I have a real fucking problem with how I'm reacting to other conditions that real people suffer from

Spoiler

I honestly feel like I might just be wasting a professional's time, and even if I wasn't, the whole prospect is daunting and hard and stressful and I don't know where to start. I've managed every single problem that has manifested in me solo and I feel like that's kinda how these things end up working for me. I suspect that even if I saw a professional on a proper, serious basis, I'd still be doing all the heavy lifting work, so cutting out the fear and stress and bother that it entails is consistently attractive to me, and apathy is a far easier and less stressful/exhausting path than action.

And anyway if half of my shit isn't real I'd just feel embarassed and shamed as the psych slowly realised what a pathetic attention seeker I am. That's what it felt that with that last therapist and part of why I was so cagey and dodged questions.

The NHS is overtaxed as is.

 

you're not wasting a professional's time if you seek help at all, you're having issues and you deserve help with them whether your brain wants to convince you you're a bad person or not! your problems aren't your own fault and if anything it's a symptom of mental illness to feel like you want to suffer more, one i've expsearienced too. i reely hope fins get betta for you! c: ;;

 

i do...something similar, tbh? it's why i'm so worried about what i'm experiencing now. it doesn't make you bad or fucked up or anything tho, and everyone else in this thread can and has put it better than i could ahaha.

 

incorrect
or well because I can't look inside your head and tell you whether your frelings are real or meet an arbitrary standard of legitimacy, i can at least say i think you seem super anxious and also its not true to say you don't deserve sympathy for things youre struggling with

And going to a professional and saying "I'm distressed by these things" doesnt seem like a waste of time

I went to the nurse at my college for, like, a tiny cut on my foot. It's their job to judge whether an issue is serious enough to require further treatment/meds/etc

 

Let this almost professional tell you: we would most certainly not feel that you are wasting our time! These things are actively distressing you right now, and that's reason enough to see someone!

 

A huge amount of what I've seen you post in other threads really hits home for me, like almost to the point I could imagine were parallel universe versions of each other. What you've written here echoes a lot of what I've experienced too, but I don't seem to struggle with scrupulosity the way you do.

In college I went through a long period of pining for some kind if diagnosis, because I felt strongly that something was wrong, I felt like I was struggling and like my brain was running in fucked up modes that I couldn't identify or express. I felt like I was hurting without being able to pinpoint how.

I had many times where I wanted to be able to wear the label of a diagnosis and at least have a name for what I was struggling with, but I also kept clunking along, barely functional enough that I felt I couldn't justify claiming a disorder or seeking out help. (My school's psych staff were hugely unhelpful the one time I actually reached out to them, so that compounded the whole thing.) And I had the same debate you're having internally, only in my case with my friends. "Why would you want that condition, it would make your life is hard?" "I am already having a hard time, I just want to understand why and what I can do to make it better or at the very least be able to get some recognition for the fact I'm struggling!" That sort of thing.

So that's how I'm interpreting what you're saying here. I'm seeing you struggle with issues, but the fact you're managing them convinces you that you must be okay even though it really shouldn't be this hard on you. I'm seeing your brain recognize aspects of your struggle and seek out ways to recognize itself and find a guideline for how you can have better results with less struggle. But since nothing you see seems to quite fit in the "what is wrong with me" socket, you are left with the default conclusion that nothing is wrong, even though you are still suffering and struggling.

I would strongly urge you to see a psych professional. You have been managing on your own and keeping your head above water, but with professional assistance you may be able to manage better and more efficiently, so that you have more of yourself left to invest in things you want to do beyond just coping and plodding onward.

And I'll tell you, in my case I didn't actually get a diagnosis when I finally found a decent shrink - she was more concerned with addressing my struggles and helping me develop strategies to make them less of a burden than finding a label to explain them. And the improvement I felt working with her actually gave me a break from that pining for a diagnosis, because the real trouble that created that desire was being addressed at last.

I can't promise you'll have as smooth an experience as I did (I had the advantage that a couple of my friends had, between them, tried just about every shrink in the region before agreeing that this was the best one around), but I can promise you that trying is the healthier choice in the long run.

 

I felt exactly like this for a significant chunk of my adolescence - before I had real treatment. And in retrospect, I think it was because I wasn't in treatment - not just to help curb the effects, but to help validate my distress in the first place.

When I was younger, I wrote online about having mental illnesses I didn't actually have. I felt bad about it, but I didn't really think of it as lying - I didn't have any kind of words, actions, narratives, etc. to express the profound distress I was experiencing, so I expressed it using narratives that I was aware of, narratives that other people would understand and relate to (even if only a small number of them understood).

In retrospect I don't actually think it was wrong. I didn't exaggerate the seriousness of the distress, I just gave it a different name, like how I went by a different name online. I needed support for the profound dysphoria (in the non-gender-related sense) I was experiencing, but I didn't think that it deserved support because it wasn't "real" enough; even if it were labelled depression, what right did I have to be depressed at my age, you know?

Once I was about 18 and had mostly grown out of "translating" my distress into recognised narratives, a very close friend of mine had a bit of a Munchausen episode, during which time she "acted out" various MH problems she didn't really have, including psychosis and anorexia. It was juuuuust convincing enough that she got the treatment she wanted - the treatment she needed, really, because she wouldn't have "performed" like that if she wasn't really desperate for the kind of care she was given in response. She was in profound distress, needed help for that distress, and didn't believe that she deserved help for it because she was ashamed of it being so unrecognisable to others; so, metaphorically speaking, she dressed it up in a disguise and sent it out for help undercover. It was what I had done in previous years, just offline and more concentrated. So frustrating as it was to watch, I did have sympathy - I wanted to tell her that her pain was enough, that she deserved help for her pain without having to pretend it was something else.

The same applies to you. I think you're trying to find an acceptable format for your pain, because it doesn't feel like enough of a problem on its own to deserve help. You're not doing this because you're an inconsiderate happy person, you're doing it because you are desperately trying to make sense of your pain. It's not working, which is in itself painful.

I hope this post hasn't been too self-centred. I didn't know how to tell you what I wanted to tell you without going into my own background. No matter what you do or don't have, though, I care about your pain, and I believe that you deserve to live without it. I don't care what form it takes; it doesn't need a stable form to be a problem, or for you to deserve help.

 

When I feel awful, I feel awful. When I don't feel awful, I feel exceptionally guilty, and fake. I do want something probably real. Something that I can hold onto as a constant and undeniably consistent explanation and that it's sufficiently broad and severe enough that I both am seen as actually having something wrong with me and not having to be guilty whenever I'm in a good mood. Because I'm not always feeling awful... It varies a lot even minute to minute with just small things, and I spend a lot of the time feeling fine.

My fear is that I mostly am fine and I am making mountains out of molehills for dealing with normal human issues, boredom etc, because I'm a dumb conceited woe-is-me teenager who doesn't understand real pain or trouble and is wrongfully trying to place themself on the same scale as that.

As everyone in my life keeps pointing out, I "have it really easy".

 

Gonna paraphrase Luka here: it's worth seeing a professional even for minor issues, because a broken finger isn't a broken neck but it still hurts like hell. You deserve help.

 

But I mean, I don't think that's the only reason either.

I think there is a part of me that just wants to be sufficiently lost in myself that I can justify giving up trying and having to function.

If I wasn't able to function I wouldn't have to put effort into doing so.

 

Yeah, but still... It's a little rich of me, coming here and taking up so much airspace with my shitty finger while everyone else is clutching their necks but are still giving me time out of the goodness of their hearts because they're all good people and are kind even when you get people like me being self-centered like that.

 

I mean, part of therapy is doing a lot of work. That is hard, and it can get pretty stressful! But it is still worth it. One hundred percent. Being happy is worth it.

 

I can tell you from my experience and that of many friends and loved ones that a whole lot of mental health issues will give you breaks - sometimes long breaks where you feel "fine" like the illness isn't there anymore. That's an unfortunately confusing part of the experience.

 

Healthy people without problems don't have that urge. They don't flail around for pages and pages trying to justify why they're actually just fine and somehow lying to themselves.

 

@BlackholeKG I would just like to point out the irony of you insisting that you don't have real problems when the title of the thread starts with "I have a real fucking problem..."

Also where does it say on Kintsugi "you must be this suffering to be here"? By anyone's standards, I have it pretty easy and oftentimes I feel fine, but that doesn't mean my problems aren't real or aren't worth getting help for or that I'm self centered for believing that. Same goes for you.

You go through this pattern every couple days of "I'm so terrible. No, I don't really have problems, I'm just awful!" That's not a normal healthy brain thing at all and it seems pretty serious to me!

 

To extend that analogy, most of the people with "broken necks" are already getting medical attention, and you are not. Your pain is as real as anyone else's, and from what I've seen in my time here you take the time to support other people too. So if your brain is telling you it's not your turn for healing and support, your brain is lying to you.

 

also i think it's important to mention that even if your brain is "making up" symptoms (psycosomatic like) those symptoms are still real, and still affecting you, and you still deserve treatment and care.

 

As for where to start, it's totally acceptable to just call the office of the nearest psych clinic and ask to schedule a consultation.

 

email is also usually a pretty good way to make first contact. phone calls generally produce more immediate results but in this age email is (in my experience) a perfectly acceptable way to contact doctorly folks.

 

I think that if you need to put what feels like a lot of effort into "functioning"--which I'm interpreting here as sort of baseline life stuff, going through the day, etc.--that's an indication of distress and possible brainweird.

Not to co-opt this thread with my own story, but seconding this. I'm still struggling to find the words that fit my experiences--but doing that is much easier when you have help and someone trained in the art of looking over your shoulder, seeing what you're describing to them, and compassionately helping you parse what you're going through. I have a lot of moments in which I question the particular labels I've used to categorize my life, but those moments are easier to deal with when someone accompanies me through them. I can feel...safe in my unsureness when I feel that I have support. And I think seeking out that kind of help is a good place to begin.