Feeling Mentally "Sick", Angry

[yellowgirl]

Hi, I haven't posted in awhile.  Lately I've been struggling with feeling mentally sick and overwhelmed about it.  I also feel like no one is really helping me (psychiatrist, therapist).  I have very hard mornings.  I have bipolar/atypical depression with CPTSD.  I really struggle with the physicality of this depression.  I am also on Depakote which makes me fatigued.  Every morning I wake up barely able to wake up.  Breathing feels difficult, moving feels difficult.  I get angry.  My therapist and I have worked out that part of why I have so much morning anger is that it's a way to arouse myself when I am feeling so fatigued and heavy.  Anger is bodily and emotional arousal, and that's how I'm functioning in society.  I work and manage to get myself to work everyday through 1-1.5 hours of traffic and don't take sick days unless I'm sick in the traditional sense (colds, flu).  Being so angry and acting on it sometimes, although I hold it in fairly well considering how powerful my thoughts are, is tiresome and feels just terrible.  I'm taking a science backed secular mindfulness course and meditating most days of the week now.  I'm noticing my thoughts more and really everything more.  I feel like it almost makes it harder because I truly have this physical tiredness and heaviness and my ingrained pattern is to be angry along with it, I've done this for years, maybe my whole life.  Changing it is going to be so slow, it's overwhelming.  And I don't feel like the doctors are hearing me on the tiredness/heaviness enough and helping me out with medication for it, if that exists.  It's hard to let go of my thoughts and feelings in these physical states.  I just wish someone would help me more.  I feel impatient for something to change.  I'm afraid of acting out from this anger and it damaging my life in my job or other.  Does anyone else struggle with anger in the morning, or in general and how do you deal when it's a pattern you've turned to for so long?  It's not like there are always specific events or people I'm angry at, I just have this underlying angry thinking.  I have a feeling it's wrapped up in the CPTSD...waking up every morning for almost 18 years in an unsafe home.

[Candid]

I'm sorry you're feeling so overwhelmed, yellowgirl. Hats off to you for continuing to go to work!

I too am struggling with massive anger. H gets all my irritability, while I turn the rage on myself with self-destructive behaviours. It's a tough road, for sure.

[unwife]

I get so angry at times and turn it inward, my adrenaline makes me feel like I'm having a heart attack.  i'm still with someone who is flattening me like a pancake mentally, and i only stay because he works and i cannot.  Also, there is always the threat that he will call the police on me for the slightest thing... he knows all the officers and charms them, whereas i cannot.  So i desperately try to not raise my voice or God forbid, throw something. 

You are very strong for going for a solution and working steadily.  For me this came on so insidiously and slowly that ten years went by till i realized I couldn't work and was abusing just about everything from food to cold pills.  I don't blame anyone but myself for any of this. I am ashamed that i can't/won't work.  I worked for almost 30 years but the last six, my moods are so erratic that i wouldn't be able to make it thru one day.  I couldn't even get thru an interview.  *, I can barely get thru taking a shower and putting my makeup on.

Stat strong...

[GlassChild]

Depakote did that to me. I could never wake up and I was so irritable. I don't know how you're managing it. There are many much newer meds for depression and cPTSD.  If you don't think your therapist is working well for you, don't be afraid to find a new one. Doctors work for you.