I've heard about the learned helplessness theory of depression and that it's even how the depression-like state is often induced in animals for research purposes - basically induce the stress and give no control over the stressor to the animal.
Doesn't it resemble how almost every person develops their depression? Basically, how most employers and the ruling class treat the workers, giving them stress but no control over their lives and environment? They give us the stressors (yell, intimidate, long hours, unjust work recognition, high prices on basic needs, little to no breaks and leasure time, no choice over our lifestyles, unemployment shaming, destroying our connectedness in fear of unionizing and revolting, etc etc), give us no control or the impression of no control over them (no free time, constant control, intimidation, no say in decisions that affect us, but also propaganda, union busting and similar activities) and boom, suddenly people are burnt out and depressed? Then there's no secret in the recurring pattern of depression too - even if your body has found the resources to restore to a "normal" state (which is probably more often an anxiety or anger state?), the stressors are not gone and they are no less uncontrollable.
This also reminds me how the hierarchy in certain species works. Basically the higher ups utilize the learned helplessness response so that they don't have to fight and prove their dominance all the time. Kind of blew my mind, explained me a lot about depression and its patterns. And also why r/antiwork and controlling my time has healed my depression
Well, the thing says it all. I pressured myself to the point of crying in my second language exam and contemplating.. dark things during exam season last time, and as a result I got an aversion to studies, and someone mentioning studies itself or exams can cause me to feel mad or scared or break out in a light sweat.
Diagnosed with ADHD and moderate depression, may have developed an anxiety thing after the exam incident. No medication right now, therapy is out of the question because my parents say it's a waste of time and I'm apparently not following the instructions anyway, so the only chance I'll get mental health support is once I'm in the emergency room, but that's a different problem altogether.
Studying too long can make me feel irritable and like my head's fried. I hate it, to be honest. But I have to, because, you know, societal expectations. How do I get myself to do it properly and get good marks without stressing myself into the back of an ambulance or shutting down entirely?
This is a rant post. I’ve been deployed last two years in public health covid response, doing everything from policy writing to vaccine eligibility planning vaccine ops planning and modelling. I’m burnt out. Worked around the clock.
Got offer at another organization not in health in a role for much higher pay and advancement, which I accepted.
Today is my last day at work. I feel bad leaving everyone as they face omicron. We are short staffed, but it’s taken a toll.
Perhaps not surprising yet sad, is that I am not getting any send off or acknowledgment. All I got were responses that it’s a big loss for the team, and a lot of guilt tripping. Im not getting a virtual goodbye. Others I noticed had gotten virtual meetings for staff to come together snd say goodbye.
Now I know I’m not even appreciated among my public health colleagues. What a shame.
Edit: to make it worse they asked me to be on call when needed during my approved vacation that I’m taking to end of the year. Today was my last working day!
Getting opinions here. Shrink says to pay attention to my pain levels vs stress and see if they correlate. For me they definitely do. Work and home life have been nuts lately, and so has my pain levels.
Anyone else find similar?
What do you guys do to respond to stress? Sometimes I find myself thinking about certain things that stress me out/get me anxious - even though I know everything is gonna be fine and work out with time.
What do you guys do to help yourself, your mind and your body respond to mental stress and being anxious?
When I play fast-paced games such as shooters, action games, or competitive games, it feels like my body is activating its fight-or-flight mode. My heart beats faster, I start to sweat, and I feel tense both mentally and physically. Sometimes I feel like I'm holding my breath during tense moments as well. Since my body activates its stress mode so often, I'm starting to feel like it doesn't turn off when I stop gaming and I feel anxious all the time.
Is this a thing? Does this happen to anyone else?
😩 I’ve been going through ongoing trauma this year and I’ve been stuck with a stress response that will not let me sleep. The trauma is ongoing, multifaceted and I can’t escape it. So I need to function in spite of it.
The stress has devolved into other anxiety related issues- namely severe anxiety and hypervigilance and OCD.
I don’t think I have chronically high cortisol (perhaps frequent spikes, or something?) (pls refrain from recommending ashwaghanda as I have PCOS and can’t take it).
I can only fall asleep if I try really hard (isolate and wind down for 6 - yes 6 hours) and OD magnesium but only for 1-3 hours and I wake up wired.
My mind is constantly racing. I have treatment resistant depression and anxiety and have tried over 27 medications and reacted so poorly (many hospitalizations & am now worse/don’t recognize myself/can’t sleep/don’t get out of bed after several bad reactions) - it’s part of the trauma. So I’d kindly appreciate refraining from talking about meds as I’ve likely tried it and it’s triggering to talk about.
Thank you kind strangers ♥️
So, I usually have a good appetite, and can manage to eat enough food regularly, and it doesn’t make me feel sick (unless it’s a non-safe food that I really detest). But I’ve noticed that during times of extreme, prolonged stress and/or severe anxiety, I lose my appetite completely, and I feel sick after eating (to the point of almost throwing up). During these times I can’t consume anything except saltine crackers and water, because almost everything else makes me feel sick afterwards. Thankfully, I haven’t had a period like this for quite a while, and I’m usually pretty good about eating enough food (even if it is still a limited variety). I eat so little during these times that I start to become afraid that I might starve to death, and my body starts pumping out adrenaline to make up for the lack of food. That, in turn, makes the stress/anxiety worse. But these periods usually don’t last for more than a week or two.
*I should note that I’ve had an anxiety disorder for most of my life, so it could just be a symptom of this.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi4343
Here’s what I think Hilary is cooking up: she will claim that she was pregnant yet again but the stress of the “bullying” that followed the on set killing at Alec’s hand caused her to miscarry. She will equate the “lost baby’s” life to that of Halyna’s and cry that TWO lives were tragically lost in this event and that she and Alec and their children are just as much victims as Halyna’s husband and child. Calling it now. (Rest in power, HH 🌺)
My wife (40 years old) and I are going through a stressful time as we are about to move to a new country with our two small children during COVID, etc. We are both stressed and there's nothing surprising about that, and we're trying to deal with it through exercise, breathing, etc.
My worry though is about my wife's specific physiological response to this stress. For the entire time we've been married (almost 10 years) when she has acute stress, she feels tightness and discomfort in one specific part of her upper left chest. Today that tension and discomfort was radiating up and down her body from that point (down her leg, up her neck), but only on the left side. We had a good walk outside and she has calmed down to the point that it's not so bad, but I know this will come back.
She had a full physical including bloodwork about one year ago and we're not aware of any major health issues. So my question is - does this generally point to anything physical that we should be worried about, particularly that might not have been picked up during a physical?
Details are changed because my partner reads bipolar subreddits.
My partner is bipolar 1 and heavily medicated along with regular therapy. Based on what they have described, I have never seen them in a true manic episode, and we have been in a relationship for over two years. However, they do get into depressive moods often.
My main struggle is that my partner is very susceptible to stressful situations and gets incapacitated by very small triggers. Triggers can be anything that deviates from what they planned out in their head, such as having to walk a block or two longer than they thought or an item not being in the room that they expected. When something like this happens, my partner gets a severe headache, has to sit down, and basically cannot function or have any meaningful conversation. My partner does have bad chronic migraine, but this may also be a bipolar symptom.
What's frustrating for me is that me talking to my partner about our relationship or their responsibilities is also a trigger.
Recently, I find myself having to take on more responsibilities for both of us because my partner is in a fairly demanding school program while I have a regular work from home job. It's been a stressful few weeks for us lately because of a life change we are making and I have basically assumed all the responsibilities for this change while they only did the parts that are absolutely required of them. I was worried this might happen and had told my partner that I would not be happy if I had to do all the work. When I realized I was doing most of the work, I tried to bring this disparity to my partner's attention and this seems to have triggered a stress response. They had to spend an hour lying in bed in a dark room afterwards.
Things like this have happened before where I get stressed out from my partner being unwell often and they just feel sick again when I try to tell them so.
I don't believe my partner is intentionally trying to dodge conversations like this, but I also think my partner doesn't realize that I can get stressed out sometimes. I don't show my emotions outward very much, even a lot of neurotypical people tell me I'm the most chill person they know.
I want to be able to discuss it with my partner without triggering such a stress response. Is this a common problem with bipolar people and are there any tips to work around it?
My current house has a particularly noisy hot water tank. The sound of it filling or just heating makes me feel on edge the whole time its on, which is particularly problematic in the winter. I can usually block it out with music in earphones but if I'm in a zoom meeting etc I have to turn the heating off as it makes me have the same bodily response as feeling threatened.
Does anyone else have a similar noise response?
Any time I’m met with any stress or pushback, I begin to contemplate suicide. I won’t go through with it (at least not until my mom passes) but I get the strongest urges. My only response to stress is to sleep, distract myself, or contemplate suicide. Why am I like this? Am I just lazy or incompetent? I don’t deserve to be where I am, I’m useless. I’ll never make it in the real world.
If you feel the PTSD in your body and you can't process information because trauma responses take down the brain, how the hell is CBT supposed to work? I think you need a good combination of grounding, relaxation, medication and a good therapist. I tried to explain this my two psychologists over the last year several times, yet they just shrugged and ignored this issue. And here's the funny thing, when i would work myself up to get in a state to do therapy where i could 'socially perform' i get the feeling they would think im OK and just faking it. Yes i can produce good enough word salad with my dissociative amnesia. I've been forced to pretend I'm ok all the time to extent people don't believe I'm dying inside and have PTSD flashbacks. FML
I’ll go first: “Gotcha”.
That’s the response I got from a so-called “best friend” when I was pouring my heart out bc I thought she was someone I could confide in. Am I being dramatic?
I have struggled for almost two years with infertility and sometimes I need an outlet or somebody to just listen and help me down the cliff. I find it very hard to open up about my true feelings when it comes to the struggle I have.
I dont really open up much so when I did this instance, it was just a shock that this one person whose words I have always valued would respond so dishearteningly. Idk.
I was out of town for two weeks visiting family and I had my new pet sitter check on my cat once a day to feed him, play and give him some love.
He’s not super snuggly but definitely a product of Covid and just wants to be nearby all the time (I’m home a lot).
His pet sitter is phenomenal and went above and beyond but I know he was still likely stressed out with being alone like that.
I noticed he now has some bald patches on his head (there are two at the base of his ears on the top/middle of his head. Has anyone else encountered this? Could it be a result of over grooming due to stress?
Thank you!
We just published a study on the effects of touching on stress coping that you might find interesting. We invited 159 participants to come to the lab to undergo the Trier Social Stress Test-a paradigm designed to induce moderate amounts of social-evaluative stress that asks participants to give a speech in front of two passive committee members and a fake video camera and to work on a hard mathematical task. One third self-touched (i.e. placed their right hand on their heart and their left hand on their belly), one third was hugged by a female research assistant, and one third build a paper plane (the control condition). We also asked if the effectiveness of the touch interventions would depend on whether our participants identified more strongly with the person providing the hug. We measured heart rate, subjective-emotional responses to stress, and cortisol. We found that cortisol levels in the self-touch and hug conditions were lower on three out of four measurement points after the stressor. Subjective-emotional responses and heart rate were unaffected by the touch interventions and social identification had no influence on the results.
The paper was published in an open access journal and is free to read for everyone: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666497621000655
This is me.
For. Every. Little. Thing.
I feel like I'm not fully realizing the consequences to things that happen in life because I'm just like, fuck it, i'll kill myself.
I'm never going to kill myself though. I know I won't, I don't have it in me. It's like suicidal thoughts are a coping mechanism. I told my therapist this and I think she thought the idea was ludicrous, haha. I love her though, so I moved on quickly from this idea, even though it really does feel like a coping mechanism. And, on top of it, I find it funny, too. In a nihilistic, absurdist sort of way. However, while it is funny, I can feel that it's just a way to avoid, or cop out, of whatever issue is in front of me.
Is anyone else like this?
Dear god, please tell me how you were able to stop thinking this way, please.
Edit: Wow, I got so many responses on this post. This community is incredible and I'm excited to read through everything.
