Determined to get my life back

[Svenhassel]

Hi people. Found this forum the other night and spent quite a while poring over the posts and reading everybody's stories. There are some facinating tales on here and some that sound quite similar to my own.

I've had it up to here with my illness. my main issue is an ongoing lack of emotion, like everything in my head has been flattened to the point where I can remember (some) incidents but am unable to recall the pleasurable emotions associated with them. I feel joyless and anxious, I am constantly focussed on my illness and I suffer almost constant headaches and neck/shoulder pain. I am married with a teenage daughter and this is really affecting my life in a detremental way as I hardly ever leave the house, I am indecisive and can't make decisions about what to do to change my life for the better...so i do nothing Does this sound familiar to anybody?

I seem to suffer from some sort of low level mental confusion whereby, my memory is appalling (can't remember names to save my life) my concentration levels are almost non-existent and I'm drinking way too much at night,just so I can feel...not better, just DIFFERENT does anyone else do this?

I have a full time, responsible job where I work from home mainly so I'm able to hide the symptoms when they are at their worst. I'm only in the office for 4 hours a week and I think, even for that short period of time, people are beginning to notice things aren't right. I get behind with paperwork and get confused as to what needs doing, than I don't sleep, worrying about pointless work related things and, well you get the picture, it just goes round and round and round.

I am determined to get my life on track and want to break out of my negative thought patterns and take on the world again.

The reason for this post is twofold:

Firstly, I would love to hear from anybody who has experienced similiar feelings of flatness/lack of concentration/motivation/engagement and has found any way at all of addressing these issues...I am willing to try anything to get out of this situation.

Secondly, I would love to use my interaction on this forum as motivation to get my life back on track and, hopefully, help others do the same. I am, in spite of everything, a positive person. I've become bogged down in negativity and constantly thinking about my illness and I don't want to do this any more...I deserve happiness. We all deserve happiness

Let's look at positive things and try and motivate each other.

Any advice anyone can give me on addressing my issues would be most gratefully received. I want my life back!

 

[rollinat]

Hi and to the forum - I hope you enjoy it, it is a good place. I can relate to what you were saying about lack of motivation / engagement. I am ok when I have specific things to do, less good when I have time on my hands to choose what I do. I know I "should" do things that will ultimately benefit me but I still finding looking too far ahead pretty scary - but if I concentrate on the here and now I just fritter time away. Bit of a vicious circle really.

Do you have any support from your GP or others? If not that might be a worthwhile place to start; and of course post away here, it is good to get things out in the open.

Hope to see you around.

Rollinat

 

[Svenhassel]

Hi Rollinat. Thanks for replying. I have had support from my GP in the past, was on Citalopram for a while but these just made me feel even flatter. I felt less anxious but I want to be able to experience emotions more, not flatten them further. I also saw a cogniative therapist, but she really didn't have a clue what I was going on about, kept saying that the symptoms I was describing to her, IE detachment, lack of emotion, feeling distanced from my own thoughts, feelings and emotions were new to her...not great when you feel detached to have a therapist reinforce your view that no one understands you

Like you, I tend to drift as opposed to grabbing life and running with it. I spend way too much time on my own and would barely leave the house if it wasn't for my family pushing me to do so. I can barely make decisions, let alone follow them through

I Intend to do at least 1 new thing each week from now on, reasoning that if I force myself out of my comfort zone I just might start to feel a little different from the way I do now. I want o feel emotions, be they happy, sad, angry, whatever...just sick of this flatness...but I know I have to stop dwelling on my illness and do anything and everything I can to move forward with my life. I have a great, well paid job, a supportive family and some wonderful friends...it's time to start enjoying life

 

[Ainsworth]

Hi Rollinat. Thanks for replying. I have had support from my GP in the past, was on Citalopram for a while but these just made me feel even flatter. I felt less anxious but I want to be able to experience emotions more, not flatten them further. I also saw a cogniative therapist, but she really didn't have a clue what I was going on about, kept saying that the symptoms I was describing to her, IE detachment, lack of emotion, feeling distanced from my own thoughts, feelings and emotions were new to her...not great when you feel detached to have a therapist reinforce your view that no one understands you

my CBT therapist didnt understand me at all, so i quit afew weeks ago.

i have two extremes of emotion, so dont get the flatten mood the whole time

1, i feel too much and its overwhelming
2, i feel nothing and is an indifference

i can feel someones hurt and feel pain from it but at the same time i can also feel nothing for that person the same with hobbies and doing things, either i do all or nothing. ive always been like it, i tend not to understand emotions or have a grip on what im suppose to feel, so dont trust it for myself. i would like the middle ground between the two. i have a habit of detaching myself from people very fast for no reason even ones i have a connection to.

hello BTW

 

[Svenhassel]

my CBT therapist didnt understand me at all, so i quit afew weeks ago.

i have two extremes of emotion, so dont get the flatten mood the whole time

1, i feel too much and its overwhelming
2, i feel nothing and is an indifference

i can feel someones hurt and feel pain from it but at the same time i can also feel nothing for that person the same with hobbies and doing things, either i do all or nothing. ive always been like it, i tend not to understand emotions or have a grip on what im suppose to feel, so dont trust it for myself. i would like the middle ground between the two. i have a habit of detaching myself from people very fast for no reason even ones i have a connection to.

hello BTW

Hiya

I can get upset at strange moments, which is unfortunate and frustrating but at least when I do I know that there is some emotion in there, which is oddly comforting. It's difficult to motivate yourself to do something when you get no enjoyment out of said task, but my way of thinking is that we have to try, and if we are rewarded by an emotion, there is a positive to be taken from it.

I'm currently working on the theory that it might be possible to re-teach emotions by exposing ourselves to situations where we know strong emotions should be evident. I'm working on a 'childhood box' at the moment which will be made up of little things that remind me of my wonderful childhood and, therefore, might stimulate dormant emotions in me. I love the smell of gas tar so there's a lump of that in there there is also a cd of songs that I associate with good things from my past which I can play and a collection of photographs which are precious to me. Youtube is proving useful in this too. I remember the summer of 1976 as a wonderful time in my childhood and there are plenty of cine films on there of events from that summer which might well spark emotions.

The intention is to build all this stuff up and expose myself to them al at once when I get a couple of hours to do so. Sort of like my own invented therapy

Well, it can't be any less useful than that cogniative therapist

 

[jamesdean]

Himy heads in such a mess that I havent been able to read all this thread though read alittleofyour opening statement so I think you will find that most people can relate to the memory thing,I hope that we can be supportive and if we can get your life backon track because I still wantto getmine back on track, sorrymy anxiety is a 100mile an hour @ theminute can not slow down any longer.JD

 

[Svenhassel]

Himy heads in such a mess that I havent been able to read all this thread though read alittleofyour opening statement so I think you will find that most people can relate to the memory thing,I hope that we can be supportive and if we can get your life backon track because I still wantto getmine back on track, sorrymy anxiety is a 100mile an hour @ theminute can not slow down any longer.JD

Thanks Jamesdean. The support, of course, will be fully reciprocated. I hope we can all pull together cos we deserve peace of mind...and by God I'm going to get it one way or another

 

[Ainsworth]

its funny because i get so overwhelmed with emotions at times (actually quite alot) that if i had the choice i would choose not to have them

i think thats a good idea to relive good memories from your childhood to feel emotions and build them. i need the opposite to that as my extreme emotions come from childhood memories that i wish i could shut off

hey we are opposites

the summer of 1976 was hot! i got burnt on my back as a small child bad memory

 

[jamesdean]

Thanks Jamesdean. The support, of course, will be fully reciprocated. I hope we can all pull together cos we deserve peace of mind...and by God I'm going to get it one way or another

Ihavelived by that statement for twenty years so I hope upon hope that youmight be able to had someextra positive stuff into the arena looking forward to hearing whot that could be (being deadly serious)

 

[rollinat]

the summer of 1976 was hot! i got burnt on my back as a small child bad memory

I remember that summer too - hundreds of ladybirds when we were in Scarborough on holiday. But also earlier that summer it snowed! Very strange.

Svenhassel, that's really awful that your therapist didn't understand what you were talking about. Perhaps not the best at their job, is the kindest way I can put it! I would have thought that detatchment was a fairly common way of attempting to deal with emotional distress. I know I have the tendency to use distraction too much, so I don't have to think about how rubbish I feel.

Your idea of a childhood box is nice - I recently went through a lot of things as we've just moved from the UK to the US, and I found lots of school things, photos and so on. I did find it hard looking through things - I think I am more compassionate to myself as a child but know that's not how I felt at the time. I hope it helps you to awaken emotion.

Take care