Losing myself

[arcx]

I hardly know where to begin; this is the first time I've visited a mental health forum, so I'll do my best to be brief and not to bore.

My situation

In the past 6 months my anxiety and general depression has me in a spiral, and I'm beginning to fear for my sanity. I've been a manic, narcissistic, anxious, volatile and slightly odd person as long as I can remember; but its only recently that I've really begun to worry about my condition.

Anxiety ties you up in your thoughts; rather than 'being', you become a stream of worries and conscious decisions; decisions about how to act, what to say, and how to move; only now it's even my ideas that have become so overanalysed that I'm not sure what it even is that I believe in. I'm just 'thoughts' and 'analysis'. The only emotion I experience now is the anxious adrenaline of a social encounter.

I worry I'm becoming an insomniac. I have headaches; low, dull and constant pains behind my eyes and in my forehead. You know the ecstatic feeling of sleepiness when your eyelids just begin to droop? It's only a memory for me now. Each night I sleep only a fitful few hours before waking, feeling unrested but strangely more alert than ever.

I succeed effortlessly in university. I'm able to cram months of work in the night before an exam, and still achieve high marks. Every position, appointment or job I apply to I'm selected for. My success fuels my narcissism but it's never enough to douse the feelings of inferiority; I feel like I'm better than everyone, and I consciously acknowledge it, but it's not enough.

I experience delusions of grandeur; all I think about is succeeding, becoming rich, living forever; I'll listen to an electronic song and well up in tears as I imagine the future hundreds of years from now, and I tell myself 'I will live for this, I will experience that future'. And so I drive myself on further, never satisfied or happy, just chasing some glory in silence; as I'd never tell anyone how I feel about life and success and movement.

One day I'll relate to the plight of the victim of an injustice, and then the next I'll revel in the fact that such an injustice even exists. One day I'll be on the verge of jumping from my balcony, sickened at my own social maladjustment, and then the next I'll laugh at how idiotic I am and wonder how I could be so melodramatic.

I am no longer 'me'. My life is just a roller-coaster ride of highs and lows, witnessed by my own crippling self-awareness.

The only constant is a deep, profound unhappiness. Some days I feel it more strongly than others, but its always there.

I don't know what to do. I just want to live, mindlessly and happy like everyone else.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

[arcx]

Maybe-helpful-history

I'm a male, the youngest of four children from a working class family. I have a long family history of mental problems: My mother had natal depression during her pregnancy with me, and has battled major depression for a large part of her life, as well as her parents before her. Her brother, my uncle, experienced a period of profound insanity during his early twenties and was institutionalised for a period (though he has since fully recovered). My dad has had low-grade generalised anxiety disorder for the majority of his life as well as an intense fear of public speaking; his father, my granddad, was an alcoholic, and his father before him.

Before entering primary school I was the kid who 'hides behind his mothers skirt'. Starting preschool/primary school was a difficult experience, but I acclimatised quickly enough and was fortunate enough to become a 'popular kid'. Much of primary school was an enjoyable experience.

Highschool was much, much more difficult, and being the kind of person who finds it a real stretch to make new friends, I clung mostly to those I knew from primary school. Unfortunately I was bullied badly for a year or so from years 8-9, and a lot of my them abandoned. This is the point where I first began to experience extreme anxiety, and simply refused to go to school most days. Despite this, I never experienced depression; only in later high school after my social situation stabilised did the awareness of my constant, anxious vigil start to gnaw at me.

Despite this I still did well in highschool, achieving one of the highest scores in the state for my extension english major, and slipping into a world-class university, where I'm currently studying in my first undergraduate year.