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

I'm a 31 year old male and I had my first breakdown days after my 11th birthday. I'm barely functional, and I spend a lot of time feeling depressed, angry, or both. This anger is almost exclusively directed towards myself and it's been getting worse with each passing year. It's so bad now that I can't go an hour without instinctively hitting, berating, or yelling at myself.

I'm aware that I had some disabilities going into grade school, that the general school bullying experience happened, that things were stressful at home, but I personally don't have memories of anything traumatic. People I knew at the time are reluctant to tell me much more than "I was bullied". What I do remember easiest and best are times when I did things wrong which were somehow unforgivable. To this day I don't let go of my mistakes whether they're from a few days ago or over a decade ago.

Conventional therapy for depression and anxiety aren't effective so my new therapist and I are experimenting with using EMDR and surrogate experiences. These surrogate experiences include creating an archetypal scene out of whole cloth with the awareness that it's a creation, or using scenes from works of fiction. My knee jerk reaction to both so far is still an intense, almost violent self-hatred and rage. Has anyone heard of or tried this sort of approach before? Do any other approaches look promising?


TLDR: Things happened during childhood but I don't quite know what those things were. How do people get over a past they can't remember?

I'm no professional, i am sure that someone more qualified will answer you better than i can, that said:

1. Hypnotism was the first thing that sprang to mind.

2. Having an anger outlet was the second. Something violent, boxing maybe, that way you will not have to punish yourself if you make mistakes, the other guy will do that for you.

3. Do something impossible to fail that you can feel good about. Hard to yell at yourself for messing up a cross stitch, since you can simply correct the mistake.

4. Usually the last resort - Go see a doc and get him to throw you on some happy pills. Won't remove the roots of the weed, but won't let them grow either.

I do see a doc and do take meds. I'm also starting the process to get authorized for ECT and I'm hard on myself for mistakes I can or can't fix. As for using something else as a target...

I don't know. Does that also reduce the amount of anger and rage or does that merely refocus it on something else?

Towards my teen years, leading to my early twenties, i was pretty angry all the time.

I used to get into bar fights as often as i could, punching peoples faces in on a weekly basis, and after a while, i just mellowed. I didn't see the point anymore and now my fuse is pretty long.

Primarily only four groups take up boxing:

Those who wish to defend themselves
Those who want to lose weight
Those who admire the sport
Those who need an anger outlet

Just like shedding those love handles, you can drop the anger too. Just need an outlet that matches you. Preferably something violent of course, hockey, UFC, rugby, American Football, etc.

Others are able to work out their frustrations with physical exercise. I am sure you have seen those people that are their own drill sergeants, pushing themselves ever harder.

Find somewhere to pour your extra emotions out, then they won't spill on the rest of your life.