn't true - if there is something else that is worse than having your parents know, let me know what it is). But think about how you are feeling now. Think about how you were feeling when you wrote the first post in this thread. Would having your parents know be worse than that?
For me, particularly when I am thinking about death a lot, my mood goes up and down many times. At one point I'll be able to cook dinner and talk to my kids, but at another time all I can do is lie on my bed and think dangerous thoughts, and then I'll be OK for a while (hours? days?) and then the dangerous thoughts will come back. So even if you are feeling a little better now than you were when you started this thread, you might end up feeling that badly again (I find that night time is particularly hard for me. I'll do OK in the day, but at night it is bad). When you are feeling the worst, you probably won't have the ability to ask for help - so I'm really hoping that you will ask for some help while you are feeling a litle better. Does this make sense?
Did you find out if your friend is in town this weekend? Have you talked to her?
Did you think about an adult you could trust? Could you find anyone you could be comfortable with? If you didn't, let me know and I'll try to think of other kinds of people who we haven't thought of yet.
It really is important for you to find some support now - especially if you are feeling a little better than you were. If you start feeling really badly again you need to have that support in place to help you.
Lots of people are scared to ask for help because when you ask for help it seems so much more "real" that you have a problem. None of us want to have problems! But, I have a problem whether I talk about it or not. Ignoring it or saying it isn't a big thing doesn't make it go away. You have been significantly unhappy for at least a month now - I think that if it was just going to go away, it would have done that by now. Please let me or someone else help you.
My email is Babble FallsFall at hotmail.com. It is easier to talk through email or IM. Will you email me?
poster:fallsfall
thread:284151
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20031124/msgs/284756.html