Battling Depression

[Tennesseer]

Feb 28, 2023 23:59:23 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

I have finally given in. My Doctor used to try to get me to take anti depressants, and I have always refused after the first time I tried them years ago, when I was going through what I still describe as the worst years of my life, when there was no doubt that all the things I was dealing with overwhelmed me to the point that I was clinically depressed.

The Doctor I’ve been seeing since my old Doctor retired, keeps suggesting antidepressants. everybody keeps suggesting them.

I would get the initial prescriptions filled, but wouldn’t take them because I was afraid of the side effects, and withdrawal if they didn’t work for me. 

I went to my new PCP last week, who I am not exactly thrilled with and want to replace, and she suggested antidepressants again, and gave me a prescription for Zoloft this time, instead of one of the newer ones. 

I still didn’t plan on taking those either. 

But tonight, I was walking through the den and said something to Mister about something I won’t get into here, and he asked what is happening to us, why are we both doing that. And I said the first thing that popped into my head, “because we are both probably clinically depressed” and kept walking.

That is stuck in my brain now, because I know it popped out of my mouth so easily, because I actually do think that. Even though I don’t feel hopeless or suicidal, I know enough about depression to know that I do have some of the other symptoms. So I decided tonight that I should probably take the damn Zoloft and give it a chance.

Good. And I speak from family experience.

[finnime]

Agree with Tennesseer. Pink Cashmere, when antidepressants work they restore you to yourself. It's depression that fucks with your best functioning. They don't make you happy but they do allow you to experience happiness. Try it, and if it doesn't work, try another. You have been through so much. Why handicap yourself by not managing an extra burden needlessly.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

My therapist explained it as the anti-depressant may not make all my issues go away but it can quiet at least one of them allowing me to devote more of my brain space/energy towards handling the other two.  And isn't that better than how I am doing now?

The answer to that ended up being yes.

[TheOtherMe]

Pink, also remember that anti-depressants and dosages can take time to figure out.  Zoloft may not be the correct drug for your body.  It wasn't for mine, but others are.

[azucena]

Pink - you didn't give in. You took the next step. That's all, one next step.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Question for everyone here.  Do the flashbacks ever stop?  I was driving yesterday to Abby's dance class having a decent time chatting with her and listening to the radio.

Out of no where I was back in the ER the day my mom had a heart attack.  I felt myself sliding in the chair and she noticed I was there.  She reassured ME that everything was going to be okay and don't worry.

But it wasn't okay.   Then I flashed to the code blue and how time slowed down as my brain processed the code blue was for her.

I did the 5,4,3,2,1 technique the therapist shared with me and I did a breathing exercise.  That got me over the hump of the panic that comes with remembering it all.

But I am still messed up and off kilter today.   I know part of it is I haven't allowed myself or had time to really sit and force myself to process so my brain is taking what quiet moments it can to be "hey we still gotta deal with this chicka".

The therapist said in time the panic associated with it will fade but I want to know if you ever stop having the flashbacks themselves or is this something that will continue to haunt me from time to time?

[geenamercile]

I don´t get flash backs, mine are flashes of everything that can go wrong in the future.  And normally they last until I can pull myself together enough to make plan A,B and C.  

[TheOtherMe]

My flashbacks came in the form of dreams where those final horrible things happened.  

They happened with the deaths of my best friend, mom and dad.  The length was different for each one when they stopped, but they have stopped.

The ones about my friend stopped when she came to me in a dream and said she was okay and to get on with my life.  It's an incredible memory I have of her.

[finnime]

I've had flashbacks of the time I learned my father had died suddenly. From my mother's expected death, no. But for my dad, the flashbacks included thinking I saw him walking down the street or driving a car when he was nowhere near where I lived. Of the specifics of being called by my BIL, then my DSis, and told--that in time faded and frequency lessened until now I can remember without feeling the shock. It has been 30 years, of course. I was 33 when he died. I was no longer really strongly affected by the flashbacks about 10 years after. By then other traumas in my life were more urgent.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I had forgotten there that my mom had tried to reassure me that day.  Cause that's what mom's do right?   That was the most soul crushing part of the flashback.

[wvugurl26]

It's definitely what they do drama not that it makes it any better. After I'd had grandma home a couple days and before I got the night aide and before my dad showed up, grandma was questioning me one day about whether I was sleeping at all. She was still very alert and with it when she wasn't sleeping then.

I had caught a glance at the bags under my eyes that day and thought damn. But here grandma was in hospice care dying of multiple organ failure and still trying to take care of me.

I'm sorry about the flashbacks.

I'm sure it's going to all catch up with me one day.

[TheOtherMe]

My mom was worried about us and dad right up until the end, too.

After watching one parent die with dementia and one without, it was easier to let mom go because she knew what was happening and could state her wishes.  She could tell us if she was hungry.  She told us her concerns for us.  She was a mom always.

Mom knew what she wanted to eat for lunch the day she went in to the final coma.  I had the pleasure of getting it from DQ and sharing lunch with my parents for what was to be the last time.

[Pink Cashmere]

Mister’s Mom and I weren’t super close, but during her last hospital stay, Mister was asking me specific questions about my stomach issues. He told me Doctor *his last name* was trying to figure out what might be wrong with me. I was like who is that?! He said him Mom. She felt bad for me and was trying to figure it out so I could feel better. That was about a month before she died, when she had so many of her own issues to deal with, but she was worried about me.

I also think about the last time she and I had a long conversation on the phone right before she went in the hospital the first time. She was so excited about her new job working at a daycare and was telling me about the children and one little boy that she needed to do some research so she could figure out how to interact with him better and get him engaged. She LOVED children and teaching them. 

DGD1 cried when DD told her Mister’s Mom passed. She said “she was so nice though”. 

I knew it was all very stressful and upsetting for Mister, but I didn’t realize it was for me too (not nearly as much as it was for Mister though), until the day after the funeral, when I realized how exhausted I was. Remembering her makes me sad that she’s gone, I can’t imagine what Mister must be feeling.

She helped me plant some lavender in the pots on my front porch a couple years ago. They died. I am going to plant some more this spring, and try very hard to keep them alive this time because that’s something she and I did together. She “blessed” the plants after we were done, but her blessing was obviously no match for my black thumb. I am going to try again though.

If I ever manage to grow lavender for her and roses for my Grandmother, I would be pleased.

[azucena]

DD10 got a 98.9% on her state project and paper. Six weeks of work, 8 page paper. She's completely hung up on it not being a perfect 100%. Even my own sense of perfectionism and overachieving hasn't prepared me for parenting her. I understood mathematically it was near impossible to get 100% on most things. Going to use this as example in therapy on Tues; open to thoughts.

[finnime]

What does 100% mean to her, azucena? Is anything short of it mean that it/she is not good enough? Because it seems distorted to me, that thinking, if that's the case. I have a niece that went through a rough period struggling with perfectionism/OCD and therapy demanded for her that some things were messed up, then cleaned up, so she could experience it was made good again. It was a painful treatment in some ways but it worked.

[TheOtherMe]

I demanded of myself that I get A's on everything and mostly achieved it.  For me, that did not mean 100% on everything.  Even I understood, that was not possible.

It does seem distorted to me also.  Do you pay her for A's?  My parents did that and I took that over seriously.  My sister didn't care about the money so it didn't motivate her.  

I never got a C until college and I was devastated.  I got a C in college and I was devastated.  It was not the wrong grade for the work I did, but I was devastated.  I still graduated summa c*m laude.  That was my main goal.

Do talk about this at therapy. It's not at all realistic.  She got a fantastic grade.

[azucena]

It's all pressure from herself. We already talked thru therapy that her goal of A+s wasn't realistic. She's mad that she missed any points.

I don't pay for grades. I don't even talk about As or "doing your best" bc her best translates to perfection. We talk about working hard and even doing some things good enough.

Her classmates seem to compare amongst themselves too much. I keep telling her to say mind yo own business.

[Tennesseer]

Very good article written by Pastor John Pavlovitz back in 2019.

Dying to Leave, Trying to Live: My Depression Journey


(Trigger warning: suicide, self-harm)

“I’m done living.”

It was a few days after Christmas and I was sitting in a car outside our Central New York hotel, with heavy snow swiftly obscuring the world outside the windows. My tears turned cold as they ran down my cheeks, and my labored breath shot white clouds like fireworks in front of me.

After months of a slow and steady slide into a now lingering sadness that would not lift—all my exhausted mind could now process was, “I’m done.”

I didn’t want to kill myself (at least I didn’t process it that way in that moment), I just felt as though I’d exhausted every possibility that a living person could to not feel like this: prayer, therapy, meditation, medication, working out, nature, journaling, art, breathing exercises, positive thinking—and it was all presently failing me. I’d simply run out of options and energy, and I was through looking.

It didn’t matter that all the objective evidence of my life testified that I should be happy, that I was fortunate, that I had so much to be grateful for, so much to want to live for—none of that registered in that moment, none of that tipped the scales toward hope. The dire story I told myself didn’t require data. It never does.

That’s what people don’t understand about those of us who live with the inner monsters: intellectually we understand that this makes no sense, which is often part of the problem. We don’t just feel terrible—we feel guilty for feeling so terrible. We have a chronic pain with no discernible source, and so we hurt and we feel stupid for hurting. Telling us how much we have to live for and how good our lives are sometimes makes us feel worse.

For many people, life can be a daily battle to stay positive.

For people with severe depression, life can be a daily battle simply to stay.

While everyone finds themselves occasionally slipping into moments of expected sadness when trouble or conflict or tragedy visit—we are often standing hopelessly at the precipice of the abyss for no good reason, staring into the black void and wondering why we’re here again: dying to leave and trying to live.

Depression brings a heavy and hovering despair that requires no measurable cause to exist, and so when tangible difficulties do come, when actual difficult circumstances and struggles finally arrive—they can become the final straw, they can push us over that edge.

I think that’s what people without mental illness don’t understand about days like these, when so much cruelty is being cultivated and when leaders are manufacturing such prolific violence and when decency is in such great demand: they are potentially deadly days for us. It is the outside world and our own heads both agreeing that it’s hopeless.

I managed to pull myself out that night. I’m not sure how. The hows and whys of who makes it and who doesn’t in this battle usually defies understanding. Lots of good, loving, intelligent, faithful people don’t make it.

I only know that I somehow stepped back into jagged, bloody trenches of life and decided to keep fighting. I had just enough in my reserves of energy or I grabbed a fleeting moment of clarity enough to realize that I needed to keep going; to step out of that car and that moment. Then I let a few people into the hell I was walking through so that I wasn’t walking it alone.

But I could easily have not done those things—I could have been one of the millions of people whose exhaustion simply won in the disorienting chaos of the swirling sadness.

And the thing about it is, if I had given up, if I had walked further into that done-ness to something worse—no one would have seen it coming. I would have simply been another person with so much to live for, being eulogized by stunned loved ones who were trying to make sense of the senseless.

Like so many people who struggle with depression, I can be really good at hiding it. We have to be. It’s part of the gig. We hide because we feel like a burden and we hide because we hate admitting we’re losing.

I tell you that because there are likely people around you who you love dearly, who are hiding as well. Do your best to see them and to step into their lives and to let them know they matter and that you want them to stay—but also to let you know that that may not be enough and that it will not be your fault if it isn’t. Sometimes all the love in the world isn’t enough to save people. It’s really difficult from the outside to speak louder than the voices in someone’s head.

I’m still here a year later. I’m usually glad I am.

It has been beautiful and horrible—and it’s rarely been easy. Mental illness doesn’t afford you much easy.

I do want to stay, so I still do all the things I can do to not feel that way I sometimes still feel. I have a daily regimen of prayer, therapy, meditation, medication, working out, nature, journaling, art, breathing exercises, and positive thinking—and yet there are still fleeting moments when I look down and see only the void.

Until some miracle cure comes, I and the millions of us who walk this nonsensical, exhausting road will be here alongside you do what we can do: dying to leave and trying to live.



(Note: If you’re struggling with depression, desire to self-harm, or suicidal thoughts, talk to someone at the National Suicide Prevention lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Dying to Leave, Trying to Live: My Depression Journey

[finnime]

Tennesseer, yes. Thank you.

[TheOtherMe]

I could have written this if I had the talent.  

[finnime]

[snip]

[TheOtherMe]

[ners]

finnime  

[toomuchreality]

Oh, boy.
Hugs finnime ♡
I hope she's able to figure this out.

[finnime]

I think DD needs the emotional support with some money thrown in that I can provide. Longer term we're going to plan on her coming up here. She's too ashamed and angry with herself to talk with me right now.

She called me in a total panic Saturday because her electric bill was going to overdraw her account. I Venmo'd her enough to cover that bill.

It's going to cost to move her up here. I had hoped she could cover it with the money she inherited. Now, I don't know.

Longer term, too, I'm going to work with her toward the idea of working at least parttime. She is an RN. Her degree is in psychology. She's had experience working in the maternity unit of a very busy hospital. Maybe she could work as a health aide in a school or something. Maybe answering the phone for an insurance company when people call for telehealth support. I don't know. Clearly she isn't doing well right now and that can't continue. But I can't act in her stead. She must step up herself. I can advise and propose, but that's it.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Not sure what was posted I missed it but hugs Finn. 


I was a perfectionist and gave myself stress hives every year thinking I had forgotten everything and was too stupid to return to school.  

As has been pointed out numerous times to me by several therapists and a career counselor. . . we are human.  We cannot operate at 100% perfection at all times and when we fail it makes it that much harder because we set the bar so high for ourselves.   

Plus it leads to burn out eventually.  As the career counselor explained to me when you set the bar that high you condition others, like your boss and co-workers to expect you to constantly operate at 120%.  Then when the shit hits the fan you got nothing to give because you've always been at 120% and can't do 140%.  Which is partly why the hammer comes down on me harder than it does someone who gives only 75% at their job during normal work days.   I have to learn to give 80% of myself so I have room to expand when the shit hits the fan.

I have learned over time that my behavior is in part massive overcompensation for ADHD.   It's common, especially in women, to feel the need to perform 2-3x better than everyone else to cover up the fact we are not wired the same and are struggling.   Also part of ADHD is an intense craving for control since my brain leans towards chaos if left unchecked.   

I can control my grades and work performance by driving myself into the ground being practically perfect in every way.  I can "show" people I am not stupid with my performance.

Add into that I was constantly praised for being "so smart" while in school that validated my behavior.  Now here I sit wound tighter than a two-cent watch, having to unlearn my behavior at 39 years of age and reflect on how many times it has backfired in my face.

Definitely talk to her therapist about it. The sooner she learns that perfection is the enemy of good the better.   I, personally, think it would have been better for me to learn that while still in public school where it was a softer place to land and the consequences of my actions weren't so high.   Trying to learn this while paying $630/credit hour or when a blow-out can cost me my job is a lot harder.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

So sick of other people's drama.   They are all about to get a referral to BetterHealth if they don't leave me alone.  I'll be the Oprah of therapy  "You get a therapist!" "You get a therapist!" "Everyone gets therapy!"

Ugh.  I had it out with DH last night because he doesn't want to work on Saturdays anymore.  Which is fine that is a perfectly reasonable boundary to set with my dad.  However HE doesn't want to set it he wants ME to set it.  I told him no.  You are a grown man and you are not going to hide behind my skirts.  Notice I don't work out there anymore if you want to go back to emergencies only you need to tell him.

Nope instead he gossips to our coworker J who then twisted it into something even more dramatic when she told my dad.

DH and his stupid passive aggressive shit.  I told him dude you know I never clue into that shit because I assume that you are adult enough to actually tell me what is wrong.  He is my dad, we are EXACTLY THE SAME.  So WTF made you think that it was going to work on him?  And this is why you don't gossip you can't trust what the other person is going to say.

Then she's mad at my dad about other stuff because the 15 year old half heard a conversation that wasn't even involving her or J but interpreted it as such and gossiped.

My dad is also guilty of gossip and tends to fall into the trap I used to of trusting people too much and overshares.   Learned the hard way a lot younger to keep my mouth shut these people are not my friends by any stretch of the imagination.

I can let their stuff roll off my back and I just make noises that they interpret as support. I am not stupid I know if I engage that they are just as likely talking about me.  They probably do regardless.  This is yet another reason why even $25/hr isn't enough to get me to back into the service industry if I don't have to.

DH is another story.  This is part of why I am so burned out because everyone wants ME to be the adult even my own husband.  No I do not HAVE to listen you vent/gossip.   If it bothers you that much pull up your big boy underwear and deal with it yourself.  It is not my job to be the adult for you.  

And that boys and girls is partially why I have decided fuck it and I am getting a pug puppy like I always wanted.   I'm doing it in a responsible way but it's extremely impulsive for me.   That is money that could be going to our HVAC instead and any other time I would probably talk myself out of it.

But now, now?  Fuck it.  It's LONG overdue that I get to be the "irreponsible" one for a change and get what *I* want.  I am freaking OWED a pug puppy between having to deal with everyone's shit and being expected to carry my own while functioning and pretending some semblance of normalcy in society.

I hate people SO MUCH.   I might just take the puppy and go live in a cave.

[busymom]

If you DO move into a cave, NomoreDramaQ1015, you'd better find one in a "cave complex", because I too have days where I just want to go, maybe take the dogs, and have time to myself.  I get SO tired of "cleaning out the barn" for everyone else.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Mar 13, 2023 13:56:32 GMT -5 busymom said:

If you DO move into a cave, NomoreDramaQ1015 , you'd better find one in a "cave complex", because I too have days where I just want to go, maybe take the dogs, and have time to myself.  I get SO tired of "cleaning out the barn" for everyone else.

Hmm. . .there seems to be an untapped market. 

[swamp]

Mar 13, 2023 13:57:13 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Mar 13, 2023 13:56:32 GMT -5 busymom said:

If you DO move into a cave, NomoreDramaQ1015 , you'd better find one in a "cave complex", because I too have days where I just want to go, maybe take the dogs, and have time to myself.  I get SO tired of "cleaning out the barn" for everyone else.

Hmm. . .there seems to be an untapped market. 

There is, because other than the lack of sunlight, living in a cave with my dog sounds fabulous.