Agreed, @sprigatito_bread@lemmy.world. Get a job. Any job. Ideally one that could pay a bit more than minimum wage and/or one tangentially related to the field you want to go into. But you can’t afford to be too picky. That’s step one.

Step two, move out. I know you said you don’t have friends. You don’t need them. But you need to find a roommate because you’re unlikely to be able to afford to live on your own.

https://www.reddit.com/r/roommates/comments/1fipamp/best_roommate_finding_apps/

This reddit link has some ideas/websites to try for step two. It’s not an exhaustive list on how to find a roommate, but it’s a start.

Check out the mental health community that MonsterTrick posted. It’s fairly active!

Hi, friend. I know you have a zillion thoughts running through your head.

You DO matter.

You aren’t harm others from being mentally unwell. People either are going to support you or they’re not. Unfortunately most people don’t, but your existence itself and being in pain does NOT cause hurt to others. YOU are the one who is hurting, and you are projecting that thinking that your hurt is telepathically harming others. You aren’t.

You are a human being who is hurting. You are a human being, not a monster. You deserve love and acceptance. I’m sorry for the things you have gone through. You do not deserve that. You deserve to walk this earth and have your own slice of happiness out there. You DO deserve that.

I don’t have solutions for you, unfortunately. The classic advice is “see a professional”, but that’s only so helpful in the moment and with whatever capacity you have for that.

It’s weird because while I have had radically different life experiences (no abusive partner, no stalking… generally a much milder experience), I feel like I identify almost word for word with what you’ve written about the mental side of things. Feeling like a burden, feeling like you don’t deserve things, talking to AI instead of humans (can actually be helpful for venting lmao), thinking you are harming everyone by existing (bro that was a core belief of mine I shit you not), etc.

You are not alone. Many others have walked your path and managed to get out to the other side. I guess I have no real useful advice to give so I apologize about that.

One thing that has always helped me was to know that life will change. I hate change tbh. And when things are going good, I hate that I know they will eventually change. But you know what? When you’re in a bad spot, change will still happen. Will it change to be worse? Maybe. Will it change to be better? Also maybe. Change is inevitable.

Stick with us a bit longer, and know that you are in good company.

Goddamn I feel you, bro. I learned recently that the world is filled with assholes. Nothing you say or do is going to make people treat you like a human being if they weren’t going to to begin with.

This realization helped me internally to no longer hate myself, but I’m a bit stuck as to where to go from here. I guess I’ll be chatting with my therapist about this sort of thing tomorrow.

What’s your scenario exactly?

Hey listen, man. I know you’re freaking out rn (hopefully you’re freaking out less so at the moment), but you’re not necessarily gonna get out on an involuntary hold. Providers DON’T really love doing that. Be honest and tell them you have some degree suicidal ideation, but don’t say you have a plan to do it off the bridge right now. They don’t commit patients solely for suicidal ideation unless they are stupid. Most patients coming in for psych help feel this. It’s relatively “normal” and not something they are quick to “throw you in the brig” for.

If you have panic attacks, you should ask a provider about propranolol. It’s technically a blood pressure med but it also is given for panic attacks! It will decrease your heart rate and blood pressure which will make your heart stop racing and help you to stop panicking over it. You just take it when you’re panicking and wait a bit for it to kick in to calm down. Honestly might help you a ton! It’s not an addictive, feel good med like benzos at all whatsoever.

Baseline anxiety they might want to give you an SSRI and do therapy, but you don’t necessarily have to commit to that right away if it’s too much or too expensive to deal with rn.

What country are you in? If you’re in the US, I used some service called ZocDoc to find mine. I don’t think I even had to make an account to log in or to view stuff, just when you were actually gonna make the appointment. I called out of work one day because I was feeling really shit and decided to Google a psych provider.

Yeah it’s fucking daunting like you said. But with that website you can literally fill in the day you want to be seen and it will pop up with plenty of dates and times with a shitton of different providers. I just picked whatever was available same day and someone was actually able to see me then. I was surprised at how quick it was when it had never been that quick or simple before.

Now, this person ended up as a psych NP, not a physician. I think you’re not going to find a physician available on these websites. Idk if my NP is shit or not, but at least she has been seeing me and she was able to refer me to a therapist.

Idk if this wouldn’t work with your insurance tho. I think the website maybe tells you the insurances that the providers accept. My insurance is kind of shit so it didn’t entirely matter who I picked.

Anyway, best of luck, man, you got this.

Taking a break, obviously.

Are you ok at least? I know you said you were trying to get out of an abusive relationship?

I mean I’ve never had an issues with attention so it just doesn’t make sense to me. Obviously I have emotional problems, but that would be my only “ADHD trait” which is shared by many “conditions”. What other traits do you have?

Yeah some of my online friends seem to think I have a lot of trauma. But the weird thing with that is like… doesn’t literally everyone? Why would some be more effected than others? Some people are horribly abused and it makes sense…but many of us have a lot “milder” traumatic experiences.

I have been consulting ChatGPT (lmao) and it seems that guanfacine is the most common indicated thing for emotional dysregulation in complex trauma. I had never heard of it before.

Yeah thing is I’m totally fine when I have no triggers. But when I do, I go from 0 to 100 and have a hard time getting out of it (whether it’s an activated state more damaging to the self or a low energy state where I have a hard time physically walking or moving). I think my baseline leans normal to slightly depressed.

How do you feel about taking so many meds? I’m already a bit turned off from meds. I have always been of the opinion that while some people really do absolutely need them that a lot of people are over medicated.

After my negative experiences I kind of want to stop trying meds but I’m afraid to get off them after my last experience. I had a reaction in SSRI withdrawal that severely threatened my job. And now my provider has me on lamotrigine, but research that I’ve done seems like it does nothing for emotional dysregulation.

Do you know how much I would have loved to be blunted on SSRIs lol? My issue is too many and too strong emotions, so feeling less would have been helpful!

Oh and why are you taking both guanfacine and propranolol? They both seem to cause a “body calm”, so it seems odd you’re prescribed both.

Sorry for the long response lol

Yes I absolutely relate almost exactly to what you are talking about! It’s frustrating because I feel like I feel these certain things so deeply and others just don’t have that type of intense emotional pain that I do.

It’s funny you mention ADHD because whenever I look up things like “emotional dysregulation” and “rejection sensitivity”…for some reason ADHD is one of the top results/conditions lol.

I relate to all of the ADHD related bullet points that you say, but I just don’t really have core “symptoms” of ADHD. I have the same emotion issues, but I don’t have issues with attention and etc. to my knowledge. I’ve always had issues with things like keeping up with household chores and staying neat, but beyond that none of the “core” features seem to fit me. My older sibling has very obvious ADHD though lol.

Dunno much if any of what I have is real trauma, but my therapist the other day that my frantic efforts to predict and prevent negative emotions from others is a “trauma response”, but idk how much of that is true for me.

I’m guessing the main med helping you is some ADHD meds, right? Do you take anything else?

Yeah there is a theme.

1. People getting upset with me, especially if it’s not because something I did or if it’s because of something I didn’t intend
2. Rejection from people I care about
3. Someone stopping to criticize and nitpick me about dumb insignificant shit when I am working as hard as I possibly can and trying my best. My supervisor does this which is part of my issue with functioning at work
4. Less common to cause a big outwardly external reaction, but more internal panic and/or sadness…failure/inadequacy at work related tasks that others do well

What happens is that I have periods of high energy low mood and low energy low mood.

The high energy low mood states involve things like distress, frustration, rage directed inward, impulsivity, urges to self harm, etc. These episodes are the most damaging to the self, my workplace, and my relationships.

Sometimes when I am in a high energy high mood state, a trigger can actually cause me to rapidly switch into a high energy high mood state.

In the low energy states, they are still extremely painful, but not really dangerous to the self. Sometimes I get in states where it actually feels physically difficult to move. Even getting out of a chair feels impossible like I am paralyzed or have 50 lb weights scattered across my body. Sometimes I end up sleeping excessively during these phases.

In between, I am totally normal!

Maybe it sounds similar to it, but I do NOT meet the criteria for bipolar disorder. I do NOT meet the criteria for hypomania, my “episodes” are almost always caused by triggers, and most of them are not long enough in duration to meet the criteria (although sometimes the low energy low mood states can last a few weeks). If rejection is reverted, the negative mood state can be relatively quickly relieved.

I also have significant baseline anxiety, but I’ve always been that way ever since I was a kid. The distressing and damaging parts to me are the mood episodes, not generally the anxiety (but it can be disabling sometimes). It is possible that some of my “episodes” might be triggered by anxiety.