Mental Health Support Thread

[primandimproper]

Sorry if a thread like this already exists, but I figured since we're stuck in quarantine those of us with mental health issues could use a bit of support. So just start by telling us your diagnosis, what's bothering you, and what you're doing to cope with everything. Who knows? Maybe someone will suggest a healthy coping mechanism. I'll go first.

Okay, so I have bpd, major depressive disorder with psychotic features, social anxiety, and PTSD. I'm kinda having a hard time coping with the quarantine because I'm a shut-in because I'm trans and live in a bad neighborhood (I live down the street from a men's shelter full of ex-convicts). I'm currently not speaking to the one friend that actually lives in the same city as me because he was badmouthing my little sis and I'm the only one who is allowed to do that. Also I'm supposed to be doing phone sessions with my therapists and workers, but my therapist forgot about me twice this week, so not feeling too great about that. And, finally, the last thing is that I applied to a four year college because I got GED last year, and I'm going nuts waiting to hear back from them.

Um, I've been coping by using social media and the internet, and playing ACNH and reading books to keep me busy.

Anyone else care to share what they've been going through lately?

 

[Darkesque_]

*sigh*​

I have major depressive disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, anxiety disorder, and PTSD.

I am close to losing my mind, because school was cancelled for the rest of the year, and everyone gets a "free pass" to the next grade. About 75% of my classmates are failing. I know of a very. little amount of people who are passing. So, giving them a "free pass" isn't a good idea because they wouldn't have learned anything! They also wouldn't probably do good in the next grade because they didn't learn anything previously. So, yeah, I am super stressed about that. Also, I will not be able to see my friends for 4 months, so that is great.

I have been coping by playing music on my french horn and piano. I have also been reading a lot, and playing New Horizons and Fortnite...and somewhat of City Folk.

 

[idiotdoomspiral]

i have to deal with quite a few mental illnesses but the ones that affect me the most are c-ptsd, anxiety and major depression that becomes psychotic if my mood is extremely low for a long period of time which is something that happened while i was at college so i had to quit. i take medication to try and prevent that from happening but there's not much i can do otherwise. a couple of months before the lockdown i had to end my therapy sessions associated with camhs because i turned 18, it's a mental health service for children and adolescents in my country and i wasn't eligible to be there anymore so they moved me to an adult one. camhs wasn't perfect but i managed to get a therapist after so many years that i could connect with and comfortably vent to, being forced out of something like that is one of the worst things in the system. my new psychiatrist gives me the creeps and my care coordinator doesn't seem to understand any of my disorders at all, my last conversation with them was on the phone telling my care coordinator that i'm struggling with intrusive thoughts and then she told me that sticking to a routine was an amazingly positive thing that i should keep doing, to be fair i didn't explain that this was an unhealthy thing for me but i was too mad to say that and i didn't want to talk to her any further. i haven't known them for very long and lockdown makes this difficult but i have a gut feeling that these people won't help me at all. i'm just glad i have a plan for when all of this is over.

at the moment video games (mostly nh) and music have been keeping me at bay but other than that i haven't been doing much. time has been going extremely fast for me which is probably a good thing.

 

[Lyraa]

My moods have been very up and down for the past 2 weeks. Today isn’t a good day needless to say.
I’m constantly worried about university, they’re still going ahead with the work but I study music, and I need access to the studios in order to pass, they have yet to find a way around this. Part of me wants to give up and not hand anything in and fail, I don’t have the motivation to even do the academic side. I somewhat want them to give us a free pass for this year, however there’s certain people in my year that don’t deserve the pass, that’s a whole different story.
I miss my boyfriend a whole lot, and it’s taken a toll on me mentally. My grandma is 78 and she’s in and out of hospital as she has a lot of underlying health issues, I’m petrified that she’ll pick the virus up on her visits to the hospital, and her visits are something she can’t not miss.

The only thing keeping me going really is Animal Crossing and streaming, that way I can interact with people, it’s not the same but it’s something I suppose.

 

[cIementine]

thank you for making this thread, i imagine it'll be particularly useful for people during this time!

i suffer with anxiety, and i think it's relatively mild, but at times where i have bad experiences because of it, it knocks my confidence for a while. i haven't had the chance to get help for it yet despite suffering from it for well over a year, which i was planning to do just before the pandemic got quite bad and figured i'll just wait. a lot of it is to do with just being out and about, especially with food involved, but only because i worry about experiencing physical symptoms of anxiety in social situations, like feeling frozen, dry heaving, feeling sick, etc. it's had quite an impact on my quality of life because it intrudes on things i want to enjoy, like going out with my friends. most recently i was out for drinks with people i work with (and don't know all of them too well), and i just had this silent panic where i couldn't talk and felt like i had to chug a ton of water, which is pretty noticeable when you're sat at a table and look a bit distressed mid drinking game. as a result i feel worried about embarrassing myself and fixate on times like these, which just creates a cycle of anxiety. so being able to dwell in lockdown hasn't been great for that, particularly as i look forward to moving to london, a massive city, for uni, and worry about how my anxiety is going to ruin it for me.

i also was quite depressed last summer and spent the whole summer break sat in my room just very blank and sad. fortunately i'm in a much better place now, getting a job which helped my confidence and meant i got out more, and quitting driving lessons which were really mentally draining for me, but having been mostly inside for the last month with nothing to do feels like a huge step back, even if my mind is in a far better place, and feels a bit like an erasure of the progress i've made, and i worry about the repercussions of self-isolation on my wellbeing.

i really hope all of you are doing well during this quarantine and that you're able to access the resources you need during this time.

 

[visibleghost]

yikes, hope things get better for you soon

i have been severely mentally ill since i was 12 (that's when i count it as starting but long story short i don't think mental illness generally starts with a suicide attempt), and only in the past year has it been getting better thanks to working medication. after being in regular therapy for four years i stopped going last autumn because i had been getting better and kept switching therapists so we decided i should just see my doctor when talking about my medication and that's it. i would have probably benefited from staying in therapy but honestly i didn't really feel like i could connect to my new therapist and i didn't have the energy to build up yet another relationship with a therapist for like the fourth time in a year and a half.

i don't like to dwell on the past because it makes me so sad to think about how much of my life i have lost to mental illness but at the same time i think i have a need to talk about it, which is why i should have stayed in therapy but OH WELL. i still sh but it's wayyy less than it has ever been so it's not even an issue tbh.

if i were 16 i would murder myself for saying this but it does get better, weirdly enough. i thought that it was just the way i was and that i would always be miserable but now i'm not. i don't blame myself for being suicidal though, because if i had to live through those years again i'm not sure i would survive, even knowing that things would get better.

 

[Corrie]

Social anxiety squad member here!!

I wish I could find some actual helpful tips to dealing with it. The ones online are not helping whatsoever.

 

[primandimproper]

i have to deal with quite a few mental illnesses but the ones that affect me the most are c-ptsd, anxiety and major depression that becomes psychotic if my mood is extremely low for a long period of time which is something that happened while i was at college so i had to quit.

This exact same thing happened to me last year when I started my first semester of college. My anti-depressants stopped working and I became suicidal and was sent to the hospital. Then my case worker advised me to withdraw from college because she thought I wasn't ready for the social aspect of it.

As for dealing with anxiety, I have no clue what to say about that one. I have to take two doses of Klonopin just to get through the day. Not that it does any good, though, because I'm afraid to leave my apartment because I live in a bad neighborhood. I have found that stuff like journaling and coloring helped a fair bit. That's why I started a blog where I document my life as a trans man and write Marvel fanfictions.

 

[cannedcommunism]

so I have social anxiety and adhd. I've always sort of struggled to stop isolating myself and actually go out and talk to people, so when I was finally able to do that, coronavirus hit and everyone was just like "nvm go inside lmao". just some bad timing, what can you do

 

[IKI]

I am struggling with depression and anxiety, as well as anorexia.
When the virus hit, it didn’t really effect the way I live, I’ve always isolated myself in my own home.
Although, I do enjoy having a friend over, which always brightened up my mood.
My mood has been erratic the past months, like an extremely high or a low.
When, I was 13 yrs old, I was diagnosed with anorexia.
Around 2011, I had to drop out of college because of how bad my depression and anxiety got.
My anorexia has been on and off the past years, but it got really bad just about 3 years ago, to the point where I could have probably died.
So, I was forced to the hospital as an inpatient for a month.

So far, it’s been pretty stable, although I feel like a bag of flesh.
I’ve been taking medication, which is helping me out to be stable enough, tho I feel emotionless at times.
I have trouble socializing with others as well as having anxiety towards having a job, I’ve never had a job.
Been having thoughts of death which makes me think the whole anorexia thing was just me trying to kill myself.

I’ve been just trying to take care of myself, which is very difficult for me to do.
Been distracting myself with music and AC:NH and Dragon Quest 11, trying to get into drawing again as well.

 

[primandimproper]

so I have social anxiety and adhd. I've always sort of struggled to stop isolating myself and actually go out and talk to people, so when I was finally able to do that, coronavirus hit and everyone was just like "nvm go inside lmao". just some bad timing, what can you do

Are you seeing a therapist for your anxiety?

 

[cannedcommunism]

Are you seeing a therapist for your anxiety?

yes and no. when I moved away for college I stopped seeing her regularly except a few times when I came back home, but I haven't seen her since I started social distancing. fortunately I'm at a point where I don't need therapy as often. but yeah she's dope. I used to not like therapy because I've had a few therapists who just sorta talked at me and didn't really do anything helpful, but my current therapist is a lot more conversational and that's something that I personally respond to a lot better.

 

[Sanaki]

We have a "What's Bothering You?" thread for this type of thing in the Basement that's run by a moderator because when I originally made the thread, it got way out of control and people didn't take it seriously.

But I have BPD as well, and I've been struggling horribly with the quarantine. :<

 

[Soigne]

i have a smattering of issues that have affected me for the greater part of my life, but since being in quarantine my ocd & depression have gone off the charts the most.

i've been sleeping for upwards of 18 hours a day some days. it's my last semester of college and i haven't been doing any of my work since moving online.

 

[Sanaki]

To add on to what I said, I feel super disorganized and I keep sleeping in and not attending my online classes. It's so hard to maintain a good sleep schedule in quarantine. I feel bad for just shrugging off my work and with BPD it's super hard to regulate my emotions or temper when it feels like I have no real outlet or distraction.

 

[xSuperMario64x]

So I deal w a lot of mental health issues, the most prominent being anxiety, depression, OCD, and ADD. As you can prob guess, those things do not mix with taking online classes and having to commit to my own schedule.

I have a very difficult time focusing on the task at hand, especially if it's not really intriguing to me (which most of my work isn't). I'm easily distracted by literally everything: games, TV, people talking/calling for me, etc. I also have a lot of responsibilities at home because my mom has severe health issues and my dad refuses to clean or do anything around our house except maybe cook once in a while. My anxiety is under control but my ADD and depression are not so I struggle with that greatly, especially now when I have so much more responsibility and stress to deal with.

I've been falling behind in my work load, since I often find that I'm not in the right state of mind to do schoolwork. I almost never am anyways. I go through phases where I won't do anything for a few days then all of a sudden I have to cram all my work in to get it done on time. Recently I haven't been turning in my work on time. I'm really behind in my German class because I don't have the textbook and my prof has decided to "snail-mail" me the papers that I need. I'm seriously considering dropping the writing option for one of my classes because I'm supposed to have a rough draft sometime this week and I've barely even come up with my sources or my topic or anything.

So yeah, in terms of schoolwork I'm a h o t m e s s. I really wish that I could be done w school for the semester. I can't handle this at all.

 

[theravenboys]

I have anxiety, depression, OCD, and hypochondria. Thankfully my hypochondria has been better lately than it has in the past but my OCD is driving me up the wall right now, especially at night.

I go through "phases" with my OCD, and on and off for about a year now I've been in a "phase" where I count syllables in sentences. Not while I'm talking, but when I lie awake in bed at night, I just make up sentences in my head and then I'll modify them over and over until I can get the syllables to end in a multiple of five. I'm not even much of a "counter" and when I am, it's usually three or seven. Where the heck did my brain get the number five? I think it's because I have five fingers on each hand, and I count the syllables on my fingers as I'm saying the sentence. So if it ends before I get to the last finger on one of my hands, that bothers me so much. I'm starting to think it's not even the number five, it's just the number of fingers. So if I had an extra finger on each hand, I'd probably be obsessed with making sure the sentences had syllables that were a multiple of six lol. Anyway yeah I can't sleep because of this.

Also, I was in a real hand washing "phase" a while back. Not even because I was afraid my hands were unclean, it was just that after I ate I was scared my hands either smelled like the food or had some of the food still on them, and then I'd get it on my laptop or my iPad or my Switch. I would literally like...stand in front of the sink smelling my hands, washing them, smelling them again, washing them again, etc. until I was satisfied they smelled like soap and not like garlic or whatever. I kind of wish I hadn't changed to counting syllables because an obsession with hand washing might not be a bad thing during a time like this. But I'm also glad I'm not doing that right now because 1.) it was annoying and 2.) it was embarrassing when I thought I was "done" washing my hands and then I'd rejoin my family or whoever I was with and I'd start to get paranoid my hands still smelled or had food on them and then I'd have to excuse myself to go wash my hands AGAIN.

 

[hallejulia]

I have anxiety, depression, and asperger's.

I had my first day of online school today (didn't have any classes for the past 5 weeks) and nearly had a panic attack during one of my classes. I managed to calm myself down enough to make it through the rest of the class but started crying as soon as it was over.

Other than that, I've been doing great these past few weeks.
I don't have any friends that I would want to hang out with and all my family members/relatives that I care about live in the same house as me so I can visit them whenever I want.
In all honesty, being stuck at home with no school is the best thing that could've happened to my mental health, unfortunately now that I have online classes my mental health is going to deteriorate again.

 

[Xara]

i have depression and anxiety. i have been medicated since august and will hopefully be seeing a psychiatrist in july. my mental illnesses seem to be as contained as they can be for the time being but i’m slowly beginning to realize that i’ll likely never entirely be out of the woods which is scary to think about