u/wegeekhard

i don't know what this is. i have a talk therapist who agrees that i'm dissociative, but i feel like a fraud and like i’m looking around in the dark and guessing.

maybe i just have really bad depression. i'm always low. i have this mode i kick into around people where i appear animated and energetic and friendly, all while feeling trapped inside, like the awfulness can't really get out around friends and family. i’ve been doing better at letting the hopelessness and pain show outwardly recently, though i can only really do it alone. sometimes i’ll find myself performing as if i’m around people – laughing at things when appropriate, reacting as if i'm excited and full of energy, and it's weird feeling myself do it.

i did this performance stuff a lot through school. i struggle with tension i often don't even notice is there until i remind myself to check on my body after i get randomly fatigued when im doing nothing at all, either in public or in private.

dissociation sounds more severe in other people, though. i don't lose chunks of time. i can still feel my body physically, though emotions are confusing for me and like im constantly chasing the trails of them rather than feeling them outright. i have this persistent feeling of awfulness, and then trails of other emotions i can kind of reliably guess at, though they're foggy and distant.

it's possible i'm not even describing any of this right.

i also have ocd, and ocd related to all of this emotion labeling and feeling stuff. but i don't think it's just ocd here. i think maybe there really is something seriously wrong and numb about me emotionally and ocd just makes it all worse. but i don't know.

doors any of this resonate with the people here. i'm tired and hopeless and constantly waiting for sleep

my med story is kind of complicated

i'm an alcoholic. i finally stopped drinking about a year ago after a shit ton of relapses. i think what helped is going on naltrexone + gabapentin. while i was on these two meds, i went on prozac so that i could build up levels of a long-term medication in my blood while getting somewhat soothed by gabapentin and prevented from drinking by naltrexone

at either 20 or 40mg (plus the other medications) i had a period of two weeks during the summer where i felt great. i had so much energy. working was suddenly extremely easy, and i actually wanted to work more because my default mood wasn't fucking agonizing

but after these two weeks, my mood dropped again. my psychiatrist tried to up my dose to 60, then 80. my gabapentin dose was increased over time. then wellbutrin was added, and a low dose of guanfacine in the fall. when the guanfacine was added, i had a few days where i felt good again, only for my mood to drop back down yet again

after months now, i'm slowly tapering off meds with my psychiatrist's guidance. i think it's good to find out where my baseline is at after a year of no drinking, but life has been so frustrating this past year. i'm at disabled levels of psychiatric distress. i'm in an incredibly fortunate situation where i'm able to stay housed, financially supported and keep my job even while barely working, but wanting to be productive and having my body and brain fight every attempt at productivity is a living fucking nightmare

my theory on this is that i need to be on much less activating medications. i recently found out that my diagnosis list doesn't include OCD, which is pretty fundamental to my daily and ongoing distress. my psychiatrist has been intensely focused on my depression when i think the depression is a result of my OCD being so bad. all these activating medications have just made my mind run faster without doing anything meaningful to my ability to actually get up and go do things. in fact, because of the high dose of gabapentin i'm on, my physical body stays really fucking tired during the day. i have about three hours of energy before i need to nap during the day, and it's nightmarish laying down for one because my mind is running while my body is exhausted.

i'm really frustrated. every day feels like a dice roll for my mood. i need to establish community with other alcoholics but it's hard when you get so little joy from everything, including socializing. i'm still going to therapy, which i think is kind of helping. but going to therapy without working medication feels like i'm being taught a bunch of techniques on how to use an electric device that's not charged and hasn't been for a long time.

everything sucks. i just want to feel better.