So I [29F] have suffered with depression from as early as 12 years old. I remember having severely low moods, not wanting to go to school, and thinking everyone would be better of without me. Seventeen years later, and that pain has not gone away. In between this time I have had several depressive episodes, the worst one being when I was 19, and finally went to a GP for the first time to get help…only to be threatened to get sectioned 🙃 (this was purely because I mentioned s*idical ideation, but no actual plan to follow through with it) I then tried free counselling on the NHS, as well as counselling services at my university. Both of these proved counterproductive and so I stopped. I was also prescribed medication for the first time, which allowed me to return to university, but the depressive episodes didn’t go away, and my insomnia got worse, so I stopped taking them. I tried to deal with this pain on my own, and I was up and down mentally for years, until one year at my first job I started to get severely bullied by my line manager. This caused me severe anxiety and I’d even get heart palpitations just from sitting at my desk. I eventually left with no other job lined up because I just couldn’t take it anymore and when I got a new job I started private therapy to build my confidence back. Unfortunately a similar situation happened at my new job and I had to leave after 7 months. Whilst my therapists helped me to leave that job and I was happy at my new job, there was a weird shift in our relationship. Sessions became more triggering and upsetting. She’d make very bold accusations about me, and once spent half a session having a go at me for ‘not trying hard enough’, which was the final nail in the coffin for me, so I ended that relationship. After a couple of months, I realised I do still need to speak to a therapist, so I found a new one and saw him for about a year and a half. Again, our relationship got weird, I got the sense that he found me difficult to work with, but whenever I asked him directly, he always denied it. Until our last session, when he confessed that I was sometimes difficult to work with and I was ‘hard to read’. This was disheartening that even a therapist would lie to me and I have experienced similar patterns with 2 additional therapists. I don’t know what it is, but I’m always made to feel like I’m difficult, or hard to understand because I don’t give them the answers they want to hear. It sometimes feels like there’s this weird pressure to answer a question in a certain way, even if you don’t believe it. I’m just being honest, and I refuse to lie especially if I’m paying for professional help, because who does that serve? Fast forward to today, work became a toxic environment for me, and I finally had a nervous breakdown had had to be signed off work. I know the last two years with the pandemic has been rough for everyone, in my experience it was work that was causing a lot of the distress and pain. I started taking medication again in early 2020, but that didn’t help. I was also in therapy and that was proving to be unhelpful. I got so desperate that I was calling s*icidal hotlines on a weekly basis. The whole process of being signed off work was traumatic, as I had to deal with possibly the most rudest, apathetic doctor I’ve ever had the displeasure of talking to. I’ve even tried to get support from a union, but that’s been underwhelming as well. I write all of this to say; I am fucking trying, and I’ve had enough. I’m tired, no, exhausted actually. Everytime I try to get support or help I’m misunderstood, dismissed, invalidated or just plain disrespected and I’ve had enough. I’m struggling to see the point in all of this and I just want this all to end so I can finally stop feeling this pain.