Dear Batty and Kendy; yes I'm still here! Actually I had a pretty good week this week. I have been taking a little more medication for nerves and sleep, which seems to be helping. Also, friends of ours had some friends visiting them, and it just happened to come up in the conversation that the woman of the couple who was visiting admitted to me that she had gone through some very rough times while she was going to University in the past. At that time, she started to cut herself. You can imagine my surprise. She had suffered with a father who was extremely pushy and perfectionistic, who had demanded "A" grades throughout her schooling, and because she was quite smart, ended up in a special school and went on to a five year course in Languages (she can speak four languages and has lived in three different countries). But because she was different; (I won't go into the details), all the students in her high end school used to beat her up. One time she described one student as beating her with a baseball bat, and a teacher who saw what was going on, just left the scene without doing anything about it, because the teacher didn't like her either. Can you imagine? It was at that point that she started to cut herself (so I imagine it was all too much for her, and she was disassociating from her body??) Anyway I asked her that question , but she didn't answer it directly. I did notice that she was a very quiet person, and didn't talk much; until we started talking about all these types of things. She said at least she had not turned to alcohol or eating disorders which many people do. I guess she could tell I was kind of similar, so she was quite frank. Anyway, she said she was able to over-come the problem later on in her life, although she said that she can never say that she is cured, and that things may come up in the future so that she can never feel completely cured. Lately she also admitted to me that she had had a miscarriage, and that that was really hard on her body (and mind I imagine), but she has year old baby right at the moment, and that keeps her very busy, plus she works part time as a teacher. She has a very supportive husband now, and a nice place to live, so I think the supports that she has now have enabled her to find more peace.

Still here Visionary. Hope you are too. Kendy

Thank you Batty 1969...I hear you.

remember visionary i am not full blown borderline i just have tendencies. my illness reflects more of the ptsd and bipolar. i comply daily and take my meds and as kendy knows i will always take my meds because of my son. im so glad to hear that you are doing better. you sound so much stronger than before. i am very pleased for you that you are no longer taking responsibility for others actions any longer. you are doing very well. but please dont lump me in the same category as her. im sure my "issues" are somewhat different :O) anyhoo...you are doing well and that is all that matters. congrats and keep going. we are all still here for you when you need us. stay strong! hugs

Thank you Kendy and Batty for responding. I guess we all have something in common. I suspect that I was abused too, but I can't remember it. My sister and my brother were; and my grandfather used to treat me in in-appropriate manners sexually, but not exactly sex. He used to take my father to prostitutes when he was young. And my brother and father used to peak at me having baths. And some other stuff I don't want to talk about. My brother was caught behind our school sexually abusing girls, and the police told my parents to get him help, but they refused. I didn't hear about it until my mother was dieing. What an appropriate time to find out eh? I remember my schoolmates asking me if I knew who it was who had been sexually abusing people behind our school, and I remember saying that I didn't. That's because nobody told me. I was not treated appropriately even though there probably was no actual sex, at least that I can remember. (but I always wondered if I had been, and it is really strange that I should think that if nothing happened) Kendy, good for you about size...I learned that we should love ourselves no matter what our size, even if others don't in the eating disorders therapy...NO MORE DIETING was the slogan; and I feel the way you do that I can't handle trying to loose anymore, I did that so many times yo-yo dieting to the extreme, loosing and putting it on so many times that my body can't loose anymore. Mostly I blame the medications and my body type. I always fantasize about operations instead. I believe there is a segment of the population who have taken medications for a long period of time, who probably deserve to have free operations to remove the fat, the stignma, and the pains associated with it, because WE ARE NOT TO BLAME! I don't care what any doctor says about it, because I have lived it, and I know myself! If you continue to try dieting your body will just hold on to the fat more and more as time goes on, so it is not worth it. At times, I have also thought that no body would want me anyway physically, but that is just not true and I can't believe that. My husband likes me this way, and others have gone after me in my new country, no kidding! There is no accounting for attraction...maybe there is, and I believe i

visionary i didnt repsond because i do have some other problems besides depression and i wasnt sure if i would be answering you question correctly. even though my dx is different than yours i still battle with depression. ive told my story before so i dont think rehasing it would matter much. i just basically wanted to check to see how you are feeling today. i am sorry i cant be of any help but the others seem to be helping. you arent alone. there are many people but most just dont post. so, i hope you are feeling well today. just checking on ya. take care.

Good Morning Visionary, Where to begin? As it has been explained to me, depersonalization can manifest itself by a feeling of separateness from the world or a feeling that the world is not real. I frequently experience both. I have resorted to cutting myself just to know that I am still here, still real. I too am a very, very large person but I find that people don't like to look at me. They look past me, the way you don't stare at a person with a bad scar. The other night my husband and I were at an outdoor art fair and this woman kept staring at me as I walked toward and past her. I'd glance away and glance back and her eyes were still on me with a look that seemed to say, "how dare you exist?" My husband would say that I probably looked like someone she knew. If that were the case it must have been someone she didn't like very much! My childhood was not at all OK. My mom was always there and did the best she could but she had me when she was barely 18. My father sexually abused me as a young child and then again as a young teenager. I've pretty much dealt with all of that but it doesn't undue the damage to my psyche caused by it all. It's a weird thing to forgive, not forget, but then still have to live with the consequences of what was done to my spirit. I recently found out that my father had abused another member of the family years before me and on only one occasion but this seemed to reignite the pain and make the whole thing so real again. I found out recently that a man I have known for years with whom my husband and I are friends has always suffered from depression. We talked about it a couple of times and it was so good to not have to explain everything to him. He knows how I feel because he's felt it. But the last couple of times I've seen him, I feel like he's pulled back from me. It's like he's feeling disloyal to his wife or something even though both of our spouses are well-aware of the situation and have both said that it's good for us to have someone to talk to. I enjoy having male friends very much and it hurts that our coming clean has seemed to put distance between us, for whatever reason. I'm sure my husband does not worry about my having an affair. Honestly, the way I look no one would want me anyway

Kendy; thank you so much for replying! It is nice that you have a caring psychologist. I had "free" therapy for about seven years, mostly from the pshychiatrist type doctors for the first three years who saw me 20 minutes a week for a quick talk about the past, and prescriptions. Then later I was seeing doctors who were foreigners who were students of phsychiatry for the remaining four years. In between I attended eating disorder classes and therapy groups at the Toronto Hospital, and after that was completed I attended Shena's place; a free therapy of higher quality delving into various courses available for those with eating problems. It was started by a chariable organization for people with eating disorders - especially the mother of Shena, who was a teen who died of annorexia. So many people with eating problems have had the similar abusive family background that it astonishes me that more people are not dieing out there from eating disorders than anything else. When I became familiar with the symptoms, I saw people with them all around me. Anyway, there I took classes for exercise for pain, which was really interesting and comforting; art therapy which was painful, singing therapy which was painful, and relationship therapy; where I found out I was extremely angry with my mother who had already passed away. And she was the "perfect mother/enabler" of my alcoholic father and brothers. I also attended a few meetings of Alanon which was totally upsetting, because the memories were painful and the pain had to come out. So I cannot say that I did not receive any help at all; but since I moved to another country, the medical profession and the public look upon depression in a very negative way. I tried to get away from the actual theraputic setting, and felt free from it; feeling that it had contributed to a low self esteem of having to always attend a class or a doctor's therapy all the time. I did not have much support that I was doing good things for myself in attending them, and so when I was free from it all for a while, I felt better. I started on a course of Chinese medicine, which I found did help me physically, but there was no real talk therapy to go with it. And it is difficult to find people to communicate with on a deep level abo

Visionary...I'm here and from your description, I am a lot like you. My official diagnosis is chronic recurrent major depressive disorder with dysthemia and generalized panic disorder. I am on medications which need to be adjusted and sometimes changed periodically and have been in therapy with a competent, caring psychologist for over five years. I function fairly well but I still feel like an anomoly. I often feel like there is a shield between me and everything else in the world. I can see beauty and kindness all around me but am separated from it (depersonalization disorder). I have days, weeks when I can't stop thinking about grand philosophical questions (obsessive but more anxiety related). My head doesn't shut off even when I'm asleep. I have so many dreams, some disturbing, that I wake up mentally exhausted. I am damaged and imperfect and I feel like I won't ever be whole. My first feelings of being different than everyone else were as a young child. I am invisible. That is to say that people see someone they think is me and talk to her, interact with her. But very few people have seen the real person I am. I like being invisible most of the time but sometimes it hurts so much to feel so different, so alone. I am chronically suicidal, I think for all of the cliche reasons...I want the hurting to stop, I want to shut off my brain and not think. I am guilted into not acting on that impulse because of the devastating effect it would have on my son. He is grown now but in many ways (and I don't mean this in some perverse, incestuous way) our souls are connected. We have the ability to emotionally communicate with each other across great distances. He, unfortunately, like me ponders the "great mysteries" of life and has many discussions with God. (I can say these things because I am "crazy".) He too laments his separateness in the universe and wants to become a psychologist to try to help other people who feel the way that he does. I see so many signs of my illness in him and wonder if I am to be punished further by watching him suffer too. I am further punished by having a sixth sense about people. I can usually tell within a few minutes of meeting someone if they are on the level and am rarely wrong. Like Cassandra dur

So since nobody answered the last question I raised, I am left to assume that everyone on this site has other concerns besides simple Major Depression, that it is a side effect of prolonged suffering of some type or another, correct? Therefore, Major Depression should be considered curable, if one can determine what problems started it happening, or are keeping it happening? I believe mine started with a horrible family life, add to that negative thinking because of all I've experienced; and in combination of deep rooted family problems that go back for generations. The damage to my autonomic nervous system was somewhat permanent; and although thinking about and dealing with panic attacks and social phobias can help; I will never have a perfect nervous system unless an act of God occurs, correct? Until then, I must rely on medications, along with the (illusive for me) therapy which is supposed to all make the past wash away? I know there are people out there who have been comforted somewhat by various methods of therapy, but has anyone been completely cured? Is that possible? I guess based on your lack of responses to my question that everyone has other issues they are working on, and therefore this subject is just too complicated to pin down to one illness, or nerve problem such as clinical depression or major depression; am I right? If sensitivity, intelligence, emotional I.Q., personality types have also been a burden to a person, how are they to cope? The main theme for me that I keep running through my head is "I am alone out there" "there is no one like me" "no one will ever understand me completely but God", "I'm lonely, lonely, lonley"..."I cannot get out of this place I am in". I tend to feel more comfortable around those who are highly gifted; they also feel lonely, because no one can come up to their level of intelligence. I am not that gifted, but I realise that they are lonely lonely lonely too! Isn't that the center of the matter? "Nobody has gone what I have gone through feeling?" My biggest problem started since I was a young teen, blushing my way through school and my life for the next 37 years. But actually it started before that; in my childhood, although I wasn't blushing as much, I was often very depressed and afraid of pe