Depression

[TxRover]

49 minutes ago, Lyle Lanley said:

My anxiety recently has been a lot worse recently and have no idea what’s causing me to feel like this. 

Anxiety is a cruel mistress, you have it under wraps for any amount of time and all it takes is one little crack in the covers and it launches out again in full glory.

The good news is by recognizing what has occurred, you are already on the way to overcoming it. Instead of focusing on the feeling, look around a bit whenever you feel those twinges and see if you can find a link to something that causes this feeling to intensify. The bonus of taking a minute to look around is it can often calm you down, as a quick study generally shows no pending threats to cause the feeling. If you can find a tie to an environment or condition that generates the anxiety, then your ability to control it will be that much better.

The flip side is when you worry about what’s causing the feeling without knowing the genesis, it often snowballs. That’s when a checklist of things is useful, because you can look over what’s been done, and to be done, and be sure there is actually nothing physical to stress over. The mental bit is where this usually resides, as you well know, but being reassured that is the case may help.

Mine normally manifests as feelings of doom about the future due to uncontrollable factors, that my mind won’t accept are uncontrollable, and thus my mind starts on the hamster wheel of doom. For many people, that’s the route to using alcohol or drugs to forget things/ignore things, but if you can nail it down to being a strictly mental thing, there are tricks to getting your mind off it. What those tricks are varies by person, but you know yourself best. I will say, however, that a good walk or a distracting game (physical or mental) seem to often help me. Stay strong!

[Venti]

2 hours ago, Lyle Lanley said:

My anxiety recently has been a lot worse recently and have no idea what’s causing me to feel like this. 

Sometimes little innocuous things can trigger anxiety/panic attacks.

Like I said to Jamie try some breathing exercises.

[thistledo]

51 minutes ago, Venti said:

Sometimes little innocuous things can trigger anxiety/panic attacks.

Like I said to Jamie try some breathing exercises.

I genuinely actually used that breathing and counting down thing last night! I often go to bed with one line of a song stuck in my head and it will repeat over and over again like a broken record, it infuriates me. Weirdly I usually envision myself in a zombie apocalypse to get to sleep (not joking) I get caught up in the mundane things I'd do first that I fall asleep before any real action happens. Anyway, yeah got to about 80 odd and I was asleep. 

@Lyle Lanley if you're podcast fan try the Where is my Mind podcast. Fellow anxiety sufferer talks about all things anxiety, usually with some really good guests. Also covers some Buddhist meditation techniques, you'll get people who'll have a laugh at that, but don't knock it until you've tried it. I've mentioned on here being unable to do the simplest of things due to anxiety and this podcast helps me massively. Gained a much better understanding of why we get anxiety, which for me really helped long term. 

[RossBFaeDundee]

On 16/01/2023 at 18:29, Stellaboz said:

I can recommend taking vitamin d supplements. It won't fix everything but it does help a little with the lack of sun.

Started doing so during a very rough festive period filled with panic attacks and the like, which aside from feeling down was marred by light-headedness and a lack of energy. Looked into symptoms of low Vit. D and had a couple of independent recommendations from friends. I do feel it's having a positive effect, almost immediately started to feel better and had regained a lot of my energy. The only issue now is to keep remembering to take the bloody things daily!

[carpetmonster]

1 hour ago, RossBFaeDundee said:

Started doing so during a very rough festive period filled with panic attacks and the like, which aside from feeling down was marred by light-headedness and a lack of energy. Looked into symptoms of low Vit. D and had a couple of independent recommendations from friends. I do feel it's having a positive effect, almost immediately started to feel better and had regained a lot of my energy. The only issue now is to keep remembering to take the bloody things daily!

I have a wee scoosher that I just keep on me. It’s 4 sprays to get your full dose so I do them one at a time throughout the day and that helps build up the habit of remembering to do it 

[Venti]

Just wanted to say that after giving blood last week I felt like fucking shite.

Didn't really eat well before.

[Lyle Lanley]

Thank you for the replies, Will try out the breathing exercises and have a listen to the where is my mind podcast. 

[moses1924]

19 minutes ago, PB1994 said:

I think I might have ended my marriage tonight and there is a chance I’m being a stressed filled paranoid idiot. 

Hope things arent as bad as they seem @PB1994things will be calmer in the morning if your feeling stressed just now, always folk on here at strange times of the night if you want random thoughts from random football fans...

[moses1924]

hope the breathing works @Lyle Lanleyneed to try that vit d spray @carpetmonster

[dundeefc1783]

10 hours ago, Lyle Lanley said:

My anxiety recently has been a lot worse recently and have no idea what’s causing me to feel like this. 

In a similar position my anxiety has been off the scale recently. I feel the route of mines is often work related. Something minor at work when a decision I make might come back with criticism causes me to really struggle. I then end up anxious about pretty much everything and not just the initial situation that caused it. I end up overthinking and catastrophic thinking takes over. It's a cycle I just really struggle to get out of. 

[PB1994]

9 hours ago, moses1924 said:

Hope things arent as bad as they seem @PB1994things will be calmer in the morning if your feeling stressed just now, always folk on here at strange times of the night if you want random thoughts from random football fans...

Nope things are just the same this morning.

Sometimes it is easier to speak to people you don’t know than it is to speak to the ones you do know.

[Jacksgranda]

9 hours ago, dundeefc1783 said:

In a similar position my anxiety has been off the scale recently. I feel the route of mines is often work related. Something minor at work when a decision I make might come back with criticism causes me to really struggle. I then end up anxious about pretty much everything and not just the initial situation that caused it. I end up overthinking and catastrophic thinking takes over. It's a cycle I just really struggle to get out of. 

Mine definitely was, constant low level background anxiety, with regular peaks.

Still get a bit anxious about appointments, even if they are routine. Got a bit uptight because I thought I'd get a telling off because my implant was a month late, and had also to rearrange my telephone appointment with my cancer nurse. Not an issue.

[Alert Mongoose]

On 14/01/2023 at 23:40, carpetmonster said:

Believe it or not, I actually get to sleep easier because of @Hedgecutter - he made a post years ago about taking a deep slow breath in and every time you breathe count one down from 100. I do it if I'm having trouble and I never get past 80. Tagging him because he might be able to give more detail. Of course, I can also sleep easily because I don't live in Scotland so there's lesser chance of him popping up at the back window. 

I'm going to give this a bash especially since I have reread it and realised that you are not supposed to count to 100 during each breath. 

[DA Baracus]

The sunlight issue mentioned earlier is a big one. 

Before Covid, in the winter I'd be getting in to an office when it was dark or just getting lighter, where I was sat in harsh artificial light with no windows near me, and then going home when it was dark. Felt tired all the time.

Now that I work at home three days a week I get some good light since I work right beside the living room window which faces the sun. Despite it being freezing today I'm actually quite comfortable as the sun is shining right on to me.

Although I still have to go in to the office twice a week, I now sit right beside a window which helps immeasurably (and I don't turn on the horrible light; it's so harsh and glaring!). Also have the brightness on my phone and laptop turned way down. I'm almost blinded sometimes when I see how bright other folks have their screens.

Anyway, not much help, but just noting the benefits of getting light if you can. Sadly that will not be possible for some folk, which is a sbit situation.

Also, we over halfway through January already. January is often a pish month as you have the buildup to Christmas and/or New Year to look forward to. They're thing many eagerly anticipate as it's a time where you usually see family and friends more and often have a good laugh. For us lonely folk it's really nice, so when it's all suddenly over and you're alone again, that can be tough. Even if you aren't lonely, suddenly being jolted back to 'reality' is a tough transition.

It gets easier once January is over. I always find it's like being able to breathe again.

[Smurph]

I’ve never used a SAD light (mentioned by someone earlier) but my old flatmate had one and it really made a difference to her, whenever she bothered to use it, and I’ve heard good things from others.

As DA said, January is just a festive comedown and it’s always a bit shite. Every day is getting lighter and longer now though.

[Alert Mongoose]

I've got one of those but (and it's maybe not borne out in reality) all I can think about when it's on is how fast the electricity meter will be going round.

[TxRover]

4 hours ago, PB1994 said:

Nope things are just the same this morning.

Sometimes it is easier to speak to people you don’t know than it is to speak to the ones you do know.

This is the brutal truth in some cases. The key aspect of this situation is not trying just to try, things won’t get better with out change, usually by both parties. In far to many situations, the change is only forthcoming with one party, and doomed to failure as the road becomes I compromise and they take. A big step back, and some careful evaluation is in order. Good luck.

[PB1994]

41 minutes ago, TxRover said:

This is the brutal truth in some cases. The key aspect of this situation is not trying just to try, things won’t get better with out change, usually by both parties. In far to many situations, the change is only forthcoming with one party, and doomed to failure as the road becomes I compromise and they take. A big step back, and some careful evaluation is in order. Good luck.

Thanks.

The worst thing isis probably a totally daft thing to be falling out/ending a relationship over but I’m 99% sure she is lying to me.

Ill try explain without writing a novel… We’ve been together 9 years now and after having our first child she put on a bit of weight. Not a lot but over the years she has tried dieting loads of times to lose it. Some times without success and sometimes after a good start it kind of fizzles out. Anyway back in November she said she was going to try again. By the week before Christmas she had lost a stone, which is great. It was weird though, she had cut out eating chocolate and snacks etc but wasn’t really watching what she ate. Still plenty takeaways and at least 4 nights out that I can think of between November and New Year. She also had these vile smelling burps when she started which was different too. I believe they are called sulphur burps. Smells like rotten eggs when you burp. Vile things. She was also talking about how she wasn’t able to eat as much as she used to as she was going out for dinner and didn’t want to go somewhere with big portions.

Last Wednesday I was raiding through the fridge and found this strange injection pen. It was for a thing called ozempic. Which is used to treat type 2 diabetes but is also used for weight loss. I messaged her asking what it was as she was at work at the time and she told me it was her friends but it was in our fridge to hide from her friends mum. I also found a bag of needles in the cupboard above the fridge which I didn’t tell her I found.

I did some Googling on it and it tricks your brain into thinking you are full so you don’t eat as much and you cut down your portion sizes. It also makes the food in your stomach take longer to digest so you don’t need to eat for a longer period of time. What is one of the common side affects? Sulphur burps among other things.

So going through my head was she has lost a stone in about 6 weeks without really having a strict diet and then I find this. Looking back everything this drug is supposed to do has happened to her. 

On top of that our eldest child has type 1 diabetes so we have a sharps bin in the kitchen for all his insulin needles. I found two used needles in our sharps bin that were from the bag I found. I also spotted the needle wrapper lid on our carpet in the living room right next to where she normally sits. That was a week past Saturday and I did wonder what it was at the time but it never really clicked until I found the needles etc.

On Friday I noticed that the bag of needles had been moved to a different spot. Strange since she has no reason to be in the bag. This was after telling her that I didn’t want the injection kept in our fridge and her friend will have to take it back.

They work together and had a shift on Saturday so it was all taken from the house, needles included but on the Sunday there was another used needle in our bin. It’s taken once a week so that’s the last two Saturdays I could see it being used. I don’t understand why you would give all this stuff back but her friend still gave her the used needle to take back and put in our bin.

Basically she is saying that it’s her friends stuff to keep hidden from her mother and once a week the wife takes all the stuff out to her and then takes everything back in the house to store or dispose of.

I don’t believe her at all as it all seems to fit with her starting this diet. The dramatic weight loss side effects etc. I’d been stressing about it for the last week and it all came out last night and big argument etc happened.

I can’t actually prove her wrong without asking to examine her for injection sites or looking through her phone, which I’m not particularly keen on doing. The problem is I just don’t believe what she is saying and it’s just making me paranoid of everything else that she is doing even if she’s not actually up to anything.

Dont really have a clue what to do to try and solve it tbh. I could be being a complete fucking idiot here worried over nothing so please let me know if I am.

Sorry, that went on for ages and I dont even know if it makes any sense.

Edited January 18, 2023 by PB1994

[Jeff Venom]

On the anxiety front, has anyone ever been in such a heightened anxiety-induced state that they've been unable to eat or sleep and need medication just to settle down?

Almost exactly a year ago that was me. I don't know how exactly I ended up in that state either, but it was so bad I couldn't eat, lost loads of weight, stomach was burning with the acid build up, could barely sleep and no amount of breathing or exercise or journaling (which I tired for the first time as I was just flinging things at the wall by that stage) was touching it. I could just about sleep if I took a nytol.

I was given a week's worth of Xanax by my doc and thankfully (actually by some luck tbh) had just started speaking to a counsellor at the time who was great with me and between those two things we managed to strip things right back to get my nervous system into a state where breathing and such other tools could begin to work, and I could start eating again. I was in constant hyper-vigilance or something.

I've always had anxiety to some extent but never understood wtf it was until 6-7 years ago, but despite the tough spells culminating in my own horror show a year ago, it absolutely amazes me the power of your nervous system and of your own breath. 

One last thing, my counsellor recommended an app to me called "insight timer". It has an enormous amount of resource on it to help with mental health, probably an overwhelming amount at first. But I found one track in amongst it all which helped me a lot with calming down and so it was worth it to me.

[eindhovendee]

15 minutes ago, PB1994 said:

Thanks.

The worst thing isis probably a totally daft thing to be falling out/ending a relationship over but I’m 99% sure she is lying to me.

 

Apart from possibly lying, which is a biggie, is she actually doing something wrong? 

I don't know anything about that type of diet but if it's a legal way to lose weight can you not let her get on with it and offer support?

Assuming you can put up with smelly burps.