Adventures in Mental Health Part 1.

Over the last 6-ish months, I’ve had a resurgence of mental health issues similar to those I’ve had in the past, as well as the development of potential new ones. Or at least new thought patterns and feelings. This will be difficult for me to write about.

Apart from the general symptoms that most depressed and anxious people experience, I’ve developed the following… issues.

Intrusive thoughts.

I’ve been dealing with intrusive thoughts, almost constantly, that make me feel… not so great. Things like I’m a burden to everyone I know, I am not good enough, I’d be better gone, no one loves me, no one cares about me… even though I 100% know these thoughts aren’t true. I can give you so much evidence to prove every single thought wrong. But it doesn’t stop the thoughts from tearing me down.

The biggest issue with intrusive thoughts is they can send me into the worst mood for the rest of the day. They can completely destroy me to the point I need to go home or be alone. They put me in a place I can’t get out of.

Hot & cold feelings.

I have instances where I go from completely admiring someone and putting them on a pedestal, to completely disliking them and not wanting to talk to them, believing everything is wrong with our relationship when the other person has no idea. This tends to happen when I have an unaddressed issue with someone – I am actively working to not let things fester like that any more. In the worst cases, this on/off thing is combined with intrusive thoughts about the person that can lead to me pushing them away.

Brain fog & memory impacts.

On the most depressive days, everything feels like a fog. My emotions are dampened, I am stuck within my own mood; just like I described with my intrusive thoughts, regular old sad thoughts put me into a very sad mood and I can’t get anywhere near anything resembling a positive mood. The whole day is shitty. Luckily the fog isn’t always there, I can feel like myself and there’s a lot less negative thoughts the majority of the time.

Another part of the fog is the inability for me to make new memories. On days I feel overwhelmingly depressed, anxious, or even just agitated I have a hard time remembering what happened. Everything is fine as I am going about my day in a seemingly normal way, but if you ask me what I did I wouldn’t be able to tell you. It’s like my mind just doesn’t want to remember how I was feeling, so it doesn’t record anything I did that day.

For example, if I have a breakdown on a Friday night, I can easily forget part of Friday and all day Saturday. When I’m not feeling like myself I can easily forget conversations I had that day, even hours before. It’s not fun, it’s not cool, but that’s what it is.

The Two Me’s

This is the hardest issue to tell people about, because I feel legitimately crazy. Sometimes I feel like two people – not that I hear voices, or have multiple personalities, but that I take a back seat to my own life and watch myself lose control. It’s like a more emotional version of me takes over at certain moments and I can’t control it, although I am completely aware of what is going on.

For example, this occurred when I needed to have a serious discussion with someone, but knew I was not in the right head space to do it (not to mention I had to leave shortly to get to an appointment). I actually thought to myself “this is not the time to discuss this, wait until later” but the words were already coming out of my mouth, I was already starting the discussion. Internally I was yelling at myself, “Why did you do that?!? That was dumb! THIS IS NOT THE TIME! WHY! THIS IS NOT THE TIME!” and usually the conversation goes really poorly because of this.

It’s like one part of me is… me. The Tessa you know and (hopefully) like. She’s rational, in control. Reasonable. All those normal things. And the other part of me is hateful, angry, wants to tear everyone down – especially myself. She tells me I am not good enough, that I deserve every bad thing that happens to me. She is the voice of self doubt, lack of self confidence, and everything bad. And I have a difficult time controlling her.

So… now what?

I would guess that MAYBE three people in my life have seen me have any form of depressive episode or uncontrolled outburst, so most people have no idea what I constantly struggle with. But it is a struggle. And it’s just getting worse. The outbursts are more frequent, more uncontrollable.

Luckily I referred myself for psychological assessment (very thankful I can do that without having to speak to my general practitioner), and hopefully we figure out what the heck is going on in my mind. I’m hoping to have a series of posts about the process, my experience & feelings, and all those fun things.