Mental Health Worried about my Mental Health

[neoblazing]

Hi all
bit of a long one but I hope you will bare with me.

I have been worried about my mental health and dark thoughts so could use some unbiased thoughts. I understand advice on hear is to be taken as purely an opinion not a trained doctors view but maybe someone can shine some light for me.

I will start with some back story and history to hopefully give a clear picture, I am a 34 year old male and for as long as I can remember I have always had a very hateful and doubting opinion of myself, my achievements and value. I also have a very aggressive and sometimes nasty temper (gotten better over the years but I am still quick to get frustrated and often very angry) whilst I try to not take it out on my family and have never been abusive can be over nasty in the ways I say things when I get frustrated, I have seen a doctor and physiatrist to help control it they offered no real advice other then to give me some coping methods to use I find them less and less effective over the years. I have always survived on an average on 3-5 hours sleep a night for as long as I can remember and never had any reason other then I can't turn of my mind until I am exhausted and have general doing hard labor and long houred jobs (baker, night time truck driver and manager). I have never been medicated or diagnosed with any known issues but I also find it very hard to be open about this topic and my have masked it so they couldn't however when I was a child showed a lot of markers for ADHD but again they never gave a formal diagnoses, I have struggled with focus and never known what I wanted to do in life but then find if I do focus on a task I get hyper focused and will over do it on whatever it is I am focusing on.

When I was younger I self medicated with drugs and alcohol to help me deal with it and when I met my wife through work she help me to cut these out of my life, to paint a honest picture I used to drink a 700ml bottle of jacks a night before bed and smoke on average an ounce a fortnight on top of that was taking ectasy on the weekends to feel better about myself and forget for a brief moment. My alcohol consumption on the weekends averaged out to 6-9 700ml bottles of jacks more on a bad weekend so my wife quite literally saved my life because the road I was on ended up in me starting to self harm and cut myself, just writing this makes me hate myself for getting that bad but when I put it in words really makes me realize I was not only very lucky but VERY stupid.

now all that being said have done very well to gain a good skill set in management and have always held a job and worked full time hours and have been told I am a workaholic I just find by focusing on work I feel good that I am achieving something and am very results driven and always given my employee's 110% support I am generally the first one in and one of the last out but have increasing found it hard to have any passion in life anymore and my kids are getting a bad father as a result I love them my family is my world but don't know how to bring my focus back to them and not work anymore. This was made very clear to me when last year my father had a heart attack and it nearly broke me to think the man I had never seen sick and always worked harder them me could be taken so easily whilst he survived it has led to a lot of heart to hearts with my dad and he said that my life isn't healthy and that was what he used to be similar, this is the reason I have been trying to work out where I am heading in my life so I can work on myself and be the best father because I can't shake the feeling that my life has been wasted and not given them my all. I feel like all I have done is change alcohol for work and its not much of a healthier choice. Am I treating work as escape from my issues?

My thoughts are mostly about death and the like the few people I confided in have passed away and I feel if I ever broached the subject with most people they would think poorly of me I am the one people ask for help so thought of me being weak in anyone's eyes makes me think I would lose everyone's respect forever, I know it probably sounds stupid but its just how I feel I have always been the protector so I just feel I should be able to shoulder this and it be mine to deal with but maybe that's part of the problem I find myself thinking back to my chats my deceased friend and he was always my sounding board and listened to my rants just I did for him.

sorry for the long post just had to get it off my chest and gets some opinions, I will never take my life and whilst the thoughts are in my head like a screaming demon as with all the doubt life is always worth living just seems so hard some days.

 

[Jerry Atrick]

Hi @neoblazing, first off I want to say that I don't think you should be so hard on yourself. Drinking that much alcohol, while it could possibly be construed as careless, does not make you stupid. It sounds like you were self-medicating, which is very common for people who are having undiagnosed psychological issues. When I was first showing signs of psychosis and mania, I also self-medicated by smoking an oz per week and was careless enough with my drinking that I got 2 DWIs within two months. I was having serious psychological problems but had yet to see a doctor and did not know what was going on with my mind. Now I'm NOT saying you have psychosis or mania. As you stated, none of us are doctors or professionals in mental health and therefore are unqualified to give a diagnosis based on your post.

All that said, it looks like you may have visited a psychotherapist who recommended the coping methods. A psychiatrist would have likely prescribed some sort of medication. My recommendation is to find a clinical psychologist to help you find a possible diagnosis that can explain your thoughts and actions over the years. After you are diagnosed, if one is warranted, then you will be able to visit a therapist who specializes in whatever issues you have been experiencing. They may be able to give better coping methods than what you received previously or implement some type of behavioral therapy to assist as needed.

I know it may not be popular in this subforum to say this but sometimes seeing a psychiatrist and starting medications can help a lot and give one peace of mind and allow certain folks to function at a more healthy level. Now many people will say medication should be a last resort, which I can somewhat agree with since a lot of psychiatrists over medicate without addressing the underlying factors that are causing the problems. However, I do not think medication should be completely ruled out either. I have been taking psych meds for nearly 20 years and they have helped me immensely. YMMV

My hope is that you will be able to find some sort of professional help and gain some peace of mind. Be safe out there!

 

[Eligiu]

My substance use rapidly escalated when my PTSD (what was later diagnosed as cPTSD) became a big issue in my life soon after running away from home.

I drank heavily, took way too many Xanax/research chemical bars, injecting meth, eating packets of ibuprofen plus codeine every day, and shooting heroin where I could find it.

I was avoiding so much trauma that I was still actively repressing, which I'm told is not the most common thing in the world, to successfully do that, but there was another scenario a bit earlier where I saw a psychiatrist to try to get hormone approval for my medical transition and she asked me about trauma and I got upset (but couldn't figure out why) due to having repressed it.

I didn't remember it due to a therapist teasing it out of me, or hypnosis, or anything like that. What actually happened is that the perpetrator of the abuse sexually assaulted me on Christmas day 2016, and after leaving in a rush when nobody defended me against him or even criticised what he did, I drove home in a haze, suddenly remembering that he had a pattern of that behaviour going back *years*.

But before I was aware of it, I just had all these uncomfortable feelings I didn't want to deal with. I couldn't name them, I couldn't associate them with anything, I couldn't work through them, I couldn't adapt to them. It was just waves upon waves of excruciatingly painful emotions that only seemed to be tolerable when I had some heavy combination of substances in my body.

By the end of 2017 I accepted that I had *maybe* experienced some trauma, but I heavily minimised it. 'oh it was only this, it wasn't that.' and I disclosed the bare minimum to a close friend in early 2018. He warned me that he suspected more would resurface as time went along if I'd managed to repress any at all, and I was not happy to hear that opinion.

My substance use was still mainly avoidance at this time, but this period where I accepted experiencing CSA is where my drug use also took on an edge of self punishment and self harm, especially the IV drug use. I would use 'because I'm a bad person' and that would be my penance.

The more trauma therapy I've done, the more I'm able to cope with the emotions associated with my experiences in life. I have come to terms with it, as much as one possibly can. And I restrict my use of substances (all of them) as much as possible.

I don't know whether I'll ever be able to live a substance free live. My drug and alcohol worker says abstinence probably isn't the right goal for me and tells me my recovery is going well based on the new conclusions I come to about the nature and meaning of my drug use.

If there comes a day where I no longer wake up feeling like I deserved everything that happened to me, and more, and that feeling doesn't ever seem to entirely leave.

I won't hold grudges against myself for doing what I need to do to survive. If using substances stops me from finding the closest gun I can and blasting my brains out, then I'm actually fine with that and if people who don't know what it feels like to be betrayed in that way can keep that to themselves.

But getting to the bottom of all of this and finding out what complex trauma was, since PTSD did not quite fit was a moment for me. It registered briefly that I understood I was getting slapped with a motherfucker of diagnoses.

But for the first time I felt like I had a plan of attack.

I encourage you to book in to see a GP or the type of doctor who does general care and have them do some basic mental health assessments. They can usually do that then and there. If you score highly enough you should be referred to a psychologist. If anything really major pops up like a psychotic disorder that's when a Psychiatrist comes in.

I honestly think everyone in the world should have access to and see a therapist. It's easier when you know what you're fighting.

 

[Just a little pinprick]

I’m suggesting this as something to just take the edge off the day and it’s not too addictive which is gabapentin,and one that’s not addictive at all,which is hydroxyzine,

I’m pretty sure benzos will chill you out but you gotta be ready to commit to them because stopping them is difficult ,if you let your doses get too high..