Being institutionalized.

[Coordinate_Apotheosis]

Look I think it's great that you're able to talk through this but I just want to reiterate. YOUR MOM IS ABUSIVE. YOU NEED TO GET INDEPENDENCE. My offer still stands. I'm sure others on this board would be willing to help in a practical way. You'd be surprised how a little peace and quiet may give you the space to start healing. Permitting yourself to be dominated is not a wise application of love.

Just see that I don't really know how to proceed, I have an idea but I have no ideas about bothering anyone for help of a tangible style, I don't intend to permit my domination.  I really just am in a very complicated situation with not just the only family I know but my emotions.  Independence for me will probably make my mom feel betrayed.  I won't have any real support after that and that's honesty really scary.   I've already tried to live on my own and it went...I guess very badly is how I'd sum up that period of life.

I don't know how to proceed, my plan was to try and talk a friend into sharing rent on an apartment once I have a stable job.

Dear CA,
i read and reread this thread a couple of times now.
Everytime the same things come to my mind, but i am very reluctant to say this.

I am not sure if you want to hear any of this and i really do not intend to worsen your situation, since there is already a great amount of emotional stress!

So for the moment, i will send you all the love and light i am capable of!

And, i do indeed believe in you, i do believe that you will get through this with a lot of spiritual growth!

Do share, you usually cut right to the heart of the matter like an...Vulcan of Mind and Emotion

So as of lately I've been...Well.  I guess I'll just say it the way I say it to myself.

I feel like a loser and a failure.

Tack this on with how many jobs have turned me down and the daily belittlement and debasement from my mother who thinks I've done nothing instead of trying.

I'm a bit emotionally crippled with depression.  So I've been staying in bed more this week than usual.  Just lying there trying to not think about how much I can't function.

So my mom gets home (just a few minutes ago) and immediately starts screaming at me to immediately talk to her "Or Else". I don't encourage her attitude anymore and so gave her the cold-shoulder.  When she's like that I don't unlock and open the door for MY safety.

So she flipped her s*** and made it very clear she's going to put me in a psych facility.

So I guess I'm wondering if anyone's ever been in one and what its like and what can I expect?

During a "psychotic episode" 7 months ago, my family checked me into the psychiatric ward. At first I was talking about heaven and hell, angels and demons, good and evil and came to my senses after 3 days or so, and realised that if I kept being open and honest about my experience I would probably never get out of there, so I had to "play the game" and make them think I was "getting well" in order to get out. It was fine in there, but its a lot easier to get in than it is to get out. The psychiatrist was cold, like a reptile and its the psychiatrist that decides your fate, whether you get out of there or not. I was in there voluntarily but the psychiatrist can decide to make you an involuntary patient, its completely up to them. I got moved to a different facility luckily, and had a second chance with a new psychiatrist, he wasn't cold and reptile like and I was able to convince the staff there that it was just a temporary wave of drug induced psychosis (in reality there were no drugs involved, but if I told them that then my chances of getting out would have been significantly lower). You've got a bed (in the first place I had a room to myself, second place it was a shared room), 3 meals per day and access to therapies such as CBT and mindfulness workshops. In the first place we were locked in, in the second place it was open, you could leave the ward (not officially, you had to be granted privileges by the psychiatrist, but it was all open, no security guards or locked doors) and leave the hospital. Different hospitals and different wards have different rules and procedures. The nurses and staff were all decent people, they were nice but not so open minded. The only exception I encountered was the first psychiatrist (who happens to be my local psychiatrist that I was appointed  ), she was callous and wouldn't listen to a word I was saying, her response to everything I said was to up my dosage of antipsychotics.

You get meds at least once a day, in my case it was every night and while they won't accept you not taking them, you can hold them in your mouth, go back to your room and spit them out. Thats what I did for a good while. Everyone in there is put on olanzapine (an antipsychotic) by default, and everything else is prescribed by the psychiatrist.  We had the option of getting 1mg of lorazepam per day, I abused that (by requesting it every day) and got those privileges revoked. There were no involuntary patients at the second hospital (the involuntary patients are in locked down wards), but there were a few of them in the first hospital. One of them was in a really bad state, her face was red all the time and she was clearly suffering constantly. It was really sad to see. Another one he was smiling all the time and seemed pretty happy, he was criminally insane, he'd stolen a bus full of passengers and drove it to my town and ditched it. He didn't get caught for that, he was in there for something else. He couldn't speak normally, he would just speak in quiet mutters, and would smile with this crazy look in his eyes whenever you talked to him. I liked him a lot, I got along with the patients in the locked down ward a lot better than the second place. They were completely non judgemental. The nurses and staff were all really nice and helpful but closed minded like I said, anything beyond the mainstream western consensus was beyond the realms of what they believed to be possible. I've been attacked and pinned down to a chair by an invisible entity and seen all kinds of paranormal things, I've astral projected, lucid dreamed most of my life, I've seen through the illusion of separation and stepped into unity consciousness, but theres only a small percentage of people that you can talk about these things to.

If you do check in to one of these places, make sure you get diagnosed with depression or anxiety and not psychosis. Do what you can to make the psychiatrist like you, thats the most important thing you can do in there. I had thought about getting checked in there as a backup plan if the "psychosis" got extreme, and had a vision of a building with two dark hands motioning to "come in", symbolising walking further into the grasp of the darkness. It was a bad move. I didn't actually realize I was getting checked in there until I was in there. I had no idea what was going to happen, I thought I was going to be attacked by entities the first night but nothing happened, everything calmed down after a few days there. The only positive memories I have from in there was being drugged up and watching Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure and talking to the criminally insane guy. Usually I'm highly compassionate and would be jumping on the chance to offer help to people with mental conditions, but since the heart block happened, I don't feel that drive and thats what disturbs me most about it all.

Sounds like an insightful experience.

Just keep trying to love, that's what's important is to keep making that choice.

Still, I'd be pretty freaked out getting drugged up and forced to watch tv.  I'd much rather listen to nature than televisions programming.

Thanks for the insight.

I wrote you a pm but hadn't seen this last post.

I'm 40 but about 80% of what you wrote I could have written at your age. It WAS rough and I am sorry you are there now.
I couldn't even go out in public without dry heaving I was so scared. You need a safe place to regain your strength.

Getting away from your mom is first. Being alone likely isn't ok right now though so are there any other people you can count on?
She sounds like my mothers double and she beyond all the other stuff you and I have experienced was destroying me. Any hope, confidence, health, peace, it sounds like your mom is doing the same to you.

Is there any family you can stay with elsewhere ?
Any social programs that can put a roof over your head while you regroup?

I got lucky and found a situation where I could volunteer in exchange for room and board while regrouping, a recovering. Eventually that led me to train for a career in the industry so I could be my own boss, pick my own hours, and work only with clients who would not destroy me again. Can we find a similar situation maybe.
It sounds like you have real talent for computers.

Don't feel bad about not being a 9-5er. That isn't the test of a persons value.
I don't want to say to much, words don't matter the essence matters.

I promise you are not a waste, there is hope, just hidden, don't give up.
You are amoung friends.

People I can count on? To get away? No.

I frequent a hookah bar to find alone time...  its the best I could do to find a sacred place away from home.

Other family...No.
Other's families.  Maybe for like a day but it'd be incredibly intruding I'd feel like.  Not very healing environments .

I have no clue of any decent free housing programs down here, I'd be relieved just to get food stamps.

Computers are a small hobby...Educating myself on them ruined my joy of the field.  Its all designed to break eventually, made to be expensive.  Inconveniently designed for profit.  And the average person is an idiot, those IT guys you hire to fix your comouter, sometimes they are mean and think you're an idiot.  I don't want to deal with that or the rude customers.

Thank you for your support.

@Coordinate_Apotheosis

It looked to me as if during a time of high stress and pain at the dentist, a part of you reached out to you to offer soothing love. Without having to re-live such an horrible experience, you are still able to develop a connection with that part of yourself. I think such a connection would be most salutary. It looks to me as if it's already there and you just need to find ways to connect to it everytime you need it. It can become a very powerful "ally" once you tame it (I put "ally" in quotation marks since, like you said, it's yourself - But I fully understand that some parts of ourselves can seem like strangers when we are not accustomed to them, self-love being one of them)

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."
- Khalil Gibran

I have felt this connection.  Teach me sempai! Lol
But seriously.  Its influence has been around for a while now.  It was like, a part of me woke up.  I don't know.  What do you think?