I’d just like to add, I genuinely tried for decades to do all the good stuff people suggested. But it didn’t make a dent. I wanted to die. To make life go away. But didn’t want to hand my bucket of pain to my little sister, then later my husband & son. You would never have known after interacting with me what was going on in my head.
My baseline was so low that nothing I tried could pull it up. And I was basically knackered from pushing the thoughts away I had very little energy left over. It became my normal. I bristled when my Doc. suggested them as I was recovering from Covid. I’d lived with it so long I thought my normal, was normal.
Took them. Improved massively within 3 months. For an entire year and one month I’ve used the fabulous app to do all the “good stuff” anti depressants & anxiety solutions. Exercise, better diet, walking, meditation, gratitude, drinking water, forgiving myself, mindfulness.
It’s all fucking amazing ! I can’t believe how transformed I am. I don’t just want to live, I want to live well. But the ADs were required to lift my baseline high enough so I could help myself. I needed both. But one had to kick in before I could embrace the other. I climb the mountains to be the best I can be everyday. It’s not a slog, it’s my “journey” (as much as I hate the word, but it does feel like one, so I get over the inner chuntering about sounding like an aged hippy)
I can’t be the only person who just got used to having a way too low base line and thought their shit head space was normal, to be expected and lived (not well) with it. Perhaps the change is that more people are aware their base line is too low, so are less resistant to medication than I was ?
Also… if I had grown up in the age of SM I genuinely think my baseline would have shifted even lower. Thank god my idiocy/not coping days were not recorded and uploaded for all the world to see and share. Thank God there weren’t gaggles of people all too willing to jump into my spiral of doom days with an overload of empathy and/or their own misery, which ALWAYS (even in the real world on a very much smaller scale) dragged me down deeper. I did better when I told nobody, “pulled my socks up” and walked through the world with a brave face on. Alone in my bad headspace. Which helped contain it to some extent. But that isn’t very fashionable, or is considered actively harmful, these days. And wasn’t much fun.