@MT Johnny - I'm just sitting here nodding, dude, I get it. I really do.
Here's something you can work on - if you are looking for something that you can actually just take control of and change. If you don't want advice, skip over this next bit - but I do mean it sincerely.
Be very disciplined about your distorted thinking. Re-frame and re-phrase all the habitual thoughts that are unbalanced. If you check out the post on Cognitive Distortion, and then re-read your opening post in this thread, you should be able to see it.
my life is just swirling around the drain faster and faster and faster.
Step back and ask yourself, what is the 'drain', what is your proof in support of this thought, what is your proof contradicting this thought, and how can you craft an honest understanding of your current (perceived, because I don't know if it's wholly true) decline? I am not saying 'find the positive' - not at all.
I could say exactly what you said in that bit I quoted. I have many reasons why it's 'true'. However, if I don't call myself out on it, I will skip over the whole other side of the equation. When I think of life swirling down the drain, I think of a wasting, degenerative, terminal illness. That's not actually what I have. A better statement: I think I am losing pieces of my life, the way it was when I wasn't this symptomatic. Can you see the differences? 'pieces' vs. all, losing the sense of a ticking clock with the 'faster and faster'. Balancing hyperbole.
if I'm doing all of the stuff I'm supposed to be doing, why does it get worse.
Can you confidently say you are doing 'all' the stuff? Anytime a statement is 'all', 'nothing', 'every', 'never' - that's a signal of a cognitive distortion. You gotta check those thoughts, re-frame them to non-judgemental perception. 'I have been trying to do what my doctors tell me to do. I don't know if those are the best things for my particular situation, and I think things are getting worse, not better. I'm confused.'
Why am I stressed out, tapped out, and just about ready to opt out of the whole thing, in one way or another, be it just say "screw it" and go live the life of a homeless man, or let them lock me up in the psych ward and throw away the key, or just languish in a corner somewhere snockered out on psych drugs until I die?
You've got a gift for language, and that will do you in if you're not careful. Stressed out, tapped out, opt out - it's good writing. But it heads to 'the whole thing' - 'whole' is a leap to a distortion. You went from stressed to suicidal in less than 10 words.
Is it just too much to ask to have a "regular" life - career, home, family, activities and interests - like "other people"? Because that is really all I've ever wanted out of life, and it seems at every corner something blocks me from that.
Bolding this for emphasis. You say career, home, family, activities, and interests - and then you describe it in minimal terms, 'really all I ever wanted' Man, you've listed the happiness holy grail. So you know that other people have that? Life could be better described as striving for those things. And 'every corner something blocks' is the kind of thinking that just leads to worsening depression, because it's
every corner and it's
something - this nameless everywhere thing -
of course you feel like you can't win, if this is the way you frame your reality.
It sucks. It's hard. I hate it. I want to just cry and cry and give up for around an hour a day, most days. It's frustrating to have to police many of the thoughts one has. I often resent it. That's how I feel, and that's a pretty balanced snapshot of my opinion of my progress right now.
If I said, instead:
"It sucks. It's unbearable. I cannot stand it. All I can do is cry and cry and every day I just want to give up. My mind is my worst enemy. I hate myself so much I cannot stand to be alive." - now, that is (to me) how it feels. But there is so much distortion in this version - and after writing it, I don't feel better, or even neutral. I just feel more hopeless.
After writing the first one I did, I actually felt a little cooler in my head. Not better, necessarily - but clearer about what's going on with me. And when I'm clear about it, I can work on it.
Those are my 100% honest and well-meant observations of your thinking style, and some suggestions as to how you could begin to give yourself a bit of relief.
