by Band Back Together | Jun 11, 2015 | Abuse, Bullying, Coping With Depression, Depression, Fear, Insomnia, Loss, Major Depressive Disorder, Murder, Suicide, Workplace Bullying |
I used to work as a planning engineer at a big construction company. I am a pure vegetarian. I didn’t like the non-vegegarian food near me, so I used to stay away from all the people who used to eat non-veg food. We all stayed in a company provided guest house, and they were the majority.
My roommate there tortured me physically where we were staying, and mentally at our workplace, on a daily basis. Since I was inexperienced and rather new to the industry, he used to bully me and downgrade me by calling me a clerk even though I was a Senior Engineer there. I wanted to report the physical torture to my superiors, but my roommate threatened that he would have people torture my family if I did.
In the same office I fell in love with a girl I worked with. I told her that I was being bullied, but she thought I was joking. My roommate’s bullying caused me to leave my job and kept me from having a healthy relationship with the girl I loved. He was telling her bad things about me, and I didn’t want to tell her everything he had been doing to me. I had thoughts of committing suicide and sometimes I even thought about killing him. These thoughts would run over and over in my dreams like nightmares.
Because of him, I am depressed, I lost my job, and I lost the girl I love. I want to report him to the police. I want to kill myself. I can’t sleep from all the nightmares. I don’t know who to talk to because I am afraid and embarrassed. Please help me if you have been through something like this.
by Band Back Together | Apr 23, 2015 | Coping With Divorce, Divorce, Loss, Major Depressive Disorder |
Just a few thoughts on age. I still get together with my friends, some of whom I knew in high school. We’re all thirtysomething (yeah like that TV show when I was a kid), but I could almost swear, at the core, we’re all still those kids. Surely, life experience causes us to collect memories, which good or bad, filter the way we interact with the world. And certainly, we all bear the marks of physical aging, whether it be gray hair, losing hair, wrinkles, or yes, even dental work. But still, these sparks we carry remain the same. Even the same as when we were little children. Way deep down for some, to be sure.
I feel like an old man when I look at my thirteen, eleven, and eight year old children. Wow! Were any of us really that energetic and bendy? It’s when I watch them play and run that I really feel what the years of labor have done to my back and knees. They fall down and bounce back up, just as if they had springy legs of some kind. They laugh the whole time, slipping and sliding in the dirt, grass or snow. Most of us would be in traction from an afternoon of tossing ourselves on the ground, victims of a horrible zombie attack.
Age is a funny thing. I used to think that my problems with self-esteem and depression would somehow evaporate with age alone. But, like physical injuries, psychological ones leave their scars. Scars that sometimes become quite raw from the newer and different events of adulthood. I remember thinking about those scars when my wife left me. I was more hurt than you could imagine. She was sick and tired of me and my depression. I’d withdrawn from nearly everyone in my life, unhealthily leaning on my woman as my only friend. It was a burden to her, I know. I still harbor some resentment from her leaving me. In some ways, that is rooted in the thought that I was left on a sickbed. But, damnit, I wouldn’t open up to anyone in those days. The things that bothered me didn’t fall away as I aged. Indeed, they seemed to have grown in strength from the darkness that I kept them in. As I have really thought about the whole thing, I realize that my many secret pains and worries destroyed my attitude and therefore my marriage. My ex knew that I struggled with depression and low self esteem. But my stubborn refusal to let my demons out into the light just made those things worse. In the end, thought, the pain really caused me to begin the healing of wounds that I’ve carried nearly my whole life.
One thing that I can say about aging is that to me, truly becoming old means letting the shit the world dishes out smother your spark. I am pagan and I think that the best way to honor the gods and our ancestors is to be grateful for the chance to live, to be hopeful about the future, no matter how dark the past and to count the many blessings we no doubt have accumulated over our lives.
I think that there are times of life that prompt very real and intense introspection in humankind. Times of loss are a perfect example. Over a long enough timeline, we all lose at least one thing that is very dear to us. At such a time, it’s easy to become stuck in a ‘woe-is-me’ attitude. Flipping that over, we see that such a time is great for taking stock of what we still have: not money or status, but the truly unique gifts within – music, art, compassion, humor, kindness. All of these and more are gifts that each of us have in some measure. Pain is often a very instructive teacher.
What I hoped time would heal was only first poulticed when I lost the woman I loved. Surely it was a painfully hard knock, and there have been many dark days, but I think that the pain off loss has facilitated my healing where age and time could not.
by Band Back Together | Apr 22, 2015 | Bullying, Childhood Bullying, Coping With Bullying, Coping With Depression, How To Heal From Being Bullied, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Major Depressive Disorder, Self-Esteem, Teen Depression |
This is her story:
Hi, The Band. I’m a Chinese international student and I’m still trying hard to recover from being bullied in kindergarten.
Back then, I was a shy little girl who was mocked by my classmates; I can still hear their laughter. To make matters worse, my kindergarten teacher was irresponsible (she only cared for children whose parents bribed her). Once, classmates kicked my head in until I bled heavily. The teachers advice? She told me to lie to my family and say that I “fell down accidentally,” clearly my own fault.
The effects of bullying persist. I’ve suppressed my own wants and desires so that I can please others; my family, classmates, and teachers. I was a nice girl, I studied hard, didn’t waste my time on music, pop culture, relationships during my adolescent “rebellion.” I took every word of my family, friends, teachers, and classmates seriously, even when they’d ask me to do something I didn’t want to do. Everyone thumbed on me and nobody thought I was problematic – including me.
I began to notice problems when I was in college: I cannot keep diaries for myself (but I can write for school work). I cannot develop hobbies, enjoy music just for fun, or express myself on social media unless it relates to school work. I don’t have any idols. Anything of my own preferences feels obscure and unimportant. My self esteem is low, I never feel proud of myself.
It’s hard for me to say no to others. I don’t even know what it feels to like fight for myself. I’ve compromised myself many times no matter if I wanted to do it or not (and there are a lot of things I like and dislike). I treat everyone the same, no matter if he/she was cruel to me.
I feel especially uncomfortable when it comes to meeting some outstanding, strong or potential-to-be-bullying peers. All my current friends are somehow weaker than me. While I relate to most of my peers during school, I never contacted them after graduation.
I need to pretend to be exciting to my peers or siblings.
I’ve just recovered from two depressive episodes and begun the long process of healing, empowering, and understanding myself. I repeated “I love you” everyday to myself since last April.
It worked!
I can calmly write for myself. I can express myself on social media. I started to figure out my likes and dislikes. I began to asking my Chinese friends to help if I have concerns about my life. I stopped taking school so seriously so that I can best understand myself and the world. I’ve begun reaching out to help other people who feel weak, depressed, or bullied learn to love themselves. Invigorated, I’ve started to contribute to the development of my discipline in China. I’m comfortable and peaceful being alone doing nothing. While I stay alone here, I’m never lonely.
I have goals now, too! There are a couple of things on my bucket list (traveling, feeling a sense of belonging with my peers, learning to make friends with people who intimidate me) are things I really want but haven’t had acquired yet. I want to fight for myself (when necessary), go to parties and have fun, enjoy music, and attending online or offline community activities.
Life is certainly looking up.
by Band Back Together | Aug 25, 2014 | Coping With Depression, Depression, Happiness, Major Depressive Disorder, Therapy |
This has been a long time coming.
Months – if not years – of untreated depression, followed by years of depression treated with therapy. Then an all-too-brief period of remission before a slip back into depression that happened both slowly and all at once, so I didn’t even realize it at first.
It was different this time. I looked okay on the outside to all but those closest to me. I wasn’t having a breakdown every day or pulling the car over on the drive to my friends’ house to cry or to throw up. I was going to work.
But this time, I was tired of trying.
I put all that effort into getting better through sheer will, and it didn’t stick. I was frustrated. And though I absolutely didn’t want to kill myself, I needed everything to stop. I needed to be done.
I didn’t let on how relieved I was when my therapist suggested we re-visit the idea of medication.
It took a few weeks, of course. The transition wasn’t that bad. An acute breakdown caused by stress at work, which was unpleasant but okay because I’d dealt with that intense depression attack before. Then a slide back into the all-pervading guilt. But then one day I woke up feeling happy.
A fluke, I thought.
Then it happened again.
And again.
I’m on day four now, and I feel like I can function. I don’t feel stressed, I don’t feel guilty about absolutely everything.
Some things didn’t change. My coworker still drives me insane. My friends can be boring. My dog needs too much attention. But these things don’t drive me to the brink of giving up. They feel like standard downs of life, to balance out the standard ups I’ve been re-experiencing.
The ups.
I love the ups.
I almost feel like I don’t deserve this, but I know that undeserving feeling will go away as the medication continues to work. It feels strange to be able to sit here on a long weekend, doing nothing, enjoying the cloudy, wet weather. It feels strange to enjoy doing nothing, for that matter. It feels almost too good for me to see a cute guy at church and decide to go talk to him. Do normal people enjoy life this much? I’d forgotten.
It’s a simple enjoyment, but it feels right.
I don’t want to go back to the way it was before.
by Band Back Together | Jun 24, 2014 | A Letter I Can't Send, Coping With Depression, Depression, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loneliness, Parent Loss |
Dear Mommy and Daddy,
We miss you. It has been a painful few months and I still have not accepted it. I still think that this was all a big joke and you guys will drive up in the driveway all happy and we will go back to being a small dysfunctional family like we were before all of this.
I look at pictures and just cry because I see how happy you two are in them, and I force myself to believe I will never get to see you two that happy again.
I just can not live in our house anymore, or even in our town. Everyone is telling me I can not keep Mia or Dokee, that I have to sell them. You both understood my love for them and that in a time like this I need them. So, I’m leaving to go to college somewhere. I want to become a vet like you always thought I needed to be, Daddy. I can not say that I have the best grades, but I think if I clear my slate and move on, I will succeed.
I have lost so much weight and now am twenty pounds under weight. I can not sleep at night. I am so depressed and ready to just give up. I can’t do this I can’t be told at eighteen that I have to pay bills and find a way to feed Steven. I just want to get away from it and hide.
I just want to get away from people telling me I have to sign this and this. Why did you put me through this, why have you done this? Was I that horrible as a child? Was it right to put me through this? Do you really believe I needed this?
– Sam
by Band Back Together | Jun 2, 2014 | Anxiety, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Depression, Fear, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Resources, Major Depressive Disorder, Schizophrenia, Social Anxiety Disorder |
I am lost.
There’s so much that is going on in my head and I use all my energy to appear “okay” around people. I don’t know why I do it – it’s not fair to me.
I have this world I’ve lost control over; it is in a war, and it isn’t nice. They want me to lead it so I’m leading a war in which the kingdom has no leaders. They want me to deal with that too, which I’m working on.
But that isn’t the real world.
In the real world, I’m too scared to open my curtains because I believe there are two invisible, flying men watching me. I’m scared of people. I’m just scared. There are other things that affect the way I do things; it annoys me because I have no control over it.
There’s a goose that runs around – he does make me laugh, but at the wrong times. There are monsters that try and attack me – sometimes they can succeed. There are two men I see that are complete opposites; it’s very rare that they agree on anything. There are other things too.
I have anxiety and depression.
It can take half an hour for me to get from one side of the door to the outside because I check my bag millions of times, my shoes and socks, and all the doors of the house.
Odd numbers are important.
I feel alone so much, even when I am with people. I feel like I’m a robot with people.
I have panic attacks; I don’t feel relaxed very often.
Sometimes I hear children singing nursery rhymes, but it sounds creepy. Sometimes I hear people scream from the war. Sometimes I hear them cry.
I self-harm, sometimes because the voices tell me to; they won’t shut up – sometimes I self-harm because I can’t cope with the emotional pain.
My family hasn’t helped helped me. They’re religious and my dad doesn’t like other people’s opinions, so I can’t share mine except occasionally to my friends. My family doesn’t understand what I’m going through. I always find myself comparing my struggles to my sister’s cancer diagnosis; at least she had something wrong that people could see and get out of her. My dad blames demons for my problems.
Nothing has happened to trigger this, I’m just really unlucky.
I just wanted to get it all out.
