Paul - Thank you for building this community
Posted: March 2nd, 2013, 11:41 am
Hello Paul and fellow MIHH friends. I am calmed and my mood lifts knowing that I am not alone. I look forward to reading and learning from your messages, and I hope that my messages return the same to you all in kind.
I am a married man, athletic, and 56 years old. I work as a web tech in a corporate cubicle farm. The work provides me a degree of satisfaction, but the environment is very ill-managed that makes it difficult to maintain a healthy sense of self. My life long challenge in all endeavors has been a constant fixation on a distorted sense of self: that my brain is damaged; that tinnitus (ringing in the ears) is debilitating my ability to think and analyze. These distorted thoughts create an ever present sense of dread starting with each waking moment.
How did I come to think this way? My upbringing was normal by all outside appearances. Yet, my self-involved, insecure, and frustrated father turns out to have been the most toxic influence in my life. A man of circumstances, born at the onset of the Great Depression, he grew up as a 1st generation American with poor, undereducated eastern European parents that worked menial jobs. Out of these circumstances, my father internalized a constant sense of dread; that financial ruin may be just around the next corner. The upshot is that I grew up in an environment that was infused with a sense of impending dread. As a result I was not given and taught the personal tools to overcome adversity: drive, confidence, optimism, and a healthy sense of well-being.
My earliest memory of being depressed is when I was 9 or 10 years old during the December holiday season. Looking back on it, I was depressed because I was not able to honestly feel the joy, love, and warmth that is in the "script" for the holiday. I thought that there must be something wrong with me since I could not generate these feelings by myself.
Alcohol has been my life-long self medication, usually 2 to 3 drinks of either wine or beer every evening. I fight the urge to drink more and am successful for now. So I am thankful for that. I have been in therapy in times of mental crisis starting in my late teens. I have seen 4 therapists over the past 32 years, each for about 2 to 3 years. I started on SSRIs in the mid-1990s, and I have been on effexor since then. I have been seeing my current therapist for 2 years, and our recent work has uncovered what I think are the most painful issues that have lain hidden under a fetid masking. I have been in crisis mode the past 2 weeks, and he is stepping up to let me know he will be with me to not only overcome it, but to be stronger because of it.
I am fearful, anxious, and hopeful. I now realize that writing and talking to others about my mental illness is a gift.
Thank you all for sharing your struggles, your victories, your insights, your care and love, and your brotherhood and sisterhood.
Chris
I am a married man, athletic, and 56 years old. I work as a web tech in a corporate cubicle farm. The work provides me a degree of satisfaction, but the environment is very ill-managed that makes it difficult to maintain a healthy sense of self. My life long challenge in all endeavors has been a constant fixation on a distorted sense of self: that my brain is damaged; that tinnitus (ringing in the ears) is debilitating my ability to think and analyze. These distorted thoughts create an ever present sense of dread starting with each waking moment.
How did I come to think this way? My upbringing was normal by all outside appearances. Yet, my self-involved, insecure, and frustrated father turns out to have been the most toxic influence in my life. A man of circumstances, born at the onset of the Great Depression, he grew up as a 1st generation American with poor, undereducated eastern European parents that worked menial jobs. Out of these circumstances, my father internalized a constant sense of dread; that financial ruin may be just around the next corner. The upshot is that I grew up in an environment that was infused with a sense of impending dread. As a result I was not given and taught the personal tools to overcome adversity: drive, confidence, optimism, and a healthy sense of well-being.
My earliest memory of being depressed is when I was 9 or 10 years old during the December holiday season. Looking back on it, I was depressed because I was not able to honestly feel the joy, love, and warmth that is in the "script" for the holiday. I thought that there must be something wrong with me since I could not generate these feelings by myself.
Alcohol has been my life-long self medication, usually 2 to 3 drinks of either wine or beer every evening. I fight the urge to drink more and am successful for now. So I am thankful for that. I have been in therapy in times of mental crisis starting in my late teens. I have seen 4 therapists over the past 32 years, each for about 2 to 3 years. I started on SSRIs in the mid-1990s, and I have been on effexor since then. I have been seeing my current therapist for 2 years, and our recent work has uncovered what I think are the most painful issues that have lain hidden under a fetid masking. I have been in crisis mode the past 2 weeks, and he is stepping up to let me know he will be with me to not only overcome it, but to be stronger because of it.
I am fearful, anxious, and hopeful. I now realize that writing and talking to others about my mental illness is a gift.
Thank you all for sharing your struggles, your victories, your insights, your care and love, and your brotherhood and sisterhood.
Chris
