dingus

I have tried therapy on and off for a while now. People would always get frustrated with me and tell me to "get therapy," but I never knew what I was actually supposed to be there for. And I tried a service like BetterHelp before (can't remember what this one was called), but it just sucked ass and I'm not sure if the people on there were even licensed professionals.

I finally started going consistently with this one therapist, but I frequently get frustrated with her for not giving me actual coping skills or techniques. One of her favorite things to ask me is "how can you deal with X?" And I get frustrated and say "I don't know." Because if I fucking knew I wouldn't be in therapy. She seems to do a more meandering talk therapy style thing with vague ideas of DBT and CBT thrown in there. She's not giving me enough skills to not get fired at work. She helped me go through a difficult time, but now that that's over, I'm back to square one.

So I found a therapist who specifically states she does DBT. Over time I have learned that my core issue is emotional dysregulation which is treated by DBT. She told me she follows this one workbook. I got the book. It's great! It gives you a zillion and one coping skills. But after having several sessions with her, I notice that she spends the entire time just going "in chapter 4, this happens. Then in chapter 8, this happens" while my eyes just glaze over. Today the session ended 35 minutes early because she only vaguely contributed to me talking about a problem I had today.

I have been seeing both therapists concurrently until my deductible resets in January.

I just am so endlessly frustrated with the entire mental health industry. I've seen so many different therapists. I've really tried to do any exercises that they have given me. I've tried multiple different psych meds (trying a new one now actually!).

Nothing works. Nothing has changed about me. I'm the same person with the same problems. And nothing I seem to try makes a lick of difference. I try so hard. I try a zillion different things...exercise, getting good sleep, eating right, therapy, meds...nothing changes me. Nothing helps me.

What in the everliving fuck am I missing? Do I have to go through 30 different therapists before I can find one that can help me? Am I just doing therapy "wrong"??? What am I supposed to be doing here?

Through all this, I've found that telling someone to "go to therapy" is almost offensive...it just absolves others from caring about you and makes it sound like you're not willing to do the base effort in bettering yourself.

Sorry for the long post and thanks for taking the time to read.

Hello. I have a very affectionate 5 year old cat that I got this August. He warmed up right away and wanted to sleep with me in my bed the first night. So I have let him ever since.

Recently he has gotten in the habit of clawing me to wake me up (or just generally for attention). I have tried both making a loud noise when he does this or ignoring him, but it doesn't seem to work. Plus ignoring it is difficult when it hurts you lol.

So last night he was sleeping in bed with me as usual. He started clawing me at like 5 am and wouldn't stop. So I tricked him to get him out of the room. I got out of bed and went into the hall where he obviously followed me. But then I walked back into my room and shit the door behind me.

He has been crying at the door all night which makes me feel bad but still. Is this a viable way to correct this behavior? My plan was to maybe do this each morning that he does this.

Hi all. Been taking lamotrigine off label from my psych provider. Intended to help with emotional instability.

I have been slowly titrating up. Had some ups and downs but now I feel like I'm nearly at the worst I've ever been.

I have been on 200 for the past 3 weeks. My mood has not stabilized in that time and I am getting much worse.

A few days after the increase to 200 my coworker noticed an immediate and dramatic negative shift in mood and appearance. Prior to that, I was on 150 for 5 weeks. Initially I was doing pretty good but I had a steady decline for the entirety of the 5th week before I was upped to 200.

My bros please help. This is destroying my career and relationships. It has immediate and significant impacts on my life.

I sent my provider an urgent message in her portal but yeah I need to figure out this shit asap.

Not sure if I am having a paradoxical reaction to every psych med I am trying or what??? Also yes I am in therapy but in the process of changing to one who is a lot more strucutred in her approach and less of a talk therapist.

I've been through idk how many therapists. And therapy is expensive as fuck because my insurance is shit. So I'm fucking done with this bullshit.

Most therapists I've tried, even if they claim to have certain treatment modalities, seem to just be keen on sitting there and listening to me talk without giving me much guidance at all. They give me vague ideas and not actually real skills or homework. This isn't helping me at all whatsoever.

Part of the issue is that I literally could never pinpoint what the fuck my issue was. I did see a therapist years back who seemed to actually give skills and worksheets, but she was using CBT for a minor issue for me because I couldn't figure out what my problem actually was. I only had a few sessions and then stopped due to the price and the fact that I thought she latched onto a minor problem to treat (and I didn't know my issue then).

When someone told me about "emotional dysregulation" and I found out that DBT is the gold standard for it, I have tried to find some who practice this, but it seems that most don't. And those who claim to are actually often essentially talk therapists who just listen to me instead of giving me techniques and homework to build skills.

I'm frustrated as all fucking hell. Recently my work told me I will be fired if I cannot sort myself out. I am desperate here.

I live in the US, Florida specifically.

Thanks for listening.

Hi. I've had my cat since August. He sleeps in my bed every night and has done so since I've got him. I've always had an incredibly mild allergy to cats...mostly when they scratch me I sometimes get very itchy (but not always), or if there are a metric buttload of them in the room (as in a shelter), my throat and eyes will be a bit scratchy. Otherwise I'm fine.

In the past several weeks, I have been sneezing a fuckton and when go to bed and wake up in the morning my nose is entirely stuffed up and runny. It goes away once I'm up and moving, but I'm still periodically sneezing whenever I'm at home. The litter boxes are NOT in my bedroom.

Any tips??? I don't want to kick him out of the bed. :(((

I have always thought that I have felt emotions much more strongly than others. At baseline, I don't feel a whole lot of positive or negative, but a stimulus easily puts me into overdrive, like the volume knob on the stereo suddenly gets maxed out and the gas pedal gets stuck down.

I bet a lot of you can relate to this. Everyone has things that make them different than others. This is one of mine. Sometimes, it can make it different to function in life. But it also has good things...the highs feel really high and I think it makes me very empathetic and much more inclined to be kind. Things are pathologized when we don't fit nearly I do the functional box that society wants us to. Nothing has ever changed this quality about me...not therapy or medications. It is who I am and it bothers a lot of people and even myself.

But I think our brains are just wired differently than some. And that's ok. It what makes you authentically you. It's what makes you empathetic.

I will give you a quote by Pearl S. Buck that I really resonated with...

A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.

To him... a touch is a blow,

A sound is a noise,

A misfortune is a tragedy,

A joy is an ecstasy,

A friend is a lover,

A lover is a god,

And failure is death.

The first line that I omitted is about creativity but I don't think this necessarily correlates with that. For me it doesn't, anyway.

First...I am NOT an anti-meds person, but I don't believe that everyone should just be on them. My friend has schizophrenia and absolutely needs her meds. It's scary when she's off them because of how negatively it impacts her life.

I called out of work one day due to having an issue and in desperation made a same day appointment with a psych NP. I was surprised at how immediate and quick she was to be like "hey sure yeah you can try meds if you want". They diagnosed me with the generic "depression and anxiety" and when from there.

Well the NP immediately quit after that and they transferred me to a new NP, who has continued to prescribe different meds for me. I also recently started therapy.

With the first med I tried (an SSRI), I continued to have my episodes, so I initially thought it had zero effect. In retrospect, I do think it slightly lowered my anxiety (but not enough to really do anything). Coming off them was unpleasant and I had another episode that may have threatened my job. I'm not sure if the episode was related to the med reduction or not.

My NP specifically stated that I do NOT have bipolar disorder, but that she wanted to try lamotrigine with me. I have been slowly over many months titrating up to my therapeutic goal dose and reached it a couple weeks ago.

She also recently prescribed me PRN propranolol which I also don't know if it has any effect. I very rarely get panic attacks. My NP's idea was that if I have a stressful that happen that day to take it so I am theoretically less inclined to have an outburst of some sort later. Again, I'm not sure if this is really doing anything for me. I don't notice an effect.

I know propranolol is preventative instead of used during or after, but I can't always predict when a trigger may occur.

My episodes generally begin with a trigger. So if there are no triggers, I have minimal/no issues. The triggers are not 24/7 and there are sometimes many weeks in between. So how tf am I supposed to tell if the medication does anything???

My issue: extreme negative emotions/spiraling generally tied to a trigger; can cause me want to self harm or do dangerous things, can sometimes cause outbursts at work which threaten work interpersonal relationships and my job. For the most part, my episodes occur outside of work and I am usually (but obviously not always) able to keep it together). So it can be very distressing and unpleasant to live with...but again it's not 24/7.

Sorry that was long!!!

Been going through a really rough time lately and I spontaneously decided I wanted a visible tattoo. Got a lion to symbolize strength, resilience, and courage, and chose to have its teeth bared to remind me to fight.

My arms are skinny af so the tattoo is relatively small...approx 9 x 7.5 cm or 3.5 x 3 in. So I'm wondering how well it will age.

I was telling myself it was gonna be my only tattoo but I kind of want another lol. There is one where I had always liked the design but was too socially anxious to get it and didn't know where I'd want it. But I'm kind of thinking since my tattoo is upper right inner forearm that I want the other on my left lower outer calf/leg. But I want to wait a bit for it haha to see if there are any other life changes coming up (unfortunately may have more soon).

Please be gentle haha!

Hi all. One of my biggest issues is emotional dysregulation.

I have noticed that a big thing is that I don't have any activities that I can do for a prolonged period of time when frustrated. These "calming techniques" like breathing and the 5-4-3-2-1 thing only work for for a minute or so and then I'm back to flipping out. I need it to be both physical AND mental though. Only tackling physical leaves too much time for rumination...and only tackling mental doesn't get out the high energy.

So I think I need something to bridge the gap here between the techniques to immediately and temporarily calm you and when I eventually feel better again.

Here are ideas I DON'T want:

• Exercise - I find that exercise has never been mentally engaging enough to make me feel better. It actually will often do the opposite of what people say it does. It gives me more time to think and ruminate. Exercise for me will magnify my current emotions, which is beneficial if I am already happy, but absolutely terrible for me if I am already frustrated. Plus if I'm frustrated at like 3am, going outside to exercise is dangerous for me lol.

• Writing down your feelings - Again, I feel like I'm missing something here. Doing that doesn't make me feel better...it makes me ruminate and focus on the problem more, making me even more upset. And then I'm more inclined to send the thing I wrote to others which can damage relationships or be self destructive.

Positive ideas

• Canvas painting - I absolutely have NO idea how to do anything artistic...but my thought is that you can angrily let your feelings out and splatter things onto a canvas...and then as you get more calm to morph it into something productive??? Dunno. But I have a screened in patio so I feel like I have the space to both be messy back there and to be able to do it in the middle of the night. I'm wondering if it would be too complicated with all the supplies needed or something though.

• Video games - Actually seem to work to take my mind off of things, BUT there is no physical aspect to them. When I am physically calmer, they help me to not ruminate...but again I feel like I have a gap period between where I need more physical activity.

Thanks all I know it's long lol.

Hi all. I've mounted a couple of things to studs before without an issue.

But I have a little bit more of an elaborate setup. I have a bunch of shelves for my cat that I want to put on the wall. I have a stud/wire detector, but one of the walls I wish to use has voltage detected across a very large area for some reason. And when I put my hand on the wall, it stops ever detecting any wires at all!!

Could there really be that much electrical wiring within this one wall??? There is a singular outlet in this area, but the detector goes off all over the wall, not just above the outlet.

My studs are very far apart at around 24 inches. So only small portions of the shelves will be drilled into the wall and the rest will be seated in the drywall with drywall anchors unfortunately.

How can I work on this project...drilling into both studs and drywall while avoiding the 10,000 wires that are evidently inside of my wall??? And also why do the "wires" all disappear when I touch the wall??

Thanks all lol.

Hi. I stopped my SSRI at the direction of my psych provider who is switching me to an entirely different class of med.

Was on 10 mg escitalopram for around 6 months. Reduced to 5 mg for 3-4 weeks and felt physically ok (but not mentally but I'm not sure if that was related). I then took some every other day because I was afraid to totally stop with the directions I was given.

But I stopped completely approx 6 days ago as instructed. Felt totally fine at first. But I started getting a bit dizzy around 3 days in. I am still dizzy now and I feel really bad. :((( It is exacerbated by too much head or eye movement. I didn't even realize that was from the med discontinuation at first until I did some googling at wtf was wrong with me.

I see my provider again tomorrow and am gonna ask her for some help.

But I'd also to know if anything personally helped you all and how long this takes to go away. Because I am going to be struggling at work and it's not like I can just take several weeks off of work. And my family was coming to stay over next weekend.

I feel a lot better if I am able to keep my head and eyes totally still but it's not feasible for me to just lay motionless for an unknown period of days/weeks.

Will anything like Dramamine help? I've never taken Dramamine before but since it helps with motion sickness you'd think it might be similar??

Thanks all. :(

I've always found it odd when I hear people say this. I'm never quite sure how I'm supposed to take it. I live alone. I have like zero responsibilities outside of work. So in that regard, every single day I do "something nice" for myself. I get to eat whatever I want, watch whatever I want on TV, etc.

One "argument" I've heard that this is instead supposed to mean to like exercise or something, but I exercise is very unpleasant to me. I committed to consistent running for over a year and never enjoyed it lol. I feel similarly about all forms of exercise.

I dunno. What am I missing here? Is telling people to do something nice for themselves reserved for people with heavy responsibilities like children and such? Because I don't understand why people would tell me to do that to myself or how I am supposed to apply that. Existing with high freedom and low responsibilities seems pretty nice to myself so I don't get it.

Am I just dumb lol?