u/Swimming_Onion_4835

Anybody have reliable (and affordable) donation services for furniture that will come pick it up? My couches are in great condition, I just have no way to move them to donate them. Got Junk can be several hundred dollars and I can’t pay that much for something I’m donating.

Thanks!

My recent diagnosis has explained so much about me, but after starting meds and having some clarity, I am wracked with guilt over the things that I’ve done. To my loved ones, to myself. I don’t feel like I deserve grace, and even if I was sick at the time, I’m still accountable for what I’ve done and it doesn’t minimize others’ hurt feelings.

How do you all process this? I have a therapist and I’m seeing her weekly (actually just reached out for a second session this week), and I’m focusing on paying attention to my med adjustments. But I just feel…so sad.

I was just diagnosed as Bipolar during an inpatient stay this past weekend. I was hesitant at first, because I know these places tend to hand out this dx like candy and it’s not like I spent a lot of time there or really spoke with a therapist. But I met with my long-term therapist yesterday and after doing a more thorough screening, she thinks BP2 checks out, with a depressive baseline. We likely missed it for years because I didn’t really report on my hypomania when it happened - I was always just relieved I wasn’t horribly depressed for a few days. It’s also how I ever got anything done. Looking back on it, it feels like every very positive appt I’ve ever had with her, where I would feel REALLY good about my recovery efforts, was likely manic. So that sucks.

I’m feeling conflicted. On the one hand, I am relieved to have a potential answer after YEARS of white-knuckling it and trying to fix certain behaviors that I just couldn’t fully control with therapy. On the other hand, I’m afraid to trust it. I have a long history of mental health treatment and diagnoses, including 3 PHP programs for anorexia. In addition to this potential dx, I also have CPTSD and OCD. I’ve been in therapy 2-3 times a week for almost 3 years now. Is it likely I was really missing such a major diagnosis for all this time?

My marriage is hanging by a thread because of everything and we’re in the process of separating, but still going to do couples therapy in addition to our individual therapy. While it’s not all the time, I have struggled with bouts of anger that end up involving a lot of yelling and sometimes name calling / disrespectful behavior if I’m triggered. Behavior that is completely indefensible. I always assumed it was just the PTSD and I’ve talked about it in therapy, and I’ve overall improved this behavior a LOT over time, but sometimes it’s like I feel possessed by something and so agitated I can’t turn it off and coping skills are hard. The idea that this could have been contributing to that to any degree and was possibly missed is very upsetting and saddening to me. Nobody in my life works harder on their mental health than I do, and I’m prepared to do whatever I can to get better, including whatever meds they want to put me on. My husband is willing to see if I improve over time, but right now he’s so hurt by how I’ve made him feel over the years that he has no romantic interest in me. I feel broken and angry at myself for what I’ve done.

I guess I just have a lot of feelings. I’m frustrated. Scared. Ashamed. Nervous about meds. They put me on Abilify while I was in treatment and I actually liked how I felt on it a lot, but they also added depakote and I’ve felt a lot more physically anxious on it and it’s fucking up my sleep (I take it at night; in the AM in the hospital I got groggy?). I woke up at 2:30 this morning and it’s now almost 5 and I’m still wide awake and shaky. I know these adjustments take time, but I just want to get better. 😞 I miss my husband. I hate my brain. I’m so tired of collecting diagnoses like Pokémon.

I know this is long and rambly. Appreciate anybody willing to read all of it.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/IVF/s/NeokN1Gryf

I wanted to provide an update. Thank you to everyone who responded to my original post.

Initially, I thought he was working on it. We went to therapy. He’s told me he wants to be here. He told me he loves me, over and over.

But he did it again today. He’s done. He doesn’t want to be married anymore. He doesn’t want to work on it. He said he hasn’t wanted to be married since IVF failed. He doesn’t even want children anymore. He tells me he loves me more than anything and will always love me, and I’m his best friend. But he doesn’t want to be with me.

So. That’s it. I’ve never felt worse in my life. I’m devastated. I think he’s being irrational and impulsive but I can’t make him see that. I feel so profoundly lonely. I’m going to lose my family. My home. I can’t stand to live in this city anymore so I’m going to have to move across country, back to my home state. I’m going to be 37 in two months and my life is over.

I wish I had a better update. This has ruined me.

My husband and I completed our second failed round of IVF just about two years ago. Of course, it was devastating to us. We went into it knowing the chances were slimmer—I have one ovary with DOR, I didn’t respond well to meds (later found out that was due to stage IV endo), and we never got a lot of follicles. We talked about the possibility of failure, but I don’t think there’s any way to really anticipate how you’ll feel until it happens. We’d exhausted our insurance and had no other options.

We were crushed, but I think he pushed a lot of his own grief back in favor of mine. He kept saying this was something that happened to me physically and was a medical trauma, and I think he just white knuckled his own feelings. After the IVF failure, I felt him pull away from me gradually. Our sex life suffered. He has had no libido for almost two years. Apparently he’s felt numb towards me and pretty much everyone else in his life since then. We started finally going to therapy together about 1.5 months ago, and I thought it was going really well. I felt happier, we were communicating better, and we felt closer.

Then yesterday he had this breakdown and panicked about how terrible of a husband he’s been, that he can’t give me what I need, that I deserve someone who feels passion for me, that he’ll never be able to have sex with me regularly. Just this outpouring of self-hatred. He wasn’t sure if he’s in love with me, even though every question I asked him about how he feels shows he loves me. But no, no passion anymore (we’ve been together 6 years, btw). All he wants to do is be alone, not just from me, but from all his loved ones so he doesn’t have to “subject them to himself” anymore. He called himself a parasite. And then he sobbed and said he couldn’t stand to be around me because I remind him of the IVF. That it feels like someone died and there’s something missing from our home and I think he just wants to flee from that pain so badly. He said whenever he sees the boxes of old meds in our kitchen he wants to die.

I think a lot of this was triggered by the endometriosis diagnosis and surgery I had earlier this spring. It’s when he started crying about it here and there and telling me how empty he felt, and he just cant push the feelings down anymore. He said he doesn’t want to be married anymore, but I managed to talk him into at least looking into a therapist and maybe some medication before making any major life decisions. And he agreed to keep going to couple’s therapy.

But I’m just fucking terrified. This is the first I’ve heard all of this, to this extent. I feel like my life is falling apart, and what makes it even harder is I and everyone else can see that this is depression and serious grief talking, and he just doesn’t understand what that feels like. Apparently even his best friend told him last night that he thinks he’s depressed. Every time I think he’s close to understanding what’s going on, he panics again and just says he wants to be alone and cries about what a bad husband he is and he worries he’s not capable of investing in us “like he should,” and it must mean he doesn’t care enough. He’s afraid of leading me on if we try and it doesn’t work.

We had our therapy session today and he realized during the appt that he resents me for IVF not working, even though it isn’t conscious. He felt disgusted in himself for that, but honestly, I’m just proud he realized it. And I told him so. I know he doesn’t blame me on purpose, but I know how complicated feelings from this can be. No wonder he pulled away from me. No wonder seeing me triggers these feelings of grief.

I keep thinking he wouldn’t feel all these feelings of guilt if he didn’t love me. Like he’s just trying to protect me from him. But I can’t make him see reality. This might be too hard for him and he might leave me, and I am just so fucking devastated about it. I wish we’d never explored this. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that.

The only hope I have right now is that our therapist asked him during our session if he felt this way about me when we decided to try for IVF, or if this was a “save the marriage” baby. He was adamant that it wasn’t, and he was happy. He said it was the last time he ever remembers feeling joy. 😔

I know this is a rant. I don’t even know what I want from posting this. Maybe to hear if anyone else’s marriage has managed to get through something this after IVF failure? Or if anyone knows of virtual support groups we could try. He said he would be willing to go to one with me.

Or, just virtual hugs. I’m so, so sad. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this man. I love him more than anything. And I’m scared he’s going to throw all of it away, and I can’t fix it. Normally when I’m sad like this he’s the one to hold me, and he can’t. I miss him so much.

TW: suicidal ideation

I’ve been struggling with an ROCD flare-up for probably the past few months, but a triggering event last weekend has cranked it up into overdrive. Before it honed in on ROCD, my OCD in general was gradually starting to worsen, it just bounced around a few other themes before settling on this one.

I don’t want to post the details of the thoughts I’m getting because I don’t want to compulse, and it’s ultimately not what the post is about.

My issue is how fucking hopeless I feel, and how unlike myself I feel. At the end of last year I had been taking Spravato (the nasal ketamine) and felt like my depression was nearly in remission. It’s literally the best I’ve ever felt, mood-wise. It didn’t address my OCD as much, but made it easier to notice with the mood stuff quieted. Then I unexpectedly had to stop it for 2 months because my company switched to a terrible pharmacy insurance, and they were incompetent and couldn’t get my med delivered for weeks. When I finally started again, I’d relapsed and it just never worked again.

I’ve struggled with MDD my whole life, but no matter how bad it got, I never really struggled with suicidality. But lately it’s been so bad that I’ve had passive ideation. I want to emphasize I have no plan; I think this is more escapist fantasy when my OCD is at its worst and I feel trapped in my head. But it seems like every minute of every day lately I feel hopeless. My brain is broken. I’m tired. If I look back on it, I’ve been sick all year. I feel like a burden to my husband. I’m scared to be alone, which has made me clingy. I’m 37 years old and this is the first time it’s been to this level. I’m just so sick of this. Normally I can accept my OCD and have for years, but all I want right now is freedom from it even though I know that fighting it is making it worse. How am I supposed to just accept that I feel like a waste of a human and that every second of my life lately is painful?

I want to preface this by saying I have pretty severe diagnosed OCD. I usually have other themes my brain fixates on, and up until now, 6 years into my relationship / 4 years into marriage, I’d been blissfully removed from the ROCD theme.

My marriage is currently undergoing some real issues, mostly related to communication, but we’re in therapy and we’re both committed to working on them, and when I’m not obsessing or compulsing I feel very confident that we’re doing well with all that. I am also fully willing to acknowledge that the sudden introduction of OCD has occasionally exacerbated some issues (clinginess, reassurance seeking, and a sudden difficulty with being alone that I’ve never had before).

This past weekend, my husband and I had a series of super in-depth, very helpful, very vulnerable conversations about our marriage, each other, and behaviors we could each improve on that we’ve probably neglected over time when life got in the way. I think these convos would be valuable to anyone in a relationship, not just a person with OCD, but as someone who does have OCD, it served as PHENOMENAL reassurance. I’ve basically been myself again for a good 3 days.

But. We all know compulsion satisfaction doesn’t last. 😒

I’m just feeling frustrated with it. We’re out of town right now for a work thing for my husband, and so far it’s been a lovely time to reconnect when he’s free while I work from our Airbnb. But I feel OCD creeping up. Before, my obsessions and anxieties were focused more on checking how he speaks to me, reading into his texts, worrying he doesn’t love me or that our issues are too hard or impossible to overcome, and panicking any time we had so much as a minor disagreement. I would pick apart every mistake he made or every part of his personality that isn’t perfect. I would compulsively review our history and pick out instances where he wasn’t the best spouse and use it as “proof” that everything is bad or he is bad, despite my own glaring imperfections.

It felt SO NICE to feel close to him again for a few days. But now, with us being in a good and more intimate place, I find myself worried he’s being TOO nice or TOO attentive, like him listening to requests I’ve made is a bad thing or manipulative or something (even though he is not a manipulative person). 🙄 I’ve done a good job of not reassurance seeking with this with him, because it’s exhausting, it doesn’t help me, and I’m sure it wouldn’t feel good for him to hear that his wife is suspicious about how nice he’s been. Instead, I’m trying to defuse and enjoy it, thank him when I notice he is listening to me, and tolerate the uncertainty. But I can also feel the tension building inside me and all I want to do is word vomit all these thoughts running through my head.

I’m just exhausted. And I’m sure so many are familiar with the thought of “well if I’m struggling with this for so long and it’s making me so miserable it must be true” and I’m just so fucking tired of that fear-based narrative.

Sigh.

I had a lap excision for stage IV DIE on 3/31. The surgery itself went well. I had pretty severe adhesions pulling my uterus, bladder, ovary, ligaments, sigmoid colon, and rectum in a bunch of different directions, plus the endo deposits removed.

Physically, my symptoms have been much better since surgery. I still cramp during my period but I no longer have agonizing pain down my legs or across my whole pelvis and back. The pain has gone from an 8-10/10 to averaging about a 4/10. My bowel movements have basically completely normalized after YEARS of IBS-like symptoms.

But I am an emotional mess and I don’t understand what’s going on.

I have pretty severe OCD, which I’ve had medicated for years now. It’s not entirely gone, but it’s manageable and has been for years. Since my surgery, it has been HORRIBLE. And my depression, which has been well-managed by medication and ketamine treatments, is also unstable and unpredictable. It kind of came to a head late last week while on my second period since surgery. I was hysterical, overly-sensitive, and completely tortured by various intrusive thoughts pretty much every minute I was awake. It reminded me of the severe PMDD I had when I was younger and unmedicated, when my period would majorly trigger my OCD the second bleeding started.

I guess I’m just looking for commiseration or anecdotes that I’m not alone or losing my mind. Of course, as someone with OCD, I’m desperate for some sort of explanation. I’ve read anesthesia can mess up mental health, sometimes for months, but I don’t think it would get progressively worse over time. Since it feels like PMDD I’ve also been curious if surgery is messing with my hormones somehow, like maybe the endo suppressed hormone function and now it’s rapidly increased to where it should be, but I don’t even know if there’s any scientific basis to this. My levels were never chronically low before surgery. I am not on any hormonal treatment post-surgery, though I will be getting an IUD inserted during a scheduled appendectomy in a few weeks to stop my period and give me a break.

I’m scared and emotionally overwhelmed. 😞 I felt so much promise after surgery, especially when my body seemed to respond so well, and now it’s like I’m being tortured in a totally different way. I’m in therapy and talking to my therapist, and my psychiatrist and I decided to change my medication yesterday, so I’m hoping that helps and I just need time.

I’m tired.