Dear bedofroses:

“My brain feels like it’s a split between being anxious and depressed.. When I’m not anxious, I’m depressed… I’m either having a panic attack or stuck in a mental ditch with my depression”-

– Anxiety and depression are not two separate issues, they are very connected: when anxious, the brain is overly excited, and not in a fun way. The brain/ body cannot endure too much excitement for too long, so it shuts down and switches into depression. Depression is a kind of a rest for the brain, resting from too much excitation.

You asked for advice on how to talk to your boyfriend- my advice:

1. Do not call him  late at night anymore. Instead, call him when he is awake and available so  to not interrupt his sleep or studies.

2. Do not call him when you are drunk anymore. It may be that part of the fun of being drunk for you is calling him (we do tend to like hearing ourselves talk when buzzed or drunk). Better cut off that part of the fun.

3. Share with him your anxiety and depression in a responsible way: not repeating yourself, not going on and on and on, not crying a whole lot, and not blaming him for making you feel  bad or for not making you feel better. State how you feel with the appropriate facial expression that goes with how you feel, a tear here or there, a few, voice shaking, fine, but keep it relatively short. This way you express yourself without burdening him with over-expressing and/or blaming.

– If you want to share about the earliest time you remember yourself feeling anxious/ depressed, please do (and who is the “yer” in “yer killing me”, for you, in your life)?

anita

Dear bedofroses,

What is it about negative emotions that scares you so much? From the time of your adolescent, it seems that you don’t like the fact that you have negative emotions therefore try really hard to “turn that frown upside down” by changing your thoughts to positive ones. But that was merely an illusion you’ve created for yourself. The illusion of positive thoughts is that you aren’t feeling depressed; yet because it is an illusion, those negative emotions won’t go away. Those negative emotions will merely be stuffed into a chest until you can’t work your magic and create another illusion. And now it seems that the chest has no more room to stuff those negativity anymore. So now you’ve turned to drinking to try to help you numb those feelings, but those feelings doesn’t go away, does it? Rather, it feels all the more helpless.

Your boyfriend sound like a lovely person, but the issue here isn’t how to talk to your boyfriend. The issue here is how you talk to yourself. What kind of things are you telling yourself? What kind of things are you allowing yourself to feel or not feel? Where does that need to hide your depression and negativity come from? Why can’t you be depressed? Why must you be happy all the time?

Start from there. Ruminate on these questions. Think about why you have to hide this or that. And remember, this is about your health.

Good luck.