Fed up with long term depression ! ( Long... and prob tedious!)

[StarSparkle]

Hi,

Does anyone have any tips on coping with long term depression ?

I have been living with clinical depression for 13 years and I am getting a bit fed up with it ! I feel mine is some sort of chemical imbalance as long term depression ( anxitey, bi polar, panic attacks and dependance) runs in my mothers side of the family.

I'n the last 13 years i have been to 2 different councillors, one who tryed to put answers in my mouth and the other who was a mental health assessor. Both were completely unhelpful and seemed to only think mental illness only derives from life experience.

I always have dark thoughts, but as i have lived with it for so long have trained myself to deal with them. I have a had few v minor breakdowns only lasting a few days/weeks. I have taken overdoses 3 times in my teens and had to go to a&e. I also have self harmed (in my teens for 3 yrs).

I often have feelings of cutting myself but since then but have only done it a handful of times in the last 7 years.

I have also developed a degree of social anxiety - which i never had before !

Anyway, enough of me feeling sorry for myself and wallowing in self pity !

Anyones experience or suggestions would be apperiated ! ( I have really bad spelling - so apologies!)

[wiggleit]

Hi everyone! So much happens on here i can't keep up with it! My DD always on the computer and can't always get on when i want to, and if it's not her hogging the puter it's my DH! I've no chance. Thank god my cat can't type!

I do believe that depression is a chemical imbalance as well as a way of showing that you have undealt with issues as some of you say. At the moment i'm going through counselling to try and relieve myself of the awful depression i have suffered on and off for years..and it seems to be related to my relationship with my Dad and my sister. Always felt inadequate and that sis was the fave daughter and could do no wrong etc. I'm currently working through all these emotions to try and come out the other side ok.

I know that prozac is one of those drugs that you either get on great with or not..luckily it works for me but i still come up against the family telling me to come off it coz of the horror stories but it really doesn't affect me like that. It's when i try and come off it that i seem to slip right back. You shouldn't come off it cold turkey, it has to be a gradual reduction over months.

I too like the analogy of diabetes. My Dr once said a similar sort of thing to me when at first i said i didn't want to go on ad's. He said no-one would bat an eyelid if you were taking tablets to control something like high blood pressure or diabetes, it's just the stigma that surrounds depression that is the problem. He also said why does anyone have to know you are on anything anyway, it's nobody else's business and if it's what gets you through each day then so be it. So now i do look at things differently re taking ad's. You have to do what works for you and gets you through. Don't feel guilty or embarrassed about it.

Sorry for rambling but as i said earlier it's a fight to actually get on the computer in our house so while i'm on i'm making the most if it!! sorry!

How is everyone? xx

[TinkerbellesMum]

I think that what happens with circumstantial depression is that you spend so much time in "fight or flight" mode that your body gets used to it and doesn't know how to come out of it. Drugs bring you out of that mode and talking about the problems helps resolve them and helps bring you out of "fight or flight".

But it has to be recognised that it is just another normal function of the body that can go wrong and sometimes it's not because of something external (I guess if we go back to diabetes that it is like GD and normal diabetes) that will pass. My dad annoys me and Mum because even after over 30 years of knowing Mum he still thinks that depression is just circumstantial.

[wiggleit]

TbM - you make a good point there. Our bodies can go wrong at any time in any area. My family don't understand my depression but are trying to since i've spoken to them and tried to make them understand. It annoys me when peole say 'what have you got to be depressed about?' ggrrr! I hate feeling this way but can't help it!

[TinkerbellesMum]

I hate the "D" word! I'm not even "depressed" in the sad sense. That's why I like the term PNI.

[Bellbird]

I've had S.A.D. since puberty - although it wasn't officially diagnosed until I was 24. The recommended treatment which involved using light boxes and taking hypericum did seem to help!

Two years later, I had a devastating time with both parents being very ill (my father terminally) and I was somehow able to keep upbeat throughout the summer months until he died in July. That autumn was the blackest, most solitary and desperate of my life - I was told to take Prozac: If there was any improvement, I was too numb to detect it.

By the following spring, I figured that the prescription drugs were dulling my brain, and I needed to keep my wits about me in my job and in my relationships, so without warning, I went cold turkey. Well I'm not sure what happened from a clinical viewpoint - but I started inventing the most ridiculous schemes and fantasies and went hyper! It took six months for me to settle back to a me that I and everyone else could tolerate!

This is a very personal thing, I know, but I feel for me, that although depression is a pain in the bum, and I still get it in gloomy weather and a less toxic depression on a monthly basis: I will not take it to the GP unless I'm genuinely suicidal. I far prefer the easy going, creative and sensitive me that has the odd black thought, to one that suppresses all my dreamy thoughts with drugs and then just explodes!

[GooseyLoosey]

Can I ask you all some questions. I suffer from quite acute anxiety and was recently diagnosed as having a "major depressive disorder". I have felt the way I do now for about 6 years.

I have 3 questions:

1. I am not sure that I am as depressed as the psychiatrist thinks I am and I worry that I have overstated things. I have not knowingly done this, but I keep thinking that surely I can't feel that bad relative to other people. Does anyone else feel like this?

1. The second thing is that I have been taking ADs for about 6 months and occasionally can feel a flash of happiness. However, when this happpens, rather than embrace it, I push it away as I am scared of it. I think that I feel that if I was to allow myself to be happy, it would be tempting fate and it would be taken away from me and things would be worse than before. Do others feel like this and if so, how do you overcome it?

1. Psych is prescribing more and more drugs. Latest prescription is for Venlafaxine and I am reluctant to take this. I don't want my life to become a cycle of taking more and more drugs which just numb me to the effects of life. Has anyone found a way out without taking lots of ADs or do you just embrace them as a good thing?

Sorry to butt in, but am feeling a bit lost with all of this.

[Bellbird]

Hi GooseyLoosey (nice name)

Answers to Q's.
(1) My brain was already caught in a loop of recycling negative thoughts and with a bit of help from a psych just set off a chain reaction. Under the circumstances I put too much emphasis on all the humiliations, grudges, and situations where I'd felt undermined or bullied or pressured and no way could I possibly see anything positive. So yes, I think it's a pretty normal way to feel.

(2)I do embrace happiness, but patiently and a bit cautiously at first. It may not last. Shit happens. I do cling to a hope - it's why I'm still here!

(3)Not qualified to answer this one because I'm not on them: I know they do the job for some friends and relatives as far as I can tell. However, call me a control freak, but I feel better off without them. The force and content of my lows is so predictable, it's actually becoming easier to dismiss them as negative, pernicious and truly unhelpful. I have a way of objectifying and looking at my thoughts and saying, 'Let's just call it a day now I've vented - Yep, I've had a non-perfect, and occasionally rubbish life - so I owe it to myself to get out of this train of thought.'

[Divastrop]

gooseyloosey-in answer to 2)i have felt like that every time i have felt the tiniest bit of happiness in the past 16 years.i feel i must prepare myself for the worst otherwise i wont be able to cope when things inevitably go wrong.

i do feel this comes from my childhood though.i was very sensitive and my mother found it difficult to cope with my emotional outbursts,so she dealt with it by telling me 'dont get your hopes up' or 'dont come crying to me when it all goes wrong' and other such pessimistic things whenever i was happy about anything.

of course,negative thinking can often become a self-fullfilling prophecy.

in answer to 3)i have no idea.i have never seen a psychiatrist,though i have never heard them spoken of favourably by those who have.venlafaxine i found was very numbing,worse than prozac,and very difficult to get off.but that is just my experience and there are other on this site who had very positive experiences on it.

bellbird-your first post was very helpful to me.i get very frustrated at being this functioning-zombie version of myself,but off the drugs i went loopy,i was screaming at the kids for nothing,imagining dh was upto allsorts and basically just an emotional wreck.but i dont know if this was because i went cold turkey,or because i had been on medication for some time and feeling emotion was strange,or because i need medication in order to function.

[TinkerbellesMum]

In answer to your first question, I don't feel depressed, to feel something would be good! Depression isn't just feeling sad and I think people don't generally understand that, which is why I said in my previous post I don't like the "D" word.

[GooseyLoosey]

Thanks!!! Its nice to be able to talk about this without worrying that you all think I'm nuts. While the pysch is nice enough I always think that he must be judging how nutty I am.

Tinkerbelle's mum, I think I feel more like you. Nothing at all most of the time punctuated by phases of complete terror sparked by anxiety.

Divastrop, it is a relief to hear that I am not the only one who is scared by happiness. I don't know why I feel like that but I wish I didn't. Your experience of Velafaxine is one I have heard before and part of the reason I am reluctant to take it. On the otherhand, I am scared that if I don't do as the psych advises that he won't help me anymore.

Bellbird - its amazing how different 2 people's experience of the same illness can be. Its all pretty shit thought isn't it.

[TinkerbellesMum]

To complicate it more, my body feels emotions that I don't. When I lost Lily-Hope I cried and sobbed for her, but inside I felt my normal "calm" (emotionless) self, but I had no control over the crying, my body was grieving without me. I can laugh at a joke but I don't feel happy or whatever the mood is supposed to be, I can cry at sad things like talking about my daughter or reading Take A Break when pregnant (haha I forgot yesterday sitting at the GP trying not to cry because I was reading TAB) but I don't feel sad.

I guess the nearest analogy (analogies are great when explaining mental health lol) is when I have a TIA I lie on the floor, fully aware of everything around me but unable to respond, I even feel like I'm faking the lying on the floor part because of being aware of it. IYSWIM

[GooseyLoosey]

Do you also go through life feeling that you are pretending all of the time? I talk to and play with my children but I feel it is just a charade and the real me should be sitting in a heap on the floor.

Unlike you Tinkerbellesmummy, it would not be true to say I feel nothing. I do feel anxiety and terror and to stop feeling that I think I have stopped feeling at all.

[TinkerbellesMum]

Like life is a TV show happening around you? Know that one.

I don't feel emotions, I just go through the motions of them usually with no control over it or just doing the act of it.

I think the lack of emotions is part of BPD, for me anyway.

[Bellbird]

My mother is 'coping' with the ads she's on, and so is one of my closest friends. However, one thing I've observed about them, and I would be interested to know if it's true for any of you - is that there is a small limit to how much time they can put up with being in their own homes. They both suffer terribly from cabin fever and have diaries crammed full of activities which get them out of their homes. This works fine for them and they have both gone from being quite shy to very sociable. However, when the weather's wet or if they are ill and they can't get out, they take it very badly.

I have a different way of coping, because as I said, I don't take drugs: I am very fortunate to have a small garden for me and the kids to potter about in. It's really therapeutic. The mistake I used to make was to set my sights on unachievable goals. In the garden I just try one small thing at a time. If things fail, I don't beat myself up about it. It's been the best thing.

[GooseyLoosey]

Bellbird, that's interesting. Actually I find its the otherway around. I have always been fairly tidy at home but since going on the ADs (and no idea if that is a coincidence or there is a causal link), I find that I have become much more obsessive about how tidy it is and actually, I think it is affecting my family life as dh will play with the kids while I am tidying up. The think is that unless everything is done, I can't relax. Oddly, this is coupled with a complete inability to motivate myself to do anything at work!

[Divastrop]

before i was on the tablets,i couldnt sit down atall during the day.i always felt there was something i should be doing,and i felt guitly if i even sat down to drink a cup of coffee.

now i just cant be arsed and only do the things i have to,so consequently my house is a shit tip which makes me feel even worse.

i cant stay in the house.i stayed in the house all day on xmas day and i nearly lost the plot.i was worse when i was a single mum,i used to stay out all day and only go home at teatime,then drink myself to sleep once the kids were in bed.

i saw a different doctor today and she is reffering me to a psychiatrist.

[GooseyLoosey]

Diva - how you feel at home is how I am at work and I don't know how to shake myself out of it. Psych says he can sign me off sick for a while, but the last think I want is for my employers to know that I'm suffering from a mental illness (if I really am). I worry all the time now about losing my job, but it still does not make me do anything!

[TinkerbellesMum]

Goosey, GP's are clever about how they word sick notes, they know no one wants their employer to know they have mental health problems. I've heard GPs say "how do you want me to write this?" and give some suggestions that will be vague enough to not lie or give away why you have a sick note without coming straight out with it.

[Bellbird]

GooseyLoosey, when I was on Prozac I was the same - I obsessed about my relationships and home environment, but could never feel satisfied. I had itchy feet all day at work. Any excuse for a coffee break, or an extended lunch and I'd be there. My brain couldn't handle lateral thinking which was necessary in my analytical job, so I distracted myself all the time: Hence, why I went cold turkey (very bad thing to do, as I said before.)I couldn't get enough of work after that, I went into overdrive in every possible way! It's been a long time since that episode and I feel for you guys, because it really sucks. Fortunately, my employer was pretty tolerant and they knew I had depression. It made it official, and they would have been breaking the law if they'd sacked me. In fact, it cast a whole new light on the subject, because many of the bosses admitted to having had episodes of it in their lives. It's more common than you think.

[GooseyLoosey]

That's interesting Bellbird. I am currently taking quite a high dose of Sertraline which I know works in a similar way to Prozac. I know I am just coasting at work at the moment and trading on my past reputation of working hard. However, it can only be a matter of time before someone works it out. I just can't manage to do anything somehow. Maybe I would be better off telling them, but I work in a largely male dominated legal environment and am the only woman with any seniority there. I am not sure that they would understand and am faily certain that it would affect the way in which I was perceived. God, its all so horrible.

[Bellbird]

GooseyLoosey, do you have an HR Dept? If so, I would try and ask them to handle it in confidence. They are then bound to abide by their own rules. Also, as Tinkerbellesmum said, GPs are pretty clued up to these issues and can write a pretty authoratitive note demanding that your employer gives you some time off through this difficult period: They don't have to be specific. If I wanted to be perceived as strong and decisive, because that's what male environments are about, then I would stand my ground and go for it. What do others think?

[StarSparkle]

I agree with bellbird - sounds like the way too go

[GooseyLoosey]

Hi Starsparkle - sorry for hijacking your thread with my own concerns and thank you all for your advice.

[StarSparkle]

Gooseyloosey ! Your not hijacking this thread at all ! Don't be silly ! You are welcome and we are all dealing with some type of depression here ! Its a good place to come to 'unload our feelings' and be amogst others who know what its like to live with some depression/anxiety/dark 5thoughts ect ect ! Hope u find this thread useful

[TinkerbellesMum]

This thread does seem to have moved away from the OP. But in a good way