As I'm new I just thought I'd say hello and give you a bit of my story.
I've had 'low moods' since I was a teenager (of the sort where I went to bed for a few days and refused to get up), but at 22 got really unwell. It took them a year to diagnose with coeliac disease, and during that time my mood symptoms got worse on and off. It got to the point I couldn't cope and started self harming. I went to see doctors, but was very against taking medication, and they wouldn't refer me for counselling until I agreed. I already had some anti-anxiety tablets I had previously been prescribed, and I used to take those to take the edge off my symptoms. With support from my family, and a job I really enjoyed as distraction, I was able to get my symptoms back into some sort of control.
This summer (aged 25) I moved out of my family home to live with my boyfriend 50 miles away. He was moving from his family home too, and has a lot of anxiety issues himself, so over the summer I was at the house alone a lot of the time. I began to have paranoid thoughts and my self harm got more extreme. I thought there were people watching me, creatures inside the house to spy on me, and the only way to get rid of those was to have him there, so I began to threaten suicide to get him there. I was spending entire days in bed just crying, was annoyed all the time, and couldn't bring myself to move even to get food.
In September I started a new job, but far from giving me the distraction I hoped, it made the situation worse. Two weeks in, my boyfriend moved out, and I eventually realised it was time to get help. I was signed off work 2 weeks, and put on citalopram. Since then, my dosage of that has upped to 30mg. I'm no longer seeing things, but am signed off work with stress, and when I have been there, have been affected so badly I'm on the verge of losing my job. After a sort of unstable limbo with my boyfriend for a few months, I've decided that the uncertainty over what's going on with him is too much and have ended things after a 6 year relationship. I know I don't really have the strength to keep that up at the moment though, and will almost certainly be begging forgiveness within days! My mood and attitudes just seem to be all over the place at the minute, I can be laughing hysterically and convinced everything will be brilliant one minute, then trying to drag myself off the floor the next.
I've got counselling sessions organised by the borough I work for starting tomorrow (anyone who's had counselling, what should I expect?!) and I've been on the waiting list for CBT since mid September (I'm attending an 'intro to cbt' workshop in January, then hopefully sessions shouldn't be far behind).
Sorry that was quite long, It just seems from all the messages I've read that this is such a supportive environment and I wanted the chance to share my experiences with you all.
