14th year house bound

[Jacques]

Hi Everyone,

I am new hear, after being removed from other mental health forums for my depressive thoughts i thought i would give this forum a try, this is my story.

I am 33 live with my mother, i am almost compeatly housebound, i leave my house once in the morning for a walk at 6am and maybe once during the week, both times i leave the house fill me with great anxiety,  i have no friends, (the last friend i had was in 2001), i have never had a job, never had a girlfriend and never been able to leave my parents side, my father died in 2001 and i have always suffered seperation anxiety the last time i had a night away from home was 1994 for one night (parents had to pick me up at midnight because i was so frantic).

I have spent most of the past 14 years in my room, or the shed, never much out of the yard, no one in my town knows me, people stare and ask each other behind my back if any one knows who i am.

I have only had an income for the past year and spend the previous 7 with no income at all, mum had to use all of her life savings to allow me to live with her and she now has nothing.

I only want to live long enough to care for her in her old age and then i plan to take my own life, i knew from an early age my life would turn out like this, but had no idea how horrible it would be, every day is the same, i often wonder why i keep going, i have very little contact with family (maybe once a year) and i am really struggling to keep going.

Please don't feel distressed about what i am saying, and i am so sorry if i have offended anyone, it is just how i feel.

Their is so much more, but i will leave it at that for the moment, i am shaking and the anxiety is kicking in so thankyou for reading and i will add more later.

Jacques

[NikNik]

Hi @Jacques,

Welcome to the Forums! I'm NikNik, the Community Manager of the Forums.

I'm so glad you found us! Thank you for sharing your story. It takes a lot of courage to share such a personal story. I'm really sorry to read what you have been through over the past 14 years.

You mentioned you have been removed from other Forums in the past. I thought I would share with you our Community Guidelines, so you are aware of how things work around here.

I read in your story that you have made plans in the future to end your life. Your wellbeing and the wellbeing of the community is our main concern. Unfortunately we are not a crisis service or a counselling service, so it's really important that if these feelings or urges escalate that you contact a crisis service. Some of those include:

Lifeline 13 11 14
Suicide call back service: 1300 659 467
If in immediate danger: 000

Just to give you some context, the Forums are a peer based community, which is moderated by SANE Australia and partner staff members. Our aim is to harness an environment that is:

- Safe for everyone

- Respectful

- anonymous

- Open for all manner of discussion but at the end of the day, aimed towards wellbeing, recovery or positive maintenance, and/or positive help seeking behaviours

- A welcoming place to all!

So if you are conscious of the  Community Guidelines , the aims listed above and what the Forums can and can't offer in terms of support,  then everything should be fine.

I'm curious to know what brought you here and what you're hoping to gain from joining the community?

If you have any questions about the above content, please feel free to ask questions here or email us at team@sane.org

Welcome again!

[kristin]

Hey @Jacques

You are welcome here, and so is your honesty. We all have our own journeys, with difficult and confronting parts. Personally I don't think the road to well-being is paved with lies but rather with our own truths - however painful or confronting they may be.

Well done for reaching out. I hope you will find this is a welcoming and supportive community of people with a wide range of different diagnoses. But we try to walk alongside each other when one is struggling, celebrate when someone is doing well, and above all to listen and learn. For each journey is unique. I'm sure some of the others will be "around" to welcome you soon - @kenny66 , @kato , @Alessandra1992 , @Troubled_One

You don't mention a diagnosis (and that's quite fine - you can if you want to but don't have to). We have often found here that there is much in common across diagnoses. You are welcome to use the forum's search function to look up your own (or different ones if you are interested), or to search on things like anxiety, etc. Feel free to join in the conversations too 

Take care.

Hope for a walk in the sunshine endures...

Kindest regards, 

Kristin

[Former-Member]

Welcome @Jacques

@kristin is so right, you are very welcome to be honest here and im glad to read your story. Things have been so difficult for you for a long time, i hope that being here and being able to share your feelings and some of your life will make things easier for you. I have found that having an outlet has helped a lot for me. The people on the forums here are from such a wide range of life and individual experiences and we accept each other easily and with friendship and support. 

I look forward to 'seeing' you around the forums,

take care,

LJ

[Jacques]

Hi LJ,
I hope my writings do not cause any distress to other, that is not my intention. I am just so low sometimes that it gets harder and harder to find a way out.

I hope at some point I will be of help to others and maybe help myself.

What brought me here was being removed from beyond blue and reading the emails from my subscription to your site. I read the one tuis morning on schizophrenia to tell their story and I thought it was time I reached out to others.

Thankyou for the warm welcome I wish I could meet people in real life as nice as the people on here.

Take care

Jacques

[Jacques]

Hi Kirstin,
I have never been formally diagnosed as I have only been to a psychiatrist and psychologist for one session each and they were both disasters. I am on medication and see my doctor once every 6 months for a repeat.

Well I suffer severe depression, severe anxiety, agoraphobia and seperation anxiety.

Thankyou for enquiring to my condition I feel no shame having this condition just shame for what it does to me.

Thankyou once again for the warm welcome. Looking forward to speaking again.

Take care
Jacques

[Jacques]

Hi LisaJane,
Thankyou you are all so kind, I have found in the past talking about my life brings me no comfort but it does to others, and I am ok with that.

Thank you and everyone for welcoming me, I am not used to such kindness, I live in a hostile environment were people in my town dislike anyone they don't know.

I am looking forward to talking to you some more if I am allowed to.

Take care
Jacques

[Jacques]

Hi Everyone,

in continuance to my story, my anxiety and depression started when i was about 5 years old, i could not be away from my parents overnight, i would be so distressed and upset that mum and dad would have to pick me up, it went from bad to wose when i got to be 19 years old my father died, had problems with a neighbour, it got so bad i would only go to the toilet when i knew she was out, everytime she would here us in the house the would hit the fence and scream obsenities at me, this went on for 7 years, i think this was a big contribution to my agoraphobia, and some other things happened that i can't talk about but once i became fully house bound the years seemed to go so fast, mum has to keep family and friends away from me i can't talk on phones and find it very difficult to drive, i nearly handed in my licence but mum talked me out of it.

so much time has gone past, everything seems a blur and not much has registered in the 14 years, i have only been to 3 social events in that time, all family gatherings.

I find it so difficult to talk to people, the first question they ask is "where do you work?" and i instantly go into a panic attack, it is so humiliating telling people i have never had a job, and that i can't leave the house.

mum has been trying to make me go out once a week to try to get used to going out, but everything seems so forign out of the house, it feels like life is for everyone else, not me, i feel so disconnected from society, i don't belong anywere.

i know their is others out their that have a worse time than me, and i feel so guilty that i am having to live this way and complain about it, but most people don't know or understand what it is like. i have several panic attacks a day and it is so exhausting.

anyway i might have to stop now i am starting to shake again.

take care all

Jacques

[Troubled_One]

So I thought I would chime in here. I am 31 and still living with my father. I am disable in one leg from a previous car accident but I can still get around.

Your story is very similar to mine.

I leave the house once or twice a day for a walk, only to get some blood flow because I need it to survive. I have currently just realised my problems such as depression and anxiety. I am trying to work through them and believe I know the triggers from them.

This site has what has kept me going from the desperate state I have been in, along with my doctors and other supports.

I am still trying and have been my whole life. I understand your struggle to a certain degree.

My childhood was quite happy but with no real meaning. When I moved back to my father only 6 months ago I got all these problem come really clear. All my life I feel I suffered from problems but they were never realised, and they have been covered up in my childhood and then as I got older things fell apart.

I feel like you like it is all too much and the struggle is ridiculous, but I keep going because I know there is a answer.

[Alessandra1992]

Hey @Jacques
It is a real bugbear of mine that socially people always default to "where do you work?"
Here's to us changing the conversation to "What are you passionate about?" Or "What is one thing you enjoy doing?" I talk about books or articles or shows or music I enjoy..
Welcome aboard the sane express 🙂