31 and Trying to Get Better

[culby]

After hearing Paul on Walking the Room, and hearing that Dave was going to be on Paul's show, I made a mental note to check it out. Yesterday, I listened to that episode, and was absolutely blown away. Not only because it's amazing to hear Dave's story, but that I saw some similarities with the crap that I've been going through the past few years. Granted, I haven't been the "angry guy", instead opting for the "bottle all of the anger up until some simple thing sends you into the stratosphere" type of anger management. Lotsa holes in walls.

It's finally come to straight up apathy in the past few years. Unhappy with my work situation (same place for 11 years now), unhappy with my weight, and struggling with my wife to have another kid, everything kind of piled on itself to a point where I've crawled into my own head. Any time I try to better myself, my brain shoots it down. It's even gotten to the point where it's affecting me in the bedroom; my own brain is willing to sabotage any sort of romance simply because "you're going to fail at it anyways".

A few years back, I had talked to a doctor about some depression issues (I ended up cheating on my wife, and the guilt had brought me to some really bad points, so much to the point of occasional, fleeting suicidal thoughts), and he put me on some meds (can't remember what, didn't really work anyways. I stopped taking them after a while). I went back recently, and talked some more. He put me on some generic Lexapro, and ran some bloodwork to check Vitamin D and Testosterone. Turns out both of those were very, very low. I'm on Vitamin D supplements now, and have a September appointment with a urologist.

I'm really kind of geeked to see if the testosterone level is the problem. So far, the Lexapro hasn't been cutting it. I'm in my second month, and I've still had some really brutal moments. One night ended with me sobbing about feelings of worthlessness, and just the other day the strange thought of drinking bleach popped into my head. (Funny story, I was able to rubberband that little moment later while eating dinner; "You were thinking of drinking bleach earlier today, surely a pickle can't be that bad.")

I guess I'm here just to have someone I can talk to about this stuff. I've only heard the one podcast, but I'm putting the rest of my podcasts on hold (save Walking the Room) to hear more of this. I've been trying to work through some of this stuff on my own, and to a little success (finally coming to terms with some self-sabotaging tendencies), but hearing Paul and Dave talk through this stuff together, and hearing Paul mention the community here motivated me to start talking about it with other people. I don't come with a lot of answers, because I'm clueless as to where it starts. But I'm hoping that I can help where I can.

[applesyumyum]

Hello, I just read your post. Our lives couldn't be more different but here we are, both struggling to cope so I thought I'd say hello. it's good to know you're not alone in the world. You seem to have a good grasp on what your issues are which is the start of getting somewhere. It also helps to find how to accept that there's no rush or quick fix
Hope you're feeling okay