Dear Jane,
I am only 18 years old and I find myself feeling so depressed, when I am alone I think about terrible things such as what if my mum dies?, what if my friends die? I can’t get these thoughts out of my head when I am alone!! My personality is described as one of the best around and I have lots and lots of friends and family, so I therefore don’t understand why I feel so alone??? I get myself that worked up about things I find myself feeling sick and actually wanting to harm myself for thinking these terrible thoughts! if I don’t do a certain thing every day I feel like these thoughts are actually going to come to reality!
Please help.
Matthew
Dear Matthew,
You’re caught in a vicious circle, Matthew, because the more your mind fills with this bad stuff, the more depressed and anxious you get. And then your mind fills with this negative stuff even more.
I’m not telling you this to make you feel hopeless -- but to make you hopeful. Because it works the other way round as well. Every minute you are NOT thinking these terrible thoughts is a minute your mind has a chance to swing into a calmer, more positive state.
Behind all this is almost certainly stress. And you’re at a very stressful age. Mentally, there’s the huge question of what to do with your life. You’re off the treadmill of school, when so many decisions are made for you. More and more, you have to make your own … yet your brain is not yet fully mature (sorry!) and in particular, the frontal lobes, source of calm decision-making and self-control, have still got two or three more years of growing to do. So you don’t yet have all the resources you’ll have. You’re probably trying to make adult decisions with a teenage brain. Maybe you’re so panicky about the idea of your mother’s death because you know you still need her support.
This time of life has other stresses. Romance is one … romantic breakup, unrequited love, sheer sexual and emotional frustration … all tend to happen at your age. Watching a few of your peers settle comfortably and successfully into work, life or studies can also be painful and make you feel panicky and inadequate. Add physical factors … experiments with drugs, maybe drinking too much (I guess you often want drink as a relaxer), perhaps an unstructured routine which disrupts your sleep, and the typical desperately inadequate teenage diet … and 18, for some, can be an age when physical and mental stresses add up and overwhelm you. (If you’re using cannabis, please don’t. It may make you calmer in the short-term but I and my colleagues have seen too many people your age for whom cannabis has created serious mental health problems. For stressed people, it can be the last straw.) Please also don’t take fizzy drinks.
You obviously have great supports in your friends and family, but look back … were there any bad things, traumas, which happened once? Things like being bullied, a humiliating teacher, family rows … can live on as stresses in your mind.
If you can spot some of these stresses, take action. Talk to someone calm and supportive. Sometimes a neutral person like a friend’s mother, or a school or college counsellor, is best. If you have traumas like being bullied, failing exams, being romantically rejected or a bad breakup … the ideal is to see a human givens or NLP counsellor or a good hypnotherapist. Relaxing hypnotic tapes, maybe directed to the issues which are most weighing on your mind, can be valuable. Right now, the more relaxation, the more you’ll feel your worries lift and gain perspective.
Writing down the things which bother you can also help. It lets you look at your fears calmly, so you can see how exaggerated your current thinking is.
Physically, you’d be surprised what difference a good diet can make. Lots of good quality meat and fish -- organic, wild caught, free-range. Minimal processed foods -- if it’s in packets in a supermarket, don’t buy it! Look out for hydrogenated or trans fats and avoid them … they clog up your brain’s receptors (and do lots of other bad things) and slow and fuzz your thinking. Eat butter, cream, cheese, and olive oil (forget about cholesterol, no space here, except to say we need cholesterol, and you probably need more. The lower the cholesterol, the more depressed and even suicidal people get).
I will never forget a middle-aged businessman I once saw. He’d been on anti-depressants for quite a while before he booked himself into an expensive private clinic. They took him off his anti-depressants, cold turkey, and switched him to a different pill. The week of acute withdrawal was, he said, the worst week of his life. And to his total horror, he cut himself. ‘I’m not some neurotic teenage girl,’ he said …
Self-harm, and things you feel you need to do to stop bad things happening, are in my experience associated with low serotonin (and no doubt other low brain transmitters) and often low blood sugar. A good diet (including a protein breakfast, not just toast or cereal, and please as little sugar as possible) will help boost your brain. But I would also suggest, as a minimum, you take Omega-3, a 1000mg capsule twice a day, a B-50 complex, and up to 6 5-HTP pills a day (in two or three doses. Start with one, and listen to your body to decide the dose that’s right for you. After a few months, you’ll find you naturally want to take fewer or none … natural substances like this seem to work the reverse of addiction.
5-HTP is the raw material the body and brain make serotonin from. However this can’t happen if you don’t get enough vitamin B6, which is why I recommend a B-Complex (all the B vitamins have important mental functions, which is why they’re often called the ‘stress vitamins’ or the ‘mental health vitamins’). If you feel very anxious (specially if you’ve always felt anxious even as a child) and/or have gut problems, then two further pills are important.
If you also have little or no dream recall -- you feel you seldom dream -- then please try P5P-complex from Biocare. You may have a metabolic situation (pyroluria) which makes it hard for you to use enough B6 and zinc, which this pill can supply. Research shows it works better if you’re also taking the B-Complex. It can take several months, even up to a year, for all your uncomfortable mental symptoms to resolve when this is the cause. Since it does no harm, you may feel you’d like to try P5P-complex for a couple of bottles -- long enough for you to notice an improvement (sometimes people feel their mind lightening up after just a couple of days) if you do have pyroluria. You’ll want to consult a clinical nutritionist when you feel you can afford it. (I can recommend one in London.) P5P-complex by Biocare is available in some good health shops in the UK or you’ll find suppliers on the net.
The other pill for anxiety or agitation is a combination of GABA, the brain’s own natural anti-anxiety neurotransmitter, and theanine (a substance in green or white tea which creates a calm yet alert state of mind). There are many good formulas on the net; in the UK you can get this as a pill called Zen from Nutrilink (08704 054 002). If you quote my therapist’s number, 304, you get a 15% discount.
Lastly, Matthew, I do urge you not to go through this alone. If you feel at risk of harming yourself or others please talk to those close to you and seek therapy. There are times when it’s really important to involve your GP, and anti-depressants can sometimes be helpful. But also ensure you see a Human Givens or similar therapist who won’t label you, will listen, and have powerful practical ways of helping you through this phase.
All good wishes,
Jane
|
