Have any of you had a completely, or seemingly, random breakdown/freakout/episode of epic depression out of nowhere? It's happening to me more and more, and it's pissing me off, a lot. And scaring the hell out of my friends.

I was hanging out with Julie last night, watching Disney movies of all things, and I just...lost it. I started thinking about how I've recently come to believe that my dad will probably either hate me or reject who I am. I kept thinking about how bad I want to go swimming, and how I'm absolutely terrified to at the same time. That got me started on dying. Yeah. I've never been one of those people who're terrified to die, I'm just afraid of it hurting. I know there's an afterlife somewhere, I just don't want to ditch all my friends to get to it.

I just kept thinking "What if I never get surgery. What if I waste my life, waiting for it, and then die before I get it?"
And it screwed me up, bad. Started crying, ended up sobbing, that led to a panic attack, which led to a seizure. It took about an hour for me to calm down and stop trying to go in the kitchen and most likely jump off the porch or mutilate the hell out of myself, but even after that I was just...agh. Exhausted, miserable, and still crying. I hate feeling like this. I hate crying as it is, freaking out like that? I feel like I'm going crazy.

I can't sleep, I'm having messed up dreams, and I'm hearing ->-bleeped-<-. I don't know if that's related at all, because it's happened before, but I'm hearing ->-bleeped-<- like...constantly. Seeing stuff out of the corner of my eye, feeling like someone's coming to kill me, hearing voices out of nowhere. Who the hell knows, maybe my apartment is haunted.

I hate feeling like a walking emotional sideshow, though. Has this happened to anyone else like this? Like, pretty much out of nowhere?

Na, this is NOT out of nowhere. It is just tons of anxiety you have pushed back coming down on you like a land slide.

So far to the "mechanics" of it. If you push back anxieties they start squeezing out of every possible corner and crevice. Starting to see spooks, crying fits, panic attacks, all the stuff you relate.
Not sure now it you on HRT (T), are you?
If so, that might make things worse for various reasons.

Mostly you like to be strong and not affected by weaknesses and now find out that the most brilliant mind may buckle under certain emotional loads. Your friend Nietzsche did so, by the way.

What's to be done?
It's not just babies that need love and hugs to survive --- we do to. And if we get love starved we can get VERY anxious in deed.

That may give you a flavour of what's happening but it will not be sorted by a couple of posts.

To let it all out is not a bad thing at all, neither is crying, neither is some amount of self-pity if no one else has pity on you. BUT, I say you need a counsellor/therapist to start clearing out some of this collected emo-garbage.

And lastly UNFORGIVENESS is the anchor that keeps most of it in place where it can drive you some more nuts.

I only hope that most, if not all makes some sense to you.

We do care,
Axelle

That sounds serious.  If I were you, I'd do something about it asap because you don't want it to get worse and create other problems on top of what you already have to deal with.

I won't tell you to see a doctor, or talk to a therapist, or find a creative outlet, or start playing drums, or find a quiet spot in the woods and just stand there and scream your lungs out.  Just do whatever you've got to do.

Best of luck to you. 

Quote from: Axélle on August 09, 2011, 01:23:43 PM
Na, this is NOT out of nowhere. It is just tons of anxiety you have pushed back coming down on you like a land slide.

So far to the "mechanics" of it. If you push back anxieties they start squeezing out of every possible corner and crevice. Starting to see spooks, crying fits, panic attacks, all the stuff you relate.
Not sure now it you on HRT (T), are you?
If so, that might make things worse for various reasons.

Mostly you like to be strong and not affected by weaknesses and now find out that the most brilliant mind may buckle under certain emotional loads. Your friend Nietzsche did so, by the way.

What's to be done?
It's not just babies that need love and hugs to survive --- we do to. And if we get love starved we can get VERY anxious in deed.

That may give you a flavour of what's happening but it will not be sorted by a couple of posts.

To let it all out is not a bad thing at all, neither is crying, neither is some amount of self-pity if no one else has pity on you. BUT, I say you need a counsellor/therapist to start clearing out some of this collected emo-garbage.

And lastly UNFORGIVENESS is the anchor that keeps most of it in place where it can drive you some more nuts.

I only hope that most, if not all makes some sense to you.

We do care,
Axelle

Nah, you've got it all down to a t, really. I hold everything in.  I've been working on it for a few years and I've gotten a hell of a lot better, but I still always have that nagging "You need to be self sufficient, if nowhere else, in emotions, people won't always be there for you" BS in the back of my head from when I was younger. Both my partners get really pissed about this, because they're always telling me to wake them up if I need them. And, in retrospect, I always kick my own ass for not doing it.

I'm not on HRT, but I am supposed to be medicated for anxiety and depression, but I stopped taking it years ago (I kept trying to overdose, because I'm kind of a moron like that sometimes).

Ironic for you to bring up therapy, though. Last night was the worst it's been in a long time (I, apparently, have stress-induced seizures. I ended up putting a dent in the wall from my head banging off of it until it woke my girlfriend up, and I don't remember any of it) and Ben finally convinced me to give up and let him try to find me a therapist. So, I've got a list of local psychologists/therapists on my laptop, and he's going to call around when he gets home to get an idea of prices, and see if they deal with trans people. So, they might not be a gender specialist, but damnit its something. I miss seeing the school counselor constantly, I was a lot better at dealing with things back then because of it.

Unforgiving...yeah, that's probably one of those "key words" of my personality. I can't let things go, and I hate it. Another thing I'm trying to work on, courtesy of Ben, because he's got the acceptance of a damn Buddhist.

I just try to damn hard to be unbreakable, I think. It's stupid, because I've got so many people around me I can go to any time, and I still try to reject it constantly. Stupid male pride, mucking up my ability to fix myself.

Seriously though, all your advice is completely sound (and accurate about me). I've decided to try and make the next few days a lot better, even if that just means cooking army-sized meals and using mascara to darken my chin fuzz. And once Ben finds a decent therapist around here, that'll make it even better.

Quote from: Alexmakenoise on August 09, 2011, 10:57:33 PM
That sounds serious.  If I were you, I'd do something about it asap because you don't want it to get worse and create other problems on top of what you already have to deal with.

I won't tell you to see a doctor, or talk to a therapist, or find a creative outlet, or start playing drums, or find a quiet spot in the woods and just stand there and scream your lungs out.  Just do whatever you've got to do.

Best of luck to you. 

I'd love to be able to get my music on, but my practice area is currently flooded X_X That would help, though. It usually does.

Quote from: Caseyy on August 10, 2011, 04:05:34 PM
I have a hard time accepting things too. Especially when people have hurt me. because I believe that if I let them go, I'm letting them win, and I'm making it ok for them to hurt me. I need to work on it too because the only person it really hurts is me. The people who hurt me will always be messed up but I shouldn't have to be because of them.

And it sounds like you have a great boyfriend.

Aggh, exactly! I've gotten a lot better about that though. I figure now, if they don't care about me, I've got no reason to waste any more time on then. Yes, it'll crawl back up sometimes, that urge to harass them or stalk them on FB, but I usually push it back down, or just find something to vent all my pissed-off-ness into/at.

I get these feelings ALL THE TIME!  At first, I didn't even know what was going on. Once I realized I was in the wrong type of body, the bouts of depression suddenly made sense, but there were other situations that I still didn't understand...until the day I had a severe panic attack upon waking from a nap.

My heart was pounding, my pulse was racing, I was nauseous, I had to struggle to keep my balance.  I crawled to the bathroom and threw up.  I thought it was a heart attack!  My wife drove me up the street to the hospital.  The whole way there, I kept thinking "I don't want to die!" At the hospital, they ran me on an ECG and took some scans, but could find nothing wrong except that my pulse and blood pressure were a bit high.

Eventually, my doctor and my therapist both came to the conclusion that I had had a panic attack and gave me some techniques for coping the next time one hits.  Not long after that, I started on medications for anxiety and depression. Currently, I'm just on Wellbutrin and the panic attacks aren't coming nearly as often...although they do still hit on occasion.

Typically, my depression and anxiety get triggered by efforts to deny my gender identity or moments of intense dysphoria...especially moments where it feels like I'll never, ever be able to come out to the remainder of my personal social sphere (current job issues. looking elsewhere, but the market stinks right now).

So, yeah, I know where you are coming from.

Even if these attacks are related to GID they can be treated seperately.  My Depression, that hung around in varying degrees for over 40 years, was related to undiagnosed GID in my early teens.  Because there was no way for me to discuss what I was going through, due to lack of knowledge about TS issues, I went straight through to full-on Depression. 
Therapy works, and with medication as a first -aid measure, can give us the techniques to overcome problems like Anxiety and Depression.  That will make coping with the GID easier too.
Stay strong, there is a friendly light at the end of the tunnel.

Karen.

Quote from: justmeinoz on August 14, 2011, 07:03:24 AM
Even if these attacks are related to GID they can be treated seperately.  My Depression, that hung around in varying degrees for over 40 years, was related to undiagnosed GID in my early teens.  Because there was no way for me to discuss what I was going through, due to lack of knowledge about TS issues, I went straight through to full-on Depression. 
Therapy works, and with medication as a first -aid measure, can give us the techniques to overcome problems like Anxiety and Depression.  That will make coping with the GID easier too.
Stay strong, there is a friendly light at the end of the tunnel.

Karen.

Well, I'm glad it worked so well for you. I definitely think therapy has a lot of merits, I think for a lot of people they just need someone to vent all this built up crap to that won't judge them and isn't personally involved, which is exactly what I'd like. If I tell a therapist "I feel like I'm losing my mind" they'll ask a bunch of questions that will eventually lead to me venting more stuff. If I tell that to either of my partners, they'll usually just get really worried that I'm going to try to off myself again.

Quote from: N.Chaos on August 09, 2011, 12:56:05 PM
Have any of you had a completely, or seemingly, random breakdown/freakout/episode of epic depression out of nowhere? It's happening to me more and more, and it's pissing me off, a lot. And scaring the hell out of my friends.

I hate feeling like a walking emotional sideshow, though. Has this happened to anyone else like this? Like, pretty much out of nowhere?

I had this happen to me yesterday. All I was doing was trying to buy a pair of shoes but it quickly became a day of crying jags and wanting to kill myself. Fortunately my wife calmed me down and I'm fine now but that was the second one this week, it's getting old.

Axélle is very astute in her assessment, it certainly rings true for me. The one thing I will add is that you can't do this alone. No matter how stoic you may feel, you need the support of other people to get through this. That said, if you don't face these things your friends will get burned out. Get help and learn the skills you need to take care of yourself. If it's music that keeps you sane don't let the excuse of your practice area being flooded stop you, find another way. In many ways we're our own worst enemy, making excuses to not take care of ourselves. Ask me how I know 

I happy to know that your looking at therapy. Sometimes I feel like I'm just paying someone to listen to me whine but at least my wife won't have to listen to it and then she can be there for me when I really need it. Plus, a good therapist will help you develop skills to help to take care of yourself more effectively.

Quote from: N.Chaos on August 09, 2011, 12:56:05 PM
I can't sleep, I'm having messed up dreams, and I'm hearing ->-bleeped-<-. I don't know if that's related at all, because it's happened before, but I'm hearing ->-bleeped-<- like...constantly. Seeing stuff out of the corner of my eye, feeling like someone's coming to kill me, hearing voices out of nowhere. Who the hell knows, maybe my apartment is haunted.

Sleep is of critical importance. Not sleeping is really bad for you physical health and will cause all sorts of physiological issues. My sleep doctor (for my sleep apnea) is actually a psychiatrist. He went into sleep medicine after he discovered that when he treated the sleep issues of his patients often their psychiatric issues went away. Google sleep hygiene for ways to help you sleep better and if you still can't please see a doctor. This stuff is hard enough to deal with without being able to sleep well.

Oh and Disney movies? Evil. They're just made to trigger people having a hard time.

Lol, Disney is the devil, but it's entertaining. Especially doing voice overs on it.

The sleeping thing is such a pain in the ass because honestly, as insane as it sounds, I'm terrified to sleep most of the time. I'm afraid that, for no apparent reason, I'll die in my sleep. I never used to think about dying unless I was actively suicidal, but over the past few months I've gotten ridiculously paranoid. It's stupid. Part of it is because my girlfriend thought she was having a heart attack, spent the night in a hospital, and it got her thinking about mortality and all that ->-bleeped-<-. The other part of it, which is  incredibly dumb, is that recently one of my mom's tenants lost her daughter, who was around my age. She'd just had a tonsilectomy, and her throat swelled up in her sleep, and she died.

I've lived in a funeral home for over 10 years, and seen countless dead bodies in passing, and that never phased me. My dad had to embalm a kid my age, reconstruct the face of a 20-something year old, and help a family cope with the loss of their toddler, and that never phased me either.
I've had friends die, and that didn't make me think about this ->-bleeped-<-.

Out of the blue, some girl I've never met and shouldn't even think about has me piss-terrified to go to sleep, because all I can think about is how horrified my girlfriend would be if she woke up and I didn't. It doesn't help that I'm having this jaw/throat soreness and stiffness right now, out of nowhere. I'm so tired, and I just downed coffee just to avoid sleeping more.