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Now, I'm not going to ask for people to share their personal issues. It's none of my business. Though, if you do suffer I feel for you truly.

I have Borderline Personality Disorder, Anxiety, Depression, and C-PTSD. I'd like to think my posts here are normally sane, but I have gone off the rockers in the past and would like to apologize both to those I offended, the moderators, and the general populace of the board for my snide comments. I know now that it is better for me to simply refrain from specific types of threads, especially since I still suffer from black and white thinking a great deal.

I'm really just posting this to open up a discussion about a relatively taboo topic in American society. Mental illnesses are often misunderstood and misdiagnosed. For whatever reason, women with BPD seem to actually get help and the men with it end up in jail for various reasons, quite frequently substance abuse problems, i.e. self medicating behavior. These men are quite literally getting the short end of the stick by being extensively punished by the law and forced into program that don't necessarily help with the root of the issue. I'm talking of the various Anonymous groups, of which I've attended only AA on a handful of occasions and read some of their literature. For whatever reason, it has become commonplace to label Alcoholism as a disease, despite the Big Book stating on page 64 that it is, this is not verbatim mind you, a symptom of underlying issues.

The good thing is AA and other groups do deal with underlying issues to some extent. The bad news is that they force spirituality upon people that may not be open it, particularly Christianity. Meetings begin with the Serenity prayer and end with the Lord's Prayer. The Big Book and AA was founded by Christians. It has very Christian overtones despite being partially rewording God as a Higher Power. Another issue is the belief that you are unable to moderate your drinking and if you drink at all you have failed your sobriety and will go off the deep end. Now, I'm still sober and have no intentions to drink, but I feel this belief almost gives people an excuse to binge simply because, well hell, I've broken my sobriety with one shot, might as well have twenty more. It's just very disheartening to me to know that so many people aren't getting the proper treatment they need.

Last year I attended a residential treatment center specializing in Dialectic Behavioral Therapy which was developed specifically to control BPD symptoms. It helped immensely and I have not self harmed since leaving. However, I did turn to drinking, partly out of boredom and partly for the release it gave me.

Just functioning on a day to day basis is extremely difficult for me. The urges to self harm, attempt suicide, or drink are still there, lurking in the background. At times I'm amazed I'm still breathing.

A big frustration to me about having BPD is how critical the media and masses are of the disorder. Everywhere I turn people with my condition are labeled as dangerous to others and especially incapable of forming true, relationships. I've come to ingrain these beliefs in myself to the point where I have ceased communication with pretty much anyone who isn't also suffering from some form of mental illness. I've given up on the possibility of any romantic relationship in the near future. I've reached the point where I feel like a threat to society and frequently wonder if I am even capable of empathy or if I simply use and manipulate everyone in my life. As you can imagine these feelings are quite frustrating.

So, I would like to hear any comments, observations, or insights people have into mental illnesses, it's taboo nature in American society (particularly among males), the role the media has in creating a negative image of those who suffer from it, and what the masses think of those suffering from them.

If anyone is a mental health care worker, I'd appreciate it if you could PM me to discuss things. Here works as well.

Thanks!

I have worked in Mental Health. Also worked in Hospital and Nursing Homes as a Healthcare worker.

Alcoholism IS a disease because it is an addiction. While there may be underlying problems that drive people to drink, it does not in any way make addiction less of a disease. Also those people who do have mental health issues should stay away from alcohol and other things because they are far more prone to substance abuse. They do it to self medicate and in the end they are unable to tell when it is too much. After awhile it just because another layer of their issues. So on top of their mental health issues, they are now an addict. Which further complicates treatment for them. It is hard enough to rationalize with somebody who is mentally ill, it becomes even worse when said person is addicted to something and their body is telling them they will die without a substance.

 trexmeyer wrote:
However, I did turn to drinking, partly out of boredom and partly for the release it gave me.

This is an excuse and it is part of the disease. You say you did it out of boredom, but that is you rationalizing it. You needed the release. This is where the disease part comes in and why they teach in AA that relapses happen. Because they do, addiction is something you can never totally kick because it physically changes how your brain works. The idea behind telling people relapses happens is to lessen the impact when they do happen. People will relapse back in to drinking, fall in to depression because they believe they can never kick their habit, then awful things can happen. Telling people "nobody is perfect, these things happen and you can come back for help" is a good way to keep people alive. Because that lets said person know that they are human like the rest of us and there are people out there that will help them. If you didn't tell people that relapses happen, how awful would it be on the person when it happens to them? They would feel totally alone, like they are the only person in the world this has ever happened to and they are worthless. That is not the point of the program.

I can only really relate to the difficulties of a completely different medical system... over here we are hamstrung by obscene waiting times (in some cases six months, to be seen for common issues like depression). So I appreciate that your efforts to help yourself must have come at the expense of stress and other pressures.
Keep going, fella. And remember you (and everyone else) are allowed to have gak days. Just get up the next morning.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
over here we are hamstrung by obscene waiting times (in some cases six months, to be seen for common issues like depression)

= American nightmare fuel

I'm currently just ending a four month wait to be seen a referred to a 90+ week one. Because I've had to go through the mental health system to be assessed.
We do have private options, but the cost is prohibitive to a great many.

I'm a Clinical Therapist (MS Clinical Psychology w/experience) who also is diagnosed with PTSD. Feel free to PM me for some general advice.

Spirituality can actually be a good thing, and work wonders with recovering addicts and the mentally ill. Sure helped the Old Man when he was getting treatment for his breakdown back in the early 90's


He's been gone of over three years now. When he was on his last leg, it was the church who helped him and my mother get through it.


I'm not what you would call a Christian man. But I'm grateful for what they did for the both of them.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

Spirituality can actually be a good thing, and work wonders with recovering addicts and the mentally ill.

It can also be an bad thing as it can be used to mask or avoid whatever it is that an individual needs to do to resolve their issues. If you want to get healthy you cannot avoid anything.

I have had some fairly severe issues in the past. Basically I had pretty gakky upbringing with a bit of tragedy thrown in which gave rise to some aberrent behaviours, nothing sinister or even that interesting but unhealthy. Something happened last January that caused quite a spectacular meltdown, I literally couldn't get out of bed for a while and I was having a really bad time. I needed 3 months of sick leave, 5 months of regular, initially weekly, psychiatirc appointments with about 6 months of followup care. I had my last appointment in the new year and, as things stand, things are looking good.

As I am in the military my waiting times were far shorter. 2 weeks for a mental health assesment and about another 3-4 weeks for a specialist appointment. The Army is genuinely exceptional when it comes to mental and physical rehabilitation.

I used to take a fairly dim view of mental illness, probably for cultural/societal reasons, but I have a radically different perspective now.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
I can only really relate to the difficulties of a completely different medical system... over here we are hamstrung by obscene waiting times (in some cases six months, to be seen for common issues like depression). So I appreciate that your efforts to help yourself must have come at the expense of stress and other pressures.
Keep going, fella. And remember you (and everyone else) are allowed to have gak days. Just get up the next morning.

My mum had to wait over 6 months for therapy for her depression (which was pretty severe), which as someone who has suffered from depression, 6 months is a long time and a lot could happen, if you catch my drift. Luckily I was under 18 at the time so I was seen quickly, but when you're in a delicate mental state, time is definitely of the essence.

For me, the worst part of depression was the apathy and self-feeding behaviour that I developed. It didn't matter if I didn't do something, because I could sleep more. Everything was a route to go back to bed. I'd wash myself, feed the pets, make sure nothing was dangerous in the house, then sleep as long as I could get away with.

I've had depression from physical shock (large spinal surgery) and from independent mental illness. They were quite different, but the big link was being tired and wanting to be "off" into sleep. I don't want to think how much of my life I willingly gave up to that.

Somehow after over a decade of it being a daily feature, I woke one day up last year and no longer felt gak. I don't know what freed me, it was absolute random. It's never come back, but I accept it can.

What I take from this is that nobody "deserves" their depression, we're not failing if that gak comes back. In some cases, we just have no control at all.



Depression is becoming slowly more understood and I'm very grateful. People are becoming more open, and I am happy to know they feel they can.
What I'd also like to see happen is stress being accepted as real, and not just seen as an excuse.

I had never experienced stress until about age 26, I thought it was something that happened to businessmen and people with high flying jobs and not enough sleep.
But when a my partner's mother died, I found myself supporting and guiding my partner, his father and myself through that process, along with trying to carry on working, and keep them on the rails for a couple of weeks... I found myself so very overwhelmed. I wasn't grieving, but I was trying to help people who were.

Couldn't sleep. Couldn't eat. I had no idea what it was, I thought I just wasn't good at being an adult. I thought I was letting people down. It couldn't be stress, because I should have been able to cope. But everyone who could usually support me was deep in their own grief.

One day in the middle of it, I got halfway down our staircase, and started shaking uncontrollably. I forgot how to walk. I just sort of slid to the steps and shook for ten minutes.
Then I got up, carried on and propelled people through a funeral and house clearance. I barely remember that month. Looking back I did what was necessary, but not what was healthy.

Most of us will experience some form of mental illness over our lives. It is unusual not to - as unusual as never experiencing physical illness.

Depression is sadly common. I was depressed in University without really realising what was going on, it's only when it's over that I was able to look back and realise how little I'd been able to do for that period.

During my graduate studies I had some serious issues with an abusive boss harassing me which I took a long time getting over.

What stands out to me is that having a mental problem is much the same as a physical one except no one can see it. If you've suffered damage, you can learn to cope and adapt to it, but the scars and damage remain. You may end up with something like a psychological limp for a long time afterwards. I am still pretty easily stressed out by emails, phonecalls or letters for example, because those were the primary ways my old boss terrorized me.

Good to hear the DBT helped, my fiance had tried it years ago before we met but hadn't stuck with it and only got the urge to get into it properly again this year after some constant shuffling with meds for about half of last year.

I was pretty depressed for about a year or two myself, I just didn't want to do anything and really got to the point where I was seriously considering suicide and to be honest even tried a couple of times without anyone knowing. I never got any help for it because I really didn't feel like it was worth anyone's effort to be a bother for it. Luckily I ended up realising that I was more depressed about how things were going and just one day came up with some goals I could manage and said to myself to get them done by a certain date or just end it, not quite there yet but good enough and always working towards where I want to be now. Coincidentally that date I'd picked ended up being her birthday almost a year after I had.

I have autism, which was problematic in my early years but manageable now. I am otherwise fine psychologically.

Mental health sadly is a poorly funded field in most nations. In the UK there have been massive cut backs to already stretched mental health services and you are now much more at the mercy of a postcode lottery as to how quickly you get seen and the quality of the service you get.

While I do not work directly in the field of mental health, a lot of the patients I see do have some form of mental health issues; mental health training should be a requirement for all front line NHS staff and a much larger focus of healthcare in general.

PTSD
Medicated for your safety

One of my main issues with NHS mental health treatment is course length. I've had several courses of various things from counselling through CBT and group therapy, but none of them lasted more than 6-7 1-hour or so sessions over as many weeks. You'd go in to it, spend a session or two getting to grips with it, spend the next 3-4 opening up, and then the last one wrapping it all up after you've just scratched the surface and told to re-refer yourself after 6 months if you're still having difficulty.

Counselling has been the only helpful one thus far, because it's the only one where I've been able to get into any sort of depth about my issues. CBT Focuses too much on trying to change things I can't currently change, or don't understand enough to change, and really needs me to be in a better environment where I'm capable of exacting those changes. It's rather more frustrating than anything.

But if I want another go at counselling, it's back on a waiting list for a few months, to get sessions with a different counsellor I'll have to spend time getting used to and filling in only for the course to end far before it should, and the cycle to begin anew. There's no permanency to any therapies. It's all extremely temporary.

studderingdave wrote:I'm a Clinical Therapist (MS Clinical Psychology w/experience) who also is diagnosed with PTSD. Feel free to PM me for some general advice.

I'll hit you up shortly.

oldravenman3025 wrote:

Spirituality can actually be a good thing, and work wonders with recovering addicts and the mentally ill. Sure helped the Old Man when he was getting treatment for his breakdown back in the early 90's


He's been gone of over three years now. When he was on his last leg, it was the church who helped him and my mother get through it.


I'm not what you would call a Christian man. But I'm grateful for what they did for the both of them.

Silent Puffin? wrote:

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

Spirituality can actually be a good thing, and work wonders with recovering addicts and the mentally ill.

It can also be an bad thing as it can be used to mask or avoid whatever it is that an individual needs to do to resolve their issues. If you want to get healthy you cannot avoid anything.

I have had some fairly severe issues in the past. Basically I had pretty gakky upbringing with a bit of tragedy thrown in which gave rise to some aberrent behaviours, nothing sinister or even that interesting but unhealthy. Something happened last January that caused quite a spectacular meltdown, I literally couldn't get out of bed for a while and I was having a really bad time. I needed 3 months of sick leave, 5 months of regular, initially weekly, psychiatirc appointments with about 6 months of followup care. I had my last appointment in the new year and, as things stand, things are looking good.

As I am in the military my waiting times were far shorter. 2 weeks for a mental health assesment and about another 3-4 weeks for a specialist appointment. The Army is genuinely exceptional when it comes to mental and physical rehabilitation.

I used to take a fairly dim view of mental illness, probably for cultural/societal reasons, but I have a radically different perspective now.

Thank you for your service.

I think a combination of spirituality and therapy can be extremely helpful, but AA and other groups have a bit of a cult mentality to them and lack a clear guiding force at the same time. In only 8 or so meetings I sat through way too many people that were borderline illiterate trying to share their stories and they 1) did not make any sense whatsoever 2) went directly against the Big Book at some points 3) were laden with curses 4) I got absolutely nothing from them. Seeking the help of a sponsor that may or may not be rehabilitated seems insane to me. At least a therapist or counselor is required to undergo therapy before earning their license and is an actual professional.

I've heard far too many horror stories about 13th steppers and AA sponsors telling people to quit therapy, get off their meds, etc, to ever trust that program.

n0t_u wrote:Good to hear the DBT helped, my fiance had tried it years ago before we met but hadn't stuck with it and only got the urge to get into it properly again this year after some constant shuffling with meds for about half of last year.

It helped until a few days ago when I broke my sobriety and cut my shoulder a few times. Fething stupid, I know. The suicidal urges are pretty constant, but at least I'm in control enough to not go HAM all over my arms.

Ashiraya wrote:I have autism, which was problematic in my early years but manageable now. I am otherwise fine psychologically.

I've often wondered if I had that or Asperger's to some degree. Could I PM you about it?

SilverMK2 wrote:Mental health sadly is a poorly funded field in most nations. In the UK there have been massive cut backs to already stretched mental health services and you are now much more at the mercy of a postcode lottery as to how quickly you get seen and the quality of the service you get.

While I do not work directly in the field of mental health, a lot of the patients I see do have some form of mental health issues; mental health training should be a requirement for all front line NHS staff and a much larger focus of healthcare in general.

Yes! Especially since people can apparently not fething differentiate between BPD and Bipolar for feth's sake.

Jihadin wrote:PTSD
Medicated for your safety

Thanks for your service. Hope you're getting therapy too.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
I can only really relate to the difficulties of a completely different medical system... over here we are hamstrung by obscene waiting times (in some cases six months, to be seen for common issues like depression). So I appreciate that your efforts to help yourself must have come at the expense of stress and other pressures.
Keep going, fella. And remember you (and everyone else) are allowed to have gak days. Just get up the next morning.

My mum had to wait over 6 months for therapy for her depression (which was pretty severe), which as someone who has suffered from depression, 6 months is a long time and a lot could happen, if you catch my drift. Luckily I was under 18 at the time so I was seen quickly, but when you're in a delicate mental state, time is definitely of the essence.

Holy crap, that is a long wait time. How long is it between visits when you finally do get to see a doctor?

AA is one of those things that isn't great, but really is the best course. I think the key is to find the right group. My dad got a lot out of it, back in early 90s when it was the classic stereotype of twelve guys smoking butts, drinking black coffee in a church basement. He found a group with other professionals, and that seemed to help.

BPD is different. I'm not a mental health professional, but I'm a disability lawyer, so I've seen roughly a thousand mental health treatment histories. Borderline is just so tough to be around. If you have the insight to work with the diagnosis there can be some improvement, but personality disorders stem from really deep rooted aspects of who a person is, where most other diagnoses are overlaid over baseline.

 Polonius wrote:
AA is one of those things that isn't great, but really is the best course. I think the key is to find the right group. My dad got a lot out of it, back in early 90s when it was the classic stereotype of twelve guys smoking butts, drinking black coffee in a church basement. He found a group with other professionals, and that seemed to help.

My grandfather was an alcoholic for the majority of his adult life. He never attended AA. Something occurred in his life back in the 90's that got him sober and he stayed sober for 25 years. I disagree vehemently that AA is the best solution. It's outdated and based on a faulty disease model of alcoholism. Our understanding of psychology has improved so dramatically over the best 30-40 years that it is beyond absurd, feth it's completely insane, to rely on a system of treatment developed 80 years ago.

Does it work? Yes, to some extent.
Is it the sole solution? No.
Is it the best solution? Hell no.

BPD is different. I'm not a mental health professional, but I'm a disability lawyer, so I've seen roughly a thousand mental health treatment histories. Borderline is just so tough to be around. If you have the insight to work with the diagnosis there can be some improvement, but personality disorders stem from really deep rooted aspects of who a person is, where most other diagnoses are overlaid over baseline.

BPD is basically a death sentence. I have no hope of living a normal life. The best I can do is not feth over everyone I get close to.

Since we are opening up...

I suffer from anxiety and related depression. I am mostly fine now, but still have the odd off day.

I agree that mental health support is very patchy. Far too patchy IMO. When I asked for help from my GP is was about a month until I saw seen, and put on a short CBT course quite quickly. I don't think it was much help on it's own, and was an online course. Fortunately through work I was able to access a mindfulness course, which helped massively. I would recommend a mindfulness course to anyone, mental health issues or not, and it is well worth the cost (Although I would caution that if you do have any complex mental health issues that you should talk to an expert first).

However, what frustrates me is the lack of priority put on mental health. Suicide is the highest cause of death in men under 50 in the UK. We have huge levels of treatable mental health issues, but they are still seen as not important, or not "real" illness. They are relatively cheap to treat, and can totally change life and quality of life for sufferers for decades, yet we do nothing. We spend tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds on cancer drugs NICE has found to be not cost effective, which might give people a few months or years. The cancer drugs fund treated 71000 people at the cost of £1billion with drugs that were not licensed by NICE because they were deemed to not be effective. For every 2 people treated with ineffective cancer drugs we could have had 1 mental health professional who would have been able to effectively treat 240 people. But cancer is fashionable to treat and gets special treatment above other illnesses.

 trexmeyer wrote:

Ashiraya wrote:I have autism, which was problematic in my early years but manageable now. I am otherwise fine psychologically.

I've often wondered if I had that or Asperger's to some degree. Could I PM you about it?
...
Yes! Especially since people can apparently not fething differentiate between BPD and Bipolar for feth's sake.

If you think you might have autism/aspergers/asd and have been diagnosed with BPD please do investigate. There is a lot of miss diagnosis. It happens a lot more with women, because a lot of people still think women can't be autistic, but treatment for one can be very damaging for the other.

As we are talking mental health.


I have bipolar disorder and horrific mood swings. In fact, my depression is so bad that I often give off the impression of having no empathy in any given situation. Which gives me more than a few odd looks now and then.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also agree, mindfulness is really good when done correctly. I went on a course in university ( because universities love looking at mental cases like myself, it gives the psychology students something to do.) it was all done by an actual psychiatrist though.

Steve steveson wrote:Since we are opening up...

I suffer from anxiety and related depression. I am mostly fine now, but still have the odd off day.

Sorry, but good to hear that you've made some recovery.

I agree that mental health support is very patchy. Far too patchy IMO. When I asked for help from my GP is was about a month until I saw seen, and put on a short CBT course quite quickly. I don't think it was much help on it's own, and was an online course. Fortunately through work I was able to access a mindfulness course, which helped massively. I would recommend a mindfulness course to anyone, mental health issues or not, and it is well worth the cost (Although I would caution that if you do have any complex mental health issues that you should talk to an expert first).

However, what frustrates me is the lack of priority put on mental health. Suicide is the highest cause of death in men under 50 in the UK. We have huge levels of treatable mental health issues, but they are still seen as not important, or not "real" illness.

It's still taboo to even acknowledge it and there is a stigma surrounding many a diagnosis. Personality Disorders and Bipolar seem to get the worst of the lot and for some reason are oft dismissed as crazy. Crazy is our word. Not yours.

 trexmeyer wrote:

Ashiraya wrote:I have autism, which was problematic in my early years but manageable now. I am otherwise fine psychologically.

I've often wondered if I had that or Asperger's to some degree. Could I PM you about it?
...
Yes! Especially since people can apparently not fething differentiate between BPD and Bipolar for feth's sake.

If you think you might have autism/aspergers/asd and have been diagnosed with BPD please do investigate. There is a lot of miss diagnosis. It happens a lot more with women, because a lot of people still think women can't be autistic, but treatment for one can be very damaging for the other.

Well I definitely have BPD. I can literally check off every symptom. Hell, I've even done the generic Hollywood crap associated with the disorder for the most part...I just wonder if I might have something else going as well due to my social difficulties.

welshhoppo wrote:As we are talking mental health.
I have bipolar disorder and horrific mood swings. In fact, my depression is so bad that I often give off the impression of having no empathy in any given situation. Which gives me more than a few odd looks now and then.

Hmm. How rapidly do you typically cycle? Do you really experience either manic symptoms or hypomania? The lack of empathy in given situations is strongly associated with BPD, but it can be part of Bipolar if connected to a depressive state, I'd think.

Feth...I really need to recover so I can get into counseling. When I'm relatively stable I fething love helping people, particularly those with BPD or childhood trauma since I've done extensive research on both and am personally familiar with them.

I do have troubles of my own, but I've started to ignore them in order to move on. I told my shrimp to go feth herself two years ago, and I decided to help myself.

So far it kind of works. I'm just trying to be self-conscious about everything I do, feel or think. It somewhat keeps my anxiety issues in check and allows me to keep control. It doesn't do gak for my depression, though.

 trexmeyer wrote:

Well I definitely have BPD. I can literally check off every symptom. Hell, I've even done the generic Hollywood crap associated with the disorder for the most part...I just wonder if I might have something else going as well due to my social difficulties

Sorry, I panick slightly when people may have unclear diagnosis. My wife is an aspie, but for years she was being treated for various mental health problems. She is only just recovering and coming to terms with herself and what happened. I don't like the thought of that happening to anyone else. Her aunt (or other relative. I forget) spent most of her life in a secure hospital for what we now think was probably also ASD, as it has a strong genetic component, and it explains a lot of the behaviour.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LethalShade wrote:
I do have troubles of my own, but I've started to ignore them in order to move on. I told my shrimp to go feth herself two years ago, and I decided to help myself.

So far it kind of works. I'm just trying to be self-conscious about everything I do, feel or think. It somewhat keeps my anxiety issues in check and allows me to keep control. It doesn't do gak for my depression, though.

Sounds a little like you have started to pick up some of the basics of mindfulness on your own. I know I sound a bit like an evangelist, but I highly recommend investigating it for anxiety. It has shown to be very effective in well respected studies.

 Steve steveson wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LethalShade wrote:
I do have troubles of my own, but I've started to ignore them in order to move on. I told my shrimp to go feth herself two years ago, and I decided to help myself.

So far it kind of works. I'm just trying to be self-conscious about everything I do, feel or think. It somewhat keeps my anxiety issues in check and allows me to keep control. It doesn't do gak for my depression, though.

Sounds a little like you have started to pick up some of the basics of mindfulness on your own. I know I sound a bit like an evangelist, but I highly recommend investigating it for anxiety. It has shown to be very effective in well respected studies.

I'll keep working on it on my own. I already have to take care of someone who really needs help, it somewhat forces me to stay strong.

 Steve steveson wrote:
I would recommend a mindfulness course to anyone, mental health issues or not, and it is well worth the cost (Although I would caution that if you do have any complex mental health issues that you should talk to an expert first).

I was diagnosed with anxiety about two years ago when my (known) depression flared up, and in the last 12 months I have started practicing mindfulness techniques with some success. Mindfulness does help, but at times I still struggle with the process, especially when something has really angered me and I try to not let it affect me but ultimately fail in that regard. Instead of "letting go" of the problem I obsess over it until I am an anxious mess or depressed to the point of suicidal thoughts. Basically falling back into all of my old, bad behaviors which leads to more bad behaviors.

What I have learned from mindfulness after all these months is recognizing those old thought and behavior patterns and, when I am cognizant of those destructive patterns, I am able to talk myself through the issue and eventually stop the negative thoughts/actions. What frustrates me is that it sometimes takes a day or two (or three or four!) before the light bulb clicks and I realize what I am doing.

One express train to Depression Town for me is reminiscing about past fights with friends or significant others and realizing that I was reacting not to them but to my anxieties at the time and then feeling awful for what transpired in the fight. I really wish I could turn my thoughts/memories off sometimes.

Anyway, great thread. There are some really thoughtful responses in here and it is nice to see what is working for others.

Its not a mental illness as such, but does anyone have Aspergers Syndrome?

I have aspergers myself. You know what i hate most about it? When people treat you like they treat somebody mentally slowed (as in the diagnosed kind). I hate being treated like a child. I'll admit i need to do things but it's often slower for people with my disorder and we tend to be more socially awkward from my experience. Being treated like a child sucked even when i was a child and i never felt more insulted than when people trained to deal with people with my disorder acted this way. I actually prefer people to treat me like garbage as long as they treat me as an adult.

I've been depressed so frequently it's more just a normal state for me. Can't remember when i've ever not been considered depressed. In reality i suppose i could've gotten out of my rut but as they say when you're in one it's tough to get out of. Lots of awful stuff between bullies, a jerk of a dad and bossy sister. I had to watch my mother die when i was 19 (she had ovarian cancer) and then my dad threw me from arizona to michigan. Funny how that got me to trying to form romantic relationships online from time to time (a horribly idea btw for many reasons even when it sorta works). I just didn't know anybody when i reached michigan. The few people i knew i only knew about 3 days out of every 3 years. They could hardly be considered close to me. Even before that i moved usually once every 5 years with my family which isn't easy on your friendships and other relationships. You kind of tend to prefer online relationships because those are the only ones that remain intact and people are scared of big online relationships. It's kind of a crappy situation.

You've described me almost to a T (well, besides the family tragedy and unhappy upbringing). My uncle was diagnosed with Aspergers a couple years ago, my family and my uncle himself think I probably have it too. In fact, I'm apparently so much like my uncle that my Dad gets us both confused and frequently calls me by my uncle's name (his younger brother).