Getting a dog has helped me in ways I never expected. I just figured "cute, cuddle, good for brain chemicals". But they HAVE to be walked at a certain time. They HAVE to be fed at a certain time. Regardless of any of your internal issues, you love them and you have to provide for their needs.
So when you are in the kitchen filling their bowl, you make yourself some toast or grab a banana. When you are taking them for a walk, maybe you go a little farther because they like it and it's good for you. If you struggle to get up in the morning, they look to you pleading to be taken out to pee and you get yourself up and dressed. They need training and that requires being consistent, so you do it for them. It's so much easier to do it for them than for yourself.
This worked for me, still dealing with a lot of issues but there is atleast a hint of schedule. And one of of my two dogs is extremely finicky about time. She has to be out the door even if there no poop to be shat.
To be fair, there are a lot of garbage-tier therapists out there. And the vast majority of us can barely afford the short list of those that happen to take the insurance our employers chose. It's freaking hard, man.
Can confirm. When I got diagnosed with GAD, SzPD and rediagnosed with ADHD, my therapist asked me why I was so anxious all the time. After giving them the rundown of everything going on around me, they told me to not think about it.
Like, I get it. Would be cool. But, it's around me. Would be easier to avoid the ground beneath my feet. They did end up helping me fine-tune my routine to unfuck myself when spiraling into a panic attack though.
I literally got my diagnosis in one day at my PCP as he went through the DSM 5 criteria and asked some questions about my childhood. It took 30 min and he was not a pill pusher. He does not ever prescribe stimulants. I tried his nonstimulant medication recommendations after feeling the need to have some intervention and they were terrible. When I asked to try a different treatment, he referred me to an in network psychiatrist and things were smooth sailing. The same was true for my two brothers who were also diagnosed as adults and one was diagnosed in another state also at his PCP.
All that being said, I think people make the jump to a psychiatrist too early when they can seek screening at a PCP first. I had to answer a few more questions for onboarding at my psychiatrist, but I never ran into any issues. I also did not have to pay for an ADHD screening because I had already been diagnosed at my PCP.
I'm in Canada, so things here are a bit different. On top of that, things differ greatly between physicians.
I went into my primary care physician, and I inquired about ADHD, because I'd done some learning, and thought I had it, but didn't want to self diagnose. I thought he'd give me a referral to a psychiatrist for diagnosis, instead he gave me a survey, which was maybe 20 questions at most, took maybe a minute to fill out. After, he looked over my answers, said something to the effect of "this seems consistent with mild ADHD, do you feel it is affecting your life?" Very yes. Then he prescribed me a relatively low dose of ADHD meds, and as soon as I got that prescription filled, my life changed for the better.
I've been on it ever since and much happier for it. Took like 3 minutes at my primary care physician.
Meanwhile, my brother went to his primary, who referred him to a psychiatrist, who did weeks of discussions and examinations before any prescription was provided for him. He also has ADHD.
Different physicians, different people, different experiences.
rolling through DSMV and calling it a day is wild, from my experience, at least with more off the cuff mental disorders a survey containing about a thousand or so questions is the bare minimum. Plus a few more rounds of that as you try to narrow down any other potential disorders it could be, because it turns out this is a really hard field to deal with.
There is definitely utility in getting a diagnosis like this, but i'd imagine most wouldn't for most things other than basic stuff like ADHD, depression, anxiety etc... There is a considerable risk of just being wrong about something, even if you roll through something like ICD10 which is markedly better than the DSMV. If you're lucky there are a few good localized options like the akhtar profiles for SzPD which can summarize the general disorder into a handful of specifics actions more so than a broad behavioral checklist.
I have adhd and all if these problems that go with it. I also found that my anxiety disorder causes me to get extremely stressed when my work gives me too much to do and expects me to move mountains. That's when I start feeling like this and I start not sleeping.
Turns out sleep is really important. Right now work is in a bit of a lull for me, and I'm sleeping fine again, and I don't feel depressed, or have any of these issues at the moment, except the usual, adhd issues of staying on task, going to bed at a normal time, etc.
I will say, getting enough sleep makes the world issues you've mentioned easier to deal with. Can't say I have any advice for how to get it under control considering everyone is different when it comes to how to help their adhd symptoms. I'm super sensitive to medications for example, so a lot of them haven't helped me much. Hope you start getting on the right track at least.
Edit: I would say definitely try to minimize the doom scrolling tho, cut out some of the news if you can. I find life easier to deal with if I'm not always worried about how bad the world is outside.
I would say definitely try to minimize the doom scrolling tho, cut out some of the news if you can. I find life easier to deal with if I'm not always worried about how bad the world is outside.
When I was young I was a news junkie. Like, watching the local network news for an hour, then the world news. Every weeknight. This turned to news radio as an adult, especially since it was the only way to get traffic info at the time (yes, I am old). I cut this out save sports for many years, before there even was doomscrolling lol. Never had any social media to speak of for the longest time. Even when I joined Reddit about 10 years ago, I was just there for the niche hobby subs and avoided /all and /top like the plague.
Speaking of... when Covid hit it became fairly imperative to keep up with events. And it came right on the heels of getting screwed on a house purchase, and precipitated the work situation going from bad to worse. Felt like every time I tried to take a step forward I got a baseball bat to the kidneys, while the outside world made me question if the boneheaded decisions made in horror movies were really all that unrealistic.
The ironic part is that I had serious trouble finding decent mental health treatment while paying out the ass for insurance, since all it seemed to cover was pill mills and unqualified social workers (which I then had to further cough up dough for). So when I had a breakdown this past winter I was pretty much hopeless. But somehow, the Evil Socialist Freeloader Plan (aka Medicaid) let me hit the freaking lottery for both group and individual therapy (unhelpful PHP detour notwithstanding). I feel like I'm making actual progress.
The catch: in a month or two I'm either going to be homeless, or spending all of the spoons doing something I'll hate in exchange for maybe enough little slips of paper that prove I'm allowed to exist (or, ya know, sleep). Either way, the clock is ticking, and the doc is slow-walking my meds. Meanwhile I'm selling off personal items to pay bills, and come November there may not be a functioning SSA to process my disability claim that that I still haven't fully filled out because of executive dysfunction and the work questions being triggering.
That sucks that you're dealing with all of that. It must be really tough. I wish you the best of luck finding decent mental health treatment, and I really really hope your situation improves.
Spot on with the "I'd really like to get the depression under control before I let you function at your job."
Because fixing the unfixable is somehow more important than making sure I keep my job so I can like....eat. And live indoors. And afford the healthcare that is paying them.
Why do that though? It's not like not having the mental bandwidth to do basic things or your job would cause you to have less mental bandwidth to do stuff overall.
As someone else said upthread (and I've told a lot of people myself) if you're depressed but know you can focus and accomplish things, the first thing you accomplish might be suicide.
This is one of the few places where I agree with standard practice. Depression first, then ADHD.
Good news, during wartime and periods of intense crisis, some people experience a temporary paradoxical increase in mental health. So, I've got that going for me.
Waiting for one of the various global crises to change in such a way as to become individually actionable, so that the famed ADHD crisis mode superpowers can finally kick in:
When people say "touch grass" it usually means that the internet shouldn't influence your mental health. Unless any of the states decisions directly impact you, you can think about what you can do to influence it, but if you find yourself spiraling about it, its time to log off. Maybe start knitting idk
Yup, I'm guessing that'll do it all right. Knit a few pairs of socks, and just normalize the world away!
This is why we are doomed. People take a look at the dumpster fire that's life now and say, "Have you tried knotting socks and not being sad?"
Myself, I reply with what I hope is understanding and compassion, and say, "Yes indeed, things look bleak. You, unknown internet person, are not alone in feeling this way"
Yeah the 'idk' part is the important one because as a generation we've been so dependent on devices for everything from entertainment to productivity that we have no fucking clue what to do AFK. This has been a bitter struggle for me lately. I feel my life slipping away from me click by click but whenever I try to go offline my dopamine system SCREAMS at me to dig up the tablet I buried in my car's trunk.
Yep, this has absolutely been what I've had to do.
No single one of us is the protagonist in some story where we'll be the ones to tip the scales in what's wrong with the world. Do what you can, where you can, and focus on the world around you. What directly effects you and those you care about.
There is not enough energy in any single person to be able to care about everything, and you'll just burn yourself out for trying. This is true even in neurotypicals. It's why people aren't running around screaming constantly about the shit situations going on. It's why people don't seem to care, they can't possibly care about absolutely everything.
So you, like them, have to at least try to exert some control over what you spend your time and mental energy on. It's sure as fuck not easy and it doesn't help improve shit in the grander world, but spiraling isn't easy on you either and it also doesn't help. It just makes you feel worse about everything.
I know this sounds just like someone telling you to "just focus more", "just don't be sad", "just don't worry". But that's not it. It's not that simple. Never will be.
Even though it will likely be astronomically harder for you, you can exert some will and effort against the roiling storm of your own internal state. Anyone saying that it is literally impossible is letting the bad inside them win. Sometimes it is truly too much amd you have to, but you shouldn't live in that space forever, and you need to remind yourself that it isn't impossible whenever other people who are in a bad place are letting it win.
That internal bad is the bad you most need to try and fight, not the bad effecting the whole world.
The bad inside you may win. It may win most of the time, sometimes you might have to let it win because it's too mich at the moment, but you need to try to fight it as much as you are able to. You don't have to win, you just have to keep trying, as much and as often as you can.
Like if you haven't eaten in 8 hours, and there's food in your house, just eat some of it. Doesn't matter what it is, if it's appealing (is it ever when you feel like this?), if you don't think it will help (do you ever think it will before you eat when you feel like this?), if you don't want to (again, do you ever want to do anything when you're spiraling like this?) Go shove some fucking slop into your goblin mouth. Something's better than nothing. Hold onto whatever tiny bits of progress you can grasp by the edge of your fingertips and try to keep moving forward.
The secret is that you can do this. It sucks. It's not easy. It may take years and external help. But it is possible. And it has been the most worthwhile thing I've ever done in my life to just keep trying.
Just wanted to say thank you for this reply. Trying to un-knot and maybe get something accomplished today so I need the in-depth reply spoons elsewhere. But it's appreciated.
I'm 53 now and was considering getting an official diagnosis a few years ago, I even had the initial appointments set up.
I canceled it, because there was too much going on in my life at that moment (even got a notification I could reschedule for later)
All that made me think about what I was hoping for from diagnosis. In the end it was just having something in writing that would help me with self-acceptance.
Around that time I also was in a group psychotherapy so I talked about that and that part is now solved.
Regarding meds - I don't want to try them now as my other coping strategies are good enough at the moment and I'm a bit wary of side effects as I need to take a handful of. medicine every day, anyways.
In the end you need to decide why you want a diagnosis. If you want to try meds I'd go for it. (My son "inherited" it from me and had meds for a time, which really helped him).
In a case like mine where I didn't expect any new strategies out of it or didn't want meds - it was probably the right decision to skip it.
My friend your first steps that you should do right now are:
Get up from the toiltet
Grab a glass and drink it
Then make yourself a sandwich
Then continue from there
And each of those small tasks is a boulder that needs to go up and over the mountain. And there's no satisfaction for handling boulder #1, because boulder #2 has been looming the whole time. And so on. And when all of the boulders have finally been moved, the next mountain is right there. It's different than the first mountain, and all of the boulders are different. Each boulder and mountain takes more and more energy. There's no end. No reward for finishing. Just boulders all the way down. Or up, in this case.
I know it's a grating saying, but the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It's true.
You don't have to succeed, you don't have to enjoy it, it won't be easy, but you do have to keep trying. Try to do whatever single action you can get yourself to do in the given moment that gets you closer to your goal. Then do it again. And again. Again. Etc etc etc. You'll at least be closer, and that's something.
Maybe the whole point is to figure it out? Do you expect capable people to just take care of you? Not trying to be mean, but you sound like you've made up your mind to just be dead weight
It was a joke my guy. I didn't really expect that toilet water would cure depression lol. Also "just figure it out" has to be the worst advice for depression ever. If it was easy to figure out alone then no one would have depression.
I do deal with depression and although it's a struggle that won't end, healthy habits such as eating well and staying hydrated do help, which is what the original comment stated just to be ridiculed. Depression may not be our fault, but it is ours to deal with.
If you have depression then i am ashamed that you don't have the common sense and empathy for someone else who is struggling with it. Now please do yourself a favor and fix that lil problem. Here's a hint: You fix it by going away. This easy to follow instruction will improve both our lives. Try it now!
Buddy, empathy doesn't mean "allow someone to continue with plainly disordered thinking because it's what they know". I'm not the person you're upset with, but the first step in getting over any problem is to force yourself to take that first step.
You're welcome to hate it, to not want to. It will absolutely be hard, often to the point of feeling actually impossible. It is going to suck, potentially forever.
But you still need to try if you want any hope of getting out of it. Progress is almost imperceptibly slow, but you will make progress if you keep trying.
Expecting the planets to align and for yourself to suddenly not have this battle to fight with yourself through no action of your own is like expecting to win the lottery when you haven't even bought a ticket.
This is the difference between telling someone what they want to hear so they don't feel worse in the moment, and pointing them towards a solution that might lead to betterness longer term.
I am formally diagnosed with ADHD, depression, and anxiety. I was informally diagnosed with an autism spectrum "condition" (not sure the term at the moment) by a retired spectrum diagnostician I lived with for a few months. Don't try to tell me I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about here. I've lived it.
Hmm. I read your thing, but I'm not sure how to respond. On one hand, you make a good point. On the other hand, you seem like youre looking for a fight. Why? Why defend someone who, if they had spoken half as eloquently as you, would not have to have their comment moderated? I just don't get the whole point of your comment, no offense, and certainly not your anger. Who/what is it you are actually mad at here?
Why dont you go tell [the] paralyzed to just get up and pick something up off the shelf. Its so easy, isnt it? They just made their mind up to be dead weight and have people take care of them.
Just because you dont suffer from something or cant physically see it doesnt mean its not real, and just because you are capable of something doesnt mean everyone is, even if they WANT to be capable of it.
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