I appreciate the comment from davidjohn (not sure how you saw the blog, as I haven't linked to it anywhere). However I've not started this blog to ask for help. My aim was to document what's going through my mind , and perhaps to analyse why. I'm also curious to know if this situation is more common than I realise.
As it happens I did go to see a doctor a little while ago. He was so fundamentally inept that it shook away any confidence I had in the NHS to provide any help. First off he kept me waiting while he tried to work out how to get his computer to print out a questionaire on depression, which went something along the lines of "are you going to kill yourself? Are you insane and going to kill other people? Are you hearing voices?". He then told me that he'd run out of time, and that I needed to take the questionnaire away and fill it in, then come back for another appointment when we'd go through it.
I took the questionnaire away, filled it in. Took it back to him, then he started to score it, got through about 3 questions then said he'd do it later, put it to one side, gave me a leaflet on alcohol and said to call a helpline.
Maybe he was right to suggest the alcohol helpline, but his dismissive attitude and the fact he laughed at me when I said how many units I drank, all lead me to believe that even if were to have had even the slightest interest in helping me, he wouldn't have known how. I'm confident that the NHS can't help me here.
I saw a counsellor privately, but while she was very competent, I don't think there was much that she could do to help.
So I'm going to get through this on my own, it's something I've always tried to do. I'm not one for hand outs. What I thought would be interesting was to leave a trail of thoughts behind as I move through things. Regardless of where I go, it has become apparent from my encounters with people, that they simply don't understand what's going through my head (and I suspect the head of a lot of people feeling like me).
All comments are appreciated, but I'm keen to look more at why I and other people have fallen into such a bad way, than answers to how to fix it (you can't properly address something until you understand it).
I left a post under another entry before I read this. I'm sorry your doctor wasn't any help.
I can relate to a lot of things you've written here. I've been in counselling for a year now and have been going to AA weekly and to Al-anon (for the families and friends of alcoholics) 3 times a week, and I must have called the samaritans about 300 times in the past year....sometimes up to 4 times a day.
There are reasons why we feel the way we do. Sure, our brains function in a chemical soup and so that can be a factor, but my own experience is that our minds are the key to much of what you're describing. Some of us develop what's called a "False Self" in childhood. Our emptiness, sense of meaninglessness and resulting depression and anxiety and sense of worthlessness and self-hatred (much of which we are unconscious of) flow from the feeling of being "fake"...a feeling that we sense but cannot pin down....Carl Jung writes about the way in which some of us repress our emotions in childhood and teenage years...for a variety of reasons...and how this distorts our sense of who we really are....and if we're not in touch with the real us, how can we have any real desires or dreams or needs....?
Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, Art Janov all have things to say on this, as does Winnicott....It's taken me a year to get my clever little head around the fact that I am NOT m y clever little head....my conscious intellect is only a small, relatively ignorant part of me....my Unconscious mind is in control (eg read the scientific research on decision making that shows we make decisions up to ten seconds before we become consciously aware of making the decision....!)....you are not your conscious mind and you might find that exploring this issue helps you find the real you that you abandoned (for very necessary reasons) a long while ago.
Have fun....seriously....have fun...I can't believe the peace joy that this discovery has unlocked for me after what has been a painful few months.
Take care,
Martin