I Can't Do One Good Thing For Myself - I Can Do Many Bad Things To Myself

[MT Johnny]

I know I'm in this deep hole - and in a lot of ways it feels soooooooo hopeless. At times I think in very suicidal terms. But I don't really want that - I want off the roller coaster, I want some quiet peaceful place to think things through.

I've been trying to achieve ONE small goal for a month - get back on my bike and start training again - and I look at it, and think about it, and say today is the day - and it never happens, then I just feel bad about that.

The bad stuff though - that I can do - overeat, skip the gym, oversleep, slurp down pop, not take prozac - that stuff I can do.

I had a discussion with my T about going back to see the psychiatrist, fessing up to all of my issues and what I'm doing, and getting some help with it. That would be the mature thing to do ....

Except I can't bring myself to do that - because when I see the psychiatrist, it's to whitewash the truth, to paint a rosey scenario, to be, as I put it, the poster boy for Sanity.

The reality is, I definitely have full-blown PTSD, like a pizza with all of the toppings - hypervigilance, flashbacks, avoidance, self-medication (it's been chocolate and ice cream and over-spending the last few days), weird dreams, anxiety and deep depression.

I still wonder about being bipolar-ish ... Because of the depressions and I can be pretty impulsive and love to spend $ - ????

In the real world, I need professional help with this stuff. The problem lies in my paranoid anxieties - if I admit to having serious symptoms my odds of being diagnosed the sanest, most stabile guy on the planet are slim to none - and for 2 1/2 years that has been my quest, because in my paranoid, black and white catastrophizing no gray areas mind, anything less than totally sane means they are going to take away my rights, lock me up in some modern-day Blackwell's Island One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest hellhole and throw away the key, all in the most publicly humiliating way possible.

I know it's not true or real, but the fear feels real.

 

[anthony]

I've been trying to achieve ONE small goal for a month - get back on my bike and start training again - and I look at it, and think about it, and say today is the day - and it never happens, then I just feel bad about that.

Choose something smaller then...

If you're thinking about getting on your bike and going for a long ride, then chances are you're deluding yourself into a thought you're not ready to commit yet.

Instead... try smaller. Get on your bike and ride down your driveway, onto the road and do some loops out front. Nothing more. Do that and then do it again, again, again, and get a feel for what you used to like about riding your bike. Then if you get that feel back, ride to the end of the street, then around the block, so forth, slowly increasing until you're achieving your goal.

Baby steps is just that... baby steps. You don't aim to go run a marathon, you aim to run a mile, improve your time, then two, improve your time, then three, improve your time, so forth. You build up by breaking down your goal into baby steps to achieve your goal.

 

[MT Johnny]

You know the dumbest part - long rides are nothing to me - I was doing 20-30 mile training rides about 3 times a week last year, and a near Century of 75 to 100 miles almost every weekend - that's not even the thing. Not saying I would have 30 miles in my legs the first ride, but

I gotta change my tires - I put studded ice and snow tires on last fall - the new pair of 700 x 25's are just sitting there waiting for me to take 10 minutes and change them.

But no, it seems too daunting of a task.

 

[shell]

It would seem the lies in your head are very strong, today would it help to tell your self, today I will remove the tyres, if it's too much maybe it will be only one.

Challenging your thinking a little at a time, walk to the bike, and when the thoughts come that this is too much, ask your self if this is true, are you physically incapable of removing the tyre. Focus on the pleasure that comes when you accomplish that task, no matter how brief.

For me, coming out of depression came from focusing on the small positives in my day, no matter how small, laughing at a joke on the radio, the sun on my skin, a caring word, just anything that for a split second felt good. It changed my focus from focusing on how bad I felt. Each day the goal was to find ten things that felt postive and write them down, sometimes that was a hard task, but while I was busy searching for positives, I wasn't focused on the negatives.

Being depressed is a very lonely scarey place, but depression lies, and when you start to challenge the lies it tells you, things get a little bit better one day at a time.

 

[MT Johnny]

Tyres - that made me smile.

Makes me wonder how the difference in spelling came about?

Tyres vs tires
Colours vs colors
Centre vs center
Paralyse vs paralyze

 

[shell]

Spelling reforms from English to American versions happened to make it easier to spell, due to phonetics, spelling like it sounds.

Like the metric system some countries introduced changes, some didn't. It makes it very confusing for children are seeing American spelling to learn how to spell.

 

[joeylittle]

I still wonder about being bipolar-ish ... Because of the depressions and I can be pretty impulsive and love to spend $ - ????

The bipolar spectrum is a tricky diagnosis. Poor impulse control and depression doesn't necessarily add up to being bipolar. From the way you've written about it, I wonder if fear of this diagnosis is contributing to keeping you away from a psychiatrist? I know you had the false diagnosis on it in the past.

Depression is a beast. Do you think you are in a place where you could apply some coping techniques, if you had them? Or is it seeming too hard to even try on your own? I'm asking because that's one way to assess whether you are getting the right kind of therapeutic support for the state you're in.

Like, if I asked you to write me a list of the steps involved in going for a 10 minute bike ride - could you do it? Just single steps. "change wheels" is actually I think a few steps - not a cyclist, but I know it can at least be broken into "take off one old wheel", so forth.

Remember, writing out the steps doesn't mean you are going to have to immediately do them after. Writing them out does not create pressure to perform. Just see if you can do it.

I'm really sorry you're suffering through this. It's no picnic, that's for sure.

 

[shimmerz]

I was doing

Johnny, I got caught in this type of thinking for a loooooongggg time. Didn't help me much. 'I used to', 'I was', 'I could have', turned into 'I can't', 'I should be', 'what is wrong with me????'. Just adds to the depression or the negative self talk which kept me immobilized. It almost seemed like a trigger unto itself. It reminded me of who I was before vs what I felt like, what the shell of me was in that moment.

When we are 'in it' we really have to adjust what we expect from ourselves. Having a shower is a high point for me these days for chrissakes. But if I don't acknowledge it as a victory then one day bleeds into the next which bleeds into the next with all the negative self talk about 'what I can't do anymore' painting the landscape. Can you possibly set yourself up for a 60 second task that you can be proud of?

 

[Deleted member 28740]

I've been trying to achieve ONE small goal for a month

Hard thing to stop beating yourself up over what you used to be able to do. No, Not just able but loved to do. Simple take care of myself. Can do for others. My dog. And doing volunteer work to get me out of my own head.

 

[Friday]

I've been trying to achieve ONE small goal for a month - get back on my bike and start training again - and I look at it, and think about it, and say today is the day - and it never happens, then I just feel bad about that.

That's not a small goal. That's a huge one. From a former athlete... "Training" both doesn't seem like a "lot" ... But it is. And coming back from time off? Even harder.

People go to therapy "just" because their bodies that they've spent years and years working on, are now suddenly betraying them! Not just not being at competition levels, but because there is a whole new version of normal they have to adapt to, and get suicidally depressed at not being able to reconcile where they are with where they were. "Easy" being an almost impossible goal. Because it's not easy, anymore. What was easy depended on those years of serious training, and it will take similar years to even start to get back to "easy". Thinking in their minds they're at a level they are not (and asking themselves to perform at that level). Having to reset what 'normal' is going to look like for the next few years as they slowly build themselves back up...? Not a simple task.

Impossible? No. But not easy. Not a small goal.

Start smaller. For true.

 

[anthony]

Start small and take part in https://www.myptsd.com/threads/log-your-daily-exercise.49519/ to help you get motivated.

When I got back into exercise, I began walking, then increased that, then introduced cross training, then running, progressively building up my fitness and pushing myself to stick with a routine, whether my brain wanted me to or not. With repetition it becomes easier again... and now I just do it, even though my brain say no at times, repetition overrides that and I go for a run, feel better, and prove my brain was false once again, PTSD trying to screw me over via depression.