Battling Depression

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Jan 26, 2024 17:00:22 GMT -5 TheOtherMe said:

I cannot forgive my sister.  Dad was starving to death even though he got Meals on Wheels and I took him shopping once a week.  He wasn't eating the meals and he was rarely buying food.  

When he was hospitalized, it took almost a week to get enough fluids in him to get him hydrated.  That still makes me cry.  She was going there daily.  I don't know how she didn't see it.  I saw it and told her but nothing happened.

I think that is totally fair Otherme.

My dad is still incredibly angry and will not forgive my grandmother for how she handled my grandfather's care during his last bout of cancer.  I didn't know the extent of some of it till it started bleeding out while talking about her care.

I've seen my dad mad.  I've seen my dad have a temper.  But I have NEVER seen him literally spitting mad and neither had my mother in 40 years of marriage until the day my grandmother refused the $300 walker because she didn't want to pay for it.  He not only was blowing up about that but the fact she wouldn't buy my grandfather one either she just left him in a chair all day until/unless my dad could get there to pick him up.  My dad bought the wheelchair.

I was seriously worried he was going to kill her and I'd have to deny I heard anything.

I personally do not consider righteous anger to be a bad thing.  Someone needs to stand up and say these things are not okay and if you aren't going to hold yourself accountable then I will.

[TheOtherMe]

Mom was competent to make her own medical decisions.  When she was advised to get a walker, she picked out one that cost more than Medicare would pay for.  She said she wanted the cadillac of walkers and that's what she got.  It was her money so why not?

It's here now because I used it with my DVT's.  It's a very nice walker.  I have never used the seat, but mom would get tired on her walks where they lived so she did use the seat.  

She also bought herself a wheelchair.

Dad totally refused to use a walker or wheelchair.  He was so stubborn about that.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

We do not have the walker it was on loan from the business my dad's is next to.  We do still have the wheelchair because you never know and my dad was going to be damned that grandma sell it and pocket the money herself.

My grandma and GU insisted on using those unstable metal ones you put the tennis balls on because it was free from the hospital.  PT said those are actually terrible to use after you get out of the hospital.  You want the ergonomic ones like my MIL had those are for being more mobile and force you to use proper posture when walking.

I don't get it myself.  If you are so damn insistent on being independent like my grandma was why on earth wouldn't you buy whatever tool you could afford to be able to achieve that?  $300 is a drop in the bucket compared to losing your mobility.

Not that a $300 walker would have likely changed much but still.  That $300 went to the freaking nursing home instead.  Was it worth it grandma?

I don't get cutting off your nose to spite your face.  I also do not get the people who enable it to happen.  I know I cannot fully control an adult but I sure as hell don't have to assist you.

[TheOtherMe]

My sister happened to have taken mom to the doctor the day mom needed a walker.  Mom asked her if it was okay to spend more than what Medicare would pay.  Yes!  It's your money.  Spend it on things to make you more comfortable.

[busymom]

I saw this today, and wanted to share it:

[azucena]

Congrats to all of us!

[Knee Deep in Water Chloe]

Has anyone used the Meru Health app?
My health insurance benefits include it. 

[azucena]

Feb 1, 2024 13:03:37 GMT -5 Knee Deep in Water Chloe said:

Has anyone used the Meru Health app?
My health insurance benefits include it. 

A psychologist friend of my always recommends people use psychologytoday.com to look for providers. Here's what they say about Meru...sounds interesting.

www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/meru-health-san-mateo-ca/1212165

If nothing else, use it to start something to take the weight off your immediate need and then continue to call local places if you think that would be better for you.
 

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I have not used that one but I used Better Help.  That is what my company used through their EAP and I stuck with it after they switched because I really liked my therapist.

The things I like about Better Help is if I don't click with the therapist I can simply click a link that says "switch therapists".  It asks me to give reasons why, I don't HAVE to but it can help with better pairing you with another person. 

I did that with marriage therapy I said she was very nice but did not appreciate her cornering me in regards to religion. I told her I was an atheist and did not want to bring Christianity into the mix but she keep pushing and making my lack of faith the "reason" why we were having marriage troubles.

My individual therapist I really liked.

I liked the app too because I could do it from the comfort of home.  I'd hang out in the bedroom.  A couple of times I was stressed and walked around the block while talking to her.  I tend to clam up in an office setting because it feels like I am going to get in trouble with the principal.  Being in on my own turf made it easier to open up.

[finnime]

One side effect of the pandemic is the wide acceptance of telehealth including mental health, which gets reimbursed at the same rate as in person. It's a great thing, I think. Makes services much more widely available to all at added convenience, too. I've never actually met my current psychiatrist; we communicate entirely by phone although I could ask to Zoom if I wanted. It works well for me.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I told DH yesterday that I'm struggling.

Now that grandma is finally on Medicaid and GUs house is finally in probate I've turned around and realized how much of my life has been sucked up by it all.

I find myself in a state of delayed grief. My mom's birthday is this month so I know that's part of it but I told DH I've spent so much of the past two years putting myself aside for everyone else my brain is now demanding its due.

I've not had the chance to process my new normal. And so many other things have gone to shit because I didn't have the mental space to focus on it. I wish DH had been capable of picking it up but that's a dead horse at this point.

I do use the coping techniques tye therapist gave me in the moment.

But they don't tell me how to figure out who I am or where to start putting stuff I neglected back together.

I know take it one thing at a time but my execution functioning has gotten so poor and there is so much I'm paralyzed with indecision.

I'd love to have someone else make decisions but that is the same dead horse.

I did go through my clothes and do my annual spring review/purge. I made the new instapot a home that isn't the table.

But I look like crap IMO, I've gained weight (some is antidepressant related but not all), our finances are poo, I can't keep track of kid stuff and I feel adrift job wise.

Just ugh. I had no idea losing our mothers would make everything go to hell in a handbl basket.

Well I did when MIL died and was prepared for that. I was not prepared for my mom and having my world rocked too.

And while covid going around the nursing home staff is a legit reason to avoid it we have FIL to think about if I'm being totally honest I hate my grandma for everything I've gone through.

I know I should be the bigger person but her shit almost got me disciplined at work because I was spending more time on it than working. Petty manager and coworker aside there was some truth to it.

Not to mention the emotional toll it's taken on me.

I suppose it's just going to take time and picking up one piece at a time. Didn't expect to be where I am now when I entered my 40s.

[TheOtherMe]

[Pink Cashmere]

Idk if I’ve already shared this here, so please forgive me if I am repeating myself.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about how I got to this place I’m in now. In hindsight, I can see that over the last several years I’ve been like the proverbial frog in boiling water when it came to my mental health. More and more stuff happening that was really stressful to me, and none of it really getting resolved, so it just kept piling on. 

From my Mom living with me, to moving here and all the fights and drama with Mister’s daughters, to the pandemic that started 6 months after we moved here, to things continuing to deteriorate even more with Mister’s daughters, to his parents and everything that happened with them.

As things got worse with Mister’s parents, so did my stomach issues. I don’t think that is coincidence. Mister was the one dealing directly with it and feeling so much stress and pressure, but it was stressful to me too.

When his Dad started coming over here, I would mostly try to avoid him and sit outside, but I eventually realized that the chaos inside was still stressing me out because I had finally gotten to the point that sometimes I could feel my body reacting to a stressful situation. 

I’m not blaming anybody, it’s still always been on me to handle stress in a healthy way, but once I realized all the things that contributed to me getting to that place, it pissed me off even more how Mister has judged me…. when things that went on with him, his daughters and his family were big parts of my issues. I am often tempted to tell him just that, the only reason I don’t is because the stuff with is parents is a delicate subject.

Anyway, it did help to figure out how I got here, and made me feel like I’m not just a crazy person for no reason. Now I just need to figure out my path forward.

[daisylu]

NMD. You have been in survival mode for quite a while, and now that things have somewhat settled it is expected to have a breakdown. 

As a mom I liken it to whenever my kids were sick. By sick, I mean I was afraid they would die as each had illnesses at very young ages that could have killed them. DD's was short term, while DS's was over a year of uncertainty. I never lost it either time while in the moment but after things settled I was a f*king mess because I did not know how to come out of survival mode. And I was alone at the time, which may have actually been better for me. 

I hope your DH steps up after your conversation. 

[finnime]

Both of you, Pink Cashmere and NomoreDramaQ1015, are in the recovery period following a shock to your lives. Kind of like after a car crash. Now you can and must take care to rebuild your life dreams and plans, and act deliberately instead of reacting. It's very hard but a good thing.

I went through this several times. When my DD was a teenager and wildly ill; when I was divorcing my abusive X, when my father and then my mother died, and most recently when DH was seriously ill. All the big stuff. There isn't a space set aside in life to recover and reconsider. You need to build it in, because life keeps happening.

Big hugs to you both.    

[Pink Cashmere]

Feb 5, 2024 3:45:01 GMT -5 daisylu said:

NMD. You have been in survival mode for quite a while, and now that things have somewhat settled it is expected to have a breakdown. 

As a mom I liken it to whenever my kids were sick. By sick, I mean I was afraid they would die as each had illnesses at very young ages that could have killed them. DD's was short term, while DS's was over a year of uncertainty. I never lost it either time while in the moment but after things settled I was a f*king mess because I did not know how to come out of survival mode. And I was alone at the time, which may have actually been better for me. 

I hope your DH steps up after your conversation. 

I felt this. During the worst time of my life, I was trying to get help and treatment for a suicidal 12yo, battling his school and the school board to make them address the severe bullying that had caused him to think it would be better to just die, trying to find out what was physically wrong with DD, which turned out to be a congenital kidney defect that required surgery to correct, and dealing with the aftermath after her surgery for several more months, and worrying about my Mom, who was diagnosed with colon cancer and had to have surgery for that.

All of that started within a 4 month time frame and was going on at the same time. 

I handled it all, and kept it pushing, not even missing work except for the times I needed to be off work to tend to my children. I was all my children had to depend on, and letting them down was not an option, so whatever needed to be done, I was on it, and that’s just what it was and how it was gonna be, no ifs ands or buts about it. Even in hindsight, knowing what the aftermath was like for me, I wouldn’t change a thing and would do the same all over again if I had a chance for a replay.

After we got through the worst of all of those things, and I felt like at least everybody would stay alive, and my son’s school administration had realized that I wasn’t going to just let things go and go away, because I was very serious about them taking responsibility for school being a safe place for him, so they finally put things in place to address the bullying….. and we were all on the path to just getting them healthier, I fell apart.

I was a whole mess. I looked like me, but it was really like just a shell, because “me” had disappeared and there wasn’t much left on the inside of the shell that looked like me. I also obviously didn’t even look like me, to anyone that paid close attention. I remember a male coworker pulling me to the side one day, and asking me if I was okay, out of what felt like genuine concern. I went broke trying to get through all of that, and was deep in debt, so I was no longer able to go get my hair done regularly like I had before. He had noticed that, and other things like I’d started coming to work with my clothes wrinkled (but clean!), things that made him express genuine concern without trying to pry. I was most definitely not okay, and I told him that, without going into details. It meant something to me that he even cared enough to ask.

It’s funny/not funny, that he noticed what my own family never noticed or if they did notice, never said anything about.

It took a few years for me to dig myself out of the dark place I was in and put myself back together. That whole ordeal is why I am not shy about defending people that are dealing with depression, because I know for myself what a beast it can be. It is not just a mood, or the blues, like some people think it is, and that it is just that simple and something easy to get yourself out of. I know that it can be a beast that lies to you all day every day, making you feel like everything is hopeless and there is nothing you can do to try to make you feel better, or fix things in your life, so there’s no point in even trying. And for some people, the lies it can tell a person, includes the lie that the world would be better off if they die, or that that is the only way to ease their suffering. 

I am grateful that even at the lowest points, I still felt like my life was worth living. I have joked (but not really joking), that even when I feel like a hopeless piece of shit, I am more likely to commit homicide if somebody keeps fucking with me, than I am likely to commit suicide. But I do get it about the lies, and have empathy for people whose depression encourages them to believe those particular lies. Because I understand first hand how easy it is to believe whatever lies depression tells you when you are in the throes of it. 

This post ended up going places I didn’t intend, but I’m not going to delete it, because I want people that are wrestling with depression to know that there are people like me, that even when everything is going well in our lives, truly do understand what depression is and how serious it can be. And I want people wrestling with it to know that they are not alone.

[TheOtherMe]

Pink, you did what mom's do when it comes to their children.  Then you fall apart because you have been so busy taking care of them that you didn't take care of yourself.  

My depression has been a beast for over 60 years.  First treatment, if that's what you want to call it, was in 5th grade.  Things were totally different then and I no longer considered what happened until I got to grad school as treatment.  Nothing like that would happen today.  

I know I have said here before that I hope I have learned my lesson about not going off my meds on my own.  That is when I get suicidal.  I have done it three times and it went the same way every time.  

Last winter (or maybe the winter before), when I did it, I was doing really well.  That is when the thinking starts that I don't need the meds because I feel so good.  The actual answer is I need the meds to help me feel better.  

It also doesn't help that I stop abruptly, which is not the way a doctor has a patient stop these meds.

I fell apart after each parent died.  I fell apart when my BFF died when we were 35.  Somehow I did get through it.  

[daisylu]

I am trying not to have a meltdown. DD turned 25 on Monday. I am mostly ok with that. I am not ok with her not acknowledging my great aunt's happy birthday wishes. Sent her a text saying that and she said she did not see it. My great aunt is the kindest, best person I know I know on this earth - besides my aunt who died last year. I think there was a reason that they shared a name and that we share a birthday. I can barely see through my tears right now.

[daisylu]

I hate that I am so good at work and not so good at personal relationships. I just bandaged DH's hand after he smashed it moving logs and went back to work. He loves and appreciates it, but I feel like a robot. I did what was needed for him and now I am doing work things. I go where I am needed, which reminds of codependency.

I killed it at work today and I killed it taking care of DH. He is more worried about me than himself, for which I should be grateful but I keep wanting to kill it.

[finnime]

daisylu, it sounds like you, similar to me, are a thinking and not a feeling person as your strength. When the chips are down you think your way out. You can handle a bad feeling if the thought is solid. 

My DH is the opposite. He allows for something logistically problematic if the feeling is good.

Both approaches can work. But we who rely on thinking can find ourselves hurting with no good reason.

[daisylu]

Feb 8, 2024 4:45:57 GMT -5 finnime said:

daisylu , it sounds like you, similar to me, are a thinking and not a feeling person as your strength. When the chips are down you think your way out. You can handle a bad feeling if the thought is solid. 

My DH is the opposite. He allows for something logistically problematic if the feeling is good.

Both approaches can work. But we who rely on thinking can find ourselves hurting with no good reason.

That makes a lot sense, thank you.

[azucena]

Finn's wisdom resonated with me too. I'm logical to a fault. Emotions, pffft, who needs 'em. Well, turns out healthy humans do.

[azucena]

Anyone done a deep dive into MTHFR gene and its links to anxiety and depression? I had that mutation in my genetic testing for anti-depression drugs several years ago. Wondering if it's worth trying to find a doc that understands it and getting DDs tested as well. I've been reading that some folks do well with supplements but it's a whole lot to educate myself on.

[lurkyloo]

I think it’s been associated with some cases of autism and other special needs esp emotional regulation deficits, I’ve seen it in that context if I’m thinking of the right gene.  As I recall you’d need to take the downstream product from the defective enzyme, methylfolate, which I don’t believe is particularly orally available and is better administered as a shot.

Anecdotally I tried the oral supplement and felt like it made me crazy. 

[lurkyloo]

Feb 8, 2024 10:27:51 GMT -5 azucena said:

Finn's wisdom resonated with me too. I'm logical to a fault. Emotions, pffft, who needs 'em. Well, turns out healthy humans do.

I get so confused when I try to be logical and my stupid biology gets all upset anyway.  

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Feb 14, 2024 13:09:18 GMT -5 azucena said:

Anyone done a deep dive into MTHFR gene and its links to anxiety and depression? I had that mutation in my genetic testing for anti-depression drugs several years ago. Wondering if it's worth trying to find a doc that understands it and getting DDs tested as well. I've been reading that some folks do well with supplements but it's a whole lot to educate myself on.

Not really.   Reading through the paperwork there is correlations but not super strong causation there that would make me want to specifically seek treatment on based it. 

 I've had the test too and it was extremely helpful in some ways but not in others. 

Like Wellburtin is on the list of things I can take but it made me go manic, the type of manic the paperwork says warrants immediate stoppage of said medication type manic,

BUT it did confirm what my brother and I already knew from experience with SSDIs.  Lorazapam was on my no no list as well which is what they gave my mom back in the 90s and made her worse.  Mirtazipine is in the red column which I figured.

Surprisingly a lot of ADHD medications are in the yellow/red area for me too.

It did give my doctor better direction as opposed to the throw things at the wall and hope it sticks method they usually do with anti-depressants.  It also gave me a better idea of WHY that happens and I was able to apply it to my understanding of pharmacokinetics.  I am betting if I drew my blood and ran it against someone else on mirtazipine it would have showed me to have a much much higher level at the half life than someone who can metabolize it correctly.  It was building up and not clearing my system. 

Wellbutrin I clearly process it WAY too fast for my body to handle.

So it's not something I would seek a diagnosis on but if Prestiq stops working and my current doctor isn't available it does give me a better framework for going to the next one and not having to bang my head against the wall when trying to explain I can't take certain medications.  Here is the proof.   Let's try this list instead.

If DD has "failed" at least two drugs in that they haven't worked for her for one reason or another she would and should qualify for the test.

[finnime]

I haven't had genetic testing to match psychopharmaceuticals with me. My previous psychiatrist was a gifted diagnostician and had a degree in and experience as a pharmacist, too. He had a Pharm.D. and an M.D. With him we derived the magical cocktail that lets me live as a more typical human.

My family has a strong history of unipolar depression on my mother's side. All of my siblings wrestle with it; ODB and I have it most severely but all have struggled with it. Both of my kids, and both of DSis's sons, have to work their way through it. My mother, too. Also, migraine headaches.

[finnime]

Feb 14, 2024 15:19:44 GMT -5 lurkyloo said:

Feb 8, 2024 10:27:51 GMT -5 azucena said:

Finn's wisdom resonated with me too. I'm logical to a fault. Emotions, pffft, who needs 'em. Well, turns out healthy humans do.

I get so confused when I try to be logical and my stupid biology gets all upset anyway.  

 ROFLMAO

[raeoflyte]

My anxiety is getting worse and I'd love some suggestions.

I exercise multiple times a week, but I'm sure I should exercise more. I have hobbies. I journal. I need better sleep hygiene. I'm not tired when I get dc to sleep even after reading for 30-45 min so I've started scrolling or putting a show on and I need to stop that.

Work, marriage, household, mental load are all stressful and not going to get better anytime soon. Work will get worse, but is also exciting.

If you're in therapy for anxiety what kind would you recommend? That's mostly what dc does, which is talk therapy and coming up with coping mechanisms. Which I guess I need because I do keep hitting the same walls, but talk therapy isn't what I'm looking for.

I just get stuck on all the balls that get dropped or are nearly dropped these days and can't see the ones that keep going anymore. And it just makes me drop more.

[finnime]

The only suggestion I have for anxiety is meditation. Mindfulness really does help slow the gerbil in your head down and allow you to focus on one ball at a time, to mix metaphors. Do you meditate, raeoflyte?