dingus

I'm in my early 30s, so not necessarily "mid-life", but I think what I have been experiencing can be described this way. I went through a lot this past year, and it has both left some large scars as well as healed some other aspects and caused new ways of thinking in others. I've tried new things and enjoyed the things that I've tried.

But I feel like I need something "more", but I have no idea what that is. I keep getting caught on the horrifying realization of life being fleeting and I want to do something to make it more whole. But I can't outrun death so I don't know that anything is left to be done. But I feel like I need something to fill that space. I may in fact be chasing something that doesn't exist idk.

I guess I just feel a bit lost and would appreciate some direction.

More about me that may or may not influence your advice: I've always been a loner and the sort of "terminally online" type. I don't experience sexual attraction, so it sort of puts most options of relationships out the window. Asexual "dating" is not as prevalent or simple as you'd think. My career is very solid and I'm paid very well, so I'm not interested in switching careers. My career was a huge source of my trauma this past year, but I have made a lot of progress since and it's really not something I can easily change. I have discovered new and healthier forms of self-expression and have done new things. I own where I live and would not be able to sell it for as much as I paid for it either, which is another reason I'd be against moving. I am physically close-ish to family and visit every couple of weeks.

Thanks all for listening.

Hopefully this isn't breaking rules. Yes it is a veiled attempt at advice because I've been hemming and hawing. But the question can be answered purely as is. There are obviously pros and cons so I'd like to know how you all feel.

Thank you.

It's now my one year "anniversary" of my psych med "journey". I just feel so frustrated.

The providers always ask me how I'm doing and if I think X drug we are trying right now helps. I always have no fucking clue.

I keep a mood log and everything, but I cannot for the life of me discern any sort of pattern for any of these. One month will be fantastic and the next month will be so horrible and painful it's like someone is boring a hole through my body with a branding iron.

My provider is having me take the GeneSight test to figure out if there is a particular option I should be trying. But I am just so exhausted with this that I'm considering the next med to be my final straw.

I do NOT have bipolar disorder. I do NOT have chronic low mood. I do NOT have lack of emotions. I do NOT have PTSD. I have periods of extreme, unbearable intensity with periods of normal in between. I have relational trauma. Since my issues are intermittent, I cannot for the life of me tell if I am ever helped by anything.

I am currently in an intensive DBT program. While it has been a lifesaver when I have "simple" problems, it does not touch the intense pain of others.

Some research I do seems to indicate my problem cannot be even minimally helped by meds, which is incredibly frustrating. I want even just a little bit of something to help reduce my pain. :(

How can I figure this out?

Just a sort of open ended question. I want to share my experience and am curious to hear of others as well. Sorry, this is long winded!

So my provider asked if I would be willing to try a therapy program that meets multiple times per week. I then got a phone call from the company about the specific details of the program. Holy moly! It was a program with 9-10 hours of therapy per WEEK (almost ALL of which is group therapy, not individual) and it lasts multiple months...guess that's how these work.

At the time (and maybe it still is), it seemed like a bit of an overreaction from her. And goddamn, the time commitment on top of working is just insane. To top it all off, the reviews of the company were absolutely fucking horrendous...couldn't find a single positive one and was beginning to think it was a scam.

But I agreed to try (after giving the admissions people a hard time lol sorry!). My first day I was absolutely pissed the fuck off of how absolutely fucking useless it seemed...until I got to the last hour...they gave us a bite-sized thing to chew on and try to apply in our lives.

Well guess what? They NEXT FUCKING DAY, I coincidentally by absolute chance had a major fucking mental health issue. I used the skill they gave along with another skill I learned on my own before the program and IT FUCKING WORKED.

So I figured there may be was something to this and kept attending. Each day I would get slowly less pissed off. I slowly was able to start reading between the lines and understand and appreciate the format of the program. I'm only a couple of weeks in now, but I don't regret wading further in. Am I "cured"? No. But it is helping me day by day to work on little things and little habits at a time to grow.

With commitment and the right mindset, this so far has felt more helpful than therapists I have tried to see once every two weeks for almost a year now. My provider told me that her goal for me was to finally get into a better place and theoretically need a regular therapist way less if even at all. And to reduce or stop having issues juggling various meds to see what might work...as the therapy would theoretically involve most or all of the heavy lifting.

Monetarily in the US, this sort of thing is not going to be accessible to everyone, so I'm grateful that I have been in the position to do so. These programs take insurance...but if your insurance doesn't cover enough, it can still be a great cost.

tl;dr - While this sort of thing isn't for everyone by far, I would honestly encourage people to have an open mind if you are ever referred to one of these things. Give it a bit and really try your hardest to be open minded, even though it can be very difficult.

Was going to cancel the visit because he improved a lot but I took him in anyway because it was scheduled. Felt a little silly, but I'm new to FIV! They did some baseline blood work instead because he had never had any before.

I have been giving him lysine powder every day for the past week. Maybe that has an effect idk. The vet said I can just give that to him forever if I want and it shouldn't hurt anything.

Verdict is that he will likely always have one watery eye, possibly due to a mild anatomic abnormal. And he might have very mild allergies or very mild asthma which does not really affect his life too much.

But I guess he needs to lose 1-2 pounds so we'll work on that next! He also has some tartar buildup so I'll have to see if I can get him to use dental chews.

Usually I keep this band flipped the other way so it's a private message for just me.

Quite frankly I'm just at a loss at this point. Been on the therapy and meds journey for almost a year now, and did the whole exercise shebang consistently for like 2 years. I was doing cardio for an hour every 1-2 days.

I am getting quite disillusioned and don't understand what I'm even doing anymore. I'm getting so caught up in various things that I'm just confused as all hell. Every time I think I figure something out, I end up so wrong it's almost like it's not even funny.

I have intense reactions to rejection. I have extreme and intense negative emotions that persist for many hours and days after a trigger and they are very painful and difficult to deal with and can impair functioning. I have a lot of social anxiety, which I did not think contributed much to this. But now I'm wondering if I have a pattern of social anxiety --> extreme rejection sensitivity --> extreme emotional dysregulation.

I have been on escitalopram (Lexapro), then lamotrigine (Lamictal), and now quetiapine (Seroquel). I do not have ADHD. I do not have bipolar disorder. I don't even have persistent depression. I have periodic extreme episodes that cause a lot of distress and can cause functional impairment like how my work threatened to fire me. I also have intense shame and self-hatred, often babbling to my online friends nonsense about how I'm a "demon" when I get this way. I am also totally normal 90% of the time. It's only the remaining 10% that causes the struggle.

People always tell me to "go to therapy". I am. I have seen multiple therapists and have been consistent with this one since the fall. People tell me I don't put enough work. I am. People tell me I am not honest enough to my providers. I am. People tell me try a different therapist. I have tried many (I stick with my main one for continuity and so that I don't have to keep rehashing my backstory).

At this point I feel like I don't know what is down and what is up. I no longer understand what my problem is anymore. Every time I think I figure out what my issue is, every time I think I figure out a technique to help me, I'm wrong.

I'm starting to think that this is who I am. It is unchangeable. I experience a lot of pain and sensitivity where others don't. I wish that wasn't the case, but I think it can't be changed.

Idk where do I go from here, friends? Thank you to those who have read my entire rant lmao.

I have been going through very intense workplace stress this year. Fuck up workplace relationships, threatened to fire me for having mental breakdown at work, yadda yadda yadda.

I have been in therapy, practicing DBT skills most days on the bus ride to work (other than TIPP bc idk how to do that on the bus), and taking medications.

I had a really bad spiral the past few days. I ended up inconsolable when I got home the other night (I live alone so no one heard me). I started trying to text/communicate with a billion different people, some of which we're my coworkers. I started texting them something akin to saying they will have a great time in the future and I appreciate them and goodbyes and whatnot. I said it because I was contemplating/really really just wanted to no call no show never come back into work (I work a professional job, not at like a Wendy's where it's expected).

I knew in the back of my mind that they could also view this as me saying goodbye before killing myself. I never ever said that outright but they panicked when I spoke vaguely and discussed with each other whether or not to Baker act me the next morning.

I have done this another time around the summer of last year. I feel embarrassed. I feel terrible. I feel like such a shitty person. But I was just in so much pain that I didn't know what to do. I was sobbing nonstop for hours and hours when I decided to do that.

I know I am supposed to use my skills. It is hard to do when I am on that level. It's hard for me to practice TIPP because it requires setup and is unpleasant and not accessible everywhere.

Am I a bad person? What do I do? They distance themselves from me because I am like this. And I knew it my heart it could be construed that way even though I was one of the most distressed I have gotten.

But I just don't know what to do with the pain. The DBT skills can help temporarily with intense concentration from me, but the moment my attention wavers from the distraction/distress techniques, the pain comes back. It's exhausting to focus that hard and I can't do it 24/7.

I am just so tired. It almost feels like physical pain all the time. And I always just feel so alone.

Thanks, guys.

You can do it, guys. Another day is here and another day to try to make it through. All you have to do is make it through one day. Don't think about tomorrow or the next day or the next. Today is now.

Sometimes it gets exhausting to try and try again every day. That's ok. When those times happen, you can rest and hibernate a bit until you're ready to come back.

Several months ago I got a tattoo in a easily visible place for me. Some mornings on my way to work, I look at it and it reminds me to keep fighting.

I'm tired. But I'll try again today.

Good luck to you all. You are all in my thoughts. And the weekend is just around the corner. :)

I have tried therapy on and off for a while now. People would always get frustrated with me and tell me to "get therapy," but I never knew what I was actually supposed to be there for. And I tried a service like BetterHelp before (can't remember what this one was called), but it just sucked ass and I'm not sure if the people on there were even licensed professionals.

I finally started going consistently with this one therapist, but I frequently get frustrated with her for not giving me actual coping skills or techniques. One of her favorite things to ask me is "how can you deal with X?" And I get frustrated and say "I don't know." Because if I fucking knew I wouldn't be in therapy. She seems to do a more meandering talk therapy style thing with vague ideas of DBT and CBT thrown in there. She's not giving me enough skills to not get fired at work. She helped me go through a difficult time, but now that that's over, I'm back to square one.

So I found a therapist who specifically states she does DBT. Over time I have learned that my core issue is emotional dysregulation which is treated by DBT. She told me she follows this one workbook. I got the book. It's great! It gives you a zillion and one coping skills. But after having several sessions with her, I notice that she spends the entire time just going "in chapter 4, this happens. Then in chapter 8, this happens" while my eyes just glaze over. Today the session ended 35 minutes early because she only vaguely contributed to me talking about a problem I had today.

I have been seeing both therapists concurrently until my deductible resets in January.

I just am so endlessly frustrated with the entire mental health industry. I've seen so many different therapists. I've really tried to do any exercises that they have given me. I've tried multiple different psych meds (trying a new one now actually!).

Nothing works. Nothing has changed about me. I'm the same person with the same problems. And nothing I seem to try makes a lick of difference. I try so hard. I try a zillion different things...exercise, getting good sleep, eating right, therapy, meds...nothing changes me. Nothing helps me.

What in the everliving fuck am I missing? Do I have to go through 30 different therapists before I can find one that can help me? Am I just doing therapy "wrong"??? What am I supposed to be doing here?

Through all this, I've found that telling someone to "go to therapy" is almost offensive...it just absolves others from caring about you and makes it sound like you're not willing to do the base effort in bettering yourself.

Sorry for the long post and thanks for taking the time to read.

Hi all. Been taking lamotrigine off label from my psych provider. Intended to help with emotional instability.

I have been slowly titrating up. Had some ups and downs but now I feel like I'm nearly at the worst I've ever been.

I have been on 200 for the past 3 weeks. My mood has not stabilized in that time and I am getting much worse.

A few days after the increase to 200 my coworker noticed an immediate and dramatic negative shift in mood and appearance. Prior to that, I was on 150 for 5 weeks. Initially I was doing pretty good but I had a steady decline for the entirety of the 5th week before I was upped to 200.

My bros please help. This is destroying my career and relationships. It has immediate and significant impacts on my life.

I sent my provider an urgent message in her portal but yeah I need to figure out this shit asap.

Not sure if I am having a paradoxical reaction to every psych med I am trying or what??? Also yes I am in therapy but in the process of changing to one who is a lot more strucutred in her approach and less of a talk therapist.

I've been through idk how many therapists. And therapy is expensive as fuck because my insurance is shit. So I'm fucking done with this bullshit.

Most therapists I've tried, even if they claim to have certain treatment modalities, seem to just be keen on sitting there and listening to me talk without giving me much guidance at all. They give me vague ideas and not actually real skills or homework. This isn't helping me at all whatsoever.

Part of the issue is that I literally could never pinpoint what the fuck my issue was. I did see a therapist years back who seemed to actually give skills and worksheets, but she was using CBT for a minor issue for me because I couldn't figure out what my problem actually was. I only had a few sessions and then stopped due to the price and the fact that I thought she latched onto a minor problem to treat (and I didn't know my issue then).

When someone told me about "emotional dysregulation" and I found out that DBT is the gold standard for it, I have tried to find some who practice this, but it seems that most don't. And those who claim to are actually often essentially talk therapists who just listen to me instead of giving me techniques and homework to build skills.

I'm frustrated as all fucking hell. Recently my work told me I will be fired if I cannot sort myself out. I am desperate here.

I live in the US, Florida specifically.

Thanks for listening.