u/Candid-Key-5523

I have MDD, possibly treat resistant since I had to do TMS. I do take medication. I had a brutal relapse last year after trying to get off some medication and I ended up being in so much pain, much worse pain than how my depression was pre-medication, and the pain really drained and burnt me out for months. I am only partially recovered. This happened exactly a year ago and I had to do TMS a few months ago to get back on my feet.

Anyways, my main symptoms is this constant pain in my mood that worsens with stress, whether it’s good stress and pressure in order to perform well, or bad stress from things like finances and family. I really wish I could handle the good kind of stress because it is what fuels me to exert myself as best I can, in school and work for example. But me being completely drained cognitively by my depressive relapse has almost completely prevented me from enduring this good stress and making progress in life.

I always feel like I will not be able to reach my potential in whatever it may be because I don’t feel like I have the capacity to endure other hardships that could be taxing mentally. This is why I don’t take on many responsibilities (I’m 22M living with my parents and have a few semesters left of college, had to take a 2 year break previously due to bad mental health).

So yeah, I have this fear that the good kind of stress and pressure needed to make progress and perform well in certain areas of life could potentially worsen my depression such that it would cause me to break down and almost impulsively hurt myself.

I’m 2-3 months out of TMS and so far I’m feeling decent. I hope I don’t slowly slip back into depression in the next few months and I’m hoping that I can ride the therapeutic effects of TMS for the next few years.

Could this be a one and done therapy for some people?

I was honestly not doing bad before getting on my first depression med which was zoloft. My only bad symptom at the time was anhedonia, I just felt flat and not really sad or antything.

And then my doctor added welbutrin and my depression was still not getting better. I had to get on rexulti while on the zoloft and welbutrin combo and that stabilized me for 2-3 years but I got off the rexulti because it caused me a lot of weight gain.

I was off zoloft at the time and was only on welbutrin. I decided to get off welbutrin just to see how I do without it…. And I suffered the most brutal relapse in depression that I ever experienced. I was in extreme mood pain and was experiencing severe anhedonia, I quite literally thought that was it and that I had to off myself because I couldn’t bear the pain.

I eventually got back on the welbutrin and rexulti (the combo that worked for 2-3 years before) and they weren’t working as well, even at higher doses. I also had to do a round of TMS, and that worked just a little bit. It didn’t change the fact that I was just so drained and tired from dealing with the extreme depression for so many months, between getting off the welbutrin last august , to doing Tms two months ago.

Now I feel so drained and hopeless about my depression because I started off only being numb emotionally and not feeling much pleasure and not having painful mood, to experiencing extremely low painful mood constantly which won’t go away no matter the treatments. Im strongly suspecting that these meds really messed with my brain chemistry beyond repair.

I don’t know what to do.

He’s only 9 years old and doesn’t have his brain developed enough to consider the risks and dangers of having his image on the internet. There’s always been many predators in his comment sections making comments about his body and it makes me sick. I really want my mom to delete his account so we can protect his safety and privacy for now and for the future. There’s been cases of people’s children’s photos online being used to create AI generated sexual abuse material, and that’s really scary to me (https://www.facebook.com/reel/1534350095048525/?mibextid=ZZyLBr)

Although the videos are innocent and they’re about him playing sports, she keeps saying that she wants to build a “brand” for him so that it could eventually start generating income. How do we know that he still wants to be posted online a year or two from now? She doesn’t have this foresight and it really pisses me off. She insists that HE wants to make the videos, which he says he does but again he’s too young to make those decisions. She keeps arguing that I’m accusing her for being a bad person all while I am just trying to protect him and my family, her included.

I am going to find a way to delete his account, yes it will upset him and my mom but it’s way better than having videos and pictures of him on the internet circulating for predators to exploit.

I don’t know what to do. I’m 22M for the record.

I already did my first 2 years at community college and I’m about to start my major courses in a computer engineering major. My math skills are okay, mainly due to the fact that I have a hard time applying myself and handling stress because I have TRD (treatment resistant depression) that I take medication for, and probably ADHD, that I’m not diagnosed with nor do I take medication for. These might sound like excuses, and they might be, but the link is very clear between the quality of my health and my ability to perform well in school.

Basically, I was doing fine for a few years and had my mental health issue (the TRD) under control, until I relapsed last year very brutally after trying to get off medication. I got back on the same meds and they just pooped out and didn’t work as well as before, even at higher doses.

I had to undergo this procedure called TMS where they send magnetic pulses to your brain in order to improve depressive symptoms. It worked decently but I am still severely burnt out and worn out from the extreme pain I had to experience during my relapse.

As a result, since I burnt out really badly because my symptoms were very painful, it really lowered my stress tolerance and I’ve become overall very sensitive to stress. I know this major is supposed to be stressful, even for bright students (I’m not one of them lol), I still doubt whether I can handle it or not. It makes me consider switching to accounting as it’s an easier degree to complete. I do get pretty suicidal when stress gets too much, that’s just the nature of my condition, and I really fear reaching a point where the stress gets too much and I impulsively try to harm myself. I never had this happen, but I fear it.

I do find compE interesting but I’m by no means passionate about it like some other people are, so that just makes the ride harder get through since passionate students experience less resistance to the difficulty of their courses. At least that’s what the general assumption is

Let me know what my next steps should be and if you have a similar story

I had a very bad relapse in my depression last year because I tried to get off medication to no avail. I got back on meds and they pooped out so it warranted to get TMS treatment. I didn’t want to do treatment while working, so I was just off the whole time. I live with my parents.

I had to leave work because I was so burnt out by my depressive symptoms and the mental pain it causes. I have been out of my workplace for 4 months now and will be going back in two weeks.

I still haven’t been clear about my MDD and as much as I am mental health aware and sympathetic towards mentally ill people of ANY kind, I still feel like it’s super embarrassing to admit that I struggle with “depression”. Where I work, everyone is in close proximity to each other and it gives way to a lot of chit chats and gossip and I definitely was a subject for a brief minute at some point while I was gone.

My coworkers like me and probably felt concern for me but I just don’t know how to explain what I went through without coming off as insincere and too mysterious, because I’m already deemed as too mysterious at work because I just don’t share my personal business much. My absence just creates more mystery. But I genuinely don’t really care what they think of me, I just care more about the dynamics it may create in the workplace.

My idea was to just say something along the lines of “I was in a lot of pain and wasn’t feeling well enough to work. My whole body was aching constantly and that’s why I couldn’t work for a while while I start treatment”

This closely sounds like a case of fibromyalgia, and this is less stigmatized and “embarrassing” to admit to deal with than clinical depression or MDD. God forbid I ever deal with this pain condition, it sounds excruciating to people that have it, and I apologize for being insensitive to anyone that has it in this sub.

I believe “depression” should be taken out of the clinical literature vocabulary about depressive disorders and that we should stick strictly to calling our issues “mood” or “neurological” disorders, to remove all stigma. This probably has already been proposed before and I’m not the first one to think of it, but it will only be a while before the terminology changes lol

I was skinnier my whole life than I am now at 22. I gained 60-70lbs during beginning of college because of a medication side effect and it changed my life and psychology for the worse. I became much more self conscious and unconfident than I already was before and it damaged my mental health pretty badly. People started treating me differently and I would also lose followers on instagram because of it. I had never experienced the “overweight” life before.

I have a hard time losing the weight now because my body has some established set point for my weight now and calorie deficit feel so unpleasant for my body. I want to hear stories of people that managed to lose weight and keep it off and fix their bad eating habits that they developed at some unfortunate point in their lives.

It finally makes me understand the body positivity movement lmao because losing weight and keeping it off feel impossible sometimes and it makes me want to accepte my “fate” as being a forever fat person and that I just have to own it. It’s depressing

I always wondered about the amount of people that feel benefits from bupropion alone vs those who need a serotoninergic drug and a dopamine boost from bupropion. The whole “Welloft” deal

I know bupropion is added to help with sexual dysfunction caused my ssris and to help activate mood more

I tried quitting Welbutrin back in July of last year and I couldn’t even last a month. I brutally relapsed into a depression that was much worse than my original depression. I had been on this drug for about 3 years. I got back on Welbutrin and Rexulti and they just didn’t work like before. I became extremely suicidal since July up until now. Well, the level of suicidality does vary everyday. I even had to start TMS (trans cranial magnetic stimulation) therapy in order to really recover from the brutal relapse from last year.

My previous psychiatrist even warned me against trying to get off Welbutrin as it would cause me brutal depression, and she was right ffs. I wish I had listened to her but it didn’t help that she was abusive. My current doctor agreed to try to get me off Welbutrin to see how I do but it frustrates me that he just didn’t have the clinical wisdom to know that getting off a medication that I had been on for years would be this detrimental for me. I’m so pissed off and frustrated. I just don’t know what to do anymore.

My former psychiatrist who was treating me completely refused to get me off an antidepressant. I had other issues with her quality of care so I fired her and saw a new doctor.

This new doctor agreed to try to get me off the antidepressant to see how I’m doing without it since I was doing fine while on it, I didn’t think it would be harmful process. Well… I had a brutal brutal relapse once I got off the antidepressant that turned me actively suicidal for months and caused me an intensity of depression I never ever felt before in my life.

In hindsight, my abusive former psychiatrist was totally right about refusing to get me off the “scaffolding” medication and my current doctor seemed to have no wisdom and knowledge about whether it’s safe to get me off an antidepressant I totally needed.

I still haven’t recovered from the relapse that happened summer of 2025 and I am still experiencing really bad depression with suicidal ideation. I had to start TMS because it just got so bad. I’m at session 12 and it worked the first week but I think I’m experiencing a dip currently.

This all would have never happened if I never got off my base antidepressant which was welbutrin 150mg. Now even welbutrin 300mg and rexulti (which is used as an adjunct if the antidepressant isn’t strong enough) is not working well, it works a bit though in alleviating anhedonia a bit.

I have a suspicion that my new psychiatrist might have completely fucked me up (maybe intentionally) to get me into TMS, because his clinic has been marketing it to me since the first time I ever started going there. This is totally fucked up. But this is just a suspicion I have informed by my knowledge of the US healthcare system being a system that values profit over patient well being.

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Medication history:

I (22M) was on antidepressants since age 17. I got on welbutrin 150 mg (I’m on welbutrin 300mg currently) at some point when I was 18 and I was taking it alongside Rexulti. I was doing well on this combo from age 18 to 20.

I got off Rexulti because it made me gain a lot of weight and I was just doing okay with Welbutrin and an SSRI that I started i was using to treat my OCD but it was always treating my depression somewhat simultaneously.

I didn’t like the effects of the SSRI so I got off of it as well with a fast taper: took half a pill of lexapro for 2 days and then stopped. I experienced bad anxiety as part of the withdrawals of SSRI because I was on it for a year.

I don’t know what the fuck to do. I’m in a lot of pain and I’m losing hope. I’m just riding out the TMS at the moment to see if it does anything. Still, the relapse last year completely obliterated me.

My MDD is quite painful and TMS has been a success so far, I’m only on day 6, and I’m hoping that TMS could restore my stress tolerance battery that has gotten completely depleted over the years because of my depression.

Has this happened successfully to anybody here?

I’m also pursuing a tough degree in university currently (electrical engineering) and I want to be sure that I can handle the stress of it and get through it, otherwise I’ll have to switch to something less stressful so I don’t get the urge to unalive myself at some point of extreme stress aggravating my depression lol