Feel like I've reached the end of the road. Don't want to be alive anymore

[soakedonsplash]

The whole thing is a long story and I'm sorry that I just don't feel up to telling it all right now. First went to see my GP 3 months ago and got signed off work - in that time I have tried an antidepressant, had three assessments with local mental health services, gone on the waiting list for several talking therapies before I finally decided to just pay to go private about a month ago. Nothing has made me feel even slightly better - to be honest things have just gotten so much worse. Thought I was suicidal back in november but that was nothing compared to now. I am just so tired, I get no enjoyment from anything and even just getting out of bed each morning feels like a massive ordeal. To be honest I feel like I have made my mind up that I just want to kill myself, but something always keeps stopping me at the last minute. I'd been planning for weeks to go through with it last Friday - I needed to go into town to buy something I needed. I had a GP appointment on Friday which I thought would get me up and dressed and into town but wouldn't actually go to the appointment. Something made me go to the appointment though, told him how I feel. My GP was great and convinced me to give something else a go. But mental health services contacted me again later that day with nothing like what I had agreed with GP - in fact they offered me nothing at all. My husband called them back to have a bit of a moan and they said they would call me today with more options - of course I've had no call from them today. Lovely GP called around lunch time to see how I was/what the plan was. Explained what had happened and I was waiting for a call - GP has said he will ring me again tomorrow.

That was a lot longer than I thought. But basically - I feel 100% sure that I just don't want to be alive anymore. I have a plan that I know will work and I can actually see myself going through with. I keep thinking I will just wait and see what happens next appointment/phone call but I always regret it because nothing happens. I feel so angry at myself for going to the appointment on Friday. Keep thinking I shouldn't be here anymore and deal with this shit. Doesn't seem to be any point asking for help because nobody thinks I deserve it. I just don't know what to do. Well, I do - I want to die, but I just can't go through with it and I hate myself for it.

So sorry you are in so much emotional pain. Ask your DH to help you with some emotional support. He loves you and wouldn’t want to be without you.
Have you called the Samaritans or the out of hours crisis team.
Please don’t do anything to hurt yourself.

Please tell your husband how you are feeling.

Doesn't seem to be any point asking for help because nobody thinks I deserve it
Well, you did ask your GP for help by going to that appointment and he obviously DOES think you deserve help - as do I - as he's called you and will call you again.

I just don't know what to do
What if you put the mental health services to one side for a while and go with your GP, because something positive just might/probably will happen with him?

Shelve your plan.
Stop hating yourself.
Tell me something you like about yourself.

Please call Samaritans. They won’t ‘talk you out of’ anything-knowing that you have a plan can be an odd comfort for you...- but they will listen, unconditionally, giving you space to explore your stuff. They’re on 116123, 24 hours.

There won't be a quick fix but you can come back from this. Have you just tried the one medication or have you tried different ones? Be open and honest with professionals that you have firm plans, you know what you will do/how you will do it and when, they can helpmyku the best when they know all the details. It might also be a weight off your back.
No one knows your full situation but you do matter in this world, strangers on the internet are holding out a helping hand and hoping you get what you need xxx

Hello soakedonsplash,

We really are so terribly sorry to hear how you're feeling right now.

As the other users have said we would always advise you to seek support in real life from friends or family.

We hope you don't mind, but when threads like yours are flagged up to us we usually add a link to our Mental Health resources.
You can also go to the Samaritans website, or email them on [email protected]. Support from other Mumsnetters is great and we really hope you will be able to take some comfort from your fellow posters, but as other MNers will tell you, it's really a good idea to seek RL help and support as well.

Good Luck holding the faith and hoping for better days ahead for you
from MNHQ

Please don’t do anything untoward. My husband took his own life a few years ago and I’ll never recover from it. Your life is worth living. Please seek more help.

Talk to your DH, he sounds supportive, go back to your GP, who also sounds really good. You can text the crisis text line SHOUT or phone the Samaritans, they have helped me many times.
Xxx

My husband knows how I am feeling. My GP called him on Friday at work to come and get me as he didn’t feel I would be safe at home. I don’t want to hurt my husband and I guess that’s part of what’s stopping me but I just don’t know how much longer I can go on.

No point calling crisis team as I am not in any danger right now. Still need to get to the shop to buy the stuff I need. GP is pushing mental health services as bless him he’s seen me pretty much every week for about three months now and hasn’t managed to get anywhere. He does want to help though, but he really just doesn’t seem to know what to do, and what we agreed last Friday mental health services obviously don’t want to do, and to be honest I don’t really want to do it anymore either

I suspect you don’t want to die OP, you just want how you are feeling to stop. Some years ago, I had my first severe depressive episode. It came on very suddenly and I quickly became a shell of my former self. Long miserable day after day, I wanted to die. Oh how I wanted to die. I had four children that needed me though so I just couldn’t. Every day I phoned my poor brother in floods of tears desperate for a way out of how I was feeling. It was honestly the worst time in my life and I thought I would never feel better. Looking back, I really didn’t want to die. I just could not see me ever being myself again and the pain of that was so deep, death seemed like the only way to make it stop.

As you can see, some years on I am still here and it did stop. For me getting the right antidepressant was the turning point. You have had one and it hasn’t helped but there are many out there and people respond to different ones. I think your GP needs to try a different one for you.

I really don’t want to prattle in about my own story, I just want you to know that I genuinely thought I would never feel better but with antidepressants and time, I did. You deserve help, you deserve to feel better, I’m just so sorry to say that there is no quick fix, it will take time to get you there, but you will get there, just as I did.

Really sorry to hear you are in so much pain. As other posters have said, the fact you are reaching out on this board and speaking suggests that a big, strong part of you wants to find a treatment that works and helps you rediscover your joy in life. It sounds like your doctor is trying to help, but not being very effective. You are, I think, very brave and I really hope you can find an effective treatment to help you regain your equilibrium. Please don't hate yourself, is there anything which can bring you a little joy?

It definitely used to be like that - just not wanting to feel like this anymore. It's moved on from that now though. Even if I can feel okay again, I still just don't want to live this life. My mood has really not been that bad today - been able to get myself out of bed and make breakfast, and spent some time playing a video game which has been pretty much impossible over the last week. I still feel like killing myself is the best thing to do though. I just hate myself and everything that has happened. I don't feel like I can live with myself knowing everything that has happened.

Hi OP. I'm sorry I didn't manage to post last night. If you're reading, I wanted to say that there is a part of you that is able to stand outside how you're feeling and describe it - the same part of you posted on here to reach out to people and try to hang on. This part of you knows you are ill and that you could recover. Feeling like you do is part of the illness. Please keep trying to get help and support - make sure everyone you can knows how you are feeling and keeping asking the GP for emergency help. Still thinking of you today.

Op, are you able to tell us what has happened? I appreciate that might be very difficult or outing or both so I understand if you can’t.

It might not be the same thing but there are a few things in my life that I have either directly caused or indirectly and I have had to learn to forgive myself. There are two suicides that I feel partly the cause of. And a poor decision I made that could have killed me and left my children motherless. The guilt and shame I have carried have kept me in some terrible dark places where I have even questioned if I deserve to live at all. I essentially kept myself ill because I didn’t believe I had any right or deserve to get better.

One thing is that we are not responsible for other people’s choices. Even if we believe we are. We are only responsible for our own and when we get it wrong and it might lead to devastating results, it doesn’t mean we should crucify ourselves. Everyone makes mistakes and some more severe than others but ultimately they are just that, mistakes. We don’t have to carry the burden of them for the rest of our lives. It doesn’t help anyone including ourselves and doesn’t change anything either.

soaked
It sounds like you are dealing with a traumatic event from your past. Is there anyone you can talk to about this in real life? Would it help to discuss it with a professional counsellor? Is that a possibility? It sounds like you are carrying around a heavy burden and you are being very hard on yourself. Often we judge ourselves much more harshly than anyone else would judge us.

There is no real big traumatic event - I just hate every single tiny thing I do. I've always felt like I don't really belong in this world - my husband is the only person I have any sort of relationship with right now. I don't have any friends, even my own family dislike me, and have done since I was a child. Was coping before by just hiding myself away as much as possible so nobody could see how messed up I am but that's all ruined now as I've been off work etc. Poor GP has spent so much time dealing with me that he really shouldn't have to do, and it's just not fair on anyone for me to stick around.

Oh, so glad you're still reading and replying. That sounds like very low self-esteem which you will have if you felt unloved by your family from an early age. I can relate to that too, and I think I've gone through most of my life not really understanding how low it is because I've always been a tough, type A get on and get things done type. But it can and does emerge as depression/anxiety. The lack of love as a child has been shown to actually affect your brain chemistry and development, so you are likely to always be more anxious and stressed than average.

Also the trouble with very low self-esteem and despair like that is you can feel you're not worth helping, not worth the GP's time etc. But of course you are - that's his job. You're at risk and need help as much as if you had cancer or a dangerous infection.

You mentioned you'd tried an antidepressant - what happened with that? I've tried at least 5 for my anxiety and sometimes depression/PND. It took a while to find one that really helped me and allows me to live on an even keel. It's very normal to not get on with the first one you try, but there could still be one that could lift you out of this and help you see everything very differently. Could you ask the GP to try a different one?

GP just called, I explained mental health services hadn't called he said he would try and chase them but didn't have much time today because of everything else that is going on. So it's really not fair that he has to deal with me. Said he would ring me on Thursday but I don't know if I can hold on that long.

That’s plenty OP and I can relate very much. Many of my own family don’t like me either and I only have my husband and children, I don’t socialise and hate it when I have to. I think with people like us, it’s a deep seated defence mechanism. I find it near impossible to trust anyone and convince myself that if anyone really got to know me they would just hate me like my own family. It’s easier to shut the world out than risk taking a chance and being hurt badly again.

As the PP says when we experience rejection in our childhood from our own family, unfortunately it does have long term consequences for us, manifestation of a nervous personality and very low self esteem. After all, if our own family can’t love us, how can we actually be lovable?

But we are and deserve to be loved. I remember the first time I went to counselling and the counsellor saying to me, PurpleThistles, your family have let you down. She was absolutely right but I needed someone else to tell me that.

I have made my own family now, my husband and children and I am raising my children to know what family really means. I am using all this experience I have gained from suffering rejection, abandonment, depression and anxiety to help them with their own problems and will continue to do so as they go through life.

Life is unpredictable OP, it might seem that the way you are and the way you feel right now will never change but it will, I absolutely promise you it will. One thing we can be sure of about life is change. It happens whether we want it to or not. Time brings changes, age brings changes. Depression if so awful because it shuts off our ability to see that.

I once read in a book a self help tip, that whenever you look at yourself in the mirror, say something nice to yourself. Sounds simple does it but what an impact that made on me. Because I realised that every time I looked in the mirror, I saw this horrible, unlovable stranger staring back. I never thought or said anything nice about or to myself. Do you OP?

What video game did you play? I play video games too, the sims, call of duty, stardew valley to name a few.

To echo what LadyMadder said, really good you are reading and replying. I am so sorry to hear you are feeling so down on yourself, it must have been very tough to not have felt alot of love as a child. That has affected the way you feel about yourself perhaps. It sounds like you are very hard on yourself, but I think a big, strong part of you wants to find a way through this pain. Your doctor's job is to help you, but if that's not working, could you seek counselling on a private basis? It might help to discuss your feelings with a professional. I think you are stronger than you give yourself credit for and I really hope that you can find some treatment to help you feel better.

OP, can you call mental health services yourself? It’s not that the GP or the services don’t care, it’s that they are so woefully understaffed and underfunded and over worked. They do care and they do want to help you, however you are going to have to find the strength to be a bit more forceful. I remember feeling fobbed off by my GP and in the end I made another appointment, sat down and said to him, once the thought of any of my children dying could bring me to tears. But just now thinking of that happening, I don’t feel anything, nothing at all.

He took me seriously then, gave me a depression test which I scored full marks in and referred me to a day centre crisis team that same day.

It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to say as a mother, that I couldn’t feel anything towards my own children, but I had to make him understand how bad I really was.

Fight for yourself OP, call the GP back, tell him it’s not good enough, call the mental health services if you can and if that doesn’t get you anywhere then you go to a&e and tell them you are suicidal.

I have been seeing a private counsellor but they are very wary about seeing me because of the risk, and to be honest I don't find it that helpful. At one point they talking about me agreeing that I wouldn't hurt myself whilst I was seeing them, even signing something, but I just said I would stop coming if they said that and then they dropped it.

I just can't cope with this anymore. I want to end it but I'm just not brave enough and I hate myself for it

I don't feel at all fobbed off by the GP - he has gone above and beyond for me in so many ways. I have the number for the assessment service and the crisis team but I don't feel like I'm allowed to call them. They know how I feel, they are meant to be calling me but they haven't so they obviously just don't want to

Counsellors are a bit like antidepressants OP, one size doesn’t fit all. I would try another, see if that’s a better fit. If you are really at breaking point though, please go to a&e, right away

It took me ages to work up the courage to see this counsellor - I really, really don't like having to speak to new people. Can't go to a&e, I really wouldn't want to anyway. I never get what people mean by breaking point anyway