Dr Love, the advice im looking for isnt about love.ive been so depressed lately over my ex. i mean i got a new boy friend now and every thing i just need some one to talk to.ive been thinking about suicide, i mean the day my b-f broke up with me i felt as if no one wanted me and that i was no good for anyone, and even though i have someone now who loves me i still feel. . . . . i don’t know, i just don’t know any more.sincerely
I am worried that you may harm yourself.Before we go any farther, you must promise me that if you feel that you cannot control your behavior that you will go immediately to your nearest emergency room.Make an appointment with a good therapist who can begin talking with you about why you have been depressed since your break-up. You can also start taking some of the over the counter remedies that help with depression, such as St. John’s Wort, or SAME, which has helped many people in Europe. If these don’t give you relief in six weeks, then you may need to ask your therapist to refer you to a psychiatrist who may prescribe a prescription drug for you.On the emotional side. You need to understand why you have fallen into this pit since your former boyfriend dropped you. There are two likely reasons. First, when we get dumped by a lover or spouse, the mind automatically associates back to previous rejections and/or abandonments. Before you know it, you are swimming in a sea of despair and you don’t know why. The reason why is because you are actually reliving the pain from all the past abandonments that you’ve suffered. This pain often goes all the way back to when we were young children.I recall a patient of mine, who was rejected by her boyfriend and fell into a full-blown abandonment despair, just like you. With my help, she came to realize that she was actually grieving an abandonment that went back to when her mother gave birth to her brother. With the new baby to care for, she threw my patient off of her lap. The despair and grief that she felt then was buried deep inside her mind, only to be resurrected when she experienced a rejection in adulthood, which opened up the old scar.It would be good for you to begin some digging and see if you can remember when you first felt abandoned. Making this connection, should help free you from the despair you are suffering over your boyfriend.The second reason why you may be unable to overcome your depression is because you never got in touch with how angry you felt over being dropped. If you’ve been reading my column for a while, you know that buried anger resurfaces as depression.Read my Archives to understand more about this.I have given you a lot to work with. Making the link to your past, working through the original source of your grief, and owning your anger should help free you from this unending depression.By all means, let a therapist assist you in this process. You shouldn’t have to go through this alone.
