This all also so fully describes what I've been been experiencing and what I'm currently feeling super stuck in--and also part of why it feels so hard to go back into therapy, and why it feels like such a huge breakthrough when I cry/allow myself to feel anything in this state. But just reading some of this stuff is giving me so much of a better idea of what I should be looking for as I'm going to try to get back into therapy because I'm really, really done with feeling this stuck/trapped and being frustrated with how far back I fall after making what feels like progress.
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Please Introduce Yourself Here / New here, finally posting (maybe triggering?)
November 27, 2015, 08:06:18 PM
I first came across this months ago and it was a huge thing for me to find something that describes everything I'm going through--I'm 21 now, in my last year at a really intense, competitive university (not a helpful or healthy environment). I grew up with an emotionally abusive mother (who also has tourettes and OCD as well as a lot of issues from growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father), and a dad with severe PTSD that caused him to be very frequently dissociated and almost entirely emotionally unavailable.
I've been in therapy on and off since the end of my senior of high school, and have had a lot of issues with depression, anxiety, eating, etc. since I came to college and left the abusive environment of my house--but I now see more and more how I had some necessary but very unhealthy coping mechanisms as I was growing up (especially related to perfectionism and numbing/escaping/dissociating (maybe?) as best as I could). I'm currently in a place where things went really quickly down hill and I'm feeling really stuck...
I was on a medication that was generally helping, and I had my first real relationship this past summer, but that ended and I came back to school with no real support system. About a month ago (I think...its been a bit of a blur) I knew I was running out of meds and tried to be proactive but had an internal sticking point on the process of getting more/seeing a doctor. The psychiatrist who had prescribed them almost a year ago felt like an absolute no go, firstly because I have new insurance so I literally can't go to him, but also because I had returned to him after a really long time away and after going off a previous medication without consulting anyone and he talked to me about it in a way that I now see as really triggering and upsetting (it was well meaning but made me feel scolded by an authority figure and that is one of the absolute most anxiety causing things for me).
My new insurance also has really few options for me in this area because its based in a different state so I couldn't find a psychiatrist, asked my dad for help, he didn't find anyone either. It got to the point where I was finally calling the insurance, got 2 names, was calling doctors and it gave me a super intense day-long anxiety attack and then felt the physical let down of that for the next couple days--and I was still running out of pills. I had already tried to call our student psychological services and health services and hadn't gotten helpful answers. Tried again, got put in phone loops, had to go through the student psych services really frustrating intake survey (at least for me in that mindset) and ended up being told I either had to go to a walk-in clinic or the ER to get a refill that fast, which with my schedule and where my brain was at felt nearly impossible.
The result of all this was that I tried to taper off by breaking pills in half, went off the meds, withdrew and was in a really bad place for a couple of days because of that and because I was punishing myself for what I felt like was really * up the basic step of going to a doctor. I got through that, had a decent week or two but then two weeks ago had a weekend where the whole thing was filled with somewhat inexplicable totally consuming anxiety and related dissociating (for lack of a better word) which has not gone away--I've gotten like this a few times before and it also coincides with me not sleeping and binge eating (or sometimes not eating). It's really, really frustrating and upsetting for me that this seems to be my brain's default state without medication. I'm at this point where I know I need to just get some help, but that feels harder than it ever has before since it was trying to get help that triggered so much stuff in the first place...
Not entirely sure what I'm looking to get out of posting on here, but have been feeling so intensely awful for the past while that I felt like I needed to do something!
I've been in therapy on and off since the end of my senior of high school, and have had a lot of issues with depression, anxiety, eating, etc. since I came to college and left the abusive environment of my house--but I now see more and more how I had some necessary but very unhealthy coping mechanisms as I was growing up (especially related to perfectionism and numbing/escaping/dissociating (maybe?) as best as I could). I'm currently in a place where things went really quickly down hill and I'm feeling really stuck...
I was on a medication that was generally helping, and I had my first real relationship this past summer, but that ended and I came back to school with no real support system. About a month ago (I think...its been a bit of a blur) I knew I was running out of meds and tried to be proactive but had an internal sticking point on the process of getting more/seeing a doctor. The psychiatrist who had prescribed them almost a year ago felt like an absolute no go, firstly because I have new insurance so I literally can't go to him, but also because I had returned to him after a really long time away and after going off a previous medication without consulting anyone and he talked to me about it in a way that I now see as really triggering and upsetting (it was well meaning but made me feel scolded by an authority figure and that is one of the absolute most anxiety causing things for me).
My new insurance also has really few options for me in this area because its based in a different state so I couldn't find a psychiatrist, asked my dad for help, he didn't find anyone either. It got to the point where I was finally calling the insurance, got 2 names, was calling doctors and it gave me a super intense day-long anxiety attack and then felt the physical let down of that for the next couple days--and I was still running out of pills. I had already tried to call our student psychological services and health services and hadn't gotten helpful answers. Tried again, got put in phone loops, had to go through the student psych services really frustrating intake survey (at least for me in that mindset) and ended up being told I either had to go to a walk-in clinic or the ER to get a refill that fast, which with my schedule and where my brain was at felt nearly impossible.
The result of all this was that I tried to taper off by breaking pills in half, went off the meds, withdrew and was in a really bad place for a couple of days because of that and because I was punishing myself for what I felt like was really * up the basic step of going to a doctor. I got through that, had a decent week or two but then two weeks ago had a weekend where the whole thing was filled with somewhat inexplicable totally consuming anxiety and related dissociating (for lack of a better word) which has not gone away--I've gotten like this a few times before and it also coincides with me not sleeping and binge eating (or sometimes not eating). It's really, really frustrating and upsetting for me that this seems to be my brain's default state without medication. I'm at this point where I know I need to just get some help, but that feels harder than it ever has before since it was trying to get help that triggered so much stuff in the first place...
Not entirely sure what I'm looking to get out of posting on here, but have been feeling so intensely awful for the past while that I felt like I needed to do something!
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