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I am depressed, lonely and feel unable to reach out for friends. I have a history of depression from my teenage years that was treated with medication. I am 23 and have quickly sunk into a depression. My mother has been dealing for a few months with cancer and she has always been my rock, but now she has no attention to give to me and naturally everybody else in my family is focusing on her as well.

I had lost my job and dropped out of this semester of grad school because i felt too overwhelmed to handle class and work and my mother… I also have been living 60 miles away from my friends and have no friends where i live.

So I am lonely as can be, far from the few people that might offer me love. I have not told my parents that I lost my job or that I am so sad, all because i feel guilty taking attention way form my mother or making her feel bad. Last week I was so sad that I just started crying on the sidewalk as my roommate was talking to me.

I have had nobody to share my pain with and it’s so hard to reach out. I have been staying in bed till noon and watching TV all day, just trying to hide from the world.
I am so depressed. I need help. What do I do?

I’m sorry you’re dealing with a difficult situation. Having a close relative with cancer has to be difficult, especially when that person served as your main support. I know that you don’t want to ask for help and support but that is exactly what you need at this time.

You assume that you’d be a burden on your family but I doubt that would be the case. It’s not uncommon for people with depression to feel like they are a bother to other people. If you reached out to your family and told them about your depression there is a good chance they’d respond in a supportive way. You may even find that they are also having a tough time trying to cope with your mother’s diagnosis. You could lean on each other.

Even though there is a good chance your family would be supportive of you if they knew about your depression I think it would be helpful if you sought additional supports outside the family. The additional support could either be a support group or an individual counselor. Both might be necessary. The reason I am suggesting that you find support outside of your immediate family and friends is that it may be difficult for them to give you the full attention that you may need at this time. Also you described having fairly serious symptoms of depression. Your friends and family may be able to offer you some support and that is good. But given the extent of your depression (i.e. you’ve already quit school, are struggling with work and spend half the day in bed) there support alone may not be enough. Your depression symptoms may require professional treatment.

There are many great support groups for individuals who have family members with cancer. Some of the support groups are web-based. There are also many in-person support groups that allow you to interact with others who have relatives with cancer. Both may be helpful to you. A list of possible online and group supports can be found here.

It makes sense that you would be having difficulty at this point in time. Your mother was diagnosed with cancer. You lost your main support system and in turn, you’re finding it difficult to function day to day. I know it is a challenge but try to reach out for help from support groups and/or a mental health professional. You need to do this not only for yourself but for your mother who most likely needs you to be her “rock” while she is battling cancer. Be there for yourself and be there for your mother. You can’t appropriately assist your mother until you help yourself. Don’t give up and please consider outside help for this very difficult life circumstance. You need and deserve the help.

It seems like for the last couple of years (or somewhere around that margin) I’ve been having problems with just letting things go or mentally getting over something. For example, yesterday, I was in a book store, walking up to the counter, when I felt something hit my back. I looked down, and it was some kind of children’s rubber toy, and there was a stand near me that it could have fell off of if I bumped into it. However, I didn’t notice any such thing on the stand, and it landed on my back…

What I’m getting at is, is that I began to ponder that there’s a good chance someone had thrown it at me. I looked around, and saw no obvious suspects, so there was pretty much nothing I could do. I gave the lady at the counter my book (my Dad was with me and he payed for it) and he drove me home. No big deal, right? Everyday little thing… But then I thought about all the things I could have done, like yell for whoever threw it, or shown some kind of anger, or even gone as far to consider asking the lady at the counter to run through security tapes to get a positive I. D. on the thrower to exact a plot of revenge at the time of my choosing. And it really bugged me, and I knew I could never go back, and if someone had thrown it, they had the better end of me. They won. I lost. I felt like a coward, and I began to re-enact things I could have done differently in my room, imagining them to have happened or that by simply saying or doing something in my room, it would somehow make me come out on top.

Then, I said things to myself like, “It’s okay, I was just showing that they’re not worth my time.” to give myself a reason to not have done anything at the time. I feel like this problem, which is growing worse at a rapid pace in my life, is affecting me mentally and clogging my mental process and emotional state, which could have something to do with my severe apathy. Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

I agree with you that this is a problem. I would categorize your reaction to the situation you described as inappropriate. It is normal to consider the possibilities of what happened to you in the store. After your analysis of the situation you could not determine what had happened. Given the facts, as you have described them, the only rational conclusion for anyone in that situation would be, they simply don’t know what happened. After they came to that conclusion they would have forgotten about it. You did not forget about it. You could not let it go. It became your primary focus. At first, you considered the possibility of an accident. You quickly abandoned that possibility and fixated on the idea that it was done on purpose. These feelings are paranoid in nature.

Paranoid personality disorder is a mental health condition in which an individual is highly distrustful of other people. They suspect that others are out to get them. Their distrust and suspiciousness can sometimes lead to anger. The anger can sometimes lead to violence. If someone believes that others are out to get them or trying to “one up” them, then this can lead an individual to feel angry and to seek revenge. This may be what you are experiencing. Based on your belief that someone had purposefully thrown a toy at you in a bookstore, you thought of plotting a way to seek revenge. If you’d like to read more about this disorder please click here.

I would highly recommend evaluation and treatment. I cannot be certain if you have paranoid personality disorder; only an in-person evaluation could accurately determine that or any other diagnosis. I believe it is important that you receive objective feedback about how you are perceiving your life situations. As you mentioned at the end of your letter, this problem is not going away and is becoming worse. It is leading you to other distressful feelings and symptoms, all of which need to be evaluated.

Therapy may be difficult for an individual if they have paranoid feelings. I believe that you would benefit from counseling if you were willing to try it. Here is a link to therapists in your area. I wish you well. Thanks for your question.

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