u/TheDanishThede

Hvor går man hen hvis man drømmer om indbagt kylling med sursød sauce og ris?

Det er årevis siden jeg har fået det (ikke siden jeg flyttede fra Kbh) men en rundtur på google gav ikke meget svar.

​

Following a mental breakdown at 31 I attended on/off sessions with a therapist for 12 years. She was a really good fit and knows my family history as well as my life events and struggles up to 9-ish years ago when I stopped because we agreed I had as many tools as she could give me at the time.

I was in a good place and it felt right.

I have now been diagnosed with AuDHD as well as C-PTSD (the latter was suspected) and not just the depression I dealt with back then.

I have also entered perimenopause.

I need help handling a lot of stuff at this point but I'm in doubt:

Would it make sense to continue with my old therapist or would the sessions be "tainted" by old assumptions, patterns etc developed during prior treatments?

It should also be noted that while she has menopause as part of her repertoire, she has no experience with adhd or autism and the specific issues they may bring.

I'm... Not sure of the flair for this as I don't mind advice but I am honestly just venting.

I'm broken.

I'm hitting perimenopause but even before that I'd lost my body to overweight, stress, meds, self medication and wearing it down by not recognizing my own needs, limits and boundaries.

Example: I worked as an escort for a year or two in my thirties because I needed money and thought it might be interesting as I'm VERY good at performing sexually. I phrase it like that, because that's what it's always been: a performance. Even if I orgasmed with a partner, the rest was a performance to please and hopefully keep him longer.

The escort job left me broken and I still have severe issues a decade later with being present during sex and the resulting anxiety attacks.

My head has been broken forever, though - depressive episodes started at 13 when we moved cross country and I lost any semblance of friends, structures or familiarity with the world around me. The new area was full of fundamental Christians, closed to outsiders until the third generation and I then experienced the loneliness that has infected me since then.

Didn't get diagnosed AuDHD until my forties and have C-PTSD from way too much family drama, shit I was put through or put myself through and, just.. life.

A major breakdown at 31 stopped my career as a chef and I've been on antidepressants since then. I've spent 12 years in therapy, on/off - trying to learn to figure out and manage the fucking mountain of traumas I lug around and though I now recognize a slew of them and where they come from, the tools I have for them isn't working. I either can't remember them in the moment or my executive fuckery stops me from implementing any

My husband is wonderful and has helped me so much. He's diagnosed Aspergers with PTSD from a run in with the Danish prison system (he's since been exonerated but the trauma remains) and I feel like such a burden to him because even with that in play, I need so much more support than he does in our daily lives.

I've lost all my major lifelong interests either because my head doesn't allow me to indulge anymore.

They were Ttrpgs: I was a happy forever GM but I can't handle the social aspects anymore - or just.. having it fade into a slow death as in Food; nutrition, molecular gastronomy, historical gastronomy, experiencing new or beloved old dishes, cooking, baking, eating the results and the joy of having others enjoy them. I still like eating, but my relationship with that is fraught with guilt and anxiety due to my body.

And writing: I can't write. I like world building but am completely locked when it comes to actually using it, despite knowing exactly what SHOULD work. I've even advised others on using the techniques and they've had success.

I can currently only stomach one specific microwave meal (apart from a handful of junk foods) and am trying to manage my nutritional needs with supplements, but it's really not helping my health.

My knee is fucked from an old injury starting to act up again and my back gives out randomly. I used to have a sixpack ffs. Now I'm morbidly obese and after covid I'm more or less asphyxiating if I try to exercise.

Not to mention that exercise or just any kind of movement or internal or external shift I'm temperature will set off a hot flash and a torrent of sweat. Eating a hot meal or taking a shower will do this too.

I'm tired all the time. Everything is such an effort and I'm never tested when I wake up.

All my joints hurt, often random muscles too. My breasts will feel swollen and painful at random times. My jaw hurts from tension and my teeth from receding gums. My cervical muscles are so tense, I constantly have to remember to forcibly relax them, so I don't get cramps.

Every morning I take stock of what hurts today.

Every night I battle dyspepsia/reflux. And nightmares. But those have been there all my life, though the good dreams used to balance them out.

My meds keep me going but ..

The elvanse doesn't seem to work anymore and I'm on max dose. I hate my antidepressants as they numb the few good things, but I don't dare stop. I've been suicidal, I've selfharmed, I've been catatonic. I'm not risking that again.

The past three years I've lived in a house with a garden and I've enjoyed rewilding half and growing a bit of produce in the other half. Unfortunately I'm not allowed this either, as my head doesn't count homegrown produce (berries and peas are exempt luckily), as actual food.

I've been able to garden every other day for an hour or two. Any more and my body can't manage it. The off days are spent recuperating, 🍂 bg behind on house chores.

And I'm slowly losing the interest this year. So, yeah.

It's been the thing keeping me running but now it's dwindling. It made winter depressions worse anyway, as the dark and cold now had the added curse of missing gardening.

Winter depression. My bane. I fear those'll be what kills me in the end.

Half of every year is lost to misery.

5 months a year I go into an emotional coma and just hibernate in my nesting chair, muscles atrophying, sinking deeper and deeper into my inner world of pain, regret, bitterness, loneliness and mourning.

Regrets and sorrow.

My sixteen year old cat died last February and she was so sick the last two or three years. There was so much I could have done for her but I only learned what and how this past year. Guilt and self loathing for what has turned out to be inferior/inadequate care, despite praise for her care from her vet, haunts me. I failed her. And putting her down when her body couldn't keep going, will forever feel like murdering her.

She played with her ping pong ball the night before being killed.

The euthanasia hurt her. She died hissing at me, fighting for her life.

I miss her so much.

I miss my body. I miss feeling pretty, being able to move, work, dance, laugh, run. I miss sex: feeling desire and desired.

Husband is sex positive asexual and really good at reading and giving during sex, but despite him being a genuine hunk, I'm no longer sexually attracted to him. So we just, don't. We've had some of the best sex of my life, like.. mind blowing transcendental spiritually connective stuff. It's just, gone.

He still desires me, in his own way. It's always been my mind he's in love with and I'm apparently still me, enough that he can sometimes want to have sex. And I can't.

I miss having a social life. I have two friends left. One lives across the country and visits for a day, roughly once a month. The other is frayed from stress and we keep making dates but never meet up.

There's a small handful of others, but they never take initiative and rarely answer invitations.

I despise my family for their toxic patterns and refusal to change anything.

I regret so much of my life now. I didn't use to. I used to believe that I am what life made me, and I was happy with who I was, despite pain, trauma, hardships.

I used to have hope that I could fix my body enough to feel good, even if I'd never get back to who I was at my best.

I used to love finding new interests, having the freedom to follow them as far as I wanted, with only my money being a limit. A pretty hard and heavy limit, but still..

I used to look forward to life and believed good things could and would come along.

That's no longer the case.

As Arctic Monkeys sang: The best you ever had is just a memory.

It's all downhill now.

Perimenopause has me realizing that this was it. The speed at which my body is breaking down has picked up and from here on I can look forward to such delights as clitoral atrophy, osteoporosis, arthritis, an even foggier brain, atrophying muscles, hormonal hell and pain pain pain.

None of what I've learnt is useful to anyone. Even if it was, I'm too broken to manage the social aspects of teaching and the pressure of performance as a teacher.

I have 40 years left in me at best, though with the cancer rates of my family, that's far from certain, and right now I have absolutely nothing I look forward to filling them with.

Travelling might be nice, but my husband can't as that triggers him far too badly. None of my friends wants to. I'd rather poke myself in the eye with a rusty spoon than have one more drama ridden family vacation. Travelling alone is.. empty. Irrelevant. Travelling with a stranger is panic inducing and horrible to me.

If my life was a game, I'd start a new save file.

Even if it meant never meeting my husband, who is the best thing to ever happen to me. The only one I've ever felt seen, accepted, respected and understood with. The only one I've ever felt safe enough to drop all masks with.

I'm so tired.

Nothing excites me. Nothing makes me happy for more than a second or two, then reality reasserts and I'm back in just waiting to die.

I'm currently not seeing a therapist and I'll probably start up again soon. The one I've been talking to these past 12 years, who knows me and my story, has no experience with audhd or even autism. Finding a new therapist and going through that whole experience again is such a hurdle. I don't know if I can.

I'm just so godsdamned tired.