Ask HN: Struggling with mental disorders, looking for advice

I've seen a lot of acquaintances (some of them friends) who over this past decade (starting when they reached their mid 30ies till mid-40ies) who went through some varieties of a mental breakdown, and which they're still recovering from 10-15 years later. Some of them got help. One of them hanged himself. All of them male. I couldn't help tuning into their life as it touched me, not just because they were close but because I also struggled a lot too and I engaged also to find a cure for my own cursed life.

In my case it was because I needed to unfuck the things that got fucked when I was a child (abuse by my mother from a young age both physical & sexual). I ran all my life from it and turned running even into a life-style (lived all over the world since the mid 90ies and still do so until today). I chose to live in some war torn terrifying places to feel alive and took some of the most dangerous jobs just for shits and giggles. I witnessed my first religious motivated murder when I got off the bus in Banda Aceh just after leaving my home country the first time ever to travel. I even started running literally to calm myself, first 10km, then half-marathons then marathons then ultra-marathons. Running 7 days a week for a min of 2 hours. I have no roots. Running both figuratively and literally helped me get through life without thinking to off-myself.

I sometimes come across as lacking empathy. Though my problem is that I have too much empathy in some cases that makes me feel connected to causes that then causes me to go nuts over certain topics that I feel too strongly about. I've also had my episodes here on HN where I advocated violence against causes that are dear to me (protection of nature/animals/biosphere etc at all costs and I was rightly put in place by the mods - thanks for putting up with my shit dang).

In the last 2 years I went through some kind of transformation. idk still what exactly triggered it, ... probably a combination of many things. I was always suspicious of medical help because I felt that my life was so complex and unique that nobody on this planet who went through the canned-curriculum of an academic institution could even fathom how I tick or help me. And besides I managed the first 35 years without killing myself so I'd surely get through this now. Also (more on this later) the experience from the friends I had who chose professional help terrified me for many reasons. I'd never tell anyone to seek professional help (sorry there won't be any of that here).

First change I made was to leave my family - I chose a wife who hit me like my mother when I was a child and who would mentally abuse me in ways I can't go into here both because it's too complex and too fucked up. My wife struggled with depression (and a fucked up childhood too so we really kind of found another). I figured it would be better to just leave them all rather than to make the kids put up with 2 depressed parents (or the risk of one of us killing themselves). It didn't seem fair to the kids as I didn't want to repeat the same lies served by my own parents. Neither my wife nor myself ever hit the children and they were our only thing that was sacred (she spent lot of time with them while I tried to make a gazillion to ensure they had everything. On the outside we were looked up to by friends and even the kids had no idea until they became teenagers when it all came tumbling down. I left them and never had a chance of seeing them again mostly because they now hate me and my ex also thinks I'm trash for leaving.

In my new place I started smoking weed because the pain of having my kids think I left them was almost unbearable - and still is until today. Their mother telling them I left them like a garbage runaway-father. And thanks to her denying me access it means that I'll probably not see them ever again since by now they also believe that I left for the reason my ex claims. What I'm trying to say is that in order to make things better I couldn't just improve stuff. I had to dismantle all the bullshit first. And that dismantling caused even more harm in the short and medium term. The idea to fix things without also destroying some parts is an illusion. I couldn't have stayed there and make it work otherwise I would be dead, or my wife would have killed herself, or god forbid the kids get as fucked up as their parents (after all the only thing that both my wife and me did well was look after them in the way we did.

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The lie that tomorrow will always be better and constantly deferring reward to some future point in time, only to realize that I've wasted time chasing a career, when I could have spent more time with my kids. ... The lie that I'm not in a toxic marriage and that my wife would love me even I'm not pulling a 5 figure salary. Standing up for myself (no matter what society would say of my walking out on the marriage) or what my so called friends would say (all my friends were actually also business associates since working 70 hour weeks and moving all over the place since the age of 16 left me with no real friends). Now I no longer earn that money nor do I wish to. Truth be told I only work as much as I need to live a comfortable life which is in my new circumstance around €500-700 (believe it or not).

I kind of reprogrammed myself from a hardcore-capitalist that measures others by what car they drive, and whether their home has a pool or not. I chose to move from the richest and most expensive place in Europe to go to the poorest country and live on 500,--/month (instead on 15K/month surrounded by people who all have N businesses registered in places like Switzerland, Luxembourg or Monaco). I have no savings - lost/blew it all and no car. If I need to get somewhere then I walk provided it's less then 60 mins walk otherwise the public transport. Not because I have to but because walking (not running) is one of the things that gives me clarity. Not on a running-belt in a gym but out in the fresh air (regardless of weather).

I receive no mail in the post anymore (I used to spend all of my Saturday writing replies and dealing with business correspondence, taxes, insurances, finances what not ... and watching my mail-box fill up during the week alone gave me anxiety attacks). For a while that mail in the post was like a proof of how good I am and how much things I can juggle in parallel. "look at me ... all those things I juggle in parallel ... so busy and important..." while at the same time I could have spent the hours with my kids & dogs.

Back then, instead of doing work in my garden on weekends I hired a gardener because why waste time doing manual labor when I can hire somebody for 15/hrs to do the job "professionally" while I put in 4 hours of work and earn 250/hrs while the guy outside cuts the grass. I look back at me with disgust knowing that I totally missed the point of a garden. Missed the point of enjoying family and life in general.

Looking at myself critically was only possible after all my power/money/confidence was taken from me (did I do this to myself on purpose after all somehow subconsciously? idk ...) But I would have not learned it otherwise, ...

but that is my specific situation and maybe got nothing to do with others who are depressed and suicidal. At least on the surface that is but in retrospect it's all connected to the way we live today trapped like hamsters in our self-constructed cages that the system pushes us into if we're not careful. No doubt it works out for many people who participate or have the energy to do so, but many of us end up in a sad way ... just look around and search for depression here and look how popular the topic is: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=depress&sort=byPopularity&pref...

Everyone of us is heading down a path of loneliness at least at some point. Even those people that ought to do well. It's like an epidemic and I'm convinced screen-time has a lot to do with it (compounded by the side effects of screen-time: not enough exercise, no walks in nature, no fresh air, quick sugar highs and an unhealthy diet). My girlfriend who is younger than me grew up with always having a phone before going out (pressured by anxious parents who want to keep track). She doesn't suffer anything and is healthy but if you take away her phone and ask her to go to the city without it she'd have a panic attack. (if she goes to a therapist they give her pills but won't ask her to get rid of her phone).

An important step I took was to get rid of all my social media in 2018. Starting with FB, Twitter, LinkedIn. The only account left is this one on HN. It feels like removing myself from social media has helped me a great deal moving forward. I can't say that social media was a huge problem for me but there is also no denying that between 2013-2016 social media has robbed me of my own free will and caused isolation that was much deeper than it would have been without. I had lots of followers (like sure many of you here who live online too do) on many places, ... yet in the end I was empty and drained from the shallowness. Because of this realization I also extended this rule now in 2019 to even do away without a mobile phone. It is now in a drawer with batteries removed and will stay there until at least Jan next year when I will reevaluate if it is something I need. (that's hardcore for an ex radio-network engineer). It took me a while to do all this and none of it happened overnight. I started by leaving my phone at home when I went out. Forcing myself to look at people when waiting for the bus (they're all looking at their screens like zombies), also it's strange when you ask a stranger for the way and even got asked once why I don't use google-maps. But it made me think about the kind of world I want to inhabit and how I want to shape my environment. ("you either shape your environment or be a product of it")

When I moved to this poor sorry place in the backwaters of Europe, it felt at first depressing but what gave me hope was the people. The Slav mentality with their gloomy mood and "can't do" attitude ... it turns out that many of them are smiling on the inside (it's often said sarcastically but it's true). It gave me new hope ... a lot more hope than the fetishism of "positivity and optimism" we practice in the West (especially in Anglo-Saxon countries but that also sips over to places like Germany, France, Belgium and everywhere else where there is Netflix). I see optimism now differently. Almost like a cancer that is eating the Western society. Fake forced smiles of Uber drivers, and so on ... I'm glad I'm no longer part of this.

I'm not going to urge you to seek medical help because I know the dangers that help can come with. I wrote about my friends and acquaintances in the opening paragraph and I noticed that many of them didn't actually get better. They just got strung along by their therapists who listen and then prescribe some pills (again your mileage may vary but knowing the healthcare system in Germany, UK, US I'd not trust them with my fragile self especially when you have a top-notch insurance you can count on these crooks rubbing their hands thinking of all the shit they can peddle). I don't actually know what advise I can give you or even it would be ethical to do so considering the complexity of our mind and the individual situation.

If you take recreational drugs of any kind (incl alcohol / coffee) I'd stop that first. We are all chemical animals so anything we put into our body has an effect. In other words you can make better progress with subtracting things than to add (pills). Instead of drinking coffee take a nap when you're tired. One of my problems was that I couldn't sleep at night and was awake always till the early AM working then I'd crash out and sleep till noon - Really unhealthy for our circadian clock.

reading, reading, reading: I started reading a lot of existential work. I think it was Dostoyeveski (Notes from the Underground) got me hungry for more. It was dark but it was also uplifting. Then Thomas Ligotti (The Conspiracy against the Human Race) and the thoughts of Emil Cioran spelled it out in clarity as I've never seen before: the only way for me to be is to realize that I have to think about death every day and that it's actually good for me to be reminded that there is no point. It gave me peace because I surrendered and stopped looking. I learned that I'm not actually a freak and it's OK to have gloomy thoughts. I no longer have to put on the optimism-mask to be happy. Anyway I kept on reading and still do so until today since about a year now. At least 1 book a day (mostly philosophy or fiction), but not with the aim to "study" or learn but to enjoy. I'm done with forcing myself for the sake of education or career. Life is too fucking short. And it could be even shorter by offing myself. I feel that suicide is still my right as a human that nobody can deny me and fuck anyone who says otherwise. What are they gonna do? arrest me? call me names? hate me? - I couldn't care less LOL. I know that one day I will kill myself but not out of spite or sadness but because it's the best way to go with dignity (much better than withering away in an old peoples home or being a guinea pig to the medical profession while I go through another round of chemo to beat some cancer. No it's much better to burn all the documents that I have or anything that proofs I've ever existed and then disappear in a way that doesn't harm others (no dramatic pills, a bullet or blood where I upset some bystander or whoever finds me. When I do it they will never find me, though they know I will have gone this way since it was my will. This is what dying with dignity means for me: on my own terms and by my own hands (or maybe in an accident that can happen without my control of course. But as long as I can control it it will be on my terms not on societies. But not today. And most likely not next week or next month. Life is too good now because I keep discovering new books and I have real conversations with them with real people. It must probably seem somewhere on a spectrum between strange, stupid and even offensive to most of you here when I say that what helped me was knowing that I need pessimism/existentialism to be happy. It doesn't at all fit to can-do spirit positive thinking and the way a doctor (and society) wants me to be. But that's OK I'm not living for them.

If you wish to talk to somebody anonymously and without judgement then feel free to drop me a mail. The address is in my profile.

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