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It's interesting that everyone seems to know something about depression and I think that's because most people like to help. I also think that people suffering from clinical depression, that round the clock dread and desperation rather than feeling awful because of a recent travesty or affected by the seasons, don't want to talk about it because they understand that many won't understand or that they can't articulate it enough to do it justice.
I talk about depression very frequently on these threads.....to help dash the stigma and try to help others understand the deep issues affecting those who struggle with it.
How many have gone this route for their depression? I have and it works...One can even lay down and go into meditation. It's free, it works and one just has to DO IT...get into this addiction of meditation. So many A/D drugs and still talk about depression. Why not look at other avenues along with your drugs. There are so many sites on meditation and depression.
People who have never been on anti-depressants don’t understand how necessary they can be. I had situational depression, massive anxiety and the continual stress of what I was going through depleted the hormones or whatever it is in the brain that keeps it operating like it’s supposed to. Celexa allowed me to function and actually start reasoning and coping and dealing with what I was facing.
That was three years ago. My situation has greatly improved and I just finished tapering off. Those who have clinical depression, however, usually end up being on them long term. I have a friend who has been on Zoloft for 20 years and has no issues. Unfortunately the chemical makeup of his brain is lacking whatever it is that produces happy feelings.
My only real issue with Celexa was when I developed other health problems and some of the medications I was prescribed had pretty severe drug interactions with SSRI’s and I wasn’t able to take them.
People who have never been on anti-depressants don’t understand how necessary they can be. I had situational depression, massive anxiety and the continual stress of what I was going through depleted the hormones or whatever it is in the brain that keeps it operating like it’s supposed to. Celexa allowed me to function and actually start reasoning and coping and dealing with what I was facing.
That was three years ago. My situation has greatly improved and I just finished tapering off. Those who have clinical depression, however, usually end up being on them long term. I have a friend who has been on Zoloft for 20 years and has no issues. Unfortunately the chemical makeup of his brain is lacking whatever it is that produces happy feelings.
My only real issue with Celexa was when I developed other health problems and some of the medications I was prescribed had pretty severe drug interactions with SSRI’s and I wasn’t able to take them.
Situations come and go in our lives and I thought a divorce was the end of the world for me. IT was not, it was the beginning of a new life I found.
Clinical depression for me was a thyroid that needed addressed. Once it was supported 10 yrs of depression lifted, a long struggle and doctors who didn't help me, but kept giving me A/D's.
Just talking to my young neighbor who goes to India for meditation workshops and like he and I say, it's so easy to get into meditation, free and easy. No side effects but good benefits. He's rare as he's not into the high tech crazies and loves peace and quiet in his life. He's truly rare and a lovely guy. So kind and he helps me when he can.
It's interesting that everyone seems to know something about depression and I think that's because most people like to help. I also think that people suffering from clinical depression, that round the clock dread and desperation rather than feeling awful because of a recent travesty or affected by the seasons, don't want to talk about it because they understand that many won't understand or that they can't articulate it enough to do it justice.
There's depression about one thing, or maybe a group of them but there is a focus. If you can get enough concentration to push away the grey muck surrounding you, and define the thing, then just knowing the key can help. But that sortofdank feeling, like your surrounded by layers of something, and it won't let you move on is hard. Somewhere in that dank place there's a door, you just can't find it. I find when I get stressed I still feel that way. A lot of things in life went the wrong path, and there's this little knowlege in my brain that anything can. So when things are fine, that little flit of fear is still there.
I just plain don't don't respond to psych meds right, and have resorted to botanicals which effect you in a milder way, but work. I take a lot of suppliments. I have some good quality valerian root tablets, and they banish it without much other effect. I think I absorb okay, just so long as I stick to the botanical versions. I used to have a few pharma pills for a big just in case, but they are too old and were tossed. And weren't needed.
I've also wondered, as if something works or doesn't seems to be determined by how well I can absorb it to get the needed effect, especially coated pills which are utterly useless. After dropping all the coated pharma stuff, and finding easily absorbed non pharma stuff, that over time the triggers themselves fade too. I know they are there, but they don't do anything. I stopped allowing them to.
Do I shift? Sure, in small ways. I wake up all ready to start something, even if its winter and it isn't going to happen until its warmer. Do I acknowledge the shift, yes, but just to recognize it. And banish it. Am I 'normal'? NOOO. But then as I have learned how to shuffle the unwanted away, I can enjoy the good parts. And in some unexpected way, when my brain is settled in murky darkness (probably in the midst of a story I'm writing) I can look around and see how it all connects. And the pills I take which work more than everything are two large magnesium ones and a small D3. All the shifting little moods settle. The what if machine shuts itself off. Its like magic and only needed because with my situation I don't absorb either much at all from food. It doesn't make instant solutions, but makes everything calm so one can find where they are hiding.
I know people who have suddenly had really bad hit them, and nothing ever has. They're frozen. They feel there are NO ways out, all is lost, what to go on for... One friend just gave up. She wasn't badly ill, but felt as if what she liked was out the door now. A few months later she died in her sleep, likely an overdose. She made the choice to check out.
We all want things to be perfect. Some wear themselves out trying to make the impossible real. Some accept that life is in charge of itself. The real world lies somewhere inbetween.
I got myself of Prozac twice and celexa once. I had no issues. I just tapered. Maybe my doses were not high enough.
I took prozac for 3 years went off of it and then went back on for another 3. I was on celexa for about 6 years.
Same here, I was on Zoloft about 4 years ago-I tapered off, a little anxiety, but not much. If you make some healthy life style changes in how you communicate and deal with things, that also helps.
Same here, I was on Zoloft about 4 years ago-I tapered off, a little anxiety, but not much. If you make some healthy life style changes in how you communicate and deal with things, that also helps.
Definitely. OK, with all the "individual variation" aspects already being stated, there are changes in the way you think that must be made. One of the more frightening things first hand experience with depression creates is a dread of EVER going down into the depths again. Fear of having to withstand and haul yourself out of it again. When you decide to stop using supportive medication, regardless of your motivation to do so, that fear comes right up and knocks on the front door. You have to re-learn that you can trust your own mental experience when the day to day triggers crop up during the process. Whether you prefer to think about anti-depressants as crutches or godsends, be sanctimonious or oblivious, no one else can prevent that. That doesn't make it any less difficult for those who deal with the reality.
Definitely. OK, with all the "individual variation" aspects already being stated, there are changes in the way you think that must be made. One of the more frightening things first hand experience with depression creates is a dread of EVER going down into the depths again. Fear of having to withstand and haul yourself out of it again. When you decide to stop using supportive medication, regardless of your motivation to do so, that fear comes right up and knocks on the front door. You have to re-learn that you can trust your own mental experience when the day to day triggers crop up during the process. Whether you prefer to think about anti-depressants as crutches or godsends, be sanctimonious or oblivious, no one else can prevent that. That doesn't make it any less difficult for those who deal with the reality.
This is very true. You should never lean too heavily on your bottle of pills. If you are having a really bad day, or this bleak storm is couming and you can tell, a pill may save you from it, and if your lucky enough to not wipe out the memory, it may give you that little 'safe space' to pull back and see it for what it is, this thing which taunts you when you think you got him banished.
Once the fear/figment/memory is isolated, you have a clear name for it and knowing it is NOT to control, can send it away. Maybe it takes more than once, but each time you deny it power, you take some back for yourself.
We're all individuals, so the exact ways we take back are different, but usually its also a letting go, maybe by allowing ourselves to see how that little creature we made into a monster is just a stand in for the pain, and letting go of it. And behind every fear is some real one, but we can't go there yet. So long as its there, we have a place to hide. And when you can't deny that only you can set the fear free, then you can. But you have to believe first.
Some like organized therapy. Some like social groups which give everyone space to talk. And some in the end need meds. But nobody can open the door to that space but someone who deeply inside has *chosen* to let it fly away.
I personally took that choice when I had the chance to actually talk about those feelings safely with the bipolar anonomous group ( Deoressive and bipolar support assn, run by most counties, free based on income, and by defination private within the meeting. It helped me more than anything else as I could talk without worrying about the day by day living with those worries.
With their help, I saw that with all the reminders of yesterday I'd never get past it, and giving myself permission to start over.
Definitely. OK, with all the "individual variation" aspects already being stated, there are changes in the way you think that must be made. One of the more frightening things first hand experience with depression creates is a dread of EVER going down into the depths again. Fear of having to withstand and haul yourself out of it again. When you decide to stop using supportive medication, regardless of your motivation to do so, that fear comes right up and knocks on the front door. You have to re-learn that you can trust your own mental experience when the day to day triggers crop up during the process. Whether you prefer to think about anti-depressants as crutches or godsends, be sanctimonious or oblivious, no one else can prevent that. That doesn't make it any less difficult for those who deal with the reality.
For me, that's where choosing to move became a necessary thing. All the family crap which had been, and I was reminded of constantly, was making me a bouncing ball of fears. I had no way to escape them. Yes, I'm sure there's places I'd have prefered to go, but it needed to be very different. Right now my retreat isn't so perfect, but things around you change too. So I need some 'fixes'. But then, before moving, I hated taking the strong med, since I felt like a zombie for at least the day, but I'd do that over letting the fears take over. And they'd drag out all the doubts and anger and regret and so on. I needed to put them away and couldn't. Here, the worries are different, and I still make catastrophy out of what I imagine, but I've learned to shut off the noise, grab a cat or two and play some music, and let go. And deal with NOW, where things are fine with problems to solve, but they are just *problems* not disastors, *unless* I end up making them one.
I'm considering moving on again, but only at the how might we do this stage, and while the idea of it, moving near my son, would be wonderful, a lot of other things needed would need to be redefined and I'm not sure inside me that I'm ready. But its not being stuffed away either.
I find there is this little inner alarm bell, and when I start piling up what if's, all those things which might not work, or will but I don't know if its going to feel good or bad, I have to just stop, listen to some music, and calm down. But now I also look over and consider what might be good or bad about change, my 'later on options' knowing its still taking a chance. And that sometimes its better to.
It would be good to be near my son, but I'm not rushing anything. And they'll keep moving. Its still a what if, but when he does get settled... Or, are there other options of being near them.
Back before I moved here, there was only good/do it for a good tomorrow. It's a lot more complex now. It couldn't be then. And despite dissapointment right now, I feel like I won, whatver I/we choose in the end.
I've never had any trouble weaning myself off anti-depressants once I'm at a point in my therapy that I'm ready to try it without them. I've never had any trouble weaning myself off one anti-depressant that isn't working and switching to another anti-depressant. So...not sure what the problems is.
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