I’ve fought so hard for this. My whole life, I’ve never been able to feel positive emotions . I can remember some memories from when I truly felt joy, when I used to hang out with some friends but nothing more than that. I’ve spent hours days trying to dig up some happy memories but nothing. I’m nothing more than an abused child, nothing more than my past. I wanna be able to feel something, anything. All I can think about nonstop is how to hurt myself. I’ve thought about burning myself to death, cutting a finger, breaking a leg. Some very violent ideas are living in my mind. Anger is all I have. When I hurt myself I feel so much better, not just better I feel ecstatic. I start laughing hysterically. I’ve tried using hunger to stop these thoughts, I’d drink and eat nothing for a day or two , it worked for a while but not anymore. I often get these intrusive thoughts where I kill my abuser, a family member, or my cat. It feels so real. I know I wouldn’t hurt anyone, I couldn’t. The most I do is scream at my mother and then apologize right after. I’ve been thinking about telling someone else to break my leg or jumping from the rooftop. I wonder how I would feel when greater pain is inflicted on me. The most ecstatic I’ve felt is when I’ve burned myself. Left some very naughty scars on my arm, now I can’t wear t-shirts even tho it’s fucking hot out here. Doesn’t matter, I just wonder how it’d feel to have my whole body burned. I get goosebumps just by thinking about it. I don’t know what is wrong with me, but this isn’t normal is it ? I’ve been diagnosed with severe depression and I’ve been taking antidepressants on and off. I started taking them again today tho. I can’t concentrate on my studies, and I have less than a month left for my finals. Everything is on the stake. If I get a bad grade, I’ll probably just kill myself. Somebody please give me some advice, I’d do anything.
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6 comments
Sorry dude, that sounds bad. I find getting busy helps distract me when I want to harm myself. That or smoking, but seriously, don’t start smoking. This shit will kill you. And quitting is hard. So get a job, make friends, find a hobby. I work 45 hour weeks and keep myself busy with guitar (and cigarettes) and other crap the rest of the time. And it really helps to keep your mind off the bad stuff. And
I don’t know you that well but I have a few questions:
1. Are the thoughts of self harm recent?
2. How long have you been taking the antidepressants? Do the self harm thoughts correlate with the antidepressants at all?
I ask because antidepressants can have some negative side effects like thoughts of self harm, especially in people under 25 which I’m guessing you are. Maybe the doctor misdiagnosed you, a lot of other things can look like depression and depression can be a symptom of a lot of things.
Have you tried running as a way to alleviate the harmful thoughts? Running is painful for the first mile or so. Another thought is a punching bag, it’s safer.
Hmm, a lot of that sounds like my experience with withdrawal or a medication that my body didn’t agree with. Which anti depressants did they put you on, more specifically what kind? SSRIs, SNRIs? What are you diagnosed with and is there anything you think you have but is undiagnosed?
“I’m nothing more than an abused child, nothing more than my past.”
I know that feeling very well. Disconnecting our identities from our traumatic pasts is much easier said than done, and a lot of people don’t understand that.
Well, dwelling on the awful options won’t help. I get it, I fantasize about hurting myself too, but the now immediate action is to redirect my attention. That doesn’t mean I feel better, it just makes those thoughts less strong.
The first step is to start identifying triggers. You were thinking about something before you started thinking about hurting yourself. Write that down, and do that for awhile until you find every item in your brain that leads unavoidably to what I refer to as the spiral, which looks like this for me;
Initial thought; I’m in a lot of pain
Following; How can I end this pain? How can I prevent it from ever occurring again? Should I cut? Should I make an attempt to end my life? That probably would solve the initial problem, but then come the problems of pain caused and potential for failure within an attempt.
You see that last bit? That I wrote into my brain as code when I identified one of the thoughts that led me back to wanting to cause myself pain or die. It’s a break statement; something that takes my brain far away from the spiral.
It isn’t easy. It’s a trudge, and even years on you’ll still be finding new triggers, because it’s an arms race between you and your brain, and no one wins. For me the goal is to make it to old enough that no one cares, or that my health is frail enough that inconvenient questions aren’t asked about my demise. That exists, and is an attainable goal. If someone with frail enough health decides not to support living, they start dying, and it’s magnificent the liberty they have.
Granted, that’s decades ahead yet, but we always bargain for less time than we need. The day I find a method to build a solution that overshoots the problem, I’ll let you know.
^^ that’s some of the best advice I’ve seen in a long time.
One thing to remember is antidepressants only work if taken daily. I know it can be difficult to remember them. But if you don’t take them daily you won’t be able to let your doctor, or psychiatrist know that the medicine isn’t working properly. It can be exhausting though I have had my medicine changed 12 times in the last 24 months. I am finally on my 4th month of the same medication. Sometimes it still doesn’t feel like it works. I have major depressive disorder, and OCD with intrusive thoughts. It feels like I can get a medication to work for one thing and not the other. It is exhausting. But the thing is that it doesn’t really have to be exhausting. Sometimes people just need to know when it is okay to ask for more help. Or who to ask. I have changed my psychiatrist also, and I am contemplating changing my primary care doctor. I just hope that you know that it is always okay to need more help then you are getting and that it is ok to reach out for help.