The last two years of breaking out of this wasteful cycle of self destruction has finally come down to an end. I’m now back to locking myself in my bedroom, lights out, sleeping all day. I haven’t been out of the house ONCE this week and tomorrow it is Saturday. I’m fearing for my mental well-being, it’s declining rapidly.
I have two parts of me, one part wants me to free myself from this destructive turmoil before it becomes habitual like it once did. It turned me into a hermit, never left the house for months, was losing my sanity as my only living and breathing space was in my bed. I was incapable of looking after myself, bedridden, insomniac.
I see patterns of this coming back. Here’s the other part of me that wants to delve deeper into this self-torment. My thought process begins with “I deserve every bad thing that’s coming to me, this is my punishment, I need to learn.” Naturally I hold every bad thing anybody has done to me against myself, as if I were the one doing the bruising. I have the mental capacity to break out of this cycle, yet old thoughts and feelings are coming in one by one.
I personally use the Internet as a way to cloud my mind and isolate those feelings and thoughts. I become impaired, it takes a lot of mental strain to remember what I had for lunch that day, or what day of the week it is. Anybody could talk to me, but it would be hard to form a coherent sentence, I would be left that lethargic I wouldn’t find myself doing anything more than coming downstairs for dinner and then heading back to bed until 5pm the following day.
I may come back to finish this off later…
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I’ve done something similar, avoiding contact with people although I still went for walks in the woods. It was a very dangerous thing and I became obsessed with suicide every minute of the day. I think we need reference points otherwise everything loses value. But maybe that’s the appeal of it. To realize how worthless everything is so we don’t feel bad about wasting our lives. I don’t know. I’m just talking out loud. Why do you think you keep returning to this behavior? There are other forms of self torment that are easier (more convenient) so what is it about isolation that attracts you?
It’s mind-numbing. Helps to close off those thoughts and emotions. I’m on medication at the moment, and would rather lose my thoughts through the affects of alcohol, but this would only leave me feeling paranoid and tense as the medication mixes with the drink.
The isolation originally (thinking back 2 years) was an entirely different problem. I’m still unsure of what happened back then, but apparently I was trying out a lot of different anti-depressants and had an awful habit of stopping cold-turkey. Maybe this messed me up a little, then again, a reality check crept in on me back then. Snapped out of it, life was wonderful, never could stop smiling. It was ruined. It came to an end.
But yes, the mind-numbing of isolation is what makes it addictive.
Almost sounds like me expect I have to go out for a little while. I think it’s best to be a hermit, I tend to think that the world to is always looking down on me. Sounds like you’re also suffering from delusions.
Delusions of what? What caused this onset of depression was not a delusion. I made such a horrible, pathetic mistake last year. I had only just gotten my life back and something bad happened. I have shunned and attacked myself ever since…
You talk about a cycle of how you deserve every bad thing to happen to you, but you are right. It’s more of negative thinking, then a delusion. Must of gotten a the words mixed.
A delusion would have been more automatic, sometimes without a general cause. Say, if I woke up someday and thought “everything is my fault, I’m a bad person who deserves to rot!” without anything bad happening to me. If my life was actually okay and then I begin to think like this.
Sorry for being defensive, I’ve had history of people telling me that I’m delusional and most of my problems don’t really exist. That everything is all in my head and I’m not consciously trying to wreck myself. I was once admitted to a psychiatric ward after this psychiatrist, who I never got along with, did a 3 second assessment and falsely diagnosed me with psychosis.
Here’s some of her questions:
1. Do you hallucinate?
2. Do you hear things?
3. Do you have voices in your head?
Now, I’m going to share with you how I was feeling back then. It had been 2 days since I’ve slept, yes, I was that depressed my thoughts begun keeping me awake at night. 48 hours I couldn’t sleep, the thoughts I had at night were unbearable so I was afraid to close my eyes and unable to relax. It got to the point of me being that exhausted I started hearing things and seeing things that weren’t there.
Now, this psychiatrist was the same woman who told me “you can’t be depressed if you still enjoy things…” and I remember having to verbally battle with her in front of this trainee therapist of hers, that she was training up to become a psychologist. She believed everything I said was because of a delusion, that my fears didn’t exist nor my thoughts. Every time I addressed a concern, it was a delusion.
Answers to the questions:
1. I haven’t been sleeping at all, so sometimes when I pass the point of exhaustion I do tend to see things that aren’t there.
2. Yes, along with not being able to sleep well, sometimes I do hear things that aren’t there. I have always been described as having an overactive imagination.
3. Do you have voices? Yes, but it’s only my voice I can hear. I think a lot.
Let me just make a note of saying, she didn’t at all tell me she was assessing me for psychosis at the time. I remember being given a high-power antipsychotic drug to take sometime after this diagnosis was made. It kept knocking me out. I couldn’t wake up much at all. Went into long, heavy sleeps.
Should I just make another quick point? Today, in this present time, I don’t hear or see things that aren’t there. I’m no longer on that horrible antipsychotic and have been taking Sertraline for a year. Sertraline has done me just fine, given me that boost that I needed.
I remember getting some type of apology letter from the psychiatrist to say that “I had no signs or symptoms of psychosis present.”
Oooooh! I’ve also just remembered, they put me in there for anorexia too! Turns out, after me being admitted, they realised they’ve gotten it incredibly wrong. I have a high metabolism and no matter how much I ate nothing would pile on. I remember eating EVERY meal they set out for me in that psych ward. They would think it was because my anorexia was being cured, that it was because of their hard work I was getting better, when in fact if you took me to a KFC and gave me a bargain bucket I would have eaten the entire thing…
It’s gotten to the point where I’m unable to handle the emotions related to the situation. Things in reality are bringing back memories, feelings, etc. I doubt this is only a delusion.
In short, I’m still freaked out over the entire situation, I’m going to be facing the “cause” of that situation in September, this is all still relevant to me.
We’re in the same boat. Sometimes I just want to stay in my bed and not do anything. Despite our best efforts to forget the past and move on in our lives, there’s always that thorn in our side that reminds us of our pain and suffering. The only thing I have going for me now is that I have trade classes during the weekends. During the weekdays, there’s not much to do and I LOATHE being alone and by myself because those thoughts that cripple me haunt me when I’m just aone in my bed and deep inside my thoughts.
Also, have you tried going to a monastery and/or religious orders? It’s actually come to the point in my life that if all else fails, I would at least join one of those religious orders and become a monk to either seclude myself with the outside world and dedicate my life to God and the order. At least I will have a purpose in this world and won’t have to spend most of my days beating myself up for whatever is happening in my life now. At least you have a roof over your head, get to work, socialize with your fellow man and have some semblance of peace and order in our lives. It surely beats what’s happening in my present situation.