I am profoundly depressed!

I feel like I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do— not skipping meals, cooking a lot, working, exercising, having hobbies and friends, taking my meds, and still I’m struggling. Anxiety, depression, and eating disorder tendencies/terrible body image are still negatively affecting my life.

Even though I’m having more good days due to my healthier routine, when I have bad days, (or more commonly, nights), it wrecks me for a few days. I’m trying to figure out what to say to my therapist and psychiatrist at my next appointments but I just feel like what else can I really do? More meds, different meds, who knows, it feels like a crapshoot.

The desire to give in to the depression is so, so strong and it’s pulling on me so badly that I’m near tears at my desk just thinking about it.

I can identify with that thing with your therapist. I have so many points during the week where I think ‘just this trigger, this moment, this intensely awful feeling could take up the fifty mins on its own’. Then the next few days bring several additional moments of overwhelm, each seeming to demand that it is the most pressing one to talk about. But somehow, come the session, many of those things sit behind a locked door, embarrassingly elusive when they were so important just days or hours before. I’ll still find words - too many!- spilling out of me (sometimes I go mute, or struggle to form sentences but mostly it just pours out) but the time flies past so quickly that the surface is barely scratched. And I have to go back to  a week of waiting before I once again say anything overt about the fundamental weirdness and hardship of just existing inside this head while everyone else makes  it all look so easy. 

I can identify with that as well. Anxiety means that I either go blank and mute or start talking about something trivial that is not the pressing thing to talk about.

Our autistic brains like structure and planning. Maybe you could write things down as they happen during the week. It will take some of the pressure off, as you won't have to keep thoughts going round in your head until the next appointment. You could either give those notes to your therapist or use them yourself to set an 'agenda', so that you cover what you actually want to talk about. 

That's a good idea Autonomistic, I'll try that out. I did actually make some notes before, and they are still folded up in my coat pocket! It's stuff that goes further back so I keep deferring getting to it!

That's a good idea Autonomistic, I'll try that out. I did actually make some notes before, and they are still folded up in my coat pocket! It's stuff that goes further back so I keep deferring getting to it!