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Depressed, Joyless, Suicidal

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NovemberStar

MyPTSD Pro
Have family staying for the weekend. Was looking forward to it. Yesterday we had a day trip - thermal hot pools, forest walk and rode a Jet-boat. I felt flat, empty, joyless most of the time - small brief moments of 'ok' but not happy, or able to laugh and mean it .

Today I feel really low. Life feels pointless; is life worth it if you are joyless? I'm struggling to see 'the point'. I feel so flat and half dead anyway - like I would feel more 'alive' if I were dead. I wish having my niece and sister here was 'enough' for me to feel 'life is worth living'. It's so hard feeling this disconnected. I know I have to 'get through today' and maybe tomorrow will feel a bit ether - just feel so dam tired and sick of this.

I struggle to find meaning in anything. 'People' seem one dimensional and the whole world seems … ridiculous …. in how it works, how people are - everything.

WHY should I stay here in this so called 'life'? When I feel this way I can't relate at ALL to 'I can feel better'. When my mood shifts the previous mood is gone completely - I can't relate to it AT ALL. Feeling 'ok' I can't remember or relate to 'feeling awful'; feeling awful I can't relate or remember 'feeling ok'. That doesn't help me when I'm so low, and life feels so awful ad POINTLESS.

Even when something 'good' happens I do stop and ask myself 'is this 'enough'? Is 'life' and its occasional moments of 'good', enough? - the answer is ALWAYS NO.
 
@NovememberStar I am sorry you feel so bad. While I don't know your specific story, I have to wonder a couple of things:

1. Are you in any active Therapy with a professional?
2. Are you being medicated; and perhaps your meds are failing?

I am sure there may be more questions, but I don't want to overwhelm your already fragile state.

I am sure others here can also be encouraging too. I figured I would at least start here and see where things go.
 
I hate when my family is happy and I'm not. It's like they are not letting me in the secret. What's worse is when I reflect back and say, "I get it now." Thank God for a forgiving family and one day I plan on making it up to them well enough to reflect back on the why I went out of my way to do so
 
Are you having basically no feelings, like you're dead inside? Or are you really sad, etc.?

I am no shrink but I have had the former and the latter. Feeling numb like encapsulated from feeling is hell and can bring despair. And that's Depression as I know of it, and you hopefully have someone professional who can help with this.

When you get angry, do you feel better and care about life more - as in having feelings even if they are lousy? There is a way out of this state of being.
 
@NovemberStar, I have been feeling the same way as you have described for the last few months. I recently was googling the meaning of life, because I honestly could not think of a reason to live. Especially not when it's this hard. I came across a book called Mans Search For Meaning by victor frankl. I'm still in middle of reading it (taking it in small doses :)) but if you google it, you might find his concept helpful.

It's helping me... So far :)
 
I understand completely. I've felt similarly the majority of the time,all my life...from my earliest recollections.

Have you ever been medicated for depression? I'm not familiar with your story, unfortunately. Many studies have found that trauma damages the part of tge beain that makes serotonin, the hippocampus...and many with trauma histories benefit greatly from ssri antidepressants, as a result...or other antidepressants, as well.

Please don't give up. Know that you're not alone in these feelings, and they can and do pass. Many who were once suicidal, or are even suicide survivors, lead happy productive lives today. And so can you. Please try to remember that, during such periods, our thinking/perspective is not clear...so what your brain is telling you can't be relied upon for accuracy, at all.

And if it's telling you to commi suicide, then it's time to start ignoring it, and to reach out for professional help.
 
Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply. Sorry I wasn't able to post back yesterday - my computer keyboard was broken, and wouldn't let me use the entire bottom row of my keyboard; so the post above I made I had to copy and paste every word with a z x c v b n m in it ;(. I just could not type anymore, but posted cos I really needed to 'talk'. Got a new keyboard today.

I am in therapy,and am on meds for depression. I did cut back on my mirtazapine from Friday night as the side effect of weight gain is not good for my eating disordered head. But I do not think that is why I was so low ( dose dropped from 22.5mg to 15mg). I think it was because I was doing things I guess I expected might help me feel better - or at least feel SOMETHING.

I have done the jet boat ride before - a few years ago - back then, I was in laughter the entire time, a huge adrenalin buzz, and it was GREAT. This time, I felt NOTHING. No, actually, I felt … flat … I was thinking 'this is it?????'. I laughed out loud a couple of time but did not feel the laughter or feel happy. It was like my 'laughing' was … not from inside of me anyway. We were traveling at 90kms / hour, ducking and diving in a gorge, close to the rocks, for a 30 min ride - and I felt NOTHING. No fear, no … anything.

I wonder if my adrenal gland has dried up / been used up.

My sister and niece went home last night. Today I felt really down, had to force myself to go to work, although I canceled some of it.

Thing is - I have recovered from PTSD before - but in many ways, I think that makes it even harder to cope or hang onto the 'it will get better'. Because last time, I was depressed and struggling with this from the time I was 15 until my mid twenties. I then had a great life - I achieved so many things, and for the first time in my life, I LOVED life.

I really thought the past was in the past. For 12 years, I was 'normal' as in - happy, sometimes sad, sometimes had down days, but had goals, aspirations, loved life. But then my city was rocked by several thousand earthquakes and aftershocks, and one that killed nearly 200 people - that triggered the past PTSD pain at a whole new level, and memories and feelings I had never felt or remembered, let alone addressed in all my years of therapy.

I lost my confidence in myself that I can 'cope'. I lost my belief that 'nothing happens by mistake'. I often wish I had never recovered the first time, because I have had so much more to lose this time around than last time. The pain is much more raw and deeper.

If PTSD came back like this, after years of it not being there at all - there is nothing to say it won't come back again IF I ever recover from the current mess ;(.

I just plod along. Endure my days. Maybe 'one day' I will look forward to life. One thing I look forward to is seeing my T. Buyt that too, is painful now, because of the transference stuff. I don't see her for 3 weeks due to public holidays; although she did say I could email her and see her one evening this week, I don't want too 'have' to 'need' to see her. It is unlikely I would 'feel better' anyway, cos I leave so dissociated and it triggers up so much.
 
I'm 43, and when I was younger I would have given anything to lose my "sensitivity". seems like a simple equation after all: lose your sensitivity...lose your susceptibility to pain, right?

But today I value that same senaitivity more highly than anything else.

Because I've become desensitized to pain? Not at all. because I've accepted it as feeling a fuller range of experience of life.

But part of the process of reaching that point of "savoring both the bitter and the sweet"...was acceptance. Meaning giving up struggling against it as "the enemy", to be fought, bemoaned, resisted.

That just mase it dig in further, in the end...rather than just pass over and through as part of greater cycles.

But I do know, as well, that it's easy to be so philosophical about it when you're not in the middle of such a period. I've had at least my share. So I do sympathise.

What you've described, feeling "flat", sounds like "numbing", a common symptom in trauma suffers. But jyst slapping a label on something doesn't make it better, I realize.

But fighting it, struggling with it, and "mountainizing" it, onlt made matters worse for.me...made it dig in deeper. As though tge.nombing wad a "scab cycle", covering over an exposed wound, so it could begin to heal. And obsessing over it was like picking that scab-after all, that just resulted in more stress, which necessitated further numbing.

I hope you can begin to try to practice some of this acceptance.

Also, many taking ssri meds (ie remeron) relate the kind of numbing of emotion you describe, especially after only beginning the meds. I'm not a medical professional, or at all suggesting you change ypur medication regimen without your physician's approval. I'm only suggesting that a logical, "biochemical" explanation should reassure you, in that it means as it's not "just you", it's not something you need to fear as permanent.

You sound better, now. So glad. Keep up the fight.
 
I emailed my T and asked for the evening app this week. I didn't want to 'need' to see her and I have shame and guilt about it but the sensible part in me knows I did the right thing.

Unresolved stuff came out of our last session and leaving it until the end of next week (3 weeks between sessions) wasn't working for me.

My mood is a bit better now I have an app with her; tomorrow evening.

Seeing her triggers up so much stuff I am struggling if I see her or I don't. Its painful.

Adding to my depression is the depersonalisation and dissociation, with subtle relentless flashbacks in the mix. I find myself questioning 'is THIS real' a lot. I even worry if my T 'is real'.

I might start another thread on that - feels like I'm stuck in my childhood and the present is just a bad dream but that waking up won't be any better cos I will be right back in the abusive situation.
 
Sorry to hear your PTSD has reared it's ugly head again. Sounds like you live in New Zealand and we have just been on a cruise there.

I know it is a very dark place you are in right now however I hope it is some small form of support to know we are here and listening and holding caring hands together to support you.
 
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