I just posted my introduction, which was quite brief. I think I want to share and seek suggestions about my intense feelings of failure. I think that, because I'm older and have struggled with this for so long, I won't get out of it. And I have terrible guilt and shame about being this way, and feel that I've lost so much time and life experience to it. My daughter is home for the summer, and I hate that she can see me struggle. It makes me feel she cannot have any respect for me. She has told me she just wants me to stop feeling depressed and inferior.
I don't know how I'll do at this program. I tried cbt last year for several months, but didn't feel better until I got new medication in my system. My mother was schizophrenic most of my childhood, and institutionalized until I was in my teens, and I worry I have a 'touch' of her illness, which expresses itself in deeply held distorted thoughts that just seem entrenched and immovable. I score high on the depression test - I especially believe I deserve to be punished. Challenging these beliefs with alternative thoughts seems impossible.
I recently left a job that was very unfulfilling - now I have to find another job, and am terribly worried about it. I have thought I should go back to school, but that seems like just a fantasy. Feeling like I do, I can barely manage my simple existence - how would I possibly be able to feel energized and motivated enough to go to school?
I am also an artist, but have lost my sense of that, too.
I would appreciate any comments from people my age, with kids, and in hearing how the family deals with this kind of situation. I feel so much guilt for being this way. My best friend was just diagnosed with lung cancer and is in treatment - he is not depressed. How dare I be depressed?
Thank you for listening to my story. And good luck to everyone out there.
