My Nightmare

melverous

This is what lead me to this group - Depression, Anxiety, and Stress (hell, everything in between!)

I've been unemployed for about a year now. A month ago, I found a job that I thought would get me out of the dumps and into a far better light. However, two weeks in, my manager decided to let me go and told me that I was "too creative" to run company reports and statistics.

Lately, I find it a struggle to track food, get up in the morning, and I feel truly uninspired, unmotivated, and unimpressed at myself.

Money is a constant worry for me. I get nervous around people and that I haven't seen friends in a long time since I find it hard to trust people nowadays. The friends I know of do nothing but smoke weed after work, smoke profusely, and get drunk during the weekends. This is not the kind of crowd that I see myself making memories with.

I mean, is this what a person needs in order to make friends? weed? alcohol? and drugs?

I've just truly been in a rut. I live with my partner and I've been finding it difficult to talk to him about my feelings and my thoughts since everyday, its always the SAME story. He works full-time and I don't feel the need to burden him with my problems.

I haven't told my friends or even my family that I'm not working anymore since they sounded really proud of me. The last thing I want is to still be a failure or a burden to anyone. Right now, I am contemplating on getting something for my depression/anxiety. Like I said, I've been finding it difficult to have motivation and even the will to get up and get my day going. I am always lacking in energy and I feel very sad and bored.

The million dollar questions are:
"Would medication even help?"
"Am I weak for looking for help?

Thank you very much for reading my big rant. I needed to vent!

clydethecat

i'm glad you reached out. thats a great place to start.

no you are not weak for getting help. its the hardest thing to do, and the best thing you can do for yourself. i cant tell you if medication is right for you, that you'll have to talk to your doctor about that. but being open to the idea of medication is good.

i know what you mean about not wanting to burden the people around you with your problems its always the last thing i want to do. when i do finally break down and tell my husband whats going on, his only admonishment is that i didnt come to him sooner. the ones that love us want us to be happy, they want us to be calm and sane and happy. and they want to help us be that.

its hard to trust, i know. but i'm sure you know the people that deserve trust.

i hope you do contact a doctor and get started on getting some help. you deserve to feel good.

if you need to vent or just talk, pm me

parmoute

That's exactly how I felt when I got kicked out of graduate school. I didn't want to talk to anyone, I felt like I had nothing new or productive to say, I didn't want to be a bother and I didn't want to be seen as a failure. I was already seeing a therapist when the final blow came, andI don't think I could have responded as well as I did without him. Sometimes it helps to have someone to talk to whose job it is to listen. I never felt like I was burdening my psychologist because that's what I was paying him for -- and it helped me to have a place to vent without feeling like I was burdening my family and friends. Instead, I was able to use my closest friends to enhance the advice I was given in therapy -- "my doctor suggested xxx, how do you think I should approach this?" -- so at least I had something new and productive to say and my friends got to be a constructive part of the solution instead of a dumping ground for my misery. I was already on medication when it happened, but just the therapy was enough to get me through without new meds or an increase in what I was already on.

If you can't afford a therapist, you've got us or use a journal. I don't normally journal, but I keep one around the house for really bad times when I'm starting to get lost in my own thoughts. Writing them down forces me to slow down to a point where I can manage the thoughts and might even come up with a new plan of action (I can think at lightning speed, but I can't write nearly as fast; I can type faster and use the computer when I'm angry/frustrated and need to vent quickly -- pounding on the keyboard is part of why it helps -- but for deeper emotions there's also a benefit to expressing yourself through handwriting). A new idea or plan of attack was often enough to allow me to fall asleep that night and to get me back out of bed the next morning. even if by the end of the day I was convinced it wouldn't work like I thought it would, at least I'd made it through another day. Now I'm much better at using it and it often helps me to identify the problem so that I can address it more directly.

Getting help is extremely important, whether its professional or personal, medication or talk therapy. All of them have their places and can be beneficial. If you don't start feeling better, and you go into a job interview unmotivated and thinking poorly of yourself, there's really no way you can hide that and it will hurt your chances of being hired.

I'm also available for personal messages if you need to vent a bit more.

Good luck!!

April