To sufferers: what made you get help?

[Mach123]

Death and dying. I had been trying to figure out what was wrong since I was in my twenties I guess. I was so depressed always. Suicidal a lot of the time. I was clean a long stretch, most of my adult life actually, but my ability to function got less and less. I never was really functioning, I sort of could do things for a while, but I was experiencing failure to flourish. I just couldn't understand it. I had, you would have thought, everything going for me. The end came in my late forties. It is so hard still for me to say this. I was curled up on the couch for weeks in the fetal position, I was taking the pills the shrink had given me and I was drinking though I don't really remember. My wife knelt over me and she whispered, you're dying.

I don't know what happened next. I don't know how I got up from that or why. Here I am though. There's something in that.

 

[Rani G2]

Highly depressed around 2002/2003. Didnt go out of the house, didnt wash myself. Didnt comb my hair. Suicidal. Infections all the time. I didnt get out of the house because I kept controlling for 1-2 hours. Breakdown at some point which meant mental ward.

 

[Tinyflame]

I broke down out of sight, mostly. Or explained it away in other ways (lied Big Time). Very grossed out by the lies, but if I afford myself any self-understanding (rare, but I've been encouraged to), the truth was I was in terribly dire straights, and tried every (lousy) coping mechanism to get through, and then 2 suicide attempts when I had exhausted every option that I could reasonably live with.

Just to say- so this won't leave my head spinning after posting it (selfishly for myself), when I finally told someone I did that (about 25 years later), they responded with sympathy or empathy- not anger or revulsion, or condemnation as I expected. I was shocked what "didn't follow ", and so quickly/ easily. That moment is why I can say what I just did, now, and accept/ believe I 'deserve' that self-understanding/ ~somewhat self-forgiveness, self-acceptance of it.

 

[Changing4Best]

An employee of mine was having a drug/ alcohol problem and when I took him for treatment, I realized I needed help too, but of a different kind. I did not know I had PTSD for sure, but I suspected it, so we went on that basis and I got therapy and soon thereafter medications too. That was in 1999 or so. I have been under care of one kind or another since.