tw:suicide
Hello I am very new to talking about myself online so sorry in advance if i ramble!
The first sign of having a mental health problem for me was at the age of 9 i started skin picking (dermatillomania) which is something that has stayed with for all my life. There was nothing significant that happened in my childhood that seemed to have caused this, i had (and still have) quite a neurotic and coddling mother which may have contributed.
Then when I moved into secondary school i found life more stressful i suppose, with a bigger school my self esteem was getting lower and lower and i started to develop a phobia of speaking aloud in class. skin picking was now a big part of my life, as soon as i came home i would spend hours in front the mirror just picking away at my skin. My phobia of speaking got so bad that i started staying at home on the days that i would have had lessons that required me to speak. However the school picked up on this and started to force me in so i could reach their government quota of good attendance from pupils. I think it was this accumulation of stress and also a major skin picking episode the night before which strained my eyes so badly that they hurt the next morning, that caused me to have my first panic attack in which i vomited aged 15.Then I got it into my head then that I could have a panic attack anywhere which would lead me to vomit and in public so I became mortally terrified of being in social places which i couldn't leave easily, hence i left school. I wrack my brain around whether my depression started as the result of the anxiety or vice versa. Prior to skin picking i was a normal healthy child and my mum said that it was a surprise that I developed depression. Anyway, from leaving school i became socially isolated and was definitely depressed for about two years of keeping myself at home hidden away and I lost enjoyment in most things. After a failed attempt in 2011 of joining sixth form i got back to education the next year, when i was 17. However my depression didn't lift and my councilor has said to me that my depressive "i don't care about anything" attitude has been a way to cope with my anxiety which was always about caring too much. To cut a long story short I don't think the depression has ever left, not even momentarily, it pervades every second of my life. I am just coming out of a year of long depressive episode of being in bed (no exaggeration) (goodness when i write this down it upsets me because I realise how extreme it sounds!) and I was suicidal a couple months ago for the first time in my life and had to go to hospital.
The reason for me being suicidal was this extreme anxiety that I will never come out of this numb depressive state and feel normal and experience normal emotions. I am worried that I have gone far too deep into the hole of depression that I will never be able to get back out??! Because I cant remember what it felt like to be happy therefore I don't have the will to keep on living. I am receiving treatment (medication and therapy) but nothing in my brain is clicking to want to get better because i cant conceive what that is like because I have never been it?? I feel like I am just going back to the numb emotionless state that made me suicidal in the first place? Is there any hope for me? I am almost 22 now, so this has been with me for most of my life and i don't feel like it will leave because it is engrained into me, it is all I know. Sorry this is so long, thanks, Kate