My stupid brain.

[flyhighk]

So I'm a 16 yo guy. Started having serious anger issues two years ago. I have always been irritable but not to the point where I needed medical help.
So 7 months ago I started taking doxepin 30mg at night. It really improved my sleep and made me way less irritable. A months later I got on 50mg sertraline and that fixed my depression.

What I'm left with is social anxiety. I used to be a bright student etc. But now I'm barely above average because I only go to school like 3 days out of 5. I just wanna graduate, get a job and live a simple life. Unfortunately I'm gonna get kicked out of school if I keep missing days. My psychiatrists don't seem to get the seriousness of my issues. "Oh you just need some therapy" I did see therapists a few times but for some reason I hate doing therapy. I'm only anxious when I have some kind of public speaking. Being the center of attention of more than 4 people is my biggest fear. I'd rather be shot than do a class presentation.

If my social anxiety disappears I would only miss like 1 day out of 10. Even less. I have an appointment in two weeks I think. I'm gonna steal a .5 xanax from my mom and take that before seeing him. Hopefully I'll be straight up and tell him I want a benzo/etifoxine, which I would only use once a week.
If I don't get scoliosis surgery within 4 years I'll kill myself.
If I don't graduate from high school I'll kill myself.

I have friends, a family, and what seems like a good life, but my mental health ruined everything.

After thinking about it for a little while, I realized that my life is great. I just don't know how tiny issues become HUGE problems in my head.
I stayed homed today because I didn't like the way my hair looked. After typing this and looking at it again, I realized it's actually pretty good.

I regret not going to school today.
I guess I'll just have to wait until I see my shrink to tell him what I really need.

 

[Oxy_Ghost]

Sounds like me when I was around your age. When I was a teenager I had anger problems. My parents would try to make me go to therapy but that just made me even more mad. I'm
23 now and I've always hated being the center of attention. Especially in school. I dreaded having to do a presentation in class. When I first tried to detox a couple years ago I had to sit in a room full of doc and social workers and explain to them why I was ready to leave detox and what I was gonna do with my life blah blah blah. It was all lies. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. To this day I still hate having to be the center of attention even if it's one on one with someone I don't really know. I'm very shy.

I ended up dropping out of school my senior year but I finished a year later. I didn't go back to my high school though. A tech school near me has a program called early and middle college. It's the same thing as high school but my classes were much smaller so I was more comfortable and it was easier for me. In high school I made C's D's and F's. In middle college I made A's and B's and I got my diploma and not a GED. So if you got a tech school near by check with them and see if they have a program like that. If you feel you wanna drop out.

If you feel the benzo's help than go for it but don't get addicted. I wasn't a benzo user, I used opiates but not for medical reasons but I hear benzo withdrawal is the worse. Opiate w/d sucked but apparently benzo w/d is even worse. So yeah use them only when you really need it. And I bet the scoliosis thing sucks. My fiancé has it. Her spine is about an inch or so off to the right in lower back. It causes her pain every day but she's also a pain killer addict(we're both currently getting clean though) so idk what she's gonna do to help her with the pain. They give tramadol(synthetic opiate) for pain but she was on that when a sist(spelling?) rupture. The tramadol didn't help. So hopefully surgery will help you out instead of just being put on pain meds. Good luck in getting the meds you need or want. I know around here, straight up asking for meds like pain killers and benzo's wouldn't fly with the docs. There's been a huge influx of pill abuse in my area and their cracking down. But it's different everywhere.

Well hope everything works out for ya! If you need anything feel free to ask

 

[legalizeall]

i know what you mean with the public speaking and i have always had real issues with that. you can imagine my horror when i went to college and they had just changed a rule that now said we all had to take a speech class as an elective. it wasnt a choice, everyone had to do it. talk about shitty your pants when i heard that. my next thought was how the fuck am i going to do this

in this class we had to give a speech in front every class. if you were lucky it wasnt every class if someone just talked their little head off which for the life of me couldn't understand. it was once a week and the anxiety would build up slowly to each class. im not gonna lie and say it was easy, it was not and i think almost every speech i did was under the time limit but i had a nice instructor and i think he realized how much it effected me and that i was really trying my best.

my issues are my face turns red and my voice shakes a little. these are the things that helped me and i have to say but the very last class i was almost comfortable going up in front. anyways, i would think to myself, how do i act when someone is giving a speech. the first thing that came to my mind was i didnt pay attention to the person. not because of them, because my mind would just start to wonder and think about other shit. it dawned on me that these people probably arent really listening to me as much as i think they are. im thinking each person is analyzing every word i say and thats just not the case. there thinking about other shit going on in their lives, which for some, can be alot.

another thing that helped was the idea that i really didnt give a shit what these people thought of me. other than my girlfriend i didnt see these people outside school, and never talked to them. they had no bearing on my life what so ever. so why should i care if they think im a little nervous up here. i had some real wackos in my school considering it was an art school in a major city in southern cali so you can imagine what some of them were like. if they all didnt like me, it wouldnt matter. keeping those things in mind along with just plain practice really helped and today i really dont have a problem with it.

ive had a staff under me before who i had to address as a group numerous times and i can say i felt good talking to them. confident. i think more people than you think have the same exact issues you are describing. its pretty natural to have a big fear of public speaking. dont think your different or that others dont have the same concerns.

 

[flyhighk]

Thanks
I'm very careful when using drugs, so addiction is very unlikely.
My scoliosis doesn't cause pain, it's pretty mild but I hate how I look. It's not severe enough to warrant surgery, that's why I'm worried. My insurance may refuse to cover surgery for a mild case like mine.
I previously wanted to drop out but now I want to graduate, and study psychiatry, I LOVE psychiatry and psycho- / neuro-pharmacology.
I understand that doctors don't like prescribing such drugs. I will have to convince them that I won't abuse them.

 

[Oxy_Ghost]

Those are some good ideas Legal, I never thought of it in those ways except for what ppl thought of me. I did care what ppl thought when I was in school but now I don't give a rats ass what anyone thinks of me, especially if I don't know them. But I still get nervous and my voice shakes too, pretty bad. I remember having to present my senior project to three of my teachers. I had to speak for like 10 minutes at the least for the presentation. I don't think I made it half way but my teachers knew I was nervous as hell. My voice was pretty damn shakie. So they helped me out by asking question about my topic. I did it on automotive braking systems and I love working on cars so I was comfortable with any questions they had and it got me to speak longer

 

[flyhighk]

it dawned on me that these people probably arent really listening to me as much as i think they are. im thinking each person is analyzing every word i say and thats just not the case. there thinking about other shit going on in their lives, which for some, can be alot.


another thing that helped was the idea that i really didnt give a shit what these people thought of me.

I think this way as well. It helps a tiny bit.
The physical symptoms make the mental part of it much worse. I will start using beta blockers to see if those stop the blushing.

Thanks again

 

[cj]

Damn op I can relate to that overwhelming feeling about your hair. Reminds me of being 16. So like that feeling is normal but it sounds like the intensity is just too much. Like you need volume turned down in life? Therapy will help a little if you have a good therapist you connect with. Hard to find though especially at 16. Just be careful with benzos and opiates. There effective but the addiction that follows is life destroying.

 

[flyhighk]

I see my school therapists once in a while, they referred me to therapists outside of my school. I can see a few ones and choose which I like better, thanks to my supportive family and school.
However therapy doesn't work as quickly as drugs. I feel like I really need drugs for the short term, and therapy in the long term.
You're right. The intensity of my reactions is too much. My impulsive explosive actions are too hard to control.
The impulsiveness isn't as big of a deal as social anxiety though.