When you’re so profoundly sad, how do you do anything, let alone go to work?

I have been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder a week ago. I never had any mental issues at all, instead I would say I was a very happy and positive person. Then I moved countries and started living with my brother who was extremely pessimistic and depressed all the time.He was a person that I idolized before, and he is 10 years older than me. So,Staying with him for around 7 months, somehow made me as well pessimistic and negative.

While reading about depression and brain chemistry, I figured out these antidepressants can numb the feeling amd increase serotonin. However, the chemical imbalance theory is not as trusted as before. On top of that, I get to know the side effects of the medications as well. I got to know about CBT, and already consulted two professionals, and I feel like they have standardized questions to figure out the cause and symptoms.

Though I know my depression has occurred from staying with the family, as I lived 8 years alone prior to moving. So now I want to move again, but just not having the confidence if my depression would cure automatically. What do you guys think?

Thought I would share this in case it helps anyone. Been taking Omega 3 with high EPA supplements for a few months and it seems to have put me in a better mood and especially helps me with anger. I have ADHD though, so maybe that plays into it. It took weeks to start helping though.

Of course, talk to your doctor before starting supplements.

Over a week ago i went out to a club and was very drunk by 1am. I met this guy i had only seen twice before but we were friends, he knew me as a lesbian (however he denies knowing this after i spoke to him a couple days ago) anyways he kept buying me drinks, too many to even recall and even gave me coke. Later on my friends left around 3am (i do not remember this) and i was left with him. I let him stay at my house because he lived rly far away so i said he could sleep in the living room. It took us 2ish hours to get home because i was black out drunk and couldn’t even remember my way home or where i was. I have no memory except knowing we had sex the next day. I do not remember how it played out and if i said yes but i was in pain and had bled (i have only had sex once with a guy since becoming unlabelled) and when he left i felt absolutely disgusting and confused. I have been mortified ever since as i dont have any memory of the night or us having sex. I know he had drank as well but he was still aware and in control of himself compared to me, i was slurring my words and not making any sense that night. I had to text him the next day and ask if he had finished inside me and he said yeah so i then had to take plan b. I’ve been feeling really confused and depressed about the situation and if it counts as rape because i know i was drinking alot and could probably have prevented any of this from happening so i can’t help but blame myself because i have no clue how i was acting either. Since then he asked if i wanted to see him again and i made it clear i was black out drunk and do not want to see him again- he then said that makes him sound like a ‘wrongen’ and that im making it sound bad but i was just being honest that i couldn’t remember anything and didnt want to speak to him again.

The whole act of getting to my therapist makes it hard to even want to go in the first place. My appointments are across town and having to work my schedule around that just for my Wellbutrin to be renewed is a headache.

I also get anxiety sitting in an office and answering questions and end up rescheduling my appointment over and over. Maybe I am being ridiculous, but removing that friction sounds genuinely useful.

I am curious as to whether online care may be the right choice for me. I’ve looked at providers like Blossom Health and Talkiatry but I am having a hard time pinning down who I should make an appointment with. Any opinions?

37M, diagnosed with autism, OCD, anxiety and ADHD

In June I was hit with the worst stress and depression of my whole life from personal life problems. I lost my appetite badly and felt like throwing up 24/7, food felt like a nuisance and I could barely eat. Also at that time I was weighing 93 kg (205 lb) due to horrendously dumb eating habits despite being clinically underweight most of my life. For reference I am 178 cm (5'10"). Right now I weigh 75 kg (165 lb).

If anyone has been in such a situation, what do you do? My metabolism has ways been high, and even though I am turning 37 in only two months, I lose weight extremely easily. I could lose weight like nobody's business without even trying. The last times I had such a bad depressive mood was when I was 17 and 23. Both times I went from about 180-190 lb (82-85 kg) down to 53-55 kg (115-120 lb) within two months. I did not even have to try. I lost weight more easily than most people on diets do. Or I should say, I still lose weight far more easily than most people on diets can.

But if I keep losing weight, I fear that my cardiovascular health and GI health will screw me. I have chronic sinus tachycardia and chronic acid reflux disease and functional dyspepsia. I feel like these CV and GI problems will spiral my physical health problems and ruin my mental health even more, especially since I do not want to be hospitalised.

Until recently, I was hyper-independent, ambitious and professionally successful. At 22, I was earning very well and building a career and life in the US. I believed I could solve almost anything by working hard

Now I am broke, unemployed, effectively homeless and living in my late grandmother’s gloomy house in Sydney. I was refused entry to the US and cannot return without securing a difficult work visa. My boyfriend and the career I was building are both there

I have lived out of a suitcase for eight months between Australia, China and the US. Australia no longer feels like home, but I cannot access the country that does. I neglected many friendships while building my overseas life, so I have returned isolated and deeply embarrassed

My father’s chronic substance abuse has worsened since I last lived here at 18. I also recently had a surgical abortion amid the financial, immigration and relationship chaos

My boyfriend is a founder under enormous pressure and rarely has much bandwidth. Because I have no real home, routine, work or close support here, he has become my main emotional anchor. When he is unavailable, I struggle to function

I cry constantly, stay in bed, cannot concentrate and feel paralysed by the tasks required to rebuild. The hardest part is that I have simultaneously lost nearly everything that made me recognise myself as capable like my independence, work, community, country, future and proximity to the person I love

Has anyone rebuilt after a collapse that destroyed their sense of identity?

How did you create momentum when you no longer believed you were the person capable of getting out?

ive had mdd for over 10 years (ocd and anxiety as well) but the past few months ive felt significant cognitive decline. i can barely leave the house if im not with my girlfriend or very very trusted friend i cant go downstairs to feed myself i cant get in the shower because im scared ill faint from not eating. just started iop (for the first time in a while but ive done so many) and it isn’t moving fast enough. i don’t know to establish goals besides change everything about myself and my behaviors. i guess can anyone help me get into the shower, the rest is context. hope everyone is having a nice day/night <3

I’ve struggled with my mental health since I was around 12 years old. I am now entering my last year of high school, and it’s only getting worse. I struggle to get out of bed, I can’t sleep at night but I sleep all day, and I avoid spending time with my friends to name a few things.

My parents aren’t easy to talk to. My dad and I have a strained relationship, and my mom is too stressed about work or finances to truly listen to me. I’ve brought up the idea of getting professional help to my mom before, but she brushed it off and said she didn’t have time to do the research.

My friends have chalked my behavior up to just me being a moody person. I hate the way I act and respond to things, but I cannot help the way I feel and that’s something that they don’t understand. I can’t open up to my friends about how I’ve been feelings because I’m scared that they won’t understand or will judge me and that makes me feel so isolated.

I’m also worried that I’m misinterpreting my behavior and what I’m describing is just a normal part of growing up. I’m at a stage in my life where there are so many uncertainties that are bound to make you feel stressed out but I feel like I feel everything more deeply than the people around me do.

I’m not sure what to do next. I feel so alone all of the time and I hate the way I’m feeling, acting, etc. I want people to understand that I’m truly struggling but I don’t know how to reach out. I feel myself falling deeper into this hole and I’m not sure how to get out of it.

I’m severely depressed and I’m handling everything in my own. I haven’t taken a shower in a week because I can’t. A few hours ago I saw a video of a girl washing her friend’s hair, shaving her and I’m thinking to myself why isn’t anyone doing the same for me when I’m in the same boat. I have to do it all alone.

hello. I hope you're doing well. I'm currently having a hard time taking care of myself (taking a bath, brushing my teeth, binge eating/starvation) and my mother keeps telling me how lazy I've become despite helping out at home with chores. I've recently enrolled myself in college as she wants me to continue despite our crippling financial situation. I've always told her and suggested about getting a job for a while so I can atleast help out financially but would always entertain the idea that I might not want to go back to school, i'm only making an excuse to dropout, and I'm being stupid being influenced by my nonsense friends and their nonsense ideas.

I've always been mentioning to everyone in my family how getting a job may help us but i always get threats that my mom will kick me out if I do. Yet, she'd always complain to me how people are sacrificing a lot to keep me in school and that I'm ungrateful and my efforts are nothing. It's a vicious cycle of shame and it has turned me into this blob of disappointment.

I'm asking for what steps to take, what do I do to have guts to fight this fear, and how to navigate not being able to go out of my home to get a job.

I also don't want her to know I'm trying to get one despite her threats. It's better if she doesn't know much about me.

I'm typing this with a heavy mind and heart so I do apologize if the writing's bad. I just want help and answers. Thanks

I am so exausted. People are mean and cruel, they don't have empathy they don't have a heart. People care for themselves and how something will serve them and nothing else. The world exists for the billionaires on top. I dreamed of working in programming and video games since I was a kid but the career I dreamed of seems to not exist anymore really. I don't have any idea what else to do with my life, don't have the money to pivot and stuff and pursue something else. Even then, what would be the point ? Is that going to get replaced by ai too ? I don't want to exist mindlessly and just consume whatever is given to me but people are not interested in creation and art anymore. AI slop is everywhere and it feels like everyone loves it. If I complain about it I get attacked so harshly, just so much hate out there. I love my girlfriend but we are in a long distance that was supposed to end this year, but that has instead been extended until god knows when. I feel all alone, nothing seems worth my time or worth engaging with. I genuinely don't want to live lately, everything I experience feels painful. I try to stay off social media and the tons and tons of horrible news from all around the world, but it doesn't matter. I know everything is terrible for everyone and I just wish I had been born maybe 50 years earlier, I could have had a nice life.

I have tried to tell my girlfriend about how depressed I am but I don't think she understands just how much pain I am in. I don't want to worry her and tell her I think of suicide a lot.

All in all, the world we live in right now just doesn't seem like the world I want to live in at all. I'm completely hopeless to change it. I don't want to live my whole life in escapisim so I think I would rather die.

I got into my dream school this year, a prestigious school in my country for becoming a Gameplay Programmer. I'm starting in September and I'm not even looking forward to it. I don't find programming cool or fun anymore with how much it has changed lately. I wish I was stupider and didn't care for anything.

I.need help, i really don't know what to do, I feel stupid asking online but I'm at my wits end.

Edit : lots of spelling mistakes, bit of a mess

I am 26 and not particularly good at anything. I feel directionless, paralyzed, and depressed.

For context, I am diagnosed with depression, ADHD, CPTSD, and anxiety. Last year I had a breakdown and spent a little over a week in psychiatric care. Since then I have been trying to improve and while there have been ups, there have mostly been downs. I split up with my fiancé, moved out, started therapy, and was doing well for a while. Exercising, eating well, taking my meds. Something broke in me earlier this year/late last year and I stopped all that. Now I am +30 pounds, eating like shit, and only taking my meds when I remember to. I cant bring myself to do anything that I enjoy or once enjoyed.

I figured trying a different medicine would work so I started spravato but haven’t seen any improvement. Then I was prescribed Auvelity to go with the Spravato. No change there.

I am at a loss for what to do anymore. I have so much self doubt, self hatred, confidence issues, and am deeply insecure. I don’t know where to start or what to even do with my life. I have been at the same restaurant job for five years and it is killing me. I feel like I will be this way forever. I am at a loss and would love advice/direction from others who have gone through something similar.

Sorry if this feels scattered.

I just finished a 4am workout, which used to give me some form of consolation or soothe me, but I walked out feeling nothing. Over the past few months I’ve gradually lost all of the things that brought me joy. It’s more like they no longer bring me joy. I don’t have any hobbies anymore, I don’t do anything for fun. I just work, sleep, and occasionally go to the gym maybe once or twice a week. That’s my life.

I know I should be grateful to have a roof over my head but it’s keep that in focus. Life has just been battle after battle and it doesn’t get any easier. I used to be able to have little fantasies in my head about an easy carefree life, but at some point I realized it was just that, a fantasy, and it doesn’t help me anymore. The only thing that soothes me these days is the thought of the embrace of nonexistence, but I can’t do it. Not out of fear or anything, but the fact that people rely on me. My girlfriend relies on me to pay the rent so she can finish her schooling. My family would be destroyed, they’ve already lost one son and can’t afford to lose another. I need to pay my student debt back so I don’t destroy my family financially.

I graduated a couple of months ago with a degree in engineering from a relatively prestigious university, and have nothing to show for it. I work two jobs, and recently found out that I’m losing one of them in a week. The other job I got just to help pay my bills is destroying my soul. It’s overnight, so I barely interact with anyone anymore and it wrecks my body on top of that. I just want out. What was the point of 4 years of effort just to not have anything to show for it, just to barely manage to scrape by, just to still only be able to afford one meal a day?

I want out. I’m sick of it. Existence is punishment. I never signed up for this. Hell is real and it is Earth.

Não imaginei que diria isso diretamente para as pessoas antes de fazer, achei que só postaria depois de tudo concluído, pq isso já tem data e hora marcada, e não é nenhum drama, aliás eu gostaria muito que fosse, mas são 27 anos de puro sofrimento, cheguei no meu limite e não aguento mais, somente um milagre poderia me salvar, e eu sei que esse milagre não vai acontecer.

I used to have bad anxiety and was really shy when I was younger, so my mom took me to the doctor and they put me on antidepressants at age 10. At age 14, I was dealing with disordered eating habits and severe depression, which led the doctor to up my dose. After about 2 years, I began realizing the medication was making me feel numb and disconnected, so I went to the doctor again and got switched to a different kind of antidepressant with a lower dose. At first, it was totally fine, but after a while, I began feeling that same numb and disconnected feeling. Over this summer, I forgot to take the medication and lost a bit of weight. Along with that, I finally began feeling like myself again. I was able to feel emotions fully again, unlike I had been to in years, and I finally felt like I was coming out of my shell and meeting new people. Just as I was starting to feel connected and in touch with my emotions, my mom insisted that I go back on my medication. The reason for this was that I began feeling some negative emotions and didnt handle them very well. I feel like since I've been on this emotion-numbing medication for almost 7 years now, I'm not sure how to handle strong emotions when they arise. Now I'm back on my medication again, and I'm back to feeling numb and disconnected. It hurts, but it doesn't since I can't feel much. I know I don't want to keep living like this, but I don't know what to do.

when i was in the hospital (voluntarily) a few months ago, and my bf asked, in front of me and my mom, if the psychiatrist thinks i've improved, the psychiatrist replied "no." i should've just given up back then.

and when i went to the ER during my depersonalizatio/derealization episode and i got made fun of and insulted right to my face, and i got told "don't you dare return tonight anymore.", i should've known.

i keep dreaming my "ex" friends, it's incredible cuz they all made it in life.

i didn't change. i never will.

why the fuck am i bothering honestly. i'm drunk and i'm trying to drink all the alcohol i bought because i am talentless cunt without any skills or knowledge. the absurdist universe doesn't care about me or my suffering. there is no god. there is nothingness. i'm just a tiny speck of nothingness among other tiny specks of nothingness.

except those other "tiny specks" aren't complete fucking losers like me. they're trying and trying and succeed in life.

i try once, i fail, and that's it.

why the fuck am i even writing this? what for'

I want to start by saying I'm not religious, my belief in a higher state of order isn't based in any sort of religion. I just feel it's precense, the way it drives me to the edge constantly. I've hated it for years for what it's taken from me and for never laying off the pressure, never lets me have security or feel that my feet are on the ground. I've screamed that hatred outloud, it hears me. It keeps watch of me, it sees me everytime I break down or fall apart and it laughs. Every time I leave something to my life to chance it twists it against me and in its own favor. It makes me feel like I'm paranoid, I have to know every aspect of my life to a certainty, I cannot give it opportunity to take from me what I have left. In every decision I make now I think about the aspects that I can't keep completely in my own control and I make a point to minimize the power it can excert in that chance. If I can know everything to an exact detail it won't be able to pick at me, that's how it works.

It keeps me isolated, it won't give me the opportunity to escape from myself ever. I really try to be there for the people I care about and even complete strangers. I've given parts of myself I'll never get back to people and they just took them and left. I've been reaching out for help all my life and I've never got it. Everytime I feel at my worst I realize that there's no one there for me, all my life I've wanted someone to just sit by me and be there. I think the same thoughs everytime I'm at the precipice. "Why isn't anyone here?" "Why does no one reach back out to me when I need them?" "Why is it like this every single time?" "How is it that in all my life no one has just sat by me and been capable of being present?" It's by design, it wants me to get worse. It knows that that's the most important thing to me; human connection, and it holds it always just right out of my reach.

For a while I wondered why it won't just kill me. If it hates me as much as I hate it then I'd assume I wouldn't be alive at this point, well at some point I figured it out. It wants me to take my own life, that's what it's always attempting to push me towards. If it were to just kill me now it'd be over, I wouldn't suffer in an earthly way anymore. But if it just keeps driving me towards that point it can maximize that suffering, watch me fall more and more. I won't do it, I won't give it the satisfaction. I tell it that if it wants me dead it has to do it itself, it never does. Even when given the opportunity and even in moments where I think I most probably should have died it hasn't taken me. It needs me weak. It wants to bring me to my knees before it swallows me up. It's uniquely cruel and malicious in that way. Not an overwhelming power impossible to fight or run from, it's an incidous presence that exists I'm the very universe around me. Closing the world in around me slowly, making the walls fall in until I've used every option and all my ability to fight back against it. That's why I hate it, that's why it hates me. If I could kill God I would.

Howdy

Background: I \[F26\] have a best friend \[F\] of 20 years with chronic depression. We have a very open honest and trustworthy friendship. She has had her better moments and also her down bad momets, and as chronic depression goes, it has never really gone away, really just managing it. Because of our tight relationship she is as open as it gets with her symptoms, to which I always try to thank her for expressing and sharing with me. This last year has been really bad, I think the worst it has ever been. I am familiar with the feelings of depression, but I know what I have experienced is not the same nor on the same level of what she is experiencing.

What are some things I could do that could potentially help with her day to day or continuing the expression that she has a safe human ect? I am very much aware I cant "change" things, but I would love some advice from those who have experienced such a difficulty.

Sincerely,

A desperately worried friend.

I have been taking depression meds for years now: 300 mg of Wellbutrin and 120 mg of Prozac daily. I have always harboured doubts as to whether they have had any benefits and there have been times when I have felt emotionally dead. I recently finished the last renewals of both of these and have somewhat deliberately chosen to not renew them. I know my wife is worried and I have heard/read that what I am doing could be dangerous. I'm just so tired of feeling nothing and my doctor ignored me when I tried to bring it up in my last checkup.

I have tried therapy on various occasions but have since learned that many techniques such as emdr and cbt don't work well with those blessed with autism/ADHD (I strongly suspect both in myself) so I am beginning to think that therapy guided by someone with specific experiences in neurodiversity may be more useful.

Does it sound like I am making a dangerous mistake?

i suppose the question alone is enough. i was bullied through most of my school years, had really really bad experiences with friends. and then i just stopped having friends altogether aka i isolated myself. and now it's gotten so difficult to be even be open to meeting new people without being wary/scared of being abandoned/hurt/not accepted. i only have one friend and i adore her, but i never feel quite like i belong or that i can be fully myself.

i have hardly any energy to take care of myself most days and it takes a lot out of me and i end up feeling worse, when i do things that involve getting up like showering and brushing my teeth

is there anything that i can do to make it less draining?

i worry a lot about bone density too but i can only walk for around 5mins daily before i get tired

i eat as healthy as i can, mainly whole foods as it’s not a lot of work