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I'm now 6 weeks into counselling, things have been slow, but I think I'm starting to get to grips with what my problems are. Possibly even starting to work towards solving them. One of the issues I find with these things is that I'm seeing each step so I end up not being a very good judge of the progress I'm making. I tend to find it difficult to talk to people about myself, which is why it's been a bit slow, but my counsellor is very patient and I'm finding it easier to talk to her as time goes on.
My issues, as I understand them at the moment, are essentially related to the way I express myself. I struggle to express myself emotionally, particularly with things like anger or sadness. I end up bottling things up, anger gets turned inwards against myself whilst I keep quiet about any pain I'm feeling in order to 'protect' the people I care about. The reasoning there being that 'they shouldn't have to deal with my problems, they've already got enough to deal with'. I find it hard to forgive myself for mistakes I've made in the past, which in turn leads me to worry quite a lot about how I should be acting. I've got a very negative self-image because of it, something that I'm very much aware others don't share. In recent weeks I've been trying to be more open with friends and family about how I'm doing, which hasn't been easy. Still, I feel like I'm starting to make a bit of headway.
Of course, real life being what it is, it's not been completely smooth sailing. A few weeks ago I started to seriously think about whether it was worth continuing to live. It's not a state of mind I've been in constantly, but it did persist for the best part of a day. It's worth noting, I think, that I seriously doubt I would act on the thoughts. A fairly key part of my mindset is that I try to avoid hurting, or even inconveniencing, others as much as possible. I'm well aware that ending my life would cause a great deal of grief for many people, that thought often keeps me moving forward. In light of my attempts at being open, I did manage to tell my friends about this. They were, naturally, concerned for me and made me promise to go to the doctor's as soon as possible, something my counsellor agreed with. So I've now been put onto a course of anti-depressants (Sertraline) which I'm now nearly three weeks into.
I think the first thing I want to say about the anti-depressants is that I think I have been low less often, and for shorter periods of time. That said, the side-effects really suck. It's still early days for them, and I was warned that this was likely to happen, but I've been getting stressed really easily for the past few weeks. Little things can make me feel very agitated very quickly, and the feeling tends to last longer than it normally would. I try and keep it under control, but sometimes it just gets a bit much and I kind of close in on myself.
It was particularly bad a few days ago. We'd gone out for a meal with one of my friend's family to celebrate her birthday. Through the first hour and a half or so of the meal I was pretty comfortable, we had finished desert maybe ten minutes earlier. I don't personally drink, but my friends father, and my friends, were all having drinks. They were planning to do so until fairly late, which was fine by me. Then I started to feel a bit stressed. Not sure what triggered it, one of the waiter's was a bit short with my friends dad, so it might've been that. But it just kept building, I ended up barely saying anything and then feeling bad that I wasn't saying anything which was making me worse. Pretty soon it reached a point where I just didn't feel I could keep sitting in the restaurant. I kept trying to say something to excuse myself, but my throat kept seizing up when I attempted to do so. Eventually I managed it when my friend's dad was away from the table. As I left I just kept berating myself for upping and leaving like that, even though I hadn't felt like I could stay.
Come the next morning, I'm still feeling bad about leaving my friend's birthday meal before everyone else. I apologise to the dad pretty much as soon as I run into him, he's fine about it and even returns the money that I'd left to help cover my part of the bill, something I feel a bit guilty about (but then, that's parents). So I go back upstairs, run into another one of my friends (whos birthday it wasn't), apologise to her as well for leaving early, and she tells me that it was really rude of me to do so without even waiting to say thanks to the dad. Now, this is something that I'd essentially been telling myself for the entirety of my journey back the previous night, something that kept me awake for a few hours when I did get back and had me still feeling pretty anxious the following morning, so I'm pretty much entirely in agreement with her on this. Hearing it from someone else pushes me over the edge, though. I ended up having a breakdown in my room, feeling convinced that my friends were going to leave me following my behaviour the previous night and that I was, essentially, a terrible person.
The breakdown wasn't immediate, so my friend didn't see I was like this instantly, but did bring me tissues when she saw. She stayed at the door to my room for a good 10 minutes or so, but I (still) think she was more annoyed than sympathetic with how I reacted to that. I think it's worth noting that she was (and still is) fairly ill, she suffers from very bad migraines, and also has her own troubles with depression, so I think in large part she wasn't in a very tolerant mood anyway that morning. Through the day she didn't speak a whole lot with me, and it was usually in front of others when she did. I'm not one of the most conversational people to begin with, but I did end up feeling like she was annoyed at me for the whole day.
Something else that didn't help the stress levels was a presentation that was looming on the following day. It was a group presentation, and I was in a group with the friend I mentioned in the previous paragraph. We'd completed the vast bulk of the work over the last few days, but there were still a few details that needed ironing out. I think having that hanging over both of us, in addition to my early leaving and breakdown, were making tensions run very high. Following the presentation I've felt a lot calmer, I can kind of spot when I'm starting to grow stressed and just try and steer my thought processes away from what's causing it. I'm also speaking to my friends much more easily now, which is making me think I may have misinterpreted the lack of talking. That said, I've also kept much more to myself, so I've not had much in the way of extended contact with them.
I'm kind of hoping that I've gotten through the worst of the tablet induced stress now, I went to a 2-week follow up with my doctor a few days ago and they did say that the best option would be to just stick with it for now. Another follow up has been booked for 3 weeks from now. Having the presentation behind me is probably a large part of it, but I've felt a bit more able to handle the stress in particular better over the last couple of days. Hopefully the restaurant/breakdown event was the worst of it.
I've gradually made more people aware both that I'm having issues and that I'm now on anti-depressants. Both of my parents, some of my friends and my uni lecturers are aware now. I feel bad about putting this onto them, but I'm at the point where I can't just keep things to myself all the time anymore. I also keep feeling like I should apologise for getting stressed so easily since starting the tablets, and I have done so to my friends. I'm not sure if I should really be apologising, given it's not something that's entirely within my control, but... I still feel acutely responsible for my actions and decisions, especially when they're poorly thought through or hasty.
So, uh, thanks for reading through all of this. I'm not really sure if I'm putting this up for advice or just to get my thoughts down. Either way... Thanks.