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Ariane16
Feb 28, 2013, 11:35 AM
Hello everyone,

I'm a 20 year old girl and my emotions have been a complete mess.

I have intense moments of sadness that frighten the hell out of me. I can spend an hour crying and screaming as if I were possessed. I have been crying every day for the last 2 weeks, and have had overwhelming feelings of anxiety or guilt for the last month.
But the weirdest thing is, apart from those intense moments of sadness (during which I even sometimes have suicidal thoughts), I can be a cheerful, outgoing, happy person, and I often laugh. It's not like I have to pretend to be happy in front of people, I just genuinely feel fine. So in the same day I can go from wanting to kill myself to making exciting plans for the future. This roller-coaster has been more than exhausting.

I have been extremely stressed out lately (I have had mock exams for the last week, and I'm presenting my actual exams in two months), and I think that I lack sleep. Every time I hear my alarm clock in the morning I feel like I want to die. I have to fight the urge of skipping class almost every day. I can't get anything done: I'm exhausted all the time and even cleaning my room can be so tedious it takes me 6 hours. I can't focus on anything for more than 15 minutes, and I can't make a decision and stick to it for more than an hour. I'm either extremely bubbly or extremely slow, but either way I can't stay focused on one thing. I feel like all I want to do is stay in bed and watch TV series and never have a responsibility again. And I also feel hungry all the time - I'm eating a lot lately.

But the worth part is the anxiety and guilt.

What's wrong with me? Am I depressed? Bipolar? Or just stressed out and sleep deprived?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and helping me out.

joypulv
Feb 28, 2013, 11:42 AM
Sure, you sound bipolar.
But you just sort of slip in here that you feel guilty - about what? That could be the cause of all the anxiety, all the depression (the two often go hand in hand, alternating).

Do you still have the boyfriend of a year ago?

Ariane16
Feb 28, 2013, 03:51 PM
Hello, thanks for your quick answer!

I can't believe you still remember me from last year. Yes, I'm still with the same guy. I had decided to give him an other chance and we got over all the lying. But we still faced a lot of problems and were on the brink of splitting up several times. We managed to overcome those problems as well and now things are going great between us. We've had a lot of ups and downs, really, but now we're more in an up phase - the downs can get pretty ugly though.

The guilt is just something I have been dragging around with me since childhood, it has just always been there. I know I feel guilty towards my mom - she's supporting me through college and paying my rent so I sometimes feel like a spoiled brat.
Overall I feel like I'm a bad person who spoils the chances that life gives her. I'm in some sort of elite school and the competition can get pretty rough - I always feel like I don't study enough. My good grades sometimes feel undeserved.

I also feel very guilty towards my boyfriend. I've had a lot of doubts about our relationship and talked to some of my friends about it (for my defense, he was being awful to me). I've also talked to my ex-boyfriend who is still in love with me and for a moment I just wondered if I shouldn't be with him instead and I've told him that I missed him and stuff like that. When things started getting better with my boyfriend I started feeling horribly guilty for talking about him to my friends and for flirting with my ex-boyfriend (I didn't cheat on him though, unless you consider it emotional cheating), so I confessed all I had done to him. He totally forgave me but somehow I just can't let it go. I keep telling myself that I've ruined my great relationship with him (specially that now everything is going so good, I feel really in love with him)
I also feel guilty towards my ex-boyfriend because I've cheated on him and left him broken-hearted. I know he is still in love with me now, but I kind of keep him on the hook by talking to him every several weeks every time things get rough. I'm not doing it intentionally though. Sometimes I really wonder if I miss him or if I should end up with him (these are incidentally the times when things are not going so well with my current boyfriend). I'm an unstable person and his emotional life should not depend on my mood swings. I wish he could just forget about me and let it go.

joypulv
Feb 28, 2013, 04:30 PM
Save guilt for driving drunk with your boyfriend in the passenger seat, and he is horribly injured or dies. Or you hit your mother and she hits her head on the mantle and has a stroke.
I don't know why you are feeling guilty about these things. Parents often pay for college. If it bothers you, either drop out and get a job and support yourself, or promise her that you will do well by your degree as well as take care of her in her old age. As for guilt over this boyfriend?? WOMAN! He was a pathological liar, and a whimpering manipulative one at that.
(I didn't remember the boyfriend, but I remembered enough to look at your old posts.)

Yes, you have something wrong with you. I've been there, except for the screaming and the moments of total cheer. I spent my 20s and 30s - heck, I don't know when it stopped - feeling the panic, depression, and anxiety of failure and ruination of other lives. I slogged along wondering why anyone liked me.
Advice? Get help from a therapist you like. I wasn't really able to find anyone who didn't just sit there.

platinum21
Mar 9, 2013, 09:37 PM
I am the same way, and honestly you just need to find a balance. When you go up and down like that within a short time span try to choose different thoughts. I sometimes just go outside when I'm upset, breathing fresh air works wonders.