I'm severely depressed, like to think of myself as mostly recovered from PTSD, but have severe anxiety. Only reason I'm alive is because of a reason I can't even say because everyone will start harassing me for it, but I will just say I have a responsibility to help others.
I don't have a single friend and never will, because I relate to no one and am so used to everyone hurting me I feel uncomfortable when people are nice to me. I have no hope for life and know it will be filled with suffering for me til the day I die.
But since I have this responsibility, what does science say about the best way to cure anxiety and depression, and gaining energy and focus as well? One of the last depression/anxiety meds I was on made me gain weight. Would like one that does the opposite if anything.
Exercise helps, try getting into a gym routine or taking up a sport. Eating healthily can never hurt so it might be worth a shot changing diet habits.
Parker Green
Didn't work. Got a gym membership and was doing that every day while eating healthy. I can't escape reality or what seems to the permanent altered physiology of my brain, which healthy eating or exercise. Great suggestions but they just weren't enough for me. Could keep trying but I need something stronger. I think my brain might be permanently damaged from the PTSD.
Benjamin Murphy
You could experiment with taking psychdelics. Smoking weed 24/7 lessens the fucks you give overall but frys your brain to some extend. Or you could start abusing benzodiazepines. Otherwise standard therapy methods would be to talk with your therapist about the stuff that makes you anxious. Another alternative would be to shock yourself through your anxiety piece by piece. Whatever makes you anxious try to let it make you anxious and if you withstand that reward yourself and go back wherever you feel safe and go into baseline feelings. There is still a lot you can try.
Colton Morris
with healthy eating or exercise*
Ryder Campbell
>permanently damaged from the PTSD I know drug abuse and physical trauma (to the head) tends to damage the brain
But I can't understand how an emotional response can damage the brain
why do you believe PTSD is the main culprit in doing the damage and not just the after effect of the damage?
Thomas Torres
Depression: different folks and strokes. Get more light on your face, go outside in the daytime. Find a kind of exercise that doesn't require you to be around gymrats all the time, gyms aren't the only place you can move around, also they are inside, so kinda negate my first point. Look up weed types that are better for depression on leafly.com and try it out for a while (3-5 weeks, one dose when you wake up, one mid-day) if you have access to a selection. Don't use hash if you can avoid it, usually more depressive strains are used because they have higher thc-content. Try caring for something small, some fishes or a few nice looking multi seasonal pot plants. Play cheerful music. Dance.
Anxiety: challenge it. Recent trials in Norway show 7/10 who follow a program of exposure treatment get very good results. Of course, those who choose such a program are possibly not the worst cases. Ask your doctor for pills, those work but are a bitch to step up and down in dosage. Try facing your fears little by little.
Are you paying child support or reparations for a victim you hurt?
Xavier Adams
I definitely don't want anything that fucks with my brain anymore than it's already been fucked with. I'm a working, full time student. I need my brain to be working well, not doped up like some fucking loser with no aim in life other than to not have any suffering.
Considered weed but it's too hard to get and not for me anyway. Every person who's every smoked weed in my life has been an absolute burden and painful to speak to because their brain function is so severely degraded.
Heard about benzos but I honestly don't even know what they are. I've considered therapy but it would do nothing for me, especially since all therapists anywhere near me are going to have a severe flaw I hate most people for (Think back to my reason for living - they cause the suffering of those I want to help, so going to see them and listening to them of all people giving ME advice. No.) so I wouldn't be able to trust them.
I have done a lot of desensitizing, so now I can actually talk about it more or less. But one of the things that gives me anxiety is something that I DO deal with every day. So increasing the frequency of it will definitely do me no favors.
But thanks. Most interested in benzodiazepines out of the things you mentioned.
Brayden Torres
I'm not sure what you mean. I'm not an expert on it, it's just what I briefly read about and saw images of. I also read about it a long time ago so I forget the details, sorry.
But basically, I read that PTSD can permanently alter the brain, making it so you will be chronically stressed, even if you're nowhere near what gave you PTSD and if you've come to terms with what happened. I have a lot of legitimate reasons to be stressed in my life that's for sure, but there are also moments when anxiety and stress seems to come for no good reason, and I think that might be why, and why only medication can help me.
Bentley Gomez
If you consider the benzo route dont use them regularly. Use it with desentisizing yourself. Just do something you would not do normally while being on benzos and then stop using them for a while but try to do the thing you didnt do before without benzos. If you use them regularly you will be fucked like there is no tomorrow and your anxiety will increase many times if you stop using them. And if you dont you might just die because it fucks with your system on a too high dose.
Wyatt Hall
Sunshine is a thought, but you lost me with the last comment. What made you think to say that? I've never hurt anyone, and don't have a child.
Samuel Kelly
Maybe a non-scientific method is more helpful in your situation?
Zachary Stewart
Since when did Veeky Forums become /r9k/?
Sebastian Phillips
No better medication than benzos? (Besides marijuana...)
The only occasion where I would be doing something that caused me anxiety that I don't do regularly would be for speeches required for one of my classes.
Other non-PTSD related anxiety is from something I would never want to increase my exposure to.
Can you recommend a specific benzo?
I think I need both benzos and a more long term solution.
Jose Adams
I'm sorry I don't really hang out here so I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm just looking for people who know what they're talking about when it comes to medication and physiology, or can at least point me in a direction or two.
Elijah Ward
I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist so i cant tell you which of the dozens of medications available helps you the best though i can recommend you something i take from time to time myself. You could use a short acting benzodiazepine lets say 3 to 6 hours. If you want to have a day off of your anxiety you should take something thats more in the range of 10-20 hours. You gotta use google to find which one suits you. Otherwise there are some medications like risperidon that are indicated to treat PTSD. What else i could recommend is that maybe you change the place where you live and give your mind less associations with the anxiety ridden patterns in your surroundings. If thats the case. But just go to a psychiatrist and ask him what medication you could use.
Brayden Kelly
Also as an after thought. Get a bracelet a chain or something else you can fiddle with when you get nervous/anxious. And fiddle with it even when you re not anxious. Try to imprint calming thoughts on it while you re feeling okay and make it a mental anchor for the way your thoughts flow.
Connecting to this you can use a visualization technique. When you feel anxiety just imagine a balloon full of your anxiety and let it mentally drain. You could imprint this thought on your fiddle toy.
Ethan Stewart
Seconding on the bracelet/chain. It doesn't *fix* the issue, but it does help managing it at the time, or at least I've had some success with it. I had a necklace with jade beads; I'd move along them, and touching them helped me stay calmer during times of severe stress. It also helped keep me from compulsively picking at my skin, or digging my nails in, or any other damaging behavior, because it gave my hands (and mind) something else to do.
Connor Butler
www.bluelight.org
Camden Sanders
>>>/tumblr/
Jayden Gonzalez
Try mindfulness meditation. You can find a lot of science-based evidence for its effectiveness. It's hard at first and you won't see any inmediate results, but in the long run it can become an extremely powerful tool to overcome certain thinking patterns. I would also take medication as a first approach and try to improve my life in a way that I can never become dependent on it.
Hunter Gomez
A psychiatrist or psychologist can only help someone with a healthy undamaged brain
nearly everyone here is making the stupid assumption that your brain is in perfect condition, if it were working perfectly you wouldn't be having this problem
you need to get an MRI and CAT scan and have it compared to a "healthy" sample to check for actual damage
if your brain is in the "healthy" range then a therapist/psychiatrist/psychologist can help
if it isn't "healthy" then there's not much you can do
and don't make the mistake of believing that the only indicator of brain damage is the reduction of intellectual ability, the brain is the most complex and intricate organ known to man. any damage to any part WILL have some effect on how it works, just look at the case of Phineas Gage (google it).
point is, get some REAL information first, then you'll have some information to work with while looking for a solution
Kayden Peterson
Are you the OP?
And of course you cant use medication or therapy for a missing part of your frontal lobe. The only problem for the OP i see is that his amygdala might be fucked and there is only so much that medication can do. If indeed PTSD irreversibly (which is not completely true as there are cases where medication/therapy lessened the symptons) damages the limbic system i would agree completely.
Nolan Nguyen
Try a different SSRI. I'm on 30mg of fluoxetine a day and it has had a major benefit on my depression. It took almost 2 years to find the right medication and the right dosage, but it has been all worth it.
Hunter Garcia
>Are you the OP? I am not
Christian Hall
You take meds right? If they aren't working, increase the dosage.
t. panic disorder fag, I'm fine
Adrian Harris
Will you take it forever, or just for a period of time?
David Ward
What if you're too depressed to exercise?
James Lee
>You take meds right? If they aren't working, increase the dosage. >I'm fine >panic disorder do you see this, OP?
don't be this guy
he is not smart, he's the reason pill bottles need to say "do not take more then X amount of pills in Y hours"
Nicholas Reed
I didn't tell him to increase the dosage by his own will, he should ask his doctor if it's necessary, like I did.
I was taking just 10mg of fluoxetine, he told me to take 20 and so I did, in a week I was fine.
I did the treatment for 2 years, stopped 5 months ago, still no signs of anxiety of panic, and yes, I know it will come back eventually.
Connor Miller
Eat nutritious cooked vegetables, as a stew with lentil or bean base. As many different ones as you can. Your body will convert these to pleasant endorphins; a natural high you can't resist. Stay away from as many useless chemicals and drugs as possible. Most people are savages and cannot be helped. If you recognize this you can avoid them and gravitate towards civilized people. However, if you ignore the savages--that are careless and dangerous--you will get used or killed.
Lucas Jones
>Depression, anxiety I can relate. Was diagnosed with Vitiligo a month ago. It's awful watching your skin deteriorate in front of your eyes. I tell myself it's just a cosmetic condition, but life has lost all its color, at least for the moment. You know these weird diseases could happen to anyone, but you still don't really believe it could happen to you, until it does.
If you need to loose weight don't eat too much and excercise.
Caleb Evans
Thanks for the tips. I can see how that could work but I also just can't see myself doing that or it working that well for me personally. I kind of have a mental block about things like that, and meditation and yoga. Worth noting that the person who physically abused me and gave me PTSD was a Buddhist who meditated. Anything similar to that kind of lifestyle I just dismiss, anything that seems like something for the fantasy prone. I mean I probably would have done that anyway, but I have disgust for it. I don't have a serious issue with little damaging behaviors like that. I'm more likely to hit myself to be honest, but beads wouldn't be able to do anything for me when I'm that stressed. Thank you. I am scared of dependency, especially since I have a busy life and even such a simple thing like taking medication every day is something that slips by for me. I'm on thyroid medication and birth control and I can skip an entire week sometimes. I guess I'll have to make an appointment for an MRI and CAT scan. It's something I've been thinking I need to do for a long time. Just been putting off making a doctor's appointment. Thanks. Female just for the record. I'll schedule an appointment to get an MRI/CAT scan and see what they say from there.
Tyler Jackson
Try shrooms, they've show a great deal of promise in treating depression.
Ryder Hughes
I was on fluoxetine. I forget if I had any side effects but I remember I forgot to take it for like a week or two and didn't have severe anxiety (this was when I moved out of the home where the person who abused me still lived, so I thought I must have only really needed anxiety medication because I was still in that environment). I was on citalopram before and that's the one that made me gain weight. I wasn't on fluoxetine for that long before I quit. I guess I could try it again. It kind of sucks though because I have to take the liquid form of it since I'm vegan and the capsule has gelatin if I'm remembering correctly. It's really bullshit that so many medications are needlessly made unusable to vegetarians/vegans. Not currently on meds, no. I thought I could live without them. I think I know more than anyone that most people are monsters. It's an exhausting realization. Most people will try to justify needless animal abuse just because they couldn't bear to change a simple fucking habit. That's why I could never trust a therapist unless they were vegan - otherwise I would just end up wanting to strangle them deep down. Sorry to hear that. If it makes you feel any better I honestly think vitiligo is cool looking. youtube.com/watch?v=0AqnCSdkjQ0 Skip to 1:43 if you're not a fan of Eminem. I think she's gorgeous. I'll look into it. But again, I tend to dismiss that kind of stuff. Especially if I'm going to risk fucking hallucinating. I used to hallucinate when I was still being physically abused and I never want that to happen again.
Connor Cox
>vegan >>>/tumblr/
Hudson Gonzalez
My friend who also has PTSD due to assault (you can guess from there) has been working through her anxiety as well. She had heard about an experimental procedure that can force you to forget things. It costs money (~$2000), but it is possible to have the fee waived or have grants pay for it. She's in the process of getting that grant and is on a waiting list for it. Can't say I'll be getting back to you on this any time soon, considering you asked /k/ for some help on exit procedures.
In the process of that CAT scan, maybe you can ask for the details about similar procedures?
Camden Collins
Just kill yourself you stupid worthless womeme.
Benjamin Gray
>responsibility to help others
Stop eating wheat.
Ayden Martinez
Have you consider microdosing mushrooms also? Pharma is made so you return, plants doesn't need ya that much.
Austin Johnson
weed is illegal because hemp threatened the cotton industry
purely business
its almost as if you believe big business and the government are evil, just for the sake of it
