This thread is the club for people who have mental illness but can't/aren't getting any help discuss tips and tricks for self-help, woes etc When I'm really depressed and unmotivated, down on myself and my abilities etc i found out that anger is a lot easier to access than positive motivation and by getting mad at myself/the depression/the way i'm acting i can get a short burst of motivation
You, too, can self-help! Seriously, I have a few books that will help. ISBN-13 978-1-886230-47-7 Master Your Panic and Take Back Your Life! 3rd Edition: Twelve Treatment Sessions to Conquer Panic, Anxiety and Agoraphobia, by Denise F. Beckfield, Ph.D. ISBN-10 1-57724-513-1, ISBN-13 978-1-57224-513-6 The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotional Regulation & Distress Tolerance, by Matthew McKay, Ph.D., Jeffrey C. Wood, Psy.D., and Jeffrey Brantley, MD ISBN-10 1-57724-413-5, ISBN-13 978-1-57724-413-9 The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, Fourth Edition, by Edmund J. Bourne, Ph.D.
I really, REALLY miss my meds, but can't have them with the wee one. :( That said, cbt is amazing! This has really helped with the splitting and catastrophizing. https://moodgym.anu.edu.au/
Whoop whoop, depression I kind of power myself through it. I keep an eye on myself to see when I'm slipping down again, and I try not to beat myself up over the fact that it's tough to work my way out of it. And the second that I have the ability to talk to someone about it, I'll send out emails to my professors if I'm having issues in their class because of it. Their feedback usually helps me out a lot, since a lot of my depression comes from thinking I'm invisible, or don't exist, or aren't important to other people. I once had a professor actually email me to check if everything was alright, because I'd missed a few classes and I seemed a little stressed. In the organization I'm going into (Americorps NCCC), they actually have on-call counselors with walk-in hours - and because they have you fill out a medical history, I told them I had issues with depression, and one of the counselors actually called me to let me know that it was totally ok, and that I was still accepted, and that if I ever needed anything, I could call her or email her. Huh, I guess I struggle most when I'm lacking a support system. Still, at least I'm out of college and in americorps soon, so it'll be less "i live with people and feel guilty that i don't feel as stressed as them" and more "i work with people and we will rely on each other for ten months to stay kind of sane in stressful areas". And I kind of do shoot from the hip psych stuff for myself; a lot of the reason I went into psych was because, coming from high school, i had issues, my friends had issues...i figured the only weapon against that was knowledge. it's worked pretty well for me so far. probably the most helpful thing was the ability to say "ok, i feel like shit right now, but it doesn't mean i'm a bad person, it's just that my brain chemicals are undergoing some fuckery." #whoops that was a long post
If it's something like waiting lists or money that's blocking your access to treatment, rather than being able to reach out to people, you could try applying for clinical trials - I linked to the search page for depression, but you can modify it for other things like anxiety or bipolar. They generally provide everything for free, and many of them in fact pay you money for your time and energy.
thanks guys!! *_* i wasn't sure if this thread would take off but the stuff you guys posted has been great
I'll probably look through Egg's blog, xey tend to reblog a lot of helpful resource posts. If I can round those up I'll post them here, but it won't happen anytime soon, earliest is probably by next week.
If you like the theory behind DBT but don't find that its approach meshes well with you, ACT is based on many of the same principles. This workbook has been helpful for me during times I couldn't get to therapy.
I'm getting pretty good treatment for my depression, (lexapro actually seems to be helping??) But I'm pretty sure I have raging, undiagnosed or treated ADHD (ex: I jumped back and forth between writing this and my thesis about three times. And this is screwing, combined with major depression and killer burnout is making writing my senior thesis all but impossible. I'm not sure what to do about it though. My executive functioning has just sort of dribbled away (can't cook, change cat litter, or really do anything that isn't a mandatory part of the school routine), and I'm trying really hard to be gentle with myself but the fact remains that I have to get my thesis done to graduate and I'm really worried about it getting done. I've got some general coping methods (clip things to myself so I don't lose them, set timers with reminders sort of things) but this is destorying my academic work.
I've got severe anxiety problems. Nervous and scared to the point where I can't climb ladders. Or just get suddenly ill for seemingly no reason. Frequent panic attacks or near panic attacks. The paranoia. It doesn't fix everything but I have found that meditation helps? Not just while meditating proper, but while also applying the basic skills of meditation to some sort of task which I may or may not need to be doing during a panic attack. So lots of controlled breathing and lots of focusing specifically on something being done. Maybe that thing is breathing. Maybe it is putting things on a shelf. Whatever. That and all the small actions that go into that are my focus point. And if I trail off and start to panic again that is fine. I try to go back. It's not entirely successful and doesn't fix everything but it has helped me make it through work days while panicking.
ohh thisss. it doesn't always work but i definitely use this and it helps a lot, esp for crowds, unfamiliar people, etc that's what makes me nervous anyway
