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depression comix #122
(via hyperchondriasis)
doctorplusone asked: Maybe it's more of an anxiety attack? They're different from panic attacks, if you didn't know already. I'm not sure what they are though as I've been trying to look them up just recently.
thats what I have been calling them, but as far as I can tell, those aren’t so much a medically recognized thing as far as the internet says.
i don’t want to want to die again
I’ve always assumed that what happens to me is something other than a panic attack. I’ve been told that if I got panic attacks, I’d know it. So there must be another word for what happens to me when I get really stressed and anxious about things. So here is the list of DSM IV critiria for a Panic Attack.
I’m going to go through them one by one.
#1 happens, but just to increased heartrate level, occationally to feeling like the heart is hammering in my chest. Never palpitations.
#2 In later stages, sometimes, mostly associated with extreme versions of #13
#3 Yes. All the time. Both tremors and uncontrolled shaking.
#4 occationally I feel like I can’t fully inhale, but not normally associated with the other things. It’s like lower level anxiety for me?
#5 no, but there is a sensation of something caught in my throat that I get over 90% of the time.
#6 not really
#7 I used to get this a lot more and still do when things get really bad, but not during these “attacks” that commonly”
#8 yes. definitely yes
#9 I have issues with this normally, but when these things happen, this stuff goes through the roof. So hard.
#10 absolutely. I literally feel like I have no control over myself when this happens.
#11 not really, because I don’t have the heart or breath symptoms as much, but I do sometimes fear myself and loss of control to the point of self harm-y stuff
#12 rarely but not never in relation to this.
#13 yes, frequently.
So basically, 3, 8, 10, and 13 always when this happens, and you only need 4 for DSM stuff, but it still doesn’t feel right calling it panic attacks, because the breath and heart symptoms are minor at best? And a lot of the of the time it is triggered by obvious building anxiety? And I can push through it to some extent?
oh wow. my time perception is so fucked up right now.
like on every scale, and in a really weird combination of ways.
like what is time of day and how old are people and how many hours has it been since things and how long ago did I last do a thing?
As Tony and Pepper so elegantly put it in Iron Man 3 “I’m a hot mess”
I did that thing where I feel I just missed 3 hours. I mean, I can mentally account for all the time, but I feel like I turned around and it was 3 hours later. I was looking up some stuff about the marvel universe and suddenly daylight.
I was supposed to at least start my paper tonight.
All I want is for the people who are supposed to be helping me get better, supposed to be treating me, to not invalidate my emotions, to not tell me in one breath that I am not my disorder and in another that all my experiences are because of one mood or another. To not dismiss me as being simply resistant and oppositional when I explain why I think something will not work, to let my experiences with myself and different situations actually act as something valid. I should be allowed to say no without being called argumentative and uncooperative. I should be allowed to decide which issues I want to deal with and which are actually a problem for me. I should be the one to say how much something is interfering and how much something is helping.
Why is this hard to find?
today, my psych told my father things I told her explicitly I didn’t want him to hear.
because it is her call what “not safe” means
and the fact that I am a legal adult means nothing
so the choice is the hospital even though I know it won’t work based on first hand experience that neither my psych nor my father have, or my (possibly somewhat psychologically abusive*) parents house.
So I went home. And my dad didn’t all that much attention to me all night. And went to bed at midnight. And has to wake me up in 4 hours so he can get to work, otherwise I miss class.
Because that means I am somehow safer than being with my friends until 3am, and then at home with my sleeping housemate.
and somehow this is supposed to get me to trust them? Right. Now I have even less people I can talk to when things are getting bad.
So yeah, professor, I didn’t get the paper done again. I know you don’t want to hear my excuses. I wouldn’t want an adult in my life to actually be interested in making things easier.
*I go back and forth on this all the time. My parents do not mean to cause harm, this I honestly believe. They try to be good parents, and they don’t want to hurt me, but each in their own way, they say some seriously fucked up things. My mother projects all of her own anxieties onto me, to the point where I was seeing a personal trainer at age 8 and told constantly to this day that there are things wrong with my body (how I don’t have body issues is a miracle). That is the one I notice because it is the one I DIDN’T internalize. My father on the other hand, just twists my words around. I don’t even think he fully understands that he does it. But like, basically it comes down to him always being right and me being not good enough, unless I am at the moment excelling. He is all tough love, but sometimes it spills over into things like tonight when he told me “don’t alienate the only allies you have in this world” referring to him, and telling me that I was putting too much pressure on my friends and that they couldn’t deal with me when all I said was that they didn’t want me staying over. He is really good at convincing me of it too. I can’t go into everything now. I need to try to get at least four hours of sleep. But that is what I mean by “possibly somewhat abusive”
apparently it is a mixed episode. tonight, instead of cutting my skin, i cut my hair. i am insane. I used very, very loosely.
Anonymous asked: my family and friends have abandoned me because of my depression so i know what youre going through and whether this has any significance i just want you to know that i care and i am sending you all the good vibes i can.
That sucks that they abandoned you. That sucks so hard! OMG that just makes me angry!
I mean, my situation is more complicated. They care, they just don’t do the right things, and mostly end up making it worse. My entire family has really unhealthy relationships to mental illness, masked in being really accepting and helpful. Overall the message is super inconsistent, and more often then not is either fatal hopelessness, or blame and guilt. But dammit, they do care, they just suck really hard at showing it at all correctly. And no amount of telling them changes that. (it was kind of how my parents were raised, i guess?)
My friends are just being less helpful than I wish they were being. Again, it isn’t like they left, but they just either can’t or won’t deal with this stuff. And I am sure I am not helping by being super cagy about what I share and instinctively hiding how bad things are whenever that is at all possible. I mean, they aren’t mind readers, right? Like I don’t know how much of it is them not doing things they honestly should be doing based on their legitimate ability and knowledge and resources, and how much of it is them either not knowing what to do, or what I need, or what is actually wrong, or not having the resources or ability themselves to do anything.
I wish I knew, but I can’t trust my thoughts at all. I obviously am catastrophizing it, and I obviously think I have made myself very noticably in crisis, but i can’t tell that objectively.
But regardless of that rant, thanks for caring. If you know of any phone line that is willing to talk to people who aren’t imediately going to kill themselves or cut or something, then that would probably help more than all the good anon vibes on the planet.
But thanks for what you can give.
I hope things look up for you. Imagine me punching those silly people who left you in a time of need. That is a terrible thing to do and you deserve better, whoever you are.
