9 replies to this topic

[whosthat]

Eh it's not the job it's the failure to fit in, job just a conduit to remind me. I'm too sensitive for this world. Anyway I'm in so much pain I can't even think straight, definitely can't be with myself. It's funny I think when you hate yourself and can't stand your person you can't expect anyone else to, and they probably won't. Then when you can stand it, you don't need/want anyone, and they are more likely to accept you. Not that they are actually more or less receptive to you, only that your view and perception of the interactions and situations have changed such that you are more open to them. It's like being able to get what you want necessitates that you don't want it. It's how people interact generally I guess. Normal people arent trying to make a friend or partner, they're just existing and it happens. Of course some are. The feeling I have is exactly the same as when that girl and I split up after two years and I didn't know what to do or where to go. Helpless, crippling sort of feeling. Like your stomach is an empty hole the size of the universe, there's no one around you. No one can hear or see you, like you're screaming to the world behind soundproof glass. Heart feels very heavy. Price we pay for love is intense pain following loss, but this effect has bled into all aspects of my life, however minor and trivial. Feels like I'm mourning my life

Think when that girl left and I realized love could be so transient part of me died, and I haven't felt safe or wanted, cared for, needed, whatever, since. I just have to get it. I can't be alone any more, it's too much for me. I'll do anything. There's this girl at my work I like and I barely know her but it feels like my brain was split in two and her image was seared into the middle before it was stitched back together. This a girl I've met half a dozen times. But it doesn't feel desperate because there are other girls there I know sort of intellectually are more attractive, but I like this one. I'm terribly awkward at work, but I think I handle it just well enough that I come off a bit mysterious or maybe angry or something, but either of those is much better than nervous and weird. I remember on random online quizzes, ''for fun'' personality tests; they'd ask if you'd rather be normal or weird, and everyone used to put weird, like who wants to be normal? How boring. I'm certain those people have never tasted being weird or desperate. Feeling like your brain and feet and heart and entire essence is on fire, horrible alarms sounding to move, run, get out of here, change what you're doing, free yourself of this pain, and there's absolutely nothing to be done. You're shackled to your inadequacies and failures with just enough slack that you can get a run going before you're ripped backward by the burdens you can't escape. Probably the worst part is imagining you lack the constitution for suicide and that the only way out is through life. Like a big field full of broken glass, blood, body parts, missed opportunities, failure failure failure cowardice humiliation. Still when I ask myself if I deserve better, if I could by word of mouth assent my pain away, I don't feel I can. It's like someone has pain and it is some sort of ethereal mist that enters your brain or body, something foreign and unnatural, something temporary, to be exiled. After some time for me the painful mist started replacing my normal, solid parts, so now that without my suffering I would collapse into an amorphous pool. No personality, no substance, nothing left of me. I would walk through a million years of hell, crying myself to sleep every night as I heaved through diseased lungs and perceived through a corrupt mind to fit in. I'd give absolutely anything

[invalidusername]

That is one highly articulated post there... and to be honest, am at a bit of a loss as to how one should respond.

 

I have briefly been over your previous post here on the forum as it was before my time here, but I can see that you have been dragged through life's proverbial hedge backwards more times than anyone should expect. And from the above, one can only gather that you are suffering a continuation of the symptoms. 

 

It is good to allow yourself to write this stuff down and get it out of your head for a while and obviously my first question to you is whether you are under the care of any therapist. Given the way in which you are describing your circumstances, it is quite clear that you are suffering psychological traumas alongside the physical ailments that maintain a presence.

 

In order to offer advice alongside the support that can be given, are you able to divulge specifics regarding your symptoms? Since your last visit we have put together all the medical inventory of users both past and present into an ebook in the medical support section which I suggest you download and familiarise yourself with. But if you are able to dilute the semantics a little to spell out symptoms, I would really like to offer some means of assistance from a medical perspective.

 

IUN 

[whosthat]

Specifics.. I would say I have severe social anxiety, but given that in the past I have been drunk and abusive with benzodiazepines and still had anxiety - while under the influence of both simultaneously- I have started to imagine it is some pathology of thought or the way I perceive things, which i suppose does not exclude anxiety, but I mean to say there is an underlying sort of unreality, a schizophrenic sort of distance from the world. The ruling judge on my granted ssdi case said I had "anxiety, depression, and personality and mood disorder with schizophrenic features."
The more obvious manifestations for me are a debilitating fear of rejection, abandonment, being insignificant, a loser, and an intensely malignant form of loneliness, dread, impending doom, that my airways will close down, my brain will seize and die, that it's absolutely over for me and there is no negotiating out of it. No reason, no begging, just the weary sigh and acceptance of an only 29 year old who feels like he's at the end of a long journey completely littered with pain and suffering. I put my treadmill on the highest incline and run up the "hill" until I nearly pass out, take hot baths that almost make me pass out, and of course the cutting. Lots and lots of cutting and blood. Only in the last year did I realize my feet are the perfect canvas for razors. All the "pain" and release, little of the shame that's elicited by my arms and chest. I have horrible brain fog and disordered thinking, often have difficulty recognizing simple words, or pronouncing them. "Now and know" were near each other in a sentence and it took me 10 seconds to recognize them. Brain just shuts down, particularly in stressful situations, like it learned: pain train incoming, shut down all higher functioning sections lest he feel it too much, and brace for impact.
The myriad therapists have said everything from schizotypal to borderline personality disorders to autism, derealization/depersonalization disorder, reactive attachment disorder, etc etc.

Here's a typical cycle: I am alone. The pain is excruciating. The excruciating psychological pain causes (is?) Tremendous stress. The stress causes disordered thinking. The disordered thinking causes anxiety. The anxiety exacerbates everything including my inability to relate and communicate with others. The inability to relate and communicate with others intensifies my isolation and loneliness. Repeat, ad infinitum, or at least for the better part of the last 15 years, and you have a relatively young mind that has experienced a gargantuan amount of psychological pain. A metric ton of suffering and desperation. Everything I've mentioned is perhaps not independent of my diagnosis of fibromyalgia, which causes intermittent but more or less constant aching joints, neck, shoulders, burning up and down my spine, pain when standing, sleep difficulties, and a need to lie on an ice pack for as long as possible each day. I am ferociously stubborn and resilient so have managed to keep two part time jobs and spend most of my time not in bed, which was my more or less place of permanence for over a year until I got tired of being so pathetic and weak. The problem is now I have a sort of twisted, contorted relationship with pain and pleasure.
By and large I do not experience pleasure as an isolated emotion or sensation. It is ALWAYS polluted with pain, fear, reluctance, guilt, whatever. I do not eat food that tastes good to me. I have a hard time allowing myself to play video games, watch movies, have sexual pleasure, etc. Oh she smiled at you as she walked by? She sees you dont talk to anyone. She's seen your arms. You're 29 and make 10 an hour. You are a loser, and she knows it. That smile was out of pity, you're disgusting to her and to everyone else. Oh you ran a mile on 15 incline @ 8mph? You felt like your chest was going to explode and you'd die? Your body was screaming to get off after 60 seconds but remained another 10 minutes? Pathetic. You should have ran more. Go more. If you can still stand you didn't give enough. More pain. More. Suffer more. Coward. Loser. You don't deserve to live. Pleasure is not for you, it doesn't come near you. I don't feel pleasure

[fishinghat]

When I had my nervous breakdown in 2002 I felt a lot like that BUT I had a clear cut cause and needed help and time to adjust which I did. It took two years to learn good coping skills and find some of the right meds. Now having said that there are some differences. Your post is almost disconnected in many places. Your sufferings that you describe remind me more of those of a severely depressed person from years of addictive trauma and/or an organic problem. This is not to say you have a brain tumor or anything but these kind of scans can indicate what areas of the brain are an issue and may point the way to a medical approach to your problem. A good neuropsychiatrist would be a good beginning. I know one thing, it is way past my abilities.

[whosthat]

When I had my nervous breakdown in 2002 I felt a lot like that BUT I had a clear cut cause and needed help and time to adjust which I did. It took two years to learn good coping skills and find some of the right meds. Now having said that there are some differences. Your post is almost disconnected in many places. Your sufferings that you describe remind me more of those of a severely depressed person from years of addictive trauma and/or an organic problem. This is not to say you have a brain tumor or anything but these kind of scans can indicate what areas of the brain are an issue and may point the way to a medical approach to your problem. A good neuropsychiatrist would be a good beginning. I know one thing, it is way past my abilities.

Can you explain what you mean by disconnected in many places

[fishinghat]

One sentence did not seem relative to the next or others. The subjects of your sentences seemed almost random with some seeming not to have anything to do with the withdrawal. HOWEVER, at my age I probably talk that way to other people. lol

[whosthat]

If anyone cares, I’ve recently discovered that my use of the benzodiazepine klonopin is likely responsible for the hell ive lived in the last few years. Turns out your body can become dependent upon it for proper functioning of your GABA systems after as little as 9 days. I would take klonopin for a few days or weeks, stop for a month, take for a few months, stop for a few weeks, etc. It’s “as needed.” So I was essentially in and out of mild or acute withdrawal consistently for several years. When I was in absolute hell for a month at a time, not leaving my room, barely moving, there wasn’t something just wrong with ME. I was withdrawaling from something said to be more addicting than heroin. Alcohol works on the GABA system as well. You can stop cocaine or heroin or pain pills cold turkey, you’ll feel like death, but you won’t die. You cannot stop benzos or alcohol cold turkey, because you could die, and people have. Lucky I didn’t die. Long journey ahead of getting this poisonous shit out of my system. Luckily I stopped taking them so often over the years my body has extensive experience dealing with this hell and I don’t care about the pain. I’m going to be all right.

[invalidusername]

OK - this makes some sense, and I hope that you have indeed found the culprit of the problems that have occurred. 

 

The system can often label the individual rather than the meds - and very inaccurately. But how one affects each individual can vary considerably. To many variables to weigh up. The withdrawal from Class A recreational drugs can cause a lot more problems - the likes of which we would rather not discuss on this forum please!!

 

Again, assuming that your klonopin diagnosis is correct, I wish you the best, but remember it is and can be prescribed on a PRN basis, but it is up to the professional to guide as to its correct use. We need to be careful here not to endorse the "same for all" rule... As you well know, so little is known about the effects of psychotropic drugs - factor that in with how little we know about the brain - and where does that leave you?

[whosthat]

From what I've seen and read on the internet in the last few days, the symptoms I've had, and my gradual physical and mental decline which is from what I can remember essentially concurrent with benzodiazepine use, I'm hopeful I can get at least part of my mind and life back after discontinuing them. It's just dozens and dozens of symptoms reported by thousands of people, and I experience most of them. I once told my doctor about this forum and he said it was quacks trying to get lawsuit money. I had two separate psychiatrists tell me I could go cold turkey off cymbalta without side effects. And of course that was one of the most wretched periods of my life. Doctors are horribly misinformed in my experience. Certainly drugs that disturb the natural chemistry and function of your mind have the potential to cause massive damage. Causation is difficult to show. Hoping I get better. Everyone else needs to research for themselves, see doctors. Etc. No self assessment via the internet. I've thought for some time this wasn't my life. Like it wasn't me, something was wrong. It wasn't depression or whatever. Maybe that's there, but there's something else. Horribly anxious at the moment and rambling, thanks for the words.

[invalidusername]

"Doctors are horribly misinformed in my experience."

 

Either that, or in my experience, they pretend they know something that they don't for fear of looking foolish. So they would rather feed you a load of rubbish than lose face in front of a patient.

 

"Certainly drugs that disturb the natural chemistry and function of your mind have the potential to cause massive damage"

 

Absolutely - and even more of a reason why the above statement is such a problem.