depression due to illnesses

Hi, I just signed up for this site today after hearing about it through the Crisis Text Line, and I think this is such an amazing website.

I'm a 17 year old senior in high school with panic/anxiety disorder, depression, Celiac Disease, Fibromyalgia, and Gastroparesis. I'm being tested for Ehler's Danlos Syndrome and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as well. I use a walker everyday and I try to go to school as much as I can, but sometimes everything just becomes too much...some days I feel like I should just stop taking my medications and doing my treatments and just let my body kill itself. It's scary and it's not okay to think like this, but I don't know what to do.

I usually watch these two men on YouTube named Dan and Phil when I'm depressed. They help immensely, but when I'm stuck in school or in the hospital without Internet, there's no way to cheer myself up or distract myself from the agonizing pain.

I'm miserable, and I need something, anything, to keep me motivated to keep living.

Thank you for reading.

I find distractions help a lot with pain. When we are in school, we need to pay attention, but when in the hospital, well, it can get boring and we tend to think too much. Can you record your show somehow so you can watch it in the hospital?

I am sorry you are going through this at such a young age. Pain is no fun at any age but you are so young and having to deal with this can be hard.

It sounds like you have a pretty good attitude, that helps a lot.

I hope that things get better and that you feel better soon.

Hang in there, welcome to the forum.

Hugs, Karen...

Welcome CB!!

Chronic conditions are hard, and a lot of people fall prey to depression. It's hard to move through life-always feeling awful. Always in pain.

I have a little insight. Here are my two thoughts for you. First--Illness does not define you, unless you let it. Your illnesses are not the sum total of you. Illnesses are conditions to be managed.

Part of this is that illness fills as much space as we choose to give it. Personally, I prefer to offer that extra real estate to things outside myself.

If you do not fill your time with illnesses(this is both thinking about being ill AND removing yourself from situations because of your illness,) you need to fill the time somehow. I find, in my own experience, that my illness can occupy everything, if I let it.

Secondly--you need to find your motivation--something to fill your time and to matter to you. It does not have to be big or earth-shattering. Sports, community, church, volunteering. My older sister, now dead, took her passion for the environment and for buddhism and made that her touchstone. Start small, and pick up a hobby or interest.