Not saying let's all go off meds and try lifestyle changes, meditation, and yoga, but how many of us can say we've actually tried all that in conjunction with our meds and still haven't achieved the desired results? If you can't feel exponentially better for improving every aspect of your health in combination with medication, then there's probably a common factor contributing to your suffering. It's your prerogative and your responsibility, to yourselves and others, to get answers and get better so that the human race has a chance at survival. You know what the last symptom of depression is? Death. This should never be the outcome of a treatable condition. If you're not willing to explore every possible avenue for alleviating your symptoms and healing your illness, you can't expect anyone else to either.

Lately I’ve been feeling obsessive compulsive sick. (It’s my way of saying that my mental illness is making me feel unwell) I hear whispers to be honest, telling me to do awful things to others and myself. They tell me how horrible everything is, they yell and scream at me, and tell me violent harmful things. Sometimes they plead for help, other times they try to lure me in to believing them, and worse of them, they threaten me. They have a gun pointed to my head and laugh at me, saying “I should’ve known you always been such a worthless piece of shit, hahaha, kill yourself you scum of the earth.” The voices are scary, but they are just voices, but they are still scary. Sometimes I want to see if they are true, but then it backfires. I am so gullible to the thoughts and believe them without warning, but when it comes to me, I am stubborn and headfast. I follow my rules, eventually breaking them out of fear. Sometimes, people can’t take it anymore, and fall. They fall off of buildings, bridges and their chairs. The voices over power them and then, they are gone. We are survivors of our own mind. We are programmed to live, but are forced by our own mind to fear itself. What a horrible fate that we are responsible for dealing with. A illness that has the same caliber has a physical one because both end with one thing: death. Death of our values, our health, and our actual life. Treat it seriously, it’s a mental illness for a reason.

I just feel like therapy isn’t working… like I get to talk about myself and understand myself… but I’m already incredibly self aware. My therapist thought I was like 5 years older than I am… and she gives me such basic strategies that do absolutely nothing for me. And a psychiatrist prescribed me with Zoloft… but I don’t know if T want to take medication. I’m scared of side effects… and I’m scared of getting better… I’m scared of letting my guard down. I know it will make me less cautious which makes me less likely to push myself to perfection like I currently do, which I can’t have happen. Every time I talk to my mom about it, she’s always like “Let’s talk about this some other time, I’m busy with other things”, and then never remembers. But in the rare moments we do talk about it, she treats it like I’m signing up to be a drug addict. I also feel very guilty for spending so much of my parents’ money- therapy… medication… etc… and also the idea of my being unlovable is so deeply engraved in my brain… I genuinely, truly believe it. No therapy or medication can fix it. I can’t change my mind. My therapist tells me my misophonia is not a “deal-breaker” and that someone would be lucky to have me as a partner… but then why hasn’t anyone ever liked me? My own FAMILY can’t stand me. How do I believe something I know isn’t true? That’s even harder to accept than me being unlovable. I can’t see someone loving me. And it is so incredibly exhausting to seek love,e I know I cannot have. My sister says, “It will get better with age…” It has only ever gotten worse. To the point I don’t want to get better. It has reached the severity where I feel more safe and successful with anxiety. My past 3 birthdays have been me wishing for therapy. And now I have therpay- and medication, the potential key… and I refuse? Am I too deep in? I cant get out, it’s too late. How did absolutely no one notice how much I had and have been hurting? Why did no one listen to my cries or worries? I feel really depressed and hopeless right now. It takes so much effort to get up every day… I’m so tired.

i want to get this out of the way; i’m not suicidal. i’m a 17 y/o guy whose been living with OCD for what i assume is most of my life despite only getting the diagnoses last year. i’ve been hustling on despite my mental health really consuming my life to moments in time where i question my sanity and self control. it’s the lack of control that really kills me with this disorder. each day i wake up, it’s the same persistent reminders; it’s the same meaningless conversations replaying; it’s the same small rituals that just barely let me breathe before the thoughts return. nothing i do is gonna stop that unbearable monogamy where i have to sit back and let my eyes be peeled open; i don’t know how to live with that. no pill has worked on me, and any response i give the thoughts just make them worse. right now i’m trying to just sit through it and not care. don’t let it effect me emotionally; try not to feel the discomfort. then it starts to manifest into physical pain where i feel the bones of my chest have this pressure—like staples entering them at the rhythm of a heart beat. i’m getting though this, but i’m not enjoying my life when doing so. i don’t know if i have a future where it isn’t just this repeating through the process of each day. i don’t want to spend the rest of my life avoiding the one thing i’m supposed to have control over. i also don’t want to drown my days in self medicating or get addicted doing so—like i already am. i don’t see the way to make this life of mine work, especially given how much i don’t have to do deal with at my age. of course that will come to. look, i’m not at risk; i really don’t want in anyway to die despite being basically hopeless. i’m numb to the pain of it, i don’t feel anything in my desire to escape these cycles, i just need an out. i’m not seeing a way to move forward. i’m willing to hear anything.