Hey Pandas, What Is Your Experience With A Mental Health Disorder? (Closed)

*This submission contains mention of SA, Suicide, Self Harm, and Abuse. If you are triggered by these, please don't read spots flagged with this symbol: //

When I was younger, I lived in a home with a deadbeat mother and constantly angry father. They would get into arguments, and mother was often the cause of angry behavior.

// My mother would not clean, and our house was a pigsty. She would lash out at my older brother, duct taping him on the wall, forcing him to drink soap, trying to abandon him places, and much, much, more. I witnessed multiple events of this happening, and I would stand there, frozen, and scared. I felt extremely guilty. My mother tried to live her life through me, sold multiple things we've owned to fuel her habit of careless giving and spending of what money we didn't have. She eventually kidnapped and then abandoned us when my father managed to get us. She was cheating on my father and apparently, she got worse after she abandoned us. //

My father got sole legal custody of us, and we're in a safer spot now. But later, in middle school, all my mental blocks against me started collapsing inside of me and falling apart. I started developing severe anxiety, and even paranoia. I could not sleep with my door locked, and being home alone made me carry a knife with me at all times. I also developed severe depression, and my grades, my hygiene, my sanity, my self control, my ability to handle being touched, and my general ability to even do things just plummeted. I was having hallucinations.

// I started having thoughts of ending my life, feeling that nobody cared about me, and I developed an eating disorder and started ingesting harmful objects, but not enough to do serious harm. I couldn't do my homework as my brain just failed me and I couldn't do anything. Anxiety caused me to be scared of everything and anything, and I couldn't relax in the slightest. I started screaming and shouting in class, and purposely causing distractions so that somebody would notice, hear me, instead of abandoning me to my demons. But I had to hide that I'm not fine. I would start writing suicidal letters and letters of goodbyes, and I'd try to make a noose, because I couldn't sleep and wanted it all to end. I'd choke myself with ribbons, my sweatshirt, my ID, anything I could get my hands on. I finally managed to get it out that I was depressed when I started quitting everything I loved. //

I went to the mental hospital twice, where they incorrectly diagnosed me with an anger disorder, and correctly diagnosed me with MDD, PSD, SAD, and GAD. I had to go through multiple medications and strengths, but it wouldn't improve.

// Eventually, I finally let out my darkest secret and got more support for that, and I started to drastically improve; my brother would frequently SA me and force me down, and no matter how hard I fought, he would still prevail. In his anger at me being the favorite child, he SA'd me over 100 times, and he'd attack me. He'd scream at me, attack me if I didn't do anything his way or correctly, and he took away my innocence. He got arrested, and justice was done, and all because my father believed me. //

Things have been done to keep my family safe and secure. There are cameras around the house, and things are locked up. I got therapy, and now have my depression at a manageable level and still have some old habits to fight. I occasionally have relapses, but I've grown stronger after it, not because of it. I basically fought for my life and dealt with scars. I hope that nobody has to go through my pain everyday, and I'd never wish severe depression on someone; it's soul crippling.

Thanks for letting me talk about this. I hope you are doing alright. I love you pandas!

My depression & anxiety problems started because of introvert personality. I have very few close friends. I don't really have a family & For many years my friends were around me so I felt normal. But eventually they got busy with their lives (family, marriage, boyfriend etc). Can't blame them, they have their own lives.

I tried making new friends but who wants to be friends with a boring introvert. I immersed myself in work during covid time & that kept me busy but eventually started getting anxiety attacks & palpitations.

Went for therapy & was diagnosed with severe depression as I have lost all self worth & gone into self loathing. I kept blaming myself for everything & started hating myself for being an introvert & fear of losing my few friends.

Therapy & medication initially helped but I hit a plateau.

I still don't feel good about myself. Sometimes I want to disappear. I have gone into self isolation . I haven't met my friends cause I don't want to spoil their mood again with nonsense going in my head right now. From a casual smoker I have become a chain smoker & have social anxiety now.

Things are better than they were a year ago but can't figure out how to feel normal & happy again. I know I have to do it on my own but it's easier said than done

Thanks for letting me rant

I don't have it that bad, but mine work together to cause havoc. I've been diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and sensory processing disorder, so it's pretty much the unholy trinity. This is how stuff goes:

Shirt feels weird. I can't stop thinking about the shirt. I am now unable to do anything with full effort because of the shirt. That guy looks suspicious, why is he looking at me. The class I'm in right now didn't have working speakers during the lockdown drill, what if someone comes in and we don't know? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY IS THIS SHIRT SO ITCHY?!?!?!

Everything is fine :)

I was raised by a narcissist for a mother but I love my dad. I didn’t even realize I might have depression until I was in my 20’s and later than that did I realize anxiety was having around with me living in a state of constant hyper awareness. I see that I now have unhealthy relationship with food and have been diagnosed with Binge eating. One of the best feelings was realizing my doctor believed me and want to make sure I have the right medication for me (for my depression and anxiety). I started therapy recently and it has been so emotionally difficult but so helpful in a variety of ways I wasn’t expecting. Slowly I’m beginning to build confidence in the way I look and learn to take care of myself physically and emotionally. I’ve still got a long way to go but now I can see more of my negative internal dialog even if I don’t have the strength to challenge it. Thank you for being a space to speak out about these things~ If you made it to here please know I at least have love for you even if you’re working on loving yourself ❤️

[Trigger warning for mentions of self harm, eating disorders, and wanting to commit suicide] I have been depressed for about eight or nine years, and it started when I lost my great grandmother who I loved dearly, and after she passed away I became a shell of who I used to be, I stopped caring about most things, and I started to wish that I could simply stop being alive anymore. A while ago my classmate made a rude comment about my weight, and it made me realize that people think I look fat, and it caused me to not eat anything, then I gradually became skinnier and skinnier, and it has made me feel tired all the time, and I barely have any energy to do anything, and I have punched an ice covered snow bank and made my fists bleed, and I enjoyed it and I have wanted to commit suicide for a while now but the thought disturbs me.

It's NORMAL and HEALTHY to get PTSD from horrible things, and kinda insane *not to*. So if you're not okay with something? You can't "let it go"? You're not the crazy one. We all have a different resilience mentally/emotionally. Sometimes, that rubber band resilience is exhausted, and sometimes, it isn't. We're each unique in how that plays out.

Diagnosed PTSD, heavy on the suicidal depression (AKA my inner abyss), had no pre-trauma life, but I've had a pretty good post-trauma one, and I never imagined that psosible... yet here I am. Bad days? Yes. Bad weeks? Yes. Bad life? No.

I'm just going to put mine on here to remind others that your life doesn't need to be traumatic for you to have "valid" mental health issues. It's valid, no matter the cause.

//WARNING: might cause triggers if you have depression or have been suicidal.//

I have the best family. They've always supported me.
About two years ago my very best friend in the whole world started dating my brother. Which is amazing, because she's now my SIL, but is also a huge bummer because everything became about THEM.
All the things I did as a normal bestie became "so cute" and "so responsible" if he thought of them as a boyfriend. Like making sure she ate enough and got rest (she has a chronic illness).
I was lonely and frustrated. My family didn't notice...they were really caught up in the "romance" of the situation.
Not even I realized it was a problem until it had spiraled into anger, then anxiety, then depression, then self-hate, and finally suicidal thought.
At that point, I was too afraid to tell my family because I felt like a horrible person for feeling this way over something so "small."
Around that same time my Dad lost his job because of COVID and we had to move...to a totally different country. I got a lot worse but I didn't know what to do.
When we finally ended up settling somewhere and most of the daily stress was removed, I was finally able to face my issues and ask for help. My family recognized that I really wasn't okay, and they have supported me since then.
I did counseling/therapy lately, got a puppy, and things are a lot better now.
It still affects almost everything I do, like making new friends or setting boundaries with my brother and SIS still, but I know that if I take one step at a time, I will be okay.

I like to say sometimes: Jesus loves the broken ones best.
Because I think He does. He didn't come to save the perfect people, but for the ones who break hardest and most often.

My disorder is Recurring Major Depression, which I've suffered from since I was a child. I am now 81. Problems? Repeated suicide attempts, repeated admissions to mental hospitals, 60 years of various antidepressants (some more effective than others), many therapists, becoming disabled due to the depression, and by far the hardest of all, working full time while raising 5 sons.

What I am grateful for? The support from, help, and understanding of my family, support of friends, and some truly talented therapists. Without these things, I would not have survived to have and enjoy the life I have now.

FYI, I am still taking antidepressants.

⚠️This post contains depression,self harm,anxiety and sort of dissociation⚠️

So I’ve struggled for a long time with different things.With anxiety i am very emotional,I am very paranoid and have very bad thoughts about myself.Depression sort of comes with that,and those thoughts and those thoughts provoke feelings of hurting myself.I’ve cut and scratched myself before just to feel something and it’s horrible,keeping clean is hard but I’m trying to do it.Over time I started to dissociate,I’d space out or feel confused what I’ve done or when I did something without knowing and it’s kinda scary to feel because I’m not sure what hall

I've been suicidal since i was just 8 when my uncle r*ped me. Even before that my mother made it clear every day that she hated me and I ruined her life by being born and she should have had an abortion when she found out she was pregnant with me. I told her the next day what her brother had done to me and she told me that I obviously had forced him to do it to me. I begged her to call the police and she said that they wouldn't believe an 8 year old over 2 adults who said I was lying and I believed her. Then she beat me for telling her. Spent my childhood trying to avoid her. She was also an alcoholic and a drug user but hid it well and always treated my 3 sisters like princesses. My sister 2 years younger had the same father as me and 2 younger sisters had my stepdad. As my father was in the military and was never around when mother got pregnant again she found my stepdad and he was there for the pregnancy and the birth so he always treated her as she was his own. At 11 I babysat for a new family a couple of miles away. I was supposed to be spending the night but the dad made me incredibly uncomfortable. They both got home drunk, she went straight to bed and he sat on the sofa where I was trying to sleep and was making inappropriate suggestions towards me and I decided to leave and walk home. I got attacked and r*ped but it wasn't the dad, just a random person who saw me. Told mother but of course she was drunk and didn't believe me. Mother had gone to rehab again and so after being released 5 months later she was sober and saw that I hadn't written down the dates of when my period had started and stopped and I told her that I hadn't had a period in that 5 months so she took me to the doctor and I was 5 months pregnant. Just turned 12. She told me that I was never allowed to tell anyone because she would kill me and my baby. I believed her. She carried on abusing me and when I was 8 months pregnant I started getting stomach pains and she called an ambulance. I found out later she told everyone it was my appendix. I don't remember much about being in the hospital but I remember someone telling me to push and I asked if it was a boy or girl and was told I had a girl and asked to hold her. No because her parents were waiting for her to arrive. I didn't sign any adoption papers and I can't find anything about her. All I can assume is that my mother did the adoption under the table and there wasn't a paper trail for me to find. She is 37 now and I hope and pray she got great parents to love and care for her. Still hurts. After giving birth my mother relapsed and refused to talk about my baby and spent the last years of her life in and out of rehab. I left home at 15 because I was so damaged by her and also because of what I did between the age of 13 to 15. I'd go to pubs and nightclubs, no alcohol or drugs just s.e.x. Low estimate of how many guys I was with is 1000+. No self esteem lead to me doing it. It was attention that I needed from them. I'm 50 this year and I've got really bad mental health issues. Chronic depression, ptsd, social anxiety and multiple suicide attempts. So much awful things have happened in my life that I really wish my mother had aborted me. I am unable to work so on a tiny disability pension and struggling to pay my bills or eat. No one cares or wants to help. I'm so tired of fighting every day and just want to die

since the year began, i feel like my life is falling apart. like nothing is going right and im drifting from someone i thought was a good friend

Since me and my ex broke up in November I suffer from night sweats even if I’m cold. Or some days I will shake so bad I can’t drive. Dinner with my parents who I should be 100% comfy with for no reason the shakes start. When I get a tight chest and lump in the throat is the worst though because I can’t eat or drink. It’s not made me an introvert I still see family and friends but some things I just can’t control.

I was raised by a narcissist for a mother but I love my dad. I didn’t even realize I might have depression until I was in my 20’s and later than that did I realize anxiety was having around with me living in a state of constant hyper awareness. I see that I now have unhealthy relationship with food and have been diagnosed with Binge eating. One of the best feelings was realizing my doctor believed me and want to make sure I have the right medication for me (for my depression and anxiety). I started therapy recently and it has been so emotionally difficult but so helpful in a variety of ways I wasn’t expecting. Slowly I’m beginning to build confidence in the way I look and learn to take care of myself physically and emotionally. I’ve still got a long way to go but now I can see more of my negative internal dialog even if I don’t have the strength to challenge it. Thank you for being a space to speak out about these things~ If you made it to here please know I at least have love for you even if you’re working on loving yourself ❤️

I've been depressed and an insomniac for as long as I can remember. I was diagnosed with C-PTSD when I was around 10 or 11. I got diagnosed finally when I was in my 30's with ADHD. Below I will be talking about nervous breakdowns and forgiveness - I don't know if someone is going to get upset about that or not so that's the only warning I have.

Just posting up the trigger warnings for my childhood would be a paragraph all it's own. Not to mention I'd need a longer character limit to even cover part of my story. I also don't want to get into to many details in part because I've traumatized a couple of my friends who pushed to know what happened to me. The fact that I made it to 18 alive is a miracle. I still have some physical issues from what happened to me when I was a kid, though thankfully almost all of the scars have faded.

Nervous breakdowns are hard, they can be terrible, but there's a clarity that you can sometimes gain on the other side of it that helps see things in a way you hadn't looked at it before. I realized when I was in my early 20's that I was holding onto my trauma like a demented teddy bear which had taken root into me. I was letting everyone who had ever hurt me still have power over me. The Rage I had from all of the abuse was draining me and it felt like that's all I had. The demented teddy and the rage.

I realized I was holding onto my trauma because I afraid of what I would be without it. That. That right there, was the realization I came to when I came out of my 3rd nervous breakdown. How messed up was that that I was defining myself by the worst things that had happened to me? I was afraid to put down that demented teddy bear because what would I be without it. When I realized that I got pissed off.

Not the best way to go down the path of letting things go but defiantly a motivator. Forgiveness isn't just a religious thing. It also doesn't mean you forget, or poof the anger and rage are gone. It took me years to dig out every throne that demented teddy I'd been clinging to had buried in my skin. I put it down a long time ago but it follows me everywhere. There are times where it will cling to me again digging in and setting back my progress. I didn't forgive anyone for them - as far as I'm concerned they can all go F themselves. I did it for me. I did it as an outlet to let go of the anger. To let go of the rage. To free myself from what they did to me and break the chains of passing that pain to another generation.

I'm not saying any of this so anyone will hop of the forgiveness train - I would never say that is mandatory for anyone. It's just the path that works for me. Do I still get angry? Yes. Do I still have times where shove the truth down peoples throats? Yes. But I don't let any of that control me anymore and it hasn't for well over a decade.

I'm still clinically depressed and always will be. I still have triggers that if they get flipped it's going to be a bad week. I still have problems sleeping and hangs ups about weird stuff. But I've learned how to manage all of that. It'll never go away, just like that demented teddy is going to be following me around forever, but I give it a nice punt every now and then to keep it from getting to close to my happiness today. There is happiness. There is joy. There is a lot of good where there wasn't. It's worth it to me and I like who I am today.

I have OCD (Obsessive- Compulsive disorder). A lot of people think it just means you just like things to be tidy, or wash your hands a lot. It is frustrating when people perceive me that way. The reality is that it is Intrusive thoughts and compulsions. OCD is an anxiety disorder. You have these intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors/rituals (compulsions).You then have the urge to perform a task to get get rid of the intrusive thoughts . The thing is that the tasks only provide temporary relief. This forms the cycle, making it almost endless. Then all the other disorders that can forms off of OCD.

An example is Trichotillomania, when someone cannot resist the urge to pull out their hair. I have this. I have gotten better at controlling it with medication, and constant reminders though. For a while I had a bald spot on the front of my hairline, so I had to part my hair a certain way to hide it. (It grew back, so no worries)

Another example is Compulsive skin picking (CSP). I pick at my upper arms, and sometimes my face. I refuse to wear tank-tops due to my upper arms being revealed because it gives me the urge to pick at them. I have scars due to picking at them in the past. I try my very hardest not to pick at them.

I think I might also have Obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). Haven't gotten diagnosed, but I match all the check marks.

***tw: sh, descriptions of anxiety, body image struggles, and mentions of depression***
mine is not nearly as bad compared to some people, but here goes. i've struggled with generalized anxiety disorder for most of my life, but i only realized it when it got worse a few years ago, and i've only been officially diagnosed for a month though i've had it waaay longer. along with that i also have moderate social anxiety. oh and i have a weird phobia of robot voices/automated sounds. like voicemails, and scam calls, and the emergency alert alarms like weather and amber alert sounds. i've not met anyone else with this exact phobia. and my parents refuse to get me tested for depression, like it won't be real if they just don't get me tested ugh. and my whole family has adhd and i've always shown the symptoms but again, they don't want to get me tested. probably because they believe the stuff inside my head can just be prayed away and they don't want to put me on medication. next part of the story: i've struggled with body image issues for as long as i can remember but when it got worse was when i was twelve years old and it's gotten even worse as the years go by. i try to not eat but i always end up eating anyway. it's gotten the worst after i realized i'm nonbinary and now dysphoria is part of the mix. this past summer i started cutting just to where my parents wouldn't notice. i wore a looot of bracelets. but then my mom saw some cuts on my leg and she started to get concerned, and my parents searched through my phone and found out i was gay. they basically told me i was too young to be gay and it's probably just a phase. i'm sure you can figure out that did wonders for my mental health...so i'm still in this jumbled mess of undiagnosed and diagnosed mental illnesses and i don't know how or when i'm gonna get out of it.

*TW sh, intrusive suicidal thoughts*

So recently I got diagnosed with ADD (ADHD) and that explains a lot of my anxiety, stress, and inability to get school assignments done. I'm on anxiety meds. But sometimes when the assignments get way out of control and I think I can't finish them, I'll look around the house for a sharp knife and try to slit the skin at my wrist. I haven't done it in a couple of weeks because my parents hid the kitchen knives and the butter knives aren't sharp enough. Sometimes I'll just wind up crying in the middle of the night because intrusive thoughts will come through and then I'll think about suicide and what my relatives and friends' lives would be like if I didn't exist anymore. Then I'll snap out of it. And I've been a bit clingy with my friends because I'm scared that something bad's gonna happen and one of us is going to die. Sometimes I also doubt my sexuality and gender identity just because I'm bored even though I know it's how I feel. I honestly don't know. I hate it all. But I send love to you pandas that are struggling with much worse than this.

I only have adhd. people say I have personalty disorder due to me pretending to be my oc's all the time. I do things they want instead of doing things I want. I pretended to like science because my oc likes science. now i only have two science classes.

I have adhd, and it makes me not be able to sit still and feel jittery a lot of the time. It also makes me forget or not pay attention to when I need to eat, drink water, and go to the bathroom. I have trouble focusing and stare into space a lot, and I forget stuff all the time. This is probably the worst thing. I have a really good memory long term, but my short term memory is s**t. I constantly forget to turn stuff in, clean, do chores, set alarms, and literally everything.

Trigger warning: self harm and self-unaliving mentioned.

I tried self-unaliving once. My issue was social phobia. I overcame it with systematic exposure to stressors/fears/crowds. I started by just being near them. Then entering the crowd. Then standing still in the crowd. Then timing how long I could stand. After about a year of doing this every day I got over it. I am now quite extroverted. I hope this helps someone.