1. I have decided that no one can hurt me unless I give them permission. I have decided that I will choose to be happy and choose to interpret all interactions in a positive light.
2. I will try to fight the suicidal thoughts and (well, maybe) I will finally reach out for more help other than just the pills. I will not stop the medication because I accept that my brain is too f**ed up to allow me to function without it.
3. I will not feel responsible for everything that goes wrong in the lives of my children. I will help if I can, but not go out of my way to try to please them. I will love myself and not worry about being unlovable.
4. I will be brave enough to accept life, in all its pain and beauty.
I don't know the answer but my daughter (with her psych degree and interest in clinical psych) says my doctor NEVER should have prescribed meds before referring me to a psychologist or psychiatrist. My family doctors have been offering me meds for years but I only took them a couple of years ago, when I was desperate.
When I went back recently and said I still fell into suicidal depressions despite the meds (although not as deeply) and thought I needed more help, I was prescribed a higher dose.
It is just so much easier for a family doctor to try medication than to decide if the person is just a little down or truly needs psychiatric help.
I still have not got the courage up to go in and demand a referral
A holiday is extra stress. That's part of why you just want to go to bed. And I am sorry to hear that your back problems was not corrected by the surgery. But hiding in to bed is not good for you. I know how hard it is to drag myself out of bed and I am not in pain, so I understand the need to hide from the world.
Your husband will never really understand your depression but he is trying to help with the trip, instead of just thinking about himself. So that is good.
Decide to enjoy the trip. Lie in the sun and hold your husband's hand. Let the warmth soak up the pain.
Right now the sun is shinning through my window, reflecting off pure white untrodden snow. There are tiny flakes, lazily floating down, glittering in the sunlight. There is a cardinal at our bird feeder, making a festive contrast to the snow.
Observe the beauty and let it give you hope.
Normal is when you are happy and sad in response to life's ups and downs.
I wonder if anyone ever gets "cured" of depression. I seem to cycle between what I would call normal happy and normal sad then genuine depression then agony, can't stand the pain, want to curl into fetal position, drowning can't breathe. The meds make the depths shorter. The CBT helps to understand some of the sad and really depressed phases and can make them a little better but nothing seems to help the agony phase. Drugs, alcohol, anything to take away the pain just make things worse long term.
I finally went to my doctor with a partially filled in referral form to a mood disorder clinic. She referred me, but who knows how long it will take?
Anyhow if it works, I will tell you what normal is.
I think I know what you mean by too fullness. Sometimes you need solitude. Alone time. Me time.
I wonder about support groups. Sometimes I think people think they are depressed but just like to whine. And how much help is it to be among a bunch of other people who just want to whine, rather than try to understand and help someone else? If a support group is to work there has to be giving as well as taking. When you are drowning you take and when you are more OK you give and both the taking and the helping help.
After the report that said that antidepressants were only slightly better than placebos in the moderately depressed, CBC radio had an interview with the head of the mood disorder clinic in Hamilton, Ontario. He said 2 things that rang true with me.
1. That most people don't realize how much good antidepressants are doing until they stop taking them.
2. That they have found that in many cases with people who have stopped taking medications that same medication does not work when they go back on it.
This is exactly what happened with me. Two years ago, in a time of extreme family and work-related stress, I finally took a low dose (75 mg) of effexor offered by my family doctor. I was amazed at the results. I felt "normal" for the first time in a long time. I continued to take it for a year to make sure that the cure was effective, after reading all I could about it, then continued for a few months longer to pass the spring equinox and avoid SAD. Then I slowly weaned with no ill effects.
By September I was in a major suicidal depression. I went back on Effexor and even tried higher doses, but continued cycling through mild depression and suicidal depression. I tried this site and it helped a bit but the dips continued. I have just come out of a deep pit and to my amazement found my self happy last Thursday. Not deliriously jump up and win the lottery happy, but really happy, normal happy. I had kept taking the medication because i was afraid to stop.
So maybe, when you go back on, it takes 6 months, rather than 6 weeks to work.
Hang in there. Work towards content.
You gotta hang in there, Null. You are doing the right thing. The trouble is it is bound to get worse before it gets better. Don't let her beg you to come back or promise that things will get better. She just wants to control you. But cry to settle as much as possible without a lawyer. All they do is cost you both money. Use your cyber-friends for support.
It will get better if you can just hang on.
Humour helps. As a (not right now) suicidal person and a suicide victim (It is the ones we leave behind who are the true victims.) that macabre statement appeals to me.
I think, that if you said that to me in a severely depressed state, with the tone I hear between the lines, it might help. Laughing at yourself is good.
If suicide were pretty and melodramatically glamorous, why would anyone ever bear the pain of depression? It's not. It is a grieving father washing blood and brains from the ceiling while a nine year old peaks in the door. It is the destruction of everyone you love and everyone who loves you.
So when it is hard to hang on, This is how I hang in there.
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