YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hi,

I originally came here to ask if seeking therapy for the anxiety I'm feeling from all the procrastination I’m doing over looking for work is legitimate or not. However I’ve realised in writing this that I probably do need help. So I’m writing this to clarify things for myself and maybe get some support.

I’ve been journaling on and off since the middle of last year. I recently read all the entries from when I started the journal until the end of that year and was kind of shocked. I had completely forgot how I was living in that period. I had spent about 3 to 4 months basically lying in bed all day excessively playing this addictive computer game, sporadically binge drinking and generally eating like shit. I was at uni at the time so I could get away with it. My sleeping was completely messed up too, I was staying awake for days at a time just playing this game. That whole period of my life was about turning off my thoughts and disconnecting from the world. I kept trying though the whole time to try to pull myself out of the rut but couldn’t. This in turned made me feel pathetic about myself. Even though I was depressed and anxious at no point did I consider getting help. My thoughts were kind of like if I can’t even do basics to help myself how can I expect anyone else to help? Although this wasn’t the first time in my life I’ve behaved like this, it’s just that I actually recorded it this time and kept the journal. There have been other times in my life that have been worse. The thing that eventually got me out of the rut was getting a scholarship to study overseas for 3 months at the start of this year.

I read the journal when I first got back from overseas and couldn’t believe I had been living like that. I was feeling completely different at that time, I was feeling content with my life and positive about the future. However when I read it again recently I completely understood how I got that bad. There have been a fare few times in the last few months where I’ve started heading back in that direction, the only thing stopping me from going into a full descent is knowing that I have to find work. I finished uni half way through this year and am supposed to be looking for work. However I’m feeling a lot of anxiety over every aspect of looking for work to the point that I’m doing nothing about it. I have made some effort here and there but I’m really inconsistent. I could go into it and give the reasons why I think I’m feeling this anxiety but this is already becoming too long.

The thought of getting support for the issues I’m dealing with hadn’t seriously entered my head for a couple of years. The other day I was on Facebook though and found out about a service in my city that planted a seed in my head. The service offers free CBT for people experiencing mild to moderate anxiety and/or depression. It’s actually the fact that I’m not feeling extreme feelings of depression or anxiety that makes me feel like I can do this. Generally I’m feeling relatively fine. I’m trying to build proper habits around eating healthy, sleeping properly, keeping my room clean, exercising and getting sunlight. I’ve also been consistently meditating for the last couple of weeks, starting with short sessions with the intention of building up to 30 minutes a day. However I feel like regular social contact is a missing part of my equation, which is another thing I have anxiety about.

It’s just every few days the anxiety and/or boredom builds up to the point that I can’t deal with it anymore and I react by binge drinking alone in my room. I’ve tried to stop it but I am finding it difficult. I felt convinced I would call the service the other day thinking that this was just a binge drinking problem but once I looked into my issues a bit more it got me feeling really nervous. I feel like a lot of the stress is around me not looking for work when I know I should be and my feeling of social isolation. I feel really sensitive about these two issues though. Although even when I actually am working I still binge drink in this way to relieve stress and loneliness. Feels like it would be really awkward to talk about. I also feel afraid that I won’t be able to explain myself properly once I get in there.

I guess I could just start by telling the therapist I have two concerns I think I need help with. I’m sporadically binge drinking alone in my room as a negative way to deal with stress and am finding it difficult to stop. I’m also unemployed and finding it difficult to get myself to look for work. Then just work my way from there? I don't want to offer up straight away that I'm also pretty lonely, but I feel like that'll come out pretty fast anyway.

I was planning on ending this post by calling the service to make the appointment, but I’ve worked myself into a bit of a state by overthinking it all. I will call them though at some point, I don’t want to let this become a thing I build up in my head then never do. More importantly I don't want things to escalate.

Just a quick update. A couple of nights before writing this I filled out a form to the service to contact me via email to arrange an appointment. I figured that would lock me into going. I got an email the morning after saying I needed to call them or receive a call to arrange the appointment, so I dwelled on it a bit wondering if I really needed help or not, which lead me to write this. However just as I was about to send this I got another message from them which made me consider it even more. I feel like I could continue to dwell on this for a long time before actually deciding to do anything, so I just sent them an email to contact me tomorrow afternoon. Makes me feel a bit pathetic that I didn't call them but I'm locked in at least.

I was planning on ending this post by calling the service to make the appointment, but I’ve worked myself into a bit of a state by overthinking it all. I will call them though at some point, I don’t want to let this become a thing I build up in my head then never do. More importantly I don't want things to escalate.

By putting this out here, you already did a substantial amount of work.

Structuring your history, thoughts and feelings, putting them into words and paragraphs, you've already prepared yourself for an appointment/interview. It will still be scary to go there, but what you've written is clear, coherent and the knowledge you already bring to the table will make you a good candidate for therapy. The same forces, that makes you avoid looking for a job, leaving your room and binge drinking to feel some sense of security, they are also in play, when you tell yourself that you shouldn't seek out therapy, because it's too scary, too hard and does it even help. I really liked CBT myself, both the therapy itself, but also learning the layout of the way I think, act and feel, but initially I approached it with lots of worry and uncertainness.

Just a quick update. A couple of nights before writing this I filled out a form to the service to contact me via email to arrange an appointment. I figured that would lock me into going. I got an email the morning after saying I needed to call them or receive a call to arrange the appointment, so I dwelled on it a bit wondering if I really needed help or not, which lead me to write this. However just as I was about to send this I got another message from them which made me consider it even more. I feel like I could continue to dwell on this for a long time before actually deciding to do anything, so I just sent them an email to contact me tomorrow afternoon. Makes me feel a bit pathetic that I didn't call them but I'm locked in at least.

This paragraph would even be relevant if you called them, where you explain, why you hesitate and have doubts. No matter how much you want to change, change is really scary and that's why getting help can be so hard. A scared brain is short sighted, so it looks for the easiest solutions like numbing out to feel safe or relaxed.

Best of luck and welcome to the club

Just making the call is one of the hardest parts, so good job getting that done! From what I can see, I think therapy would definitely be helpful, especially since you're focused and know exactly what you want to work on. That can be hard to parse out and identify sometimes as well.

Thanks for your responses Murphy and Fargin, you've made me feel a lot better about this.

I just got off the phone recently from the service. My voice quivered slightly when I gave the intake person my reasons for seeking support, but other than that it's all fine. My initial appointment won't be until the 25 of Nov, but that's okay, I'm going to just keep trying to work on myself alone till then.

This a real relief though to have it out of the way.

Great job brines.

Sometimes it takes a lot of strength to get help. A phone call isn't actually isn't as easy as we like to tell ourselves. Takes a lot of effort and luck getting the right number or the right person in the moment, when you've got just enough energy and courage to make the call. I'm not going to talk you out of doing a little work on yourself until the 25th, but just getting the appointment is already an achievement. Allow yourself a little of the relief you fell, because I'm sure your anxiety will find something else to worry about in the meanwhile.

Sorry to hear what your going through.

One really easy thing you could do is google "AA meetings" in your area. Find one, and stop in. You can sit at the back and do nothing, You dont need to talk to anyone.

Im not saying you need it or anything like that. What this is is one hour just to sit there and hopefully hear some positive things.

Good work on seeing a therapist. You wont regret seeing one.

Hope it's not too much to write a quick update and clarify for myself again how I feel about all of this. My first appointment will be tomorrow.

I have spent the majority of the last 2 weeks knowing that the decision to get help is right.

I re-read what I wrote in my first post though and have changed how I think about my drinking. I think it's a lot more complicated than just boredom and loneliness. I did figure out a way in the last week to get myself to cut down, which has been effective, but I think it's best I just talk to the therapist about it. For all I know I'm deluding myself. Thanks for the AA suggestion rc.

I'm writing here though mainly because I'm feeling massive urges to play the game I was talking about in my first post. I feel like the game is a contrast to my drinking in that I know exactly why I want to play it, which is that it's the most effective way for me to turn off my thoughts and feelings. Mixed in with this is the fake sense of accomplishment I get for achieving things in the game, this is the thing that keeps me stuck in the game once I get started. In the last few months I've kept going through cycles with it, where I'll play it for a day or two, but sometimes longer (did a week of playing it straight about a month ago), then delete it. It allows me to disconnect from myself but then I get stuck in it, whatever feelings that drove me to play it have gone away but I don't want to come back to reality. But knowing I have to find work is stopping me from just losing myself in it completely.

At the moment the thing that is driving me to want to lose myself in the game is that I'm really worried by the lack of effort I've put into looking for work. I'm feeling like if I don't get on top of it soon it's going to come back to bite in a really bad way. I've kept letting myself off though from looking for work since I made the appointment thinking that I need to talk about it all first. Which includes today, I'm doing nothing about it and I don't like it. All seems so obvious when I write it down here but something is stopping me from getting on with it.

I think it might be relevant to add my dodgy experiences I've had with employment. I come from a rural part of my country with high youth unemployment so found it difficult to find proper ongoing work growing up. I ended up going to uni I think only because I couldn't find work, this took 4 years for me to complete (was really depressed and isolated while do it). I thought if I just did a degree it'd be like WHAM!, here's a job for you. I also used to be really socially anxious, this got in the way of finding work too. Once I finished my first degree I was unemployed for 6 months+ then got a job through a friend that lasted on and off for 2 years (longest job I've had). This job was really stressful and I had a verbally abusive boss, but I felt like there were no other options, so I just grit my teeth and put up with it. After I finished I went travelling for a fair while, then came back with the intention of quickly making some money to leave again. However once I got back I was just in and out of employment again for a year. I kept applying for work, but was getting nowhere. Going back to uni to do a masters I think was mainly motivated by me not being able to find work and giving up on looking. I finished a 2 year course about 5 months ago, and here I am.

Nice work, good job, and your on the right path.

My last counselor had a tough job. He was the leader of the group, obviously, and we all had such differing substances we abused and were addicted to. Anywhere from folks who huffed spray paint to the millionaire who drank 200.00 worth of scotch, per night. Diverse?

Anyway, he called what all of us were doing a simple term that meant a lot. He said what we were doing is called 'Numbing" Numb those feelings and thoughts. I liked that description. Plus, we can beat that. Maybe not alone, but collectively, for sure.

Hi Brines. Your gender is listed as male, so I'm going to talk to you man to man. This will get a little blunt, but is offered in kindness. It is better to hear this from me, than from potential employers later.

Also, don't believe anything I say just because I say it. Weigh it against what you observe in the world, and ignore everything that doesn't match with what you observe.

First up, congratulations on calling the number. There are many kinds of heroism, and you demonstrated one kind. Well done. You have a man's (me) respect. No one can buy that.

As far as the alcohol, there is hope. I have 7.5 years sober/abstinent: straightedge, specifically. There are many ways to responsible drinking or abstinence, and lots of people can find the right path for you.

As far as your loneliness, yeah, we all face that. The only solution is go out and talk to people.

As far as anxiety regarding your unemployment. This is going to get a little real, so stop reading if you want to spare your feelings.

You say you are experiencing anxiety about your unemployment? That's probably because unemployment is something that one should naturally feel anxious about.

I don't want you to suffer in the name of anxiety for the sake of anxiety.

Instead, I want you to do the only thing that will defeat this anxiety: action. Courage and action. Like, today. As in right now action.

Here what you should do right now, as soon as you finish reading this sentence:

1. Start studying code at codecademy. In this order: HTML, SQL, command line, git. After that, maybe PHP or Ruby. Definitely JS.

2. Email your university's career center and tell them what you told us. Keep taking action til you get an in person appointment ASAP to look at your resume, LinkedIn, and Github.

3. Get in your hands (either though the library or buy online) this book "What Color is Your Parachute". The title is stupid, but the contents may save your life. I am not exaggerating.

4. Get your LinkedIn on fleek.

You see, unemployment is a serious matter, gravely serious.

Once you've done those four things today, read every word of at least five installments of the Gawker series "Hello from the Underclass!". Though a bit dated, it will give you the chilling reality of unemployment.

http://gawker.com/tag/hello-from-the-underclass

This is very important to do. You have to know what you are facing. Reading that series is of the utmost importance, and may mean the difference between success and failure for you. This is my solemn advice.

All that being said, I think you're going to be okay. You've got alot going for you. You were smart enough to get a college education, get accepted into a study abroad program, realize when you were playing too much Skyrim, and reach out for help.

You seem like a really smart guy who wants to succeed. If you work hard and smart, you'll be okay. But you gotta get going.

Off topic rambling about video games

Of course I don't know that you were playing Skyrim. I think that game is awesome. I have only 200 hours in it, over 18 months. I really think 1000 hours would be right to really get into it.

I always think about my former housemate: if he wasn't sleeping or working he was playing this game called City of Heroes. Watch that South Park episode about WoW, and it was eerily prescient of my former housemate. It was uncanny.

No joke. He'd get some Chipotle burritos and spend every waking minute in front of this game. Badges, missions, supergroups. So many badges. I can hardly describe how many badges there were, how obscure and "rare" some of them were. If I were to describe it, you wouldn't believe me. It was a very serious matter to him. Oh the badges.

Then the company went bankrupt, and the game shut down. All those badges, gone.

The thing is that this guy was a good guy. We aren't friends anymore, but I can't fault him for who he was.

Many a truth is spoken in jest, and The Onion nailed it ten years ago:

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/who-wi ... afte-10846

Video games aren't inherently bad; they're oftentimes amazing. Like Skyrim.

But they're like any other big-boy diversion: a good servant and a poor master. Alcohol, gambling, credit, sex: all can reduce good men to their knees if they get out of hand.

Lastly, recognize there is a time and place for this kind of folly. I vividly remember staying up all night in the 90s playing Tomb Raider and listening to Patsy Cline. I outgrew it, and enjoy games today in moderation. My former friend didn't outgrow it, and there are real consequences.

Patsy Cline is still awesome.

Dude, get going.

Let us know how it goes. Start coding and put that on LinkedIn. Get some recruiters calling you.