Dear Joanna

From your letter, I can see that you are a very kind and not a selfish person. All your life you have always been a caretaker and a giver, which is in my opinion nobody are willing to do. Most people will only be a receiver. You should be proud of who you are not be clouded by your past life experiences. You should let go of the past, forgive those who have hurt you and move on to the future. I know it is hard to do but if you only try, you will be surprised how easy it is.

Bad things do happen to good people. You were the victim of a terrible, ugly tragedy. But if you let these bad memory to remain in you for the rest of your life, you will never get over your past. You are a child of God. No event or person, good or bad, can rob you of that. Remember, your emotions are a product of how you perceived the event, not the event itself. Refuse to believe that you are just the product of your past experience.

Never allow yourself to be cocooned in your past, let it past and stay in the past. Now, find yourself a hobby or something that interest you and make you time occupied i.e join church activity or perhaps, catch up with old friends. Go out and feel free from the past because you deserved to be happy and you are responsible for your own happiness.

ellie



ellie

I don’t even have the words to give, or the advice to make it better. However, from my own bad past, I’ve been working through a program called Prayers to Heal the Heart. It sounds to me like you have a deeply wounded soul. I don’t think the last 20 years with your Dr. or anymore years spent will do you any good. The reason is, your Dr. is not above all of your problems. You need a healer greater then any man on this earth.

Take a look at the link http://www.cwgministries.org/prayerspackage.htm

I personally am going through to clear up my past, it has been a huge help.

Sincerely,
Jonathan


Jonathan Wichmann
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First of all, I would like to send my sympathies to you. If I had my way, you would not have gone thru the struggles you went thru growing up, including the abuse and loss of your mother. You are not alone. We all have theses perlious times. The good news is, your problem seems to be normal and occur frequently during - what is called - career burnout, also known as a nervous breakdown or mental breakdown.

As a habit, I prefer to use the term career burnout rather than nervous breakdown because it helps to illistrate the solution to your problem. You see, when people have been on a job for a long time, for example, they tend to get tired of doing the same old routine day in and day out. Meeting or working with the same people. Clocking in and out on the same time clock. They have become discouraged by the predictable events. Same is so in recurring real life situations. Over a period of time, you can get feed-up with doing the same'o same'o and need a change. Therefore, to prevent career burnout, they take a vacation, make changes around the work place, or make a complete change in their career. In most cases, this is all that it takes to restore irmal health.

However, there are some instances when things has gone so wrong for so long and professional help is needed. This is extremely rare and may be of offer little or no benefit to the person suffering burnout. Many of these patients' health will not improve unless they build or maintain a foundation of good physical health. Especially for caregiver burnout. So be sure to eat right, get enough sleep, and make exercise part of your daily routine, and you will be undergoing the ultimate source of treatment for coping with stress.

Hope this answers your question!

EDITED BY: bkdaniels
02/21/2008

A person that won't TREAT you right, damn sure won't TEACH you right!

hello joanna, how are you? you might be not expecting this question anymore, but i m asking how are you - means are you satisfied with yourself? i can only say you to make yourself happy and satisfied no matter what others think or do with you. you are answerable to yourself first and i think you are perfectly justified with yourself. you give alot to others and that is your beggest achievement in life. you should think like this; i give some one smile, someone forget hisher sorrow because of me for a while. this really give you double fold pleasure and you start loving yourself. then world become so beautiful for you. your priorities must be different from others. you shouldnt even bother of any ones bad bevaviour with you. keep smiling and find happiness even from the trivials of life...

anthro

Joanna, it’s all about who you are. I mean who you REALLY are. You are going to know this for yourself. Nobody will tell this to you. Life is wonderful and only our misunderstanding of it creates our problems. We think that we are our thoughts and nothing more. Thoughts are dead things and they can not be changed. Any memories will be there to the last day. We can not do anything about our memories. We can not change them but we can change our attitude toward them. And we can change our attitude only if we know who we REALLY are. And nobody knows who you really are. Only you are.

If the psychiatrist you saw for 20 years hasn't measureably helped you to cope, it's time to see a new psychiatrist who can prescribe the appropriate anti-depressant medication in the correct dosage for your particular manic-depressive condition.

M. R. Lawrence, Publisher, Midday

Hi Joanna,
I'm very sorry to hear about the hardships that you've been faced with through out your life. I can sympathize but cannot empathize... I've never been placed in any of the positions you have been put in. We are all faced with trauma's in our life - some more or greater than others. Fall back onto what makes you happy: family, friends, hobby, faith, whatever works for you. I don't really have too much right now at this point in my life, but one thing I do have are medicines that work for me.
You mentioned you have a psychiatrist and are manic depressive... I am sorry to hear. First things first though, you need to find a new psych or have the one you have now "experiment" with you meds - new ones, higher/lower dosage. Maybe you're Bipolar type II?! Getting your meds straight can work wonders... honest to God it's just a matter of figuring it out. It took my Uncle 10 years to get his meds right and now he is doing very well. Actually gets out of bed and does some yard work every now and then. He just turned 50.
The reason I say this is b/c I've seen multiple psychiatrists and FINALLY found a good one after 5 years. Probably one of the top mental/chemical abuse specialists in the U.S.; Definitely # 1 in Missouri! Lamictal may work for you - Lithium works for me. I am Bipolar type I, ADHD, Panic Attack Disease (aka Anxiety), and Alcoholic. The Uncle above and his brother are/were both alcoholics and both attempted suicide... one succeeded - runs in the family I guess. I could give you a GRAND old list of meds that I am on and have been on but I'll spare you that.
I believe depression is a disease and like all other diseases it needs to be treated correctly, however, treatment is different for every single person. Find your euilibrium, talk to your doc. If you've been on a certain med for a very long time and want to "detox" from it... do it in a hospital. I have. I go through the ups and downs, the extremes of the extremes, which I can't even compare to yours but there is hope.
I say it took five years because I was diagnosed late, and now that I've got things kind of leveled out I can start to rebuild what I've torn down. I am an alcoholic, I've been in resedential treatment for dual diagnosis (mental/chemical) four times, had a home foreclosed on, bankruptcy, have had two miscarriages, 4 dwi's, I'm actually on house arrest for the 2nd time right now, recently got home from a correctional facility (9 mos), countless other legal, back up to $15k in debt and no one wants to hire a felon, have alienated myself from everyone I know... depression is a bitch. Manic can be just as bad especially if you are an alchoholic. I'm 23 yrs old.
I wish you the best of luck Joanna. Nothing is impossible to over come no matter what age or walk in life.

Sincerely,
Scott G.

- scott g