Any solution short of personality transplant

[feelingabitblue]

I have turned into the most negative insecure person. Maybe I was always like that I don't know but its just making me so unhappy and, I think, ruining my marriage.

On the surface I seem to have it together but underneath I am a mess. Doing well in my job etc have house, beautiful child, hubby but underneath I am seething with self-loathing. I have not really got any friends in this country and feel lonely even though I am lucky enough to have some family around. But I think I am even driving them crazy, I'm so up or down, never in between, when a mood takes me I can't disguise it and I just feel really really negative about everything, always nagging DH and being unkind, I think everybody hates me all the time, can't stand myself anymore.

And I have no real reason to be like this, my life is good in so many ways.

I just want to be happy and likeable. I haven't felt so awkward and wretched since I was 14, 20 years ago. Thought I left this all behind then...

[joedar]

Sounds like you are feeling a BIG bit blue!! Maybe you could go do some counselling, I have suffered with insecurity and low self esteem and found this helped me.

Alot of it is just changing your mind set, sounds as though you are suffering from anxiety too.

Channel your energy into having positive thoughts! Wake each morning and think of all the things that you have to be grateful for.

Continue your day trying to catch yourself each time you are being negative and turn it in to positve.

It is not a bad thing to get help via counsellors etc.

Hope you work this out.

[smithfield]

Hi feelingabitblue-
It does sound like you are suffering depression.
You say you haven't felt like this since you were 14. Was there something significant that happend to you at that time? I might be barking up the wrong tree but sometimes things from our past do re-surface when we least expect, and this can lead to feelinmgs of depression.

[feelingabitblue]

Yes its a total attitude change I need but I am beginning to think that maybe I just have a horrible personality and aren't capable of being a postive loveable person.

I was happy for a long part of my life because I found refuge in having lots of friends and having an active social life, worked in a fun industry etc.

But these days I work in a serious stressful dry kind of job, have no friends in UK (not from here and just find it so hard to meet people/make friends), work FT so feel all my spare time needs to be spent with DD. Hardly ever go out even with DH - only thing I go to are work events which are the opposite of fun.

I just want a new personality.

[smithfield]

Feelingabitblue- Part of depression 'is' feeling like it is 'you' that is the problem. All part of the downward negative spiral I'm afraid. i can assure you it's not and given the right treatment you will feel like a different person in time.
BTW Think I just cross posted with you earlier, just wanted to say obviously you dont have to answer my last question if it is personal...sorry.

[feelingabitblue]

I moved to a new school aged 10 and had no real friend (plus a truly horrific hair cut) until I was 14.

I was miserable. I hated myself, thought I was ugly, thought everyone was laughing at me all the time.

Then I grew my hair, got a social life, had friends who understood me, was quite a party girl, then at 24 came to London, got a career job, still parties a bit, gradually friends I had left one by one to other countries, I am still here, went back to work 6 months after having DD so never really made friends with other mums.

Just miss feeling like I belong and now same feelings of self-loathing and general unlikeability.

and I am just no fun anymore, feel sorry for DH that this is what I have turned into.

[feelingabitblue]

Desperate for another baby and not prepared to stop TTC so don't think a/d's are an option - not even st john's wort.

Was on prozac once before, briefly, years ago for panic attacks and hated the fact that it killed my libido although quite like fact that it stopped me feeling so volatile.

[feelingabitblue]

I also feel like I have to spend so much energy on work - being polite, working hard etc and then again so much energy on DD - being loving to her (she is the best child I could ask for and I love her to distraction). By the time I get to DH & everyone else there is no niceness left. But then I think if I can be nice 85% of the time at work and 99.9% of the time to DD why can't I also control the other parts of my life?

Maybe I would have friends here if I was nicer?

[smithfield]

Feelingabitblue- If Ad's are out of the question (and I understand your reasoning for this as I stopped Ad's when I was ttc), then I think you must consider finding a therapist.
It could be that becoming a new mum and some of the isolation, and loss of sense of self that role can bring with it may be brining back to the surface some of the unhappiness you experienced when you were young.
This is the sort of thing you can explore with conselling.
Couple of questions; Do you have much family support here? Also did you start to feel like this after dc born (just wondering if you have suffered PND)?

[smithfield]

Btw- do not underestimate just how hard it is to be working (paid work outside the home) and then be a full time mum to your dd. Im hoping you get plenty of support from you DH, with dd?

[feelingabitblue]

I don't think it is connected with DD exactly - I felt displaced and mateless before she was born as well I think I assumed I would make friends once I became a mum and it was a huge disappointment to realise that, actually it would get even lonelier as being a FT working mum means you are a freak and have no time for socialising anyway. I actually felt great once she was born, bursting with positivity, felt like my old self was coming back, but she is nearly 3 now and having been back at work over 2 years my postivity has vanished.

I still have hope that if I ever have another child I would make some friends but in reality this is unlikely.

I just want to change my outlook and become a fun positive person - someone who people want to be around and someone people want to be with. I m so envious of women I see out and about with other women. I know that is what I am like with my old friends when I see them, that nice easy relationship, but its depressing to know I will never have it again, I really think friendships are so important for self-worth.

I just don't know anymore. I do have family close by and they are the only people I see excpet for DH and people at work but lately I imagine even they are getting sick of the way I am and I know they all think I am horribel to DH.

[smithfield]

Just read your other thread- so I now feel I have a bit more understanding of your situation.
I understand where you are coming from beacuse I lived o/seas when ds was born (had been there for 6 years). I felt exactly how you are feeling now, and even when I was at home with ds I felt low, so it was hard to make new friends with that frame of mind IYSWIM. I kept making excuses not to go to things.
We did decide to return home as I was so unhappy, but that then placed me in the situation you are in now. I had to go back to work full-time and dh ended up changing careers because he could not get work. So he was back at the bottom of the ladder, he now works long hours 6 days a week.
Like you said on your other thread, many mums are at home at least part time and so socialise during the week. It makes it almost impossible as a full time working mum to break out of the cycle of not being able to make new connections with other mums.
Sorry for waffling. Its just I can really relate to what your saying.
I think the depression is another issue on top you now have to contend with, and I think you have to give it due respect. Its your body's way of telling you just how unhappy you are with the situation as it is. I think your main sadness is surrounding your dd. You are bound to feel resentment at not getting quality time with her having had to go back to work full-time at six months. Part of you probably feels a bit robbed. I know I did.

I honestly believe that for you a good start would be to maybe put ttc on hold, and look at getting some treatment for the depression (whatever form that takes). I just think, at the moment for you it will be impossible otherwise to see the wood for the trees. The problem you have is there is so much going on and to become depressed on top of that will only make you feel like there is no solution, no hope. Whereas if you begin to feel better in yourself you would be able to see nore clearly what the way forward could be.

[feelingabitblue]

Thanks Smithfield for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it.

Its funny you understand that feeling. I often think it goes hand in hand with living away from the place where you grew up.

If I was in my home town my phone would be constantly ringing with friends catching up as well as it is for so many English women I know but I am not so it isn't.

Maybe you are right about TTC but feel like time isn't on my side anymore. Maybe I will try and self medicate St John's Wort or something and just stop if I do ever comceive (although TBH that is feeling increasingly unlikely and just adding to the depression). ANything has got to be better than this.

I am trying to exercise regularly to make myself feel better but its not really going to the root of the way I am feeling.

[smithfield]

The other thing you could do is look at getting a therapist. I have just started some therapy myself (I am pg, had started to feel depression coming on and didnt want to use the medication).
To be honest since being home and starting soem therapy, I now feel perhaps feelings at that time were nothing to do with being away from home, I just pointed to the easiest thing and blamed that.
In actual fact, now Im back I feel just as isolated, because people/ friends I knew had all moved on with their lives. Im not saying this definately applies to you, but 8 years is a long time and people are all too happy to see you on visits, but once you are home the novelty wears off IYSWIM. They go back to their lives and their lives haven't had you in them for a long time.
Having said that I can relate to the feeling of displacement you are so obviously feeling. You feel deep down you will never be able to relate on a deeper level with others because their background/culture is so different.

[feelingabitblue]

"You feel deep down you will never be able to relate on a deeper level with others because their background/culture is so different."

Yep - or more to the point I feel ike they will never really like me because I am different. I like people here I just never feel it reciprocated.

[feelingabitblue]

Congrats on being pg BTW.

[smithfield]

'I like people here I just never feel it reciprocated.'

I promise this is the depression speaking. Your self esteem is being eaten away. I know this because, after I went on Ad's, once they had begun to work I felt completely differntly. Its like while you are depressed you can only see things in black and white and yet when you are feeling better, everything is in colour again. You need to win back your vitality.

[feelingabitblue]

Maybe you are right.

I just would never have thought I could actually be depressed, I always just think its a personality defect on top of the factual things (being in a different country) which is making me so unloveable.

TBH I have felt bad about myself for about 8 years now

[feelingabitblue]

and I thought it was because I have no friends I feel like this but its all so self perpetuating.

[smithfield]

Ah feelingabitblue- want to give you a big cyber ((((hug)))). promise it is not you! I thought exactly the same (still do at times) [hmmm].
Depression will appear when you are trying to push down difficult emotions. Instead of dealing with those emotions we disconnect from them. If you imagine being incredibly angry at something or someone and then turning it on yourself.
So Im not saying there is not something (like being away from home) that is not making you genuinely unhappy, but I think whaterver it is may have triggered the depression for you. The problem is its difficult to get to the route of it all whilst you are in it so to speak.
Were you unhappy with anything at home when you left for london?

[feelingabitblue]

I was pretty high on life when I left for London but slightly self destructive as well in terms of partying like there was no tomorrow.

I had pretty good self esteem though.