Why do I have constant facial ticks, random body spasms, and talk to myself?

[martimus]

I am a 43 year old single gay male in the medical field. I'm barely able to maintain my life, and I am extremely antisocial, but mostly due to being poor and living on my own with no family or friends to help me.  I've had facial ticks my entire life, and my mother never got me checked for them, simply put them down to my sinuses and allergy problems I have suffered with from day 1.  All my life, I have imagined scenarios in my head that don't take place, and sometimes I talk to myself when I am left alone.  If something bad happens to me, I imagine sometimes that I and the perpetrator are in an imaginary court where I am the plaintiff and they are the defendant and the court sides with me, though I have routinely always had things never go my way in life. Lately, I have hit possibly a mid-life crisis, and seeing how painful and difficult my life has been and wanting to end it. In the attempts I've made to seek some help or talk to someone, a roadblock always seems to occur.  I've had severe bad luck, and I am also very negative and unable to maintain friendships due to how bleak and sad my life outlook is. I've recently become overweight and feel extremely unattractive and feel powerless and penniless to fix it - mostly because of my total lack of willpower and mental discipline to force myself to work out and eat right.  I just wish I could find some way to pull a thread to unravel this situation I am in.  I also have great difficulty sleep ,and am stuck in a terrible dead end job.  The only family I am close to lives 5 hours drive away, and the person in my life I was closest to, my mom, passed away from a painful 2 year battle with cancer in 2010 and my life has been totally horrible ever since. I feel like I am breaking.

[specialmom]

Hi.   Welcome to medhelp!  Glad you posted.  So, I have a son that you have a lot in common with except he is a lot younger.  My son has facial tics, anxiety and talks to himself all the time.  I tend to get sad when he talks to himself because I often wonder if it doesn't come out of loneliness. He is very socially awkward as a teenager and has had his fair share of rejection.  He has a minor developmental delay that is neurological in nature called sensory integration disorder.  He's also quite brilliant (If I do say so myself).  He's very intelligent and interesting and not everyone relates to the conversations he wants to have.  So, he talks to himself all the time.

Now I'm concerned that you speak about being suicidal.  You don't feel that way now, do you?  Oh please, please reach out for help if you do.  You are a valuable person even in the moments you don't feel like it.  There are numbers to call. We'll talk here. Just get help.  Go to an ER if you need to.  

I feel terrible you are feeling so terrible.  I want to swoop in and give you hope!

My son's tics are in direct relation to his anxiety.  He's had vocal tics (what he has now) and motor tics.  I understand that being penniless as you describe yourself may make it hard to seek help for any mental health issues but that would be fantastic if you could.  How is your job? Do you have insurance?  

Sometimes taking first steps helps.  I have extreme fear of mammograms.  I mean, panic attack level reaction fear.  I had my physical yesterday and they made it easy for me.  Gave me a sheet of paper, a day and a phone number. All I had to do was call the number, set the time and I had an appointment.  My doctor kindly worked out the plan for me to overcome the anxiety that day and get tot he appointment.  She totally gets me that it causes great fear (had a bad mammogram, biopsy, etc. years ago and it really frightened me, it's irrational, but you hopefully understand).  Anyway, I felt so much better once I made the call!  I took a step.  I'm moving forward.  

So, what about taking 1 step for the weight issue?  Like, "I will do exercise for 10 minutes and give up one thing food wise that I know I shouldn't have".  Just a baby step that you then can build on?  

I don't know, things like that help me.  I'm here to talk!

[Paxiled]

This sounds like pretty classic depression.  If you're still grieving that badly over someone who died 9 years ago, it's no longer grief in the traditional sense, it is part of your depression, most likely.  Everything other than the tics, which I have no idea why you have but a doctor certainly might, are symptoms depressed people get.  You say you're in the medical field, but don't say what job you have, but you do have a job in a field that is usually well-enough paying and usually with benefits such as insurance.  Do you not have that?  I wouldn't worry about talking to yourself, lots of people do that.  Imagining scenarios is also just something people do.  The difference when y0u're depressed is, these things can become obsessive or seem obsessive.  When we're depressed, the self-judging is relentless.  Treating depression isn't easy.  Therapy is the place we start, but it takes work and finding a therapist you fit with.  But if you've truly reached a suicidal place and life doesn't work in any way, therapy takes a lot of time and that's when medication comes into play.  You're actually young for a mid-life crisis, so I don't think it's that exactly, but that term is really just a way of saying there are times when we start to look at our lives and don't like what we see.  If you're not depressed, you use that to make changes that make you happier.  If you are depressed, it's very hard to do that, as that's the nature of the disorder.  I'd look for a therapist and if necessary a psychiatrist as well if you're truly suicidal.  As for willpower and discipline, lots of people lack that as well, maybe most of us.  We have a President of the US who lacks both willpower and mental discipline, but it has never bothered him and he has been able to thrive and become President.  George W Bush also lacked these.  Which is to just use them as known examples of the difference between how depressed people look at their lives and their weaknesses and how those who aren't depressed look at them so you can see that it's not so much what your circumstances are that sound so horrible as the way you're playing them out and thinking about them.  I know help is expensive, but you don't want to live like this, so I hope you do find a way to seek help.  We all need it sometimes.  Peace.

[martimus]

While I appreciate your reply, I think it’s very disgusting for you to inject your political discourse into my situation while also pretending it’s innocent. I may be depressed and suicidal, but I don’t have a serious mental obsession with bashing Donald Trump with no professional evidence where it literally has no place or relevancy.

[Paxiled]

It wasn't actually reflecting my politics.  I was merely using these two celebrities who are well known for their personal lives because they are famous that one doesn't have to have what society tends to call willpower or mental discipline to be extremely successful.  I could have added many others to this list who have confessed to lacking what society tends to say about these qualities but who have nevertheless excelled in life and accomplished much.  It was to say that people on these forums are usually very hard on themselves because it's the nature of our disorders that make it so, but that others who have similar personality traits aren't worrying over them.  It was to say that it's the worry, the negative judgments we make of ourselves, that amplifies our pain.  If I were expressing my political viewpoints, it would have looked a lot different.  I'm sorry you misunderstood what I was trying to say by way of example, but I do hope you take the underlying message, which is, you are judging yourself very harshly about things that probably are not connected to your pain.  Peace.