Q&A: Mental Illness or Just a Teen?

Question by : Mental Illness or just a Teen?
Well, I write a lot of posts on here but I’m not really sure if it’s just because I need someone to talk to or not. I know alot of people on here are uneducated on mental illnesses and that I should seek professional help for a precise answer, but the thing is, I’m not really sure on what I need help on or how to describe the way I’m feeling. I find that it’s easier to peice my thoughts together through writing, that way I can go back over and correct things that I say and take all the time I want on expressing the way I feel or have been feeling to the best of my ability.

By the way, this might be kind of long, and my thoughts are ussually scattered…

Uhm, I don’t really know what’s wrong with me or even if there is something wrong with me. I’ve spent the last month looking at mental illnesses because I thought that I was depressed and had a lot going on. However, I read someones post, actually I read quite a lot of posts saying that almost everyone goes through these things and that it’s just because you’re a teen. I’m 17 by the way and terrified of turning 18, mainlyyy because I’m terrified of responsibility.

Ok, to start off, I’m writing this for two reasons:

1. I thought that I was clinicaly depressed, but now I think I’m just really sad at how my life has turned up. I’m still not 100% sure, because there’s situational depression, which I believe is being depressed because of your situation? If I’m wrong on the definition of this or anything else that I write about, please don’t say I’m stupid or criticize me because of it. I would much rather you better inform me on it so I know the difference.

2. Reason 2 is because I would like to know if some of the things in my life that I explain seem to have similar symptoms to other mental illnesses or if I’m just a teen having a rough time. Like I’ve said, I’ve read on other posts that people say that it is just because I’m a teen and I might have a teenager’s “depression”, or I’m still in the youth of my life and learning alot on how to cope with life its self. Either way I know that if I need a real answer that I should seek professional help and that if things get to out of control that I should seek professional help, but I think that other peoples opinions/personal experiences would help a bit too.

Alrighty then, let’s begin. I’d like to start of by saying that I have a tendancy to really screw myself over, or in other words do things without thinking about the consequences. I’ve dropped out of school before, mentally and physically, mentally meaning I was there but didn’t do anything but screw around and couldn’t pay attention on my work, and physically meaning that I just hated to go to school, so I didn’t. Uhm, I have experimented with drugs, mainly weed but I’ve done exstacy quite alot too, and I’ve been in juvenile hall twice, wich I actually believe I have experienced some truama from, but again, I’m probably wrong and just thinking about things way to much.

Now I’m enrolled in a charter school but because of the last month of me moping around the house and being “depressed” I haven’t really done anything. There is actually a possibility now of me getting dropped from the charter school because of my truancy, and of course this is adding weight to the problems that I already have.

Now I know that I’m not your “average” teenager because of my situation, but I’m begining to think that the feelings I’m feeling are “average” feelings, and that me being hopeless is all in my head. However, I’m begining to believe that “feeling” hopeless, and “being” hopeless are two completely different things. I just happen to be on the “being” hopeless side.

The reason that I think I don’t have clinical depression anymore is because my problems/feelings revolve around the mistakes that I’ve made in the past, in other words my depression has a reason and isn’t because of a chemical imbalance. my mistakes just happen to be extreme mistakes, wich lead to extreme feelings, such as:

-The extreme guilt of dropping out of school at an early age. Now I feel extremely stupid and inferior to my peers because I have done this. I feel that I’ll never be able to be like anyone my age because of my stupidity from lack of education and occassionally lack of will power to learn. There are often times where my peers have known something I haven’t and I’ve become extremely depressed because of it. I beat myself up sometimes over stupid situations like this and it happens to be one of the main problems feeding my stress or my so called “depression”. I CONSTANTLY feel like I’m BEHIND in EVERYTHING, because of my education. There are also times where I’m doing my homework and I can’t understand a problem or I can’t do it, so I get EXTREMELY angry at myself. This eventually leads to me hitting myself in the head, calling myself stupid, and me feeling completely hopeless/suicidal. Sometimes over just a simple homework problem I can manage to spiral down int
at school always say “Don’t do drugs”, and “Stay in school”.. What happens to the kids that do do drugs and don’t stay in school, huh? Worst thing is, I’m still faced with problems that I can’t handle… I don’t know why I’m terrified of leaving home to go to certain places or why I always wanted to mess around instead of learn. Hell it might be something chemical that’s making me think negatively so much and make me so afraid of certain things… I don’t know anymore.. I can’t seem to live in the present I’m always thinking about mistakes I’ve made in the past and How they’ve doomed me to having a horrible future. no matter what I do I can’t stop thinking about them. Every time my mistakes are brought up I start to cry. I’m also constantly setting unrealistic goals for the future of what I can be. For example I’ve set goals like becoming a navy seal… sometimes it’s so hard to be real with myself… I pick goals that sound cool and not things that I would actually like to do………
I’m always worried about what people think… I’ve been that way since I was little.. I have had suicidal thoughts but I’m afraid of death. I only turn to suicide because I feel that since I have screwed up my life so far with all that trouble of skipping school and not getting an education that I’d rather save my self from what’s to come then actually dealing with it. I know that I’m never going to commit suicide, but to feel that death is the only option that I can turn to sometimes is pretty grim.

Like I was saying… I don’t know if this is any form of depression, but that’s part of the reason I’m writing. I’d also like to add that I have a very addictive personality and when I was locked up for drugs alot of people mentioned that I was self medicatiing. I don’t know if that’s important but I’m very dependent on certain things. For the last 3 years I have been using over the counter sleeping pills to help me sleep. I’ve become somewhat dependent of those.
Sometimes over just a simple homework problem I can manage to spiral down into feeling like the lowest of the low and can’t control it.

-I can NEVER finish something that I start, Well for the most part anyways. I seem to lose interest in alot of things, and really fast. I’ve always had some sort of “attention” problems but I figured that this was normal… maybe not. For example, Ever since I was really little (mainly during school) When I was eventually forced to show up I was the kid that was extremely shy and was the perfect kid who always did his work. However, for SOME REASON (and this happened every single year at every single place) I would get comfortable/bored of what I was doing… Now some people might think “Oh, that’s a good thing, now he’ll be able to relax around the other students and be able to loosen up some”.. yeah I loosened up alright.. I became the class clown and occaisionally made my teachers cry because I became so bad. I was the devil of the bunch
and I always was in play mode. Now this followed me all the way up until highschool… The not wanting to go to school and the playing at school to much. This was mainly the reason for dropping out of school. 1. I hated going, I mean absolutely hated going, and 2. I was so extremely hyper at school to the point that I NEVER did ANY work what so ever. I just spent the whole day “playing” and this led to Straight F’s for years…… Of course I was always ashamed when people asked what my grades where. The thing was that since I had messed around so much the year before, I had no idea what the class was doing the next year. I didn’t understand the work so I played.. This is one of the things that I constantly feel has ruined my life. One of the biggest questions the teachers always ask the student that i never knew the answer too and still don’t is “what are you going to do with your future?”…. I always thought that I had time.. That or I just didn’t care.. I wa
I was just going with the flow on everything. I just assumed that my future would turn out good because to me there was no such thing as your “future”. It just seemed like a fantasy/something
that I’ve never had to worry about….

-I’ve always been the kid that was terrified to go show up to something. I mean I would often cry and beg not to go to school just so that I could stay home. Usually kids do this but eventually get use to going to something once they make friends and all that. For me, even though I had made tons of friends, every
day was a battle. I’m not sure if you would consider this an extreme issue but I do and I’m only writing it because I still have this problem. I would rather
die than show up to certain things. I don’t know why but when I’m supposed to show up to school or something like that I simply can’t do it. I wake up and
become EXTREMELY terrified. I don’t know why but I do. I’ve always spent nights up worrying about the next day if
if I had something comming. I was constantly making up ways to get out of school because I was constantly scared of going. I would spend nights plotting on how to stay home until I found a plan that I was sure was going to work. If my plan began to fail my heart would begin to beat extremely fast and I would start to panic about going to school. Of course none of my friends seem to have this problem. They were there everysingle day, On time. I had to seriously be forced out of my house to go to school. I’ve even gone to the extreme of sticking my finger down my throat so I puke all over the place to pretend I was sick…. yeah, disgusting but true….

These are the factors that pretty much lead to my depression. I’m not sure if it’s something that I should have checked out because it’s not something that is chemical. I’m just facing the consequenses of my actions…. I’ve made some horrible decisions and most of the time I knew they were bad decisions.. People
I’ve also always had a problem with weight, I’ve always been extremely skinny and I’ve always been an excessive sleeper (Even before sleeping pills).

(I’m gonna read over what I just wrote)

OK…. my mind kind of wondered off while I was writing all of this and I completely forgot where I was going with most of what I just wrote… I hate when that happens. It has to deal with that whole attention thing I suppose. Last thing I wanted to talk about though was a Daydreaming problem/living in a fantasy world as a form of escapism that I have. I’ve always had this and I haven’t been sure if it was a problem until recently. It’s quite a hard problem to find research on actually, I think the official name for this was called “Maladaptive daydreaming”. Now I was extremely suprised when I found it because I thought that I was the only person that did this. pretty much it’s not like your average day dreaming. When I do this I pick up something that’s in the form of a s
tick, like a pencil or something and I begin to flick it up and down in a repetitive motion. Once I start doinng that I zone out into a completely different world and imagine so much stuff that it’s unbelievable. It’s like I make up stories in my head. It’s hard to explain but I’ve always done this and it’s been some sort of addiction. I’ve always felt like I’ve had to do this. I don’t know. just something that I thought that I should mention.

I understand that this is alot, but please if you have any ideas of any mental illnesses that come to mind from what I wrote then let me know. I AM GOING TO SEE A MENTAL HEALTH DOCTOR THIS WEEK! So I am going to get professional help and I plan on printing this out and showing it to him/her. Can you think of any reasons for why I made the mistakes I did or why I am like I am? Do you think I’m depressed? I’m so lost now a days…

Wow I didn’t realize that I wrote that much, I’m so sorry.

Best answer:

Answer by Scottie
You should add a very short summary to the bottom of this

Or post again with a short summary, im sorry its just really long and im sure people would be happy to answer if it wasnt very long :)

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!