<p>i’m sorry i haven’t been replying. i didn’t call a hotline and i’m sincerely concerned for myself at the moment.
an issue i have is getting my message across. people tend to assume that (teenagers) over exaggerate or are simply melodramatic. i, on the other hand, have the opposite problem. i try not to get people concerned about me so i don’t talk about my issues. i let them well up inside me and in my perfectionist nature, allow the pain to manifest itself in my life.
so i’ll show all the warning signs. and then when i’m at my VERY WORST, i’ll tell someone (usually my mom or a friend) and put it very lightly. like:
“I think I need to go to a therapist.”
“I haven’t been feeling well lately.”
and whoever i tell kind of brushes it off because i’m not telling the truth which is:
“I need help NOW before I commit suicide.”
“I’ve been running twenty five miles a day, not eating, and abusing laxatives. I don’t feel well.”
i’m trying really hard, and today i’m going to confront my issues with some people that are closely involved with me. i’m going to against my natural personality and say exactly what’s going on.</p>
<p>(so i used to be ill all the time, not because of me being a hypochondriac, but because i’m hypersensitive and actually have health issues. people always thought i was just a crybaby until i was in the hospital for several concurrent ovarian cysts in the seventh grade [huge amount of pain] and i didn’t complain or cry once.)</p>
<p>Alex,
I am glad that you are aware that you need help, and I am glad that you are letting us know that you need help.
Please don’t count on others to read your smoke signals…tell them directly that you need help, and that you need it now.
Tell your family, or a friend, or the parent of a friend, and BE EXPLICIT.</p>
<p>Or tell a teacher or a guidance counselor or coach.</p>
<p>or even walk into a police or fire station or emergency room, and tell them you are afraid you might hurt yourself.</p>
<p>Alex, please pick up a phone and make that phone call. Or tell someone as boysx3 suggested. There is help, waiting for you. Please, people want to help you.</p>
<p>I’m really kind of falling apart. It’s interesting to me that I’m so hyper-verbal, so articulate when it comes to intellectual conversation…but when it comes to feelings I have no idea how to put my thoughts and emotions into words.
I called my mom today, after I felt myself going into anxiety attack/nervous breakdown mode, and I broke down and said I really needed a psychiatrist NOW. She called around and I can’t get help unless I go with a parent or a legal guardian (my aunt doesn’t count), so the earliest I could go would be late this week if I must.
Or I can choose to go to the emergency room and be admitted to a hospital. Which isn’t going to happen, ever. I truly would rather die, ten times over, than go back to the loony bin.
So right now I’m having serious issues on what to do. I’m literally standing over the edge of the cliff, and at this moment I’m not sure if I’m going to fall, I’m already falling, or if I have enough leverage to go back. I don’t know when the next update will be, so thanks for being here and I really appreciate your support.</p>
<p>Alex, You have shown such incredible maturity and strength in reaching out. There are many of us who really care about you and are terribly worried. The overwhelming feelings you have right now will not last forever–they really won’t–but you need to get help from someone who can be physically present with you until these feelings abate. Effective treatment for depression and anxiety is available–please try to find a therapist who is trained in one of the newer evidence-based therapies and comfortable with the range of anti-depressant medications. But for right now the most important things are to make sure you’re not alone (this could mean simply being on the phone with a trained hotline volunteer) and to take the first steps to getting the help and support you need to feel better. Please keep checking in with us, we really want to know how you are doing.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I am not doing well at all. I’m holding on by my fingernails, but I guess that’s well enough for now. My parents will not allow me to attend Simon’s Rock (not due to financial reasons, because I would be the one taking on debt for that purpose).</p>
<p>Also, I have evidence that my relatives are reading this thread which negatively effects me. I have not only been using only the library computers (history tracking, visiting past websites is practiced on a regular basis at home), I’ve quite posting on forums that used to help me along somewhat. Such as CC. So, despite the help I’ve been given- that little push in the right direction- I can no longer post, or at least for a while.</p>
<p>Alex, you need to pick up the phone and dial the hotline. This is just the same as being trapped in a burning car and picking up the cell phone to call 9-1-1. We’re trying to get you to save your life here. We don’t know where you are, you need to call for help, and we need to know that you’re safe.</p>
<p>Hi! My name is Shahzeen. I was reading this and decided I might just trust it, (from Post Secret’s My Secret) “When I was fourteen, I tried to commit suicide with a razor, then with pills. Now that I am thirty I understand that my teenage problems were resolvable. I would have missed out on things like being a parent, my nephews, getting my first tattoo, learning to ride a motorcycle, and falling in love. Even though I will have these scars on my arms for life I am glad I didn’t die.”
While our problems are unbearable, I try to accept his words as testimony, that there will be somethings life will offer me that I haven’t found yet.</p>
<p>We can write each other letters. You can call me if you want to. We can share poetry and fedex books and chocolate for christmas. I don’t know, no psychiatrist but I hope you will be okay. Here, if you take up the offer, I can PM you.</p>
<p>You’ve obviously chosen, for better or worse, not to seek the traditional forms of help, no doubt for some or all of the reasons you stated earlier in this thread. </p>
<p>I am therefore wondering: is there anything we can do to help you get through this very difficult time? </p>
<p>For example: is there anything that comforts you, that creates a degree of happiness or peace, that we could somehow remind you of or bring to you in this thread?</p>
<p>No. I’ve never had any figures in my life that openly care about me (sorry, but CCers don’t know me), and I’ve never had anything that comforted me outside of the destructive world of anorexia & bulimia. I’m steadily losing friends due to depressive isolation and my anxiety is through the roof. I’m on medication and I honestly don’t think I’ll ever respond well to meds (the rate of success is exponentially decreased the more meds you try and don’t work, first med 75%, second 50%, third 25%, and so on) and since I’m on my 7th medication, it would take a small miracle for this to help me.</p>
<p>I’ve tried literally everything handed to me. Therapy, meditation, talking to friends, more exercise, less exercise, more food, less food, finding religion, losing religion: the list goes ENDLESSLY long. I’ve since tried calling the help line. I was met with an incompetent, insensitive speaker who gave me a condescending lecture on how everything would get better. I’m NOT just depressed: I’m so low I can’t get up in the morning, I haven’t even looked at myself in the mirror for two months because I’m so scared of my reflection. I’m not a teenager who needs to grow up. I’M MANIC, I’M CHRONICALLY EATING DISORDERED, AND I HAVE NOT A CLUE HOW TO DEAL WITH IT. I have my hands tied. If I speak with anyone about this, I won’t even need to think about going to college next year (that’s so beyond out of the question!). The real worry would be how long I’d be in the loony bin for. I’m ****ed up, excuse my french. I haven’t been on drugs for over 6 months and to be perfectly honest, the only thing preventing me is the fact that I’ll be sent back home where my father can scream and hit at me and my life can fall apart again.</p>
<p>My birthday is in 8 days. I don’t give a ***<em>; I don’t want to go home, I don’t want to stay here. I don’t feel deserving of any of this: my pain makes me feel like a wimp. This is why I’m different than other “depressed” kids my age. I don’t want to end my life quickly and painlessly. I want to murder myself, violently and with a vengeance. I don’t deserve anything and the fact that I’m in pain, that I’m even talking about this right now means I need to be punished, I need to JUSTIFY my pathetic insecurities with real pain. I need to isolate myself so nobody sees, nobody is affected and so that it hurts even more when I have nobody to turn to- because it’s *my</em> fault.</p>
<p>Alex, you have to trust me-- hospitalization is not so bad. You need to tell the truth to someone who can help you so that you can get better. You need a temporary break from life so that you can get your eating disorder and depression sorted out… a respite in a hospital would help you out, and I doubt you’d need to stay as long as you think you would. Maybe it’d give you an out to take next semester off. You can’t keep going on like this.</p>
<p>I took a semester off from grad school to treat my own depression. Family members have been in the hospital… one loved one was in for only a week and was able to get his life <em>completely</em> turned around… He’s doing great now, completely off medication, doesn’t need therapy anymore and has been doing very well for over a decade.</p>
<p>You need to treat this just as though you’d treat yourself if you’d been in a really bad car accident. Would you ignore complex bone fractures and gaping wounds?</p>
<p>Go to a professional and tell them how bad it really is. You need to be honest about it, though. You need to tell them that you’re suicidal, you need to tell them that you’ve got an eating disorder, you need to tell them that there’s abuse at home and that you need help.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but if you’ve read the rest of the thread you would know I’ve already been hospitalized (6 months, UCLA NPI) and it wasso harrowing to me that I’ve developed acute traumatic stress. IT WOULD ONLY MAKE ME WORSE. I don’ tknow if you’ve ever been in a mental institution, or worked in one, but if you have, you would hopefully understand why it would be unhelpful for me to be institutionalized. I’ve taken off more school than I have attended. So taking a semester off would only screw me over ever more than before.</p>
<p>And I’ve heard the physical-mental health analogy a million times. The reality is no matter WHAT I think about it, there is a stigma attached to mental disorders. A huge one. And since eating isn’t my only problem, colleges look at me like I’m Virginia Tech waiting to happen. And this I know from first-hand experience.</p>
<p>Again, read the thread, I’m not living at home right now BECAUSE of that. Because CPS intervened and ****ed up my life even more.</p>
<p>So the listener at that help line turned out to be another person who could not simply simply accept you and listen to you.</p>
<p>I’m sorry.</p>
<p>The pain comes from everything that has happened, and it feels like weakness to ask for help or be unable to bear it. Plus, you feel that asking for help will compromise your lodestar goal of college next year.</p>
<p>I was not aware that CPS was involved. Are you living at your aunt’s house as you mentioned earlier? You feel that this arrangement has turned out to be worse than living at home, perhaps desperately worse.</p>
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<p>If CC can be a source of some caring and comfort, would you consider posting here more frequently? To have people to talk to who can accept you and listen to you, who can provide some supportive human contact and help you think things through.</p>
<p>I do remember that you don’t necessarily feel able to use a computer freely and with impunity. Yet I’m hoping that there might be a way. I’m grateful that you were able to post today; I know that I and others here would be very interested in hearing more from you.</p>
<p>I believe, however, that even people that see us face to face, or are in our families, can still not really know us at all. As a middle aged person I can tell you from my heart that there are people who have know me for decades who do not really know me, and there have been moments in my life where I have touched souls with a stranger in a matter of minutes. It is a strange world (in a good way).</p>
<p>Since the most important thing about people is what is underneath, while I would be wary of people you meet online (and would never give out personal information) it is quite possible to have a relationship here which is an authentic and a valuable adjunct to the rest of your life (particularly now). I think you can feel that I care about you even though I have never met you, and Adad does as well. Others on here do, too. I don’t care about what you look like or anything else that I would see in person. I care about your soul, your heart, and your future. I can speak to all three here.</p>
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<p>I believe you. </p>
<p>I have heard so many people at open AA meetings describe a complete absence of hope, after sometimes decades addled by substance addiction, eating disorders, and gambling addiction (they are often intertwined). People who had tried what they thought was “everything”. Even those who went to AA once or more and gave up because it was “not for them”. I cannot tell you the number of human beings I have seen bravely get up and tell the most gut-wrenching stories of despair and suffering. But they were there to tell their story and they were in recovery from addiction, eating disorders, etc. All of them say they could not have ever imagined a way out of the hole. But a way out did exist.</p>
<p>There is a story about a man who fell into a gigantic hole and after exhaustive attempts at climbing out, he was ready to give up. He screamed for help but no one heard him. After a very long time, someone finally passed by and asked if heeded help. The man in the hole was thrilled – at last he would be saved! But right then the stranger jumped into the hole with him! </p>
<p>“Are you CRAZY!!! What did you do that for??? You could have thrown down a rope or something! Now we will both die!”</p>
<p>“No we won’t”, said the stranger, “I know the way out of this hole, I have been stuck down here myself once before, and I know the way out”.</p>
<p>And the stranger did show him the way out. It seemed impossible, and he could not find it on his own, but it did exist, and he was saved.</p>
<p>You need to go to HEALTHY AA/ED meetings, even if you are not using/acting on your ED any more, and go every day until you feel stabilized (and regularly after that). </p>
<p>At AA or Eating Disorders 12-Step Meetings…</p>
<p>Stick with the winners, and learn from the losers. I would not hang with anyone right now who does not have a long time in recovery (years). I would find a woman’s meeting, and grab onto some old timers and let them adopt you and show you out of the hole. Try to go to early a.m. meetings – a good bet for a healthy group. Get a temporary sponsor immediately. You can make friends with young people in recovery after you have a little time. It DOES work. </p>
<p>The twelve steps are biblically based, but they are basically a cliff notes guide to a healthy mind. Years of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars of psychologist visits might get you there, but 12-Step Meetings are for free (not that you shouldn’t also see someone who is 12-step supportive in addition to meetings – you should do that as well). Stay away from people who are there as a result of being court-ordered. You are too young in recovery to help anyone else – save yourself first and later after much time you can pass this on. </p>
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</p>
<p>If you have gone before and have given up, go back. Many people have many false starts before they really commit to the program. </p>
<p>If anyone tells you that AA is a cult do not believe them. It has the highest statistical chance of success. Science has not yet come up with proper treatment for addiction or ed’s, and until it does the twelve steps work. You can go to eating disorders 12 step meetings as well, but know that a lot of folks in AA have eating disorders. It is the same 12 steps in every program. I would go to both. But choose a healthy ed group as well, and a sponsor there with lots of time.</p>
<p>You have millions of friends all over the world. You just need to show up at a meeting to start finding them.</p>
<p>
What about a big miracle? Miracles do exist. I am not in recovery, but I know a lot of people who are, and many of them “tried religion” and failed. </p>
<p>I was totally anti-religion for much of my life, and agnostic bordering on atheist. But then I fell into a different kind of hole. With nowhere else to turn, instead of praying for God’s help I started screaming for it. You don’t need to be “religious” to do AA. Lots of folks there struggle with the high power thing. You can fit in before you are “in touch with your higher power”. But you will need to get it touch in order to work the program. </p>
<p>I call my higher power God. God and religion - two different things.</p>
<p>I finally “got it” when it comes to faith when the tenacity of my prayers reached extraordinary levels. And when I was finally ready to surrender because I had no place else to turn. No other options. Are you there?</p>
<p>Willingness to give up and let God take over you life. Check.</p>
<p>Need to tenaciously pursue constant contact with Him all day long. Check.</p>
<p>Last thing: Willingness to incorporate meditation as part of your day, every day, especially when you’re feel badly. Stop thinking, and sit with God. Just sit. Praying is when we speak to God. Meditating is when we listen. You aren’t going to hear anything. But you will feel relief, and that is how God will speak to you.</p>
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<p>There are people on CC and elsewhere who may lead you to believe that anything that is going on in your head which is unhealthy could ruin your chances at college, life etc. That is patently false. Also, you can get help without triggering action from people who would put you away. As long as you do not tell them that you are thinking of harming yourself or someone else, you are protected by HEPA laws – everything is confidential.</p>
<p>Your first order of business is to get healthy. College will never happen anyway if you fail at this. Logically, then, you should put that worry aside. When it comes time to apply, you can cross that bridge then. </p>
<p>I know a number of kids who were completely open about addiction and eating disorders in the application process to fine schools. Once they were in recovery, and could show success, there were schools willing to take a chance on them. I know one kid who was just accepted to an Ivy League who was hospitalized for an ED within the last twelve months. She was open in the admissions process, and will be accessing services at that school. I know another kid who was completely open about a history of addiction who was accepted everywhere he applied. He was also completely transparent in the process, and had even become an advocate in his community for those who were still suffering.</p>
<p>I am not saying you need to out yourself, just that you should not avoid getting the help you need for fear of being “found out” and having your life ruined. If you want to be anonymous, do it. But anonymity comes second to survival.</p>
<p>One in ten people will suffer from some form of addiction in their life time. Everyone has been touched by it one way or another, either directly or through family. Colleges need to admit people who know the way out of the hole.</p>
<p>
But I know you don’t need me to tell you that if drugs were ever a problem for you, they can be again in a minute. And I am sure you also know that there are emotional, psychological, and behavioral signs of relapse well before a person actually picks up a drug or drink.</p>
<p>
Well, that bad news is that you are certainly in a bad place. </p>
<p>But the good new is that you sound exactly like every other person who has the diseases of addiction and eating disorders that I have ever met. Certainly, all of you are not identical, but the disease is the SAME even though its manifestations may vary somewhat from person to person.</p>
<p>You are not unique or different when it comes to what ails you. What is best about you is what is unique, and that is what needs saving. The you that is being held hostage right now.</p>
<p>Once again, there are millions of people that you can turn to. You just need to go and see them every day and hang on.</p>
<p>I am sorry if any of this sounds preachy. Your post was provocative and I needed to pour my heart out to you. Please consider all that I have shared.</p>
<p>^I should also add that if you do have serious thoughts of hurting yourself or anyone else, you should talk to a trusted adult immediately. Whatever would come your way as a result of seeking help would not be as bad as the alternative. I am quite sure you already knew that - I just felt I had to put it down.</p>
<p>I also have a strong urge to repeat something in its own post:</p>
<p>DO NOT GIVE OUT ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOURSELF TO ANYONE IN ANY ONLINE FORUM (EVEN CC). EVER.</p>
<p>ALTHOUGH THERE COULD BE KIND PEOPLE WHO WISH TO CONNECT TO YOU FOR WHOLESOME REASONS, A YOUNG PERSON IN PAIN IS THE ULTIMATE TARGET FOR A PREDATOR. IT SIMPLY IS NOT WORTH THE RISK (ESPECIALLY WITH NEW POSTERS, BUT EVEN REGULARS AS WELL)</p>
<p>There. I feel better. What was life like before I became a Mega-Mom??? I can’t remember.</p>