Mental Health: My Continuing Struggle; Can Anyone Relate?

Hopefully I'm putting this in the right place, but with the lack of a mental health forum here, I'm guessing this is the best place for it. Also, this is going to be very long, so if anyone has the patience to read the whole thing to the end, kudos for you. If you don't want to read all of this but just want to see what I'm looking for, skip down to the end paragraph.

Just about two years ago, I had a mental breakdown, a serious mental breakdown. There were a lot of different things that led up to it, so I'll start with that:

In the summer of 2013, I started working full time at a library closer to the city. I knew this job was going to have me in contact with more children than at my old jobs, but it was full time with benefits and I didn't have to work weekends, so I could spend more time with my boyfriend. (I really don't like being around kids very much; more on that later) At the time, I was working two part-time library jobs to make ends meet and pay the rent, but this meant I worked one or two days of the weekend every weekend. Wasn't too fun. I still managed to have a pretty active social life somehow though . . . Anyways, I started working there in August of 2013.

I also moved out of my cozy little apartment and moved in with an acquaintance to a town that would be closer to my job. The apartment was over an hour away, whereas the room I'd rent in his house would be about 30 minutes away. So these are the changes that happened leading up to the breakdown . . . some of them. I was also hoping my boyfriend might ask me to move in, but he did not. I thought maybe he wouldn't like me living with a single male, but he didn't seem to care. Stupid reasons to move in with someone, but there it is. It seemed like it would be an okay fit at the time, too and it was closer to work. So I did it.

It was during this time I also became obsessed with the idea my boyfriend was cheating on me with his close friend who is female. It'd been building for a couple years, ever since my boyfriend and I got serious. (To be honest, I still struggle with this in some ways.) There's a lot I could say about WHY I think this/thought this. There are things with her and their relationship that make me very uncomfortable, but if I really get into it, this post will be even longer so . . . for now, I will just say I was struggling with it. At one point, on a Friday night which was "their night to get together" I called him expecting her to be gone by that point (it was pretty late, but I don't remember how late) and he was snippy on the phone with me and hung up quickly. I got really upset with him, but I left it be and stewed on it. Later he called back and I asked him why he was so snippy and he sorta denied it saying they were watching a movie still at the time. So this just didn't help matters. I started obsessing about it all night and couldn't sleep. I actually drove over there around 11 pm to see if she was still there at his house and I drove around and around by his house several times (I couldn't tell if she was still there or not in the pouring rain.) I think I also went out again at 2 am to see if she was still there, and she wasn't as far as I could tell. Anyways, I mention this to tell you just how obsessed I was with the idea. So I was struggling with that as well.

So the job was very stressful to me. I was a hypersensitive, hypervigilant person. Most of the time, the library was a chaos of parents and kids running around in a small space. My stress and anxiety were on overdrive almost every day for a good portion of the morning and later afternoon. Plus it was a new job, so there was the added stress of that. I had to interact with a lot more kids of all ages more than I was used to at my other jobs, even though I had worked in children's before, they were small libraries with less people in and out, less kids overall. I became overwhelmed really quickly, but I was trapped there. So the thing about kids: not a big fan of kids. Never was, even as a kid myself. I believe they also are a trigger for me in some ways. I didn't have a great childhood, and seeing kids with families reminds me of my own childhood and brings up a great deal of pain for me.

Things with the place I was living also went downhill. My roommate became increasingly messy and didn't clean anything, so I started staying in my room more and more, only coming out to use the bathroom and cook in the kitchen. It became increasingly clear this wasn't going to be a good fit for me, but I was stuck there for the time being.

The obsession with the friend of my boyfriend's grew and grew and led to arguments with my boyfriend. I didn't want to be the one to tell him he had to end his friendship with her, because I didn't think that was fair of me to do. (Basically, I wanted him to decide himself to end it.) But he didn't end it. And I didn't tell him to either, because that's not me. I tried to keep most of my anxiety about his relationship with her to myself, but I didn't like a lot of things about it and I felt his relationship with her got in the way of our relationship. For example, Friday nights were "their" night. I wasn't invited to join them, and neither was her husband (she's married.) I found that really offputting that they spent time alone in his house at night on a Friday no night no less. It's weird because when we first started dating, I didn't really care much about their relationship. I guess because at that time we were just dating, it wasn't serious yet. But once I felt the relationship became more serious and the rules about them seemed so rigid, it started to really worry me that something more than friendship was going on. There are tons of other things I could say about this, too, but then this post will be three times as long.

I was having a lot of trouble sleeping as you can imagine during this time. My moods were all over the place. This went on for months.

Then come February, my car started having a weird mildewy smell in it. I had no idea what was causing it, so I took it into the dealership and they discovered that a huge leak had occurred at the hatchback (was a Prius) that filled the tire well up with water. The water had sat there stagnating for probably a long time before I realized it because it had started to stink. So they fixed it, and detailed it but the car still stank (and probably still does). So I had to deal with a stinky car that made whatever was in it stink too. It was pretty awful. Luckily, I don't have this car anymore now.

One morning at the end of February I just snapped. I had this revelation that my boyfriend was poisoning me and he was molesting the daughter of the woman he worked for. I had no evidence for either, but I had these paranoid thoughts that rang as true for me. I took off early in the morning in my pajamas and drove around and around, scared feeling like there was no safe place for me, and I had to do something to protect the daughter of his boss. I ended up calling a therapist that I'd gone to a few years ago while I was going for my divorce and she told me to go to the emergency room. My boyfriend at this time was trying to call me and find out where I was, but I didn't want to talk to him. I remember watching the faces of all the people driving by me and imagining they were all in states of pain. And I drove around thinking all these weird thoughts about different places I passed. I tried to avoid driving by schools. I ended up parked in my old town where I'd used to live and thought that the people there were meeting for sexual trysts. I was just paranoid and delusional. But it expressed itself as a veil being lifted, and reality rearing it's ugly head. Finally I accepted a call from my boyfriend and he drove to where I was and drove me to the hospital.

We were there for a long time. It was a very surreal time, where everything had meaning and I had to figure out what the signs were trying to tell me. I had to take a pee test. They ended up sending me home with antibiotics for a UTI (which I still doubt I even had) and I was supposed to report to the outpatient mental health clinic in the morning. My boyfriend was there supporting me the whole time, to which I am entirely grateful.

That night, I couldn't sleep. The lights on the ceiling of the cars passing outside seemed to be haunting me. My anxiety was in full force. We live on a busy street and when anxious, I can't ignore the traffic sounds and lights. My boyfriend basically snapped and turned into this evil mean person towards me. He called me his sister's name (the one he doesn't get along with) and it was like I somehow became her. He was yelling at me and threatening me and I just remember being scared. I remember I began puking for no reason. When I confronted him in the morning about what happened, he sorta denied anything had happened. So who knows if I imagined it or what? I don't know at this point. I may have imagined parts of it, but it felt pretty real . . .

The next day I managed to drive myself to the hospital but I quickly deteriorated while in there. Again, everything had meaning. I thought there was surveillance in every room. I thought the food my boyfriend had given me to take there with me was poison. The hallucination happened where the toast he'd given me tasted like sawdust.

Eventually I somehow wandered down to the emergency room again after talking with doctors that seemed afraid of me. I don't know if they sent me down there, or I just made my own way down there. Some of it is a little fuzzy, but I remember some details astonishingly well. When I got there, I called my boyfriend and told him where he was. He was at work, but he got the okay to leave work to join me. Again, we were there a long time. I felt like I was being tested somehow and so was he. I told him I felt like I had Alzheimers. I remember telling a black woman her people were better than we all (meaning white people) made them out to be and that she should be proud. I remember I couldn't understand a lot of what was being said by the doctors and him and it was scary. Eventually I was emitted to the mental health inpatient clinic. It was there, things went from bad to worse. I started hallucinating big time, mostly auditory hallucinations; at one point I was awake but this whole scene was playing out in my head (I could only hear it; like a dream without visuals) I did some pretty embarrassing things during this period. I threw a tray of food at the wall in the room I was assigned basically because I didn't like the side I was on. I don't know if they gave me drugs that made me do this or it happened before they gave me any medication . . . I have a lot of lost memories, a lot of things I can't recall of the first night in the hospital. I remember waking up that first night feeling better and the night nurse who was assigned to watch me giving me a big hug. I remember how great that felt.

I was in the hospital for a week, my boyfriend came every night during visiting hours to see me. He was my rock. He got some of my friends and family to see me. Considering what I was thinking about him, he supported me more than anyone else in my entire life has ever supported me and this was the lowest I'd ever been. After the hospital stint, I was in inpatient care for another week. I was given three meds: risperidone, something that starts with c which I'm no longer on, and lorazepam. I was pretty stable at this point. Luckily I didn't get fired, I used vacation and sick time which I had just gotten as I'd passed my 6 month point to cover it. People at work were worried about me. None of them have any clue what really happened. I've only told one person I work with that I had a psychotic break, but with no details and I only see her on Mondays but I felt I could trust her. There's such a stigma about mental illness that I can't really bring myself to talk about it with anyone including those closest to me.

After I got out, I was a changed person. I didn't care about much anymore. I just went through the motions of getting through the day. This has pretty much continued more or less up until now. I think in some ways it's much worse now than it was then. I'm pretty sure I'm clinically depressed.

I tried weaning myself off the drugs they gave me, but I had a recurrence of psychosis in December of 2015. Again, I was having delusions and paranoia. More delusions though. I don't think I had any auditory hallucinations, though I did have one visual hallucination; I felt this time like I was in spiritual crisis. Some of these things involved my boyfriend, and I'm not sure if he was enabling me in some way by "playing along" or what exactly happened. I ended up in the emergency room again, but this time did not get emitted. I was back on the risperidone as prescribed by my new psychiatrist. They also gave me this blue pill while I was in there, and I have no idea what it was for.

This whole stint made me more depressed. Since then, it's just been downhill. Like I said, I don't really enjoy life anymore. I don't enjoy the things I once used to like like listening to music and even reading. I go out with my friends occasionally, but I don't really feel like it. I'm not close to anyone. The person I'm closest to right now is my therapist, but she's not a traditional therapist and I'm not sure she's really helping me anymore at this point. I did manage last summer to move out of the house I was sharing with the single guy to renting my own place in another nearby town. My parents and grandparents also got together and bought me a car, which was really over the top if you ask me. Very generous. But I was miserable in my new place, as a family with kids moved in upstairs and I wasn't with my boyfriend. I really wanted to be with him. And I didn't want him to be with his female friend anymore. But now, I don't really even care about them all that much. I still think about it from time to time, but I don't even care if he is cheating on me with her or not. Things have changed there, they meet up on Wednesday nights now at her house instead. Sometimes (according to him) her husband is there sometimes he is not. I work late Wednesday nights, so very convenient for them they don't have to bother disinviting me.

In October of last year, I basically did move in with my boyfriend and I've been living here with him ever since, but I still have the apartment and can't really get rid of it. He has never said to me he wants me to live with him all the time or to get rid of the place, and I somehow can't bring myself to do it. I feel like I need it or I will go back to it. So yes, I'm paying rent every month on a place that I'm not living. I know it's stupid. It adds to my depression actually. But then on the other hand, I can't see myself getting rid of it and living here for a long period of time with him. He lives in a huge house that is old and needs constant maintenance inside and out, neither of which we have time for really. He started a new job 6 months ago where he is now working weekends, either Saturday or Sunday, and this too has gotten me depressed.

Every day I can barely get out of bed. I do it, but it takes all I got to do it. I do the bare minimum of things every day to get by. I've stopped cooking altogether. I don't do any regular cleaning. I do the dishes and laundry sometimes. I go to work, get through it barely and then go home. I don't feel any happiness in going home. I drag myself through the day at work and I mostly feel numb. I don't interact with patrons or my coworkers much; sometimes I downright ignore the kids. I don't feel much of anything to be honest with you. Sex? Well, we have it, like a few times a month. My libido and sex drive are almost non-existent. Luckily his is too so this hasn't become a problem yet. I was never really thrilled with our sex life either, but that's another story. The only thing I look forward to is sleep and watching Star Trek with my boyfriend and the kitty we own at night before bed. That's really about it. I know part of it may be a side effect of the meds I'm on now. I am on a different drug then risperidone, it's quetiapine. Risperidone was having some bad physical side effects. Now my psych wants me to try a antidepressant and I'm in agreement with that.

So I joined this group in the hopes of getting some much needed support. One of the things that's happened is that I don't talk to anyone about any of this except my therapist. I try to talk a little about it with my boyfriend, but he isn't always the best person to talk to about things he hasn't experienced himself. I love him, but he always has a way of making the conversation about him and that's not what I'm looking for. I just want someone to listen. It's the same with my friends. I don't have deep relationships with people anymore. My family . . . well, it's complicated with them. But my relationship with my family is even more surfacy. My mother is mentally ill, but instead of being a confidant, we have a very distant relationship. It's actually hardly a relationship. There's really only one aunt and uncle I like and get along with, but they live far away in Ohio. I do blame her a lot for what I've become. I always hoped I wouldn't end up mentally ill myself, but here I am. And it seems maybe worse than hers. I don't have an official diagnosis which is frustrating. Psychosis NOS is what my psych says I have. NOS stands for Not Otherwise Specified. I also suffer from general anxiety and have had depression before as a teenager as well as ADHD (though I doubt that diagnosis). I also suspect I may be borderline, but I'm not sure.

I'm hoping maybe things will change if I go on antidepressants. I know I don't get enough exercise, but I don't want to do anything so it's hard to get motivated. At work, I try to take a half hour walk on my lunch break every day, but that's about it for exercise unless my boyfriend and I do a hike on the weekend. I try to eat right for the most part. I don't have any current creative outlets, and my creativity has really dried up. I'm an artist, so this is sad. I'm also a writer. But I have no desire to either draw or write creatively. Right now I'm basically struggling with mental illness and feeling like I don't belong anywhere. And also feeling like I wish I wasn't here. Not suicidal, but like I wish I wasn't alive. I don't want to hurt myself, as I don't want to feel any pain nor do I want to cause suffering in others by ending my life.

So for those of you who are wondering what this post is all about and what I want to get out of it, I'd like to hear stories about others struggling with mental illness and how you're coping with it, what meds you're on if any, your thoughts on meds. I'm also wondering if anyone has any ideas about a theory that I'm in this place because of what was happening in my life at the time and the stress getting too high. Has that happened to anyone here? I guess I just feel like if I have any sort of psychotic mental illness (like schizophrenia or something similar) it feels like it started very late for me, as I was 33 when the big break happened. Also, for anyone who has had a psychotic episode, is it normal to be able to remember it very clearly? There are parts I really remember vividly and then there's a lot of blank spots too during the night I got emitted to the hospital. I just wish I could get a diagnosis that was definitive. But the thought of being on these drugs the rest of my life and feeling like I feel right now the rest of my life depresses the shit out of me. It also depresses me to realize this relationship may not be going anywhere either ultimately although I've invested four years now, and I'll have to end it and move back to my apartment. It also depresses me when I think I'm stuck in this job that I can't really stand due to all the kids mainly but also the distance I have to travel to commute to it. I used to love working in the library but now . . . So if anyone can relate to being stuck in a job or relationship with no seeming way out or forward, please post your story here. Thanks for reading this far!

 

Thank you bingostring, Enjel, and YeahpIdk for your replies. And a *hugs* back to you all!

I have semi-isolated myself, but it's been slowly happening for years, ever since I started dating my boyfriend back in 2012. He takes up more of my time and the fact I have a full-time job instead of two part-time jobs where I somehow managed to have more free time. I still try to meet up with my friends a few times a month but as I said, none of my friends and I have a really close relationship. I don't really want to burden any of my friends with stuff they may not want to deal with. I don't feel close enough to anyone in my life right now (even my boyfriend) where I can just talk to them about this freely. The one colleague I confided in about what really happened was a fluke. She's a very private person and I trusted her with my truth, but I can't see myself discussing mental illness with her any more than that. So my therapist is really the only person I talk to about these things. I wish I had someone I could talk to and could relate to what I'm telling them, but I don't. So I am here in the hopes that talking here will help.

I had a possible chance to start seeing someone else for therapy who would also double as my psychiatrist, but it didn't work out. My therapist is very helpful in the sense I get to vent some of what is going on and how I'm feeling though most of the time we seem to focus on things that isn't my immediate problem at the moment. She's not a traditional therapist, but I have worked with her in the past and she was helpful then. To be honest, I don't do a lot of the things she wants me to try. I'm not sure she is the best choice if I do end up with a more serious diagnosis of borderline or schizophrenia. I also pay out of pocket for her as a non-traditional therapist. It's probably more me then her. :^\

I am on a new antipsychotic quetiapine which I've been taking for about two and a half months now. So far it doesn't have the side effects the other antipsychotic had, which is why I went off it in the first place. And next month when I see my psych again, we're going to start on an antidepressant, but I don't know which one as of yet.

I am already taking an anti-anxiety med as needed lorezapam, but I haven't really had to take any lately. Usually I only take it if I can't get to sleep with the quetiapine. I think I'm really on the antipsychotic more or less as a sleep aid (that's sort of how I use it); it sedates me enough where I can fall asleep easily. I have struggled for years with insomnia to one degree or another and if I don't get enough sleep, that's when I seem to be prone to unstable moods, anxiety, and if the stress builds more leads to paranoia, delusions and at the worst point psychosis.

As for mindfulness meditation, I don't seem to be good at meditation. I've tried it on occasion, but I didn't seem to feel anything from it. Maybe I didn't do it long enough or wasn't doing it right. My therapist would be happy if I could get into it! I should try again.

Art and art therapy sounds interesting. I really don't have time or the energy to do things during the week after work, which is part of my problem. But it's something to think about. Part of my problem, and why I suspect I'm depressed, is that I don't feel motivated to do much of anything. Art and creative writing used to be something I did every day practically . . .

Thanks, Enjel for sharing your story about your journey through mental illness. It helps to know I'm not alone in this, that others can relate. I am aware of my state of consciousness right now, but I do believe I have lost the desire to really live life. I am just going through the motions, waiting for my life to be over. I may not be actively suicidal, but maybe I'm passively so. I don't know. I do the bare minimum every day to get through. I feel like the only things I can do to get myself out of this is escape by quitting my job and ending my relationship with my boyfriend and moving back into my apartment. Neither thing I can do easily, and I'm not sure if maybe that's just part of my borderline personality disorder that I suspect I may have. And obviously I can't quit my job without finding another one to replace it because I have bills and rent to pay just like everyone else. I'm afraid I'm going to get at trouble at work again for taking too many sick days. I've taken one today, I just can't deal with the people and all the kids today . . .

YeahpIdk, you touched upon something I think about a lot. I really don't know if he is good for my mental health . . . I don't think he is to be honest. But he did stick by me through the worst period of my life and that means a lot to me. And I do love him, for what that's worth. And he loves me. My breakdown came about two years in to our dating, actually; we started dating in 2012 and the breakdown occurred in 2014. But it was a slow steady decent into madness. Though my boyfriend can be very generous, he can also be narcissistic and possibly manipulative. I sometimes feel like I'm being gaslighted by him. But how much is paranoia and how much of it is reality? I don't know. The few times we've had major arguments were very scary, like the time I described. But I also wasn't in a good frame of mind at the time deep in paranoia and delusions, so it's hard to say how much of my perception was skewed by that. It certainly felt like he was being emotionally abusive at the time. But I also was being abusive, threatening to leave in the middle of the night. I grew up in an emotionally and sometimes physically abusive household so I don't have the best ability to gauge these kinds of things in myself and others at time. If I leave him, I'll have no one though. And that's not a safe situation for me to be in at this time.

Well, today I am off of work as I called in sick. I'm having what I like to call a "mental health" day. I've been struggling at work lately dealing with patrons and kids, more than normal. I thought it was best to just collect my thoughts and work on me today. I have so little time to do things I want to do during the weekday and this Saturday I have to work, but I will have Monday off so at least there's that.

Thanks for everyone's responses, you've given me a lot to think about . . . I'm really glad to have found this place! *big hugs to everyone!*

 

ITKintheknow, I'm not sure what the point of your message is here. You don't believe mental illness exists? That's like saying climate change doesn't exist or the Holocaust didn't happen. Give me a break. It sounds to me like you didn't go to the right therapist regardless of what you believe about it . . . :^\

My therapist is unusual as well, she's a Catholic reverend (a very different branch than the typical obviously as she's a woman and a lesbian ordained in the church) and is deep into spiritual and homeopathic remedies. Sometimes I think I'd do better with a traditional psychologist, but then other times I am grateful for her incites.

She seems to believe mental illness does not get passed on to family members and I totally disagree with her. My mother is mentally ill, diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a teenager and later rediagnosed with PTSD in her 30's. This was a big secret in the family, something we could never talk about with anyone else. There are other mentally ill people on both sides of my family. I know it is passed on, one of the reasons I would never have children (one of the many reasons).

I was always afraid I'd be diagnosed mentally ill, and it has happened. It happened when I was a teenager and first diagnosed with depression, ADHD, and OCD but I was in denial because I did not want to be "like my mother". Now add general anxiety, psychosis nos and possibly other disorders to the mix. Mental illness still creates a big stigma against those who have it. It's not something I really want to talk to about with any of my friends, even those who struggle with their own mental illness, because I feel mine is worse than theirs and they'll still stigmatize me even if they don't do it to my face. I have friends who struggle with depression and ADHD, but I really do hesitate to talk to them about my episodes of breakdown. I can't even really talk to my boyfriend about it and he was there through a lot of it. In some ways when I look back on it, I find it fascinating some of the things I remember, but I also recalled I was scared as shit when it was happening, and I was struggling through doing the most basic of things.

Anyways, I am home right now while my boyfriend is at work as he was called to fill in. One of his colleagues fell and was brought to the hospital. I hope she's going to be all right . . . Taking the time to catch up on the news, Facebook and things here while kitty sleeps in her nest on her favorite chair. All is well.