It is very late and I really don’t know where to put all this, so I’m just leaving it here. Please excuse all the typos I am bound to make at this point.
I’ve been thinking that maybe the way I think isn’t normal, or at least in a healthy way. I was diagnosed with depression. At the time my therapist said it was severe depression and I also had a panic disorder. It was never studied extensively, so I really have no idea what I am dealing with anymore. I was at the time freshly 18 and I had never spoken to my parents about my depression. The only reason I was at therapy was because of a terrible breakup that I still find myself thinking of. I finally decided to have my parents sit in on a therapy session so we could discuss what was going on with my depression and how I had been dealing with suicidal thoughts. To put it frankly, it went the exact opposite I hoped it would go. Both my parents became defensive, telling me all the things I do wrong with my mentality. My dad got very defensive and almost angry as he said that it just didn’t make sense to him because he and my mom never thought I had depression. It basically made me feel like shit and made me question everything I had worked on in therapy. I felt like my mom and dad were no longer able to be talked to about my mental state as they continuously said that I may be put in a mental hospital for evaluation and were angry that my doctor didn’t tell them what was going on even though I am legally an adult. It caused so many fights in my household on a subject I wish they would have tried to be accepting on. I no longer go to therapy either.
Since that point i have refused to speak to them about my depression, but I am feeling more alone than ever. It’s summer and I feel so disconnected and alone. I am finding myself thinking more and more about bad things happening. When I drive home from work I have very well-thought out scenarios of me dying in an accident and what the aftermath would be like. It’s gotten to the point where I have these things happen often and in vivid detail. I am starting to wonder if other people even think this way. I keep having these problems with only focusing on bad things and I am so scared I am getting bad again. I can’t sleep until extremely late at night, so I barely get sleep. I don’t know where to turn and I feel like every time I start to get better I go back to being even worse than last time. I just want to pretend that everything is okay, but that is what got me in this mess in the first place.
At therapy I only ever talked about what was going on in my life. I wasn’t there long enough to get an in-depth explanation of how to handle my depression and panic attacks. I feel like I am just as blind as ever. And another part of me worries that deep down my parents are right about me. Ever since ll the fights I worry that I have wasted everyone’s time and I don’t really have depression. I can pretend to be happy, but at the end of the day I come home and think about how much of a failure I am and how it’s no wonder my boyfriend left me for another girl since i am such a damn mess. In the end, I know I should trust what I know and my therapist, but my parents put this self doubt that I can’t push out entirely.
I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m so tired of pretending I’m okay. And I’m tired of people who have no experience with depression trying to tell me they know me better than I do