# Needing to get this out of my head...



## braveheart (Feb 20, 2007)

This is just a kind of stream of consciousness rant in a way. But I could use some listening. Just being heard.

I am having a day's leave from work today. [the day is almost over now, as its nearly 4pm here...] A well deserved rest. Therapy [and living] has been really hard work lately. Really painful. Really a struggle. It amazes me each time I emerge from the dark places in my mind that I somehow carried on my life when I was soaked in despair and rage and pain and [self-]hatred.

I know my diagnosis, the main medical one, is recurrent depression.
But.
I have been depressed, of one shade of grey or black or another since I was 17-18. I am now nearly 37.
I did lots of yoga development work. My first counsellor thought I didn't need further referal for treatment, because the yoga psychology was all I needed. Um. 
I was meditating daily and trying to 'be spiritual' but was also hitting myself and crying uncontrollably in the shadows.

I didn't enter therapy of any kind until I was 30. I did have 6 weeks sessions with the council's teacher counselling scheme way back when I was 26 and my employer was basically bullying/overloading me. But that barely scratched the surface, the best thing she ever did was loan me a book on the Inner Child which made me realise that the way my family had been when I was growing up was actually dysfunctional...She didn't even say I was stressed, never mind depressed. But I kept a lot hidden. I was still labouring under my father's threats to me growing up that I would be put in a strait jacket and sent away to a home for bad children, would be locked up and the key thrown away....

So, yes, then..to 6 months with a counselling psychologist, who thought I needed to be in Kleinian analysis... [and, yes, she was right, because the Kleinian aspect that the therapist I have now integrates with the other aspects she uses with me... really helps....] but I stayed with her anyway... and 9 months with an existential phenomenological therapist who wasn't really on my wavelength..
..I finally made it to my current therapist. 

A year or so in, we agreed I needed some medication help, anti-depressants, I went to the GP, who gave me efexor, which didn't really help, made lots worse, but they kept me on them for a year...until it became 'blindingly obvious' that this was the wrong medication, I was refered to the psychiatrist, who got me on remeron.

Meanwhile all the time I'm working as hard as I can in therapy, and getting better by the day.... slowly, gradually, thoroughly.

The psychiatrist said I have long-standing treatment resistant depression.
He also refered to my diagnosis as 'depression, anxiety, panic attacks and other problems because of things that happened to me in the past'. *breathes*
Officially, its Recurrent Depression.
The thing is, I have days, hours, when I get remission from the Dark.
Not weeks.
But c'est le ICD-10. Or something.   

Anyway.

Yesterday I had a really really good therapy session. Really starting to break free from The Dictator that I was talking about in my thread in the PTSD forum over the weekend. Its a real breakthrough. Although the effects from this will filter through gradually....

I wonder if this will start to lift my depression, as I gain some sense of power within myself separate from this internal demon, whose ways have penetrated all my life, my feelings, my actions, for so many years. 

I don't know exactly what it would feel like to not be depressed. To feel fully alive much of the time. I have... moments.

But what joy it will be to be able to walk down the road and feel that I actually am ok to exist, that I am a person who is real, whose feelings are ok and who people areen't out to hurt.
It is possible.... I have hope...


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## sister-ray (Feb 20, 2007)

*Re: needing to get this out of my head...*



braveheart said:


> But what joy it will be to be able to walk down the road and feel that I actually am ok to exist, that I am a person who is real, whose feelings are ok and who people areen't out to hurt.
> It is possible.... I have hope...




Im hearing you Braveheart, I found the words above very poignant:hug: :hug:


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## Cat Dancer (Feb 20, 2007)

*Re: needing to get this out of my head...*



through-these-eyes said:


> Im hearing you Braveheart, I found the words above very poignant:hug: :hug:



Me too.  :hug: I always believe in hope. I don't always feel it, but I believe in it.


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## braveheart (Feb 20, 2007)

Thank you both...


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## Halo (Feb 20, 2007)

> But what joy it will be to be able to walk down the road and feel that I actually am ok to exist, that I am a person who is real, whose feelings are ok and who people areen't out to hurt.



I too hope for that same joy someday exactly as you have described it.  I or make that we, have to hold onto hope that it can happen.

Take Care
:hug:


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## foghlaim (Feb 20, 2007)

I hear you... it's been a long road,, with some still to travel..  

i'm glad you have hope.
I believe you will make it thru as well. 

((hugs))


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## ThatLady (Feb 21, 2007)

I'm really glad your therapy session went well for you, braveheart. You're trying so hard, and have been trying for so long, you deserve to have things go right for you.

You know, I thnk you're already walking down the road. It's just that you're still amongst the tall trees and it's not quite light out yet. You're unable to see the beauty, or feel the sunlight quite yet. But you will. I'm sure you will!


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## braveheart (Feb 21, 2007)

Thank you.. 

I actually managed to phone my friend. [my friend, not my befriender..] yesterday evening. I haven't seen her since last Summer, but now I am meeting up with her in just over a week's time. 

Last night I dreamt of a underground train snow plough, clearing snow off the side of the tracks..


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## sister-ray (Feb 21, 2007)

I happy to hear you called your friend and are meeting up with her:hug:


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## braveheart (Feb 21, 2007)

.. yes... I am gradually emerging from my prison...


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## Halo (Feb 21, 2007)

It is nice to hear that you are getting together with your friend again.  Hope you enjoy it and have some fun


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## Cat Dancer (Feb 22, 2007)

> But what joy it will be to be able to walk down the road and feel that I actually am ok to exist, that I am a person who is real, whose feelings are ok and who people areen't out to hurt.


I can relate to this so much. I want to be ok to exist. I want my feelings to be ok. I don't think people are out to hurt me, but I worry constantly that I am hurting people. I would like that to be gone. 

I see hope in your posting here. I just wanted to say hold on to the thought of hope. :hug:


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## braveheart (Feb 22, 2007)

Thank you both.

I just feel so ... sad this morning. So sad.


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## Cat Dancer (Feb 22, 2007)

:hug: :hug:

I hope your heart will heal. I can't say I know exactly what you're feeling because I don't, but I feel a deep sadness too a lot of the time. Like I missed something I can't get back. Or I'm broken and can't be fixed. Or I have been hurt so much, damaged so much I can't mend. I don't believe those things are true, but they feel so true. 

:hug: I don't know the right thing to say, but I hear you. I really do.


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## texasgirl (Feb 22, 2007)

I am so glad for you - hope you have a good time, BH!  

Take care,

TG


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## braveheart (Feb 22, 2007)

Janet, you are spot on, that's how it feels pretty exactly...

Thank you both.

Therapy this morning helped a lot.


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