Epictetus

One of the things I like to do is care for animals. But something interesting has been happening to me since I started to do this. When I am feeling really low, an animal will appear beside me. One Christmas I was feeling really low. I went to Mass but I couldn't force myself to go inside. Instead, I stood outside the church. Terrible thoughts were going through my head and then a frog hopped up next to me and just sat there. [Frogs are somewhat rare here in December]. I don't know why, but for some reason I felt better. This happens to me a lot. Once a lizard came up and just stayed next to me. Of course, these events could all be coincidences. But feeling better is something real. I really do feel better after these events happen. Sometimes the animal that comes up to me is an insect like an ant or beetle. It almost feels as though someone out there is giving me a little kiss. Its like someone out there does not want me to hate myself.

Health anxiety is just awful. I sure hope you find something that helps!!!!

Hi and welcome to the Forums, DaveC. I am so sorry that you are suffering. I am 63 years old and on Celexa and Omeprazole. Sorry I don't have any experience with Paxil. Hopefully others here with experience with Paxil will respond to your post. Depression and anxiety can be so brutal that there are really no words to describe them to people who have never experienced them. Worries about esophageal cancer are not foreign to me as I have had precancerous polyps removed from my esophagus before. Worry and depression seem to feed each other in an ugly vicious circle. I wish I could write more but have pain in my hands from tendinitis and so must close now. I sure hope the Paxil kicks in pretty soon. I'm rooting for you. Please keep us posted on how you are doing. I hope you will be feeling good as soon as possible! - epictetus

Hi MissKris721, I'm so sorry this happened to you! You posted on Saturday; are things better now? - epictetus

Hi toughfighter83, I can feel for what you are going through and facing from my own personal experience, but sadly I don't have any good advice. Hopefully others here will have something useful and helpful to offer. I feel like I am in the same boat as you are or at least different boats in the same ocean. Sure hope you can find something that helps!!! - epictetus

Hi Lemonade27, Depression is brutal in all its forms. I can totally relate to what you wrote. I wish I could write more, but tendinitis in both hands prevents me from typing for long. My heart goes out to you ! ! ! - epictetus

Please don't harm yourself, gvn2fly. You help so many people here on the Forums with your posts. So many of us here are on the very edge and posts like the ones you have written save lives. I follow your posts and I know you have saved my life. For six years people here have told me that it is not advice-posts that have saved their lives, but the kind you have written. Saving lives is one of the greatest things a human being can accomplish in life. Maybe the greatest. Even to save a single life dwarfs all other human accomplishments and puts them to shame. You may feel low but you are are a truly great person. Saving a life can justify a person's entire life and existence. You are such a person. That is what greatness is and you possess it! Your loss would be an inconsolable tragedy to me and the others here on the Forums and it would just devastate your wife and son for years and years and decades. . Losing someone like that is something a person never gets over. I lost a close relative when I was younger and it scarred me for life. Please think of your wife and son. Please go to the hospital again. None of us here want to lose you!!! - epictetus

Would it help to talk more about it here, Togemii?

Hi and welcome to the Forums, TinKnight! I am so sorry you are suffering from self-doubt and self-loathing. Those are feelings I can really identify with. I wish I could write much more, but I have pain in my hands from tendinitis so I cannot keep typing for long. I do look forward to your future posts and hope that you find this site as helpful to you as it has been to me. Thank you for posting what you did. It helps me and so many others here feel less alone with our own personal anguish and pain. Posts like yours are really healing and life-saving. So we are all very grateful to you. I only hope we can be as helpful to you as you have been to us. - epictetus

I also want to welcome you to the Forums, Jim! I wish I had some good advice for you, but sadly I don't. Hopefully others here will be able to make up for my lack of wisdom. You deserve a good life, Jim. I hope things work out for the best for you and your girlfriend! - epictetus

You certainly deserve a good job. No one is perfect including those who would be interviewing you. I think you would be good as a consultant for T-Mobile too. - epictetus

Hi JessiesMom, I'm sorry that these things happened to you. It must be so discouraging. I wish I had something helpful to say, but I struggle with abandonment issues too. Something that helps me a bit is something I learned from a psychiatrist. He told me: "If you love yourself, someone will always love you. And if you love yourself, you can never be abandoned." I have reflected on these things over the years. Please don't think I am offering you "advice." I am not in your shoes and am eminently unqualified to give advice. I sure hope things improve for you. You deserve a happy life where you can have peace of mind. - epictetus

@JaneWoe I'm so sorry you are suffering! Although I am not in your shoes, what you describe is something that is familiar to me in my own battle against depression and procrastination. Sadly I cannot offer any advice. I can share with you what helps me personally although I realize of course that what works for me perhaps is something that only works for me. A psychiatrist once told me that anxiety and depression are linked to the deep-seated belief that one's self-worth is vulnerable, that it can be increased and decreased and even lost. Those people, he told me, who generally feel that their self-worth in invulnerable are generally more immune to depression and anxiety if those do not have a biological origin. Since I grew up being taught that my self-worth had to be constantly earned, tested and proven, I was definitely a person with a sense that my self-worth was extremely vulnerable to externals. The psychiatrist told me that I was an absolutely unique, never to be repeated, irreplaceable person. Never again in time, history or eternity would someone exactly like me exist and that that uniqueness was the foundation of my self-worth. He compared this to the idea of being born into a royal family. One is born a prince or princess. It is not earned. It is not something that can be lost or taken away. No matter what one's successes or failures are in life, no matter one's misfortunes, no matter one's falls or frailties: one can never lose one's royalty. He said self-worth is like that. It is based on one's being not on doing and having. It is invulnerable. So I have gradually begun to see my procrastination in different terms. I have taken my self-worth out of the equation. My self-worth in invulnerable. I believe your self-worth in invulnerable too. In addition to that, I am conscious of the fact that posts like the one you wrote today help me and many others who are struggling with depression, anxiety and panic. Many people over the years have told me that posts like yours have not only had a healing effect on them but have even proved life saving. So many of us here who have been on the very edge have experienced reading of a another person's plight and feeling less alone and isolated and able to go on. That is literally life saving. Saving a life is one of the greatest, if not the greatest achievement a human being can attain in life. Such a thing can justify a person's entire life and existence although one's life does not need justification since self-worth in invulnerable. So I see you as such a helping and life saving person. Many people who have saved lives have had difficult lives fraught with frailties and losses of all kinds and yet those things have not mattered in the light of what they did for others in saving lives. I don't know if you will burn that brush pile today. But to me whether you do so or not has nothing to do with your greatness as a human being and your helping me and others here which is something really heroic. There is an old saying that goes like this: "Whoever helps save a single life, it is as if that person had saved the entire world." I see you as someone like that. I can only look up to you as a person. My deepest apologies for not having any advice to offer. I hope you will find something that helps you with your panic. Panic is awful and scary! - epictetus

Hi Regretgirl, I'm sorry you are suffering. It is awful that you are suffering! Just awful! I can't claim to know you after having read three posts of yours here on the Forum, but there is something I do know about you. Your posts here on the Forums help me and others here to feel less isolated and terribly alone with our own personal forms of anguish and pain. I've been here on the Forums for over six years now and many people have told me that posts like the one you just wrote have not only had a healing affect on them, but have actually saved their lives. When I first joined the Forums I assumed that only people that offered others great wisdom saved lives. But I was surprised to learn that sharing misery often makes the difference between life and death in those who are living on the very edge and I have been on the very edge and know this to be true. No one who saves even one life could possibly be "a massive waste of a person." The very opposite is the case. To save a life or lives is perhaps the greatest achievement any human being can make in life. I can only see you, therefore, as a person of great dignity and moral stature. I don't know exactly what mistakes or misfortunes you have suffered in your life. Often those who suffer the greatest falls and misfortunes end up being the greatest. Saving just a single life can justify a person's entire life and existence. None of what I have written means that I think it is okay that you are suffering. It is absolutely not okay! I wish I knew how to help you but sadly I don't. I do hope that somehow and someway that you are able to realize how important you are to me and all of us here on the Forums. It is good that you exist. It is very, very good that you exist. I am sorrowful that I cannot help you as you have helped me and others here. I sure hope things get better for you. You are a person of greatness who I can only look up to! - epictetus

I am very happy for you, cosb4568 ! ! !