9 posts tagged “depression”

I saw my obstetrician on Thursday - I should say, one of my obstetricians; I rotate between the five docs in the practice, plus the nurse practitioner, and so far they've all been fabulous - for my twenty-week checkup. Baby-wise, everything's good; nice strong heartbeat, reasonable weight gain, yada yada. Nothing tremendously exciting there, unless you count the continuing miracle of a healthy baby, the wshwshwsh of a tiny person's heartbeat.

This week's most-forwarded web site has got to be Dooce: Because I Couldn't Say It on the Phone.

I had promised myself I would quit posting about my ongoing struggle with depression, but I can't not address this. I need to say it, because I haven't said it outright yet: Medication saved my life, and my son's. I've been dealing with the symptoms of depression since puberty - and I'm never sure how much of it is strictly because of brain chemistry and how much of it is because I've gone through some things that have really sucked. I knew I was depressed. In high school and college I could take those public-service-announcement quizzes in magazines and check yes at every single symptom: Persistent sadness? Check. Loss of interest in things you usually enjoy? Check. Changes in sleep patterns, in eating habits, in activity levels? Check, check, check. I knew it was there. It just didn't seem worth it to seek help. It wasn't that I was worried about the stigma of mental illness, or concerned about the effects of medication, or anything logical like that - it was just that it took too much energy, too much momentum, to call my doctor and have The Talk.

So I didn't do anything, and I let my depression - let my health - slide until things were critical before I sought help. A few weeks after David was born, when my mom had gone back home and Aaron had gone back to work and the reality of being home all day, every day, with a tiny, helpless, needy baby set in, postpartum depression hit me with crippling force. Depression went from being about malaise and insomnia and sadness to instead being about panicking every time I thought about leaving the house with the baby, the constant overwhelming fear that something bad would happen to him if I left home. I had constant, unstoppable, graphic visions of dropping him down the stairs and his head shattering like a ripe melon. Worst was the overriding desire to leave, to put David in his crib and get in the car and just go as far away as I could - because I was so afraid that if I stayed, I would give in to the horrible thoughts I had of hurting myself and him.

Finally I called my doctor. I couldn't make myself seek help for myself, but I had to do it for David. When I called to make the appointment I told the receptionist I wanted to see the doctor about birth control, but when I finally got to his office I managed to choke out, "I think I'm depressed."

"Okay, what makes you think you're depressed?" he said, reasonably. I couldn't answer - I started sobbing and I couldn't stop. He looked uncomfortable for a moment, excused himself, and came back with a stack of samples and a prescription.

Taking antidepressant medication for the first time was like finally putting on glasses after years of squinting against blindness; suddenly the world felt normal. I could function. People who don't know better label antidepressants as "happy pills," but it's nothing like that - they're reality pills. Suddenly I could experience the world as it is, instead of as a place where everything is gray and bleak and hopeless. It's like the difference between experiencing everyday life with a constant sunburn - everything hurts! - and experiencing life in your own, comfortable skin.

I'm not sure if I'll have to be on antidepressant medicine for the rest of my life to function normally, but I think I probably will. I'm making every effort, through therapy and study and a lot of hard work, to make my own thought life and self-talk as healthy as I can so I'm not contributing to my depression in those ways; but I also do think that there's a part of my body chemistry that doesn't work quite right and needs medicine to do its job properly. Right now, while I'm off my medicine for this pregnancy, I'm struggling with a lot of day-to-day functioning. Interacting with my family, some days, is a bigger chore than I can handle. I cry a lot. I sleep more than I need to. I worry a quite a bit - because that's one thing depression does, is make me worry more than I should - that in doing this for the baby's health, I'm sacrificing something important with David and Noah. I know not to let it get as bad as it was before, though - and this time Aaron knows better what to watch for.

I have a hard time with well-meaning people who have said things like, "Well, now that you're off those drugs, you can just learn to do without them!" It makes me cringe - no one would tell a diabetic that he should stop taking insulin because if he concentrates hard enough, he can control his blood sugar; no one would tell a person with Alzheimer's to "just think positive!" and he won't have troubles with his memory; no sane person would tell a cancer patient not to bother with chemotherapy, that their disease will go away if they'd just spend less time dwelling on it.

All this to say - antidepressants and therapy have changed my life. Here it is, louder: antidepressants saved my life. And I will continue relying on them to stay healthy for as long as I need to.

And I think this is finally all I'm going to say about it.

It's a rare picture that inspires me to actually change my desktop background. For the longest time it was the photoshopped picture of the Beatles riding Segways; then it was Laid-Off Dad's photo of one red tulip in a sea of yellows. Earlier this week when I was catching up on the grillion or so blogs that I read regularly and that I had neglected while I was in Tennessee (not a good plan during November - even while my immediate circle of friends have mostly abandoned NaBloPoMo this year, it seems to be catching on in the mainstream blogging world, so there were about a brazillion posts to read), I found this picture, and it immediately became my new desktop:

Chemical Imbalance

It's by Terry at Bent Objects, one of my new favorite sites. Terry is a wizard who works magic on everyday objects, anthropomorphizing them with bent wire - you really should go look. All of his images are incredible, but this one especially resonated with me. It's been three and a half weeks since the last time I took my antidepressant, five and a half since I first started cutting back on the dose; and I think my body is finally past the worst of the physical withdrawal. For a while there were a lot of neurological symptoms, things like dizziness and nausea and shakiness and something called brain zaps that are the mental equivalent of the static that happens on your tv screen when you bump the rabbit-ears.

I had vaguely wondered if maybe I'd come off of the drugs and discover that I'm just fine without them; there's something shameful in being dependent on a chemical to get through your day, if that chemical is stronger than caffeine, and there's still enough controversy about antidepressants - especially in Christian circles - that on a bad day, the self-loathing associated with having to take them is enough to counteract the benefits. Throw in the side effects, the lack of long-term studies about the drugs' effects on the body, and the pricetag ($30 a month with health insurance - something like $300 without), and there are a lot of reasons why I'd like to quit. Maybe, I hoped, if I stopped taking them I'd still be okay.

But I don't think I'm okay. I mean, I'm not suicidal or anything; I'm still managing to get out of bed in the morning and herd the kids through the day and mostly cope with whatever comes my way. But mostly coping is a far cry from enjoying, from thriving, and while this isn't plumbing-the-depths depression, it's definitely the sort of flatness and emotional malaise that for me usually signals a sort of low-grade depression. My attention span is nonexistent and my concentration is shot; I'm short-tempered with the kids and moody with Aaron and exhausted all the time and weepy at everything. 

I'm peeking out from behind the curtains to reassure you, my six loyal readers, that I haven't yet curled up on the bathroom floor with a bottle of pills; I'm still here, despite my inexcusable absence from this blog. Although I'm already two months into this process, therapy continues to find still darker, twistier places to plumb; and I just haven't had any room in my brain for any thoughts beyond my ongoing emotional inventory.

Last night's session was particularly difficult and draining, and twenty-four hours later I'm still wrestling with realities of myself that I don't want to accept. Therapy has taken unexpected directions; where I thought I would be focusing on the grief of losing my mom to cancer fifteen years ago and on learning to let go of my anger at my dad for the flaws of my childhood, instead I've been faced with learning things about myself, about my personality and my habits, that I had no idea were there. And that I don't necessarily like.

Yesterday's session came on the heels of my reading this post by Heather Armstrong, who asked readers: What do you regret?, and in the midst of my reading this book, which describes the loss of self that can happen in early childhood and how childhood trauma manifests itself in the adult. The answer I would have given to Heather, had she not closed comments on that post (after nearly 500 responses! Oh, what I would give for that kind of readership!), is that I regret being so ordinary. I look at the life of my best friend from high school, who took her English degree to San Francisco and now works for a major literary magazine, and who now has, in my opinion, just about the most glamorous life I could imagine - and I feel jealous. And embarrassed. And ashamed. Because look at me, at my life: I am a college dropout, a stay-at-home mom - not even a particularly good mom.

As far as I'm concerned, my mother defined what good motherhood looks like. To me, she's proof that supermomdom is attainable! She cooked lovely, delicious meals; sewed cute clothes for me and my brothers (and herself!), kept our home beautifully decorated and immaculate; was active in church choir, little theater, teaching private lessons; maintained meticulous photo albums and baby books; and spent enough quality time with me and my brothers that we were all very grounded in spiritual teachings and could all read well before we started first grade.

And yes, I pedestalize her. This is something my therapist has pointed out, implying that it's not a healthy way to view her; and hearing that from her makes me bristle. I put my mother on a pedestal because she was perfect; I don't see anything unhealthy about that, or at least not that I'm ready to admit. The truth is, I am only now recognizing how much I do idolize my mother - which means that I also villainize my father, blaming him for all the wrongs of my childhood, but that's a post for another day. And when my therapist suggested last night that perhaps my mother was unhappy with being a supermom - that she may have felt pressured and overworked and frustrated and exhausted - this was an idea that I recoiled against. My mother was beautiful and talented and naturally perfect; she excelled because of who she was, beaming a Stepfordian smile even as she leapt tall buildings in a single bound - how could she have been unhappy??

No, the truth is, I need her to have gracefully enjoyed perfection - in order to keep her on her pedestal, yes, and also to give me something to strive for. I need to know that her first-chair life, that that sort of perfection, is attainable. That if I keep trying, I can get there, too.

That if I get there, I won't have to be afraid that no one will love me.

My therapist's unexpected revelation that I'm a perfectionist is amusing to me, therefore - if I were really a perfectionist, wouldn't my life be a bit more, well, perfect? Shouldn't I have more to show for it than an inability to relax? The wry conclusion is that I'm not even very good at being a perfectionist - add this to my list of failures! I want to be first-chair perfectionist, the valedictorian of perfectionism, but I'm barely an understudy. I have a C+ in perfectionism.

But I do resent my ordinary, non-perfect life. I was raised to be better than this. I am bright and funny and talented, daughter of two first chairs themselves. It is frustrating enough that I haven't carved a legacy for myself as bestselling author or world-renowned editor or Carnegie-worthy musician; having to adapt to the fact that I'm only average, mediocre, as a mom and wife and homemaker, that the extent of my acclaimed writing is a blog that scarcely a half-dozen people read - is tremendously disappointing. While my friend works at McSweeney's, the extent of my own publications is a handful of family scrapbooks.

My therapist also pointed out that I've transferred my perfectionism to my therapy. It's true: I change my clothes and put on makeup before an appointment, am careful to use the perfect words and give the right answers in our sessions, spent four hours plowing through the book she asked me to read. That I am pouring all my energy into dealing with the emotions stirred up in our sessions, to the exclusion of being functional for my other duties. My new goal is to get straight A's in therapy, if it kills me.

So she wants me to work on my perfectionism - on letting things go and not feeling guilty about them, on finding acceptance for myself just as I am. Not having to be a super-achiever to be loved and valued. All of which makes sense, but -

I can't do this! I can't settle! I am better than this! I am better better better, I can do so much more ---

-- shout the voices. I have no idea how to be comfortable with ordinariness, content with mediocrity. All my life all I have striven for is to be the best, the smartest, the wittiest, the most talented. I can't just give that up. No one will love me.

And besides: what would my mother think??

Here is a gripping, powerful essay about clinical depression - how it affects your life, your health, your thinking, your self. I'm not yet in a stable enough place that I can write convincingly about what this disease feels like, and I am so grateful for other strong women who can describe it for me - who can make me remember that I am not alone against this, and that I do not need to be ashamed. This piece made my breathing deeper and my shoulders relax; it sponged away some of the frustration that comes from blaming myself for being this way. It helped me remember: This is not me.
-via Dooce

I've been inexcusably silent lately; apologies. My New Year's Resolution this year was to get myself emotionally healthy and to make every effort to get off my antidepressant, and to that end I've been seeing a therapist for a few weeks now. The sessions have left me raw and overwhelmed, filled with swirling thoughts that aren't coherent enough to make it past the pages of my own paper journal, the one that will be my undoing if I ever run for office (Attention, potential investigative reporters: DON'T LOOK IN MY UNDERWEAR DRAWER). Counseling has been terrifying and amazing. In just these first two fifty-minute sessions, my therapist has already helped me to poke at the layer of muck that's spent years collecting at the bottom of my subconscious; and although this process of stirring the silt and algae and scum back into cloudy circulation is going to be painful and dizzying, I believe - I have to believe - that if I keep poking, the current will sweep it all gently away. 

We put up with a much-greater-than-usual amount of fussing from Noah last week, because we knew that he was due for some new teeth - his cuspids, or "canine teeth," so called because getting them in can be a real bitch. But when the whining, not-sleeping, not-eating, rolling-on-the-floor dramatics kept up through the weekend and into this week with no sign of any pointy new teeth, I finally took him to see his pediatrician, even though I was certain she'd tell me he was fine and I'd feel like one of Those Mothers for wasting her time and distracting her from all the kids in the waiting room with real broken bones and strep throats and ebola. But instead, it turns out that I'm one of Those Mothers who spend a week ignoring their children's pleas for relief from raging ear infections.

Zithromax sounds like a superhero name, and it's certainly come to our rescue: One dose in, Noah's already less screamy, more content to play with toys and snuggle up in front of Thomas the Tank Engine and eat peanut-butter sandwiches.

I'm also one dose into my new antidepressant regimen, and I'm feeling more like myself, too. By late last week, my depression had returned full-force, and that - coupled with the anxiety of worrying about Hey, I'm getting depressed again, what am I going to DO?? - had sent me spiraling a pretty dark place. But I'm fortunate to have a lot of very supportive, very wonderful people in my life, and they were able to convince me to seek the help I need, both pharmaceutically and therapeutically. They've helped me recognize that right now, I need both if I'm going to get back to normal - if I'm ever going to find out what "normal" is.

So now I have a new prescription for an increased dosage of my antidepressant, and I'm actively searching for a counselor that I can begin seeing in January. Thanks for being so supportive, Internet. Wish me luck.

For a few weeks I've been debating whether - or even how - to write about how I'm feeling these days. In fact I've been uncertain how to even go about thinking about this, so publishing it for the entire Internet to see seems insane when I can't even seem to find words to define it to just myself.

But here I am.

Six weeks after I started on the New Antidepressant (which I wrote about here), I saw my doctor for a follow-up and was able to tell him, very honestly, that I felt great. I wasn't flat anymore. I had finally regained my full complement of emotions, not just the crummy ones, and the ratio of crummy emotions to good emotions had markedly decreased. I could finally work up the motivation and the energy to do something besides sit - to interact with my kids, to keep the house clean and cook nutritious meals and do things for myself that I enjoyed. My doctor was surprised to hear this: most of his patients, he said, regularly took at least double the dosage I had started out on, many of them three or four times that amount. Was I sure I was okay with the small dose I was taking? Of course I was sure! I felt great! I felt!

But now I'm not sure. Now, to be honest, I'm not sure what I'm feeling. I've been muttering for several weeks that I need to call my doctor about increasing the dose I'm taking, but I haven't actually done anything about it because I'm not convinced that what I'm feeling is officially Depression, that maybe it's just a very prolonged hangover from that glass of wine a few weeks ago, or maybe it's PMS or just gas. But it didn't go away after my period started, and it didn't go away after I finished my Christmas shopping, and it didn't go away after the kids got over their colds and started sleeping through the night again.

What I've been feeling that makes me want to up my antidepressant is that I'm having trouble enjoying anything. I just want to eat and eat and eat and curl up in my bed with the covers up to my chin. I feel like I'm just tolerating my daily routine, that I'm bored with my housework and my kids and my marriage and my life, that there is nothing interesting or enjoyable or worth climbing out of bed for. I spend my days grouchy and ill-tempered, snapping at Aaron and losing patience with the kids and popping fistfuls of Ibuprofen to push back the migraine that seems to always be hovering just behind my temples.

All of which sounds remarkably like depression, now that I verbalize it. But I'm still not convinced that increasing my antidepressant is the best way to fix it. I can date all these feelings back to the emotional tailspin I encountered when I learned from my doctor that being fat is my fault (which I wrote about here and here). I've spent the past several years comforting myself by believing that it's okay, I couldn't help getting enormous, it's not my fault it's not my fault it's not my fault. Learning that these years of being trapped in an overweight (no, say it: fat) body were caused by my own self-destructive habits, not by some hormone imbalance that was wreaking havoc on my metabolism, has brought about such enormous self-loathing that I don't have room to feel much else. The depression I'm facing now is the depression of being divided against myself: so unwilling to forgive myself for years of bad eating that I have completely given up on ever changing, and that I am punishing myself by continuing to eat badly.

But what do I do, if not increase my antidepressants? Diet? Hardly. What I probably need more than I need the pills is some quality time with a good therapist, someone who can help me deal with all these feelings - maybe even help me deal with why I eat the way I do in the first place - but right now we are so terrifyingly strapped for money that there's no way we can afford to add even a copay to our monthly expenses (add this to the list of things to be depressed about). And even if we could, I'm trapped in such a cycle right now (self-loathing leads to depression leads to inertia leads to inability to accomplish anything healthy leads to self-loathing leads to...) that I'm not sure I could even force myself to call and set up a therapy appointment, much less actually leave the house to go to it. The only thing that can get me over this hump so I can even begin approaching the issues I need to Deal With would be an increase in my antidepressants. And we're back to square one.

And where do I find the energy to call my doctor and tell him this?

cupcakes

Yesterday I celebrated Noah's first birthday by making those cupcakes you see in Mom-type magazines - the chocolate ones with the gummy worms sprouting out of the tops, sprinkled with crunched-up Oreos - operating on the premise that nothing says "Welcome to toddlerhood, little boy!" like dirt and worms. The resulting sugar buzz carried us through bathtime and the opening of presents (blocks, a truck, a book about animals, one of those baby toys where you push the button or turn the lever and a head pops up at you); and by the time the sugar-crash came, he was safely on his way to bed.

Now, as the kids are still climbing down from yesterday's sugar high,

birthday boy

we've spent today in quiet pursuits: building block towers, driving trucks on the couch, watching too much tv. This is partly because the boys are still groggy from their caffeinnated night's sleep, but also because this morning I'm reeling from the effects of my own buzz and crash, one that marks the end of this eventful year as clearly as Noah's birthday party did yesterday. Noah's first birthday means he's not really a baby anymore, and I'm no longer a postpartum mom; we're done nursing (after having breastfed for the American Academy of Pediatrics-recommended twelve months, and not a second longer), and I can begin restocking my body with chemicals I wouldn't bring anywhere near my child, but which are as essential to my daily well-being as my morning Diet Coke. As I write this, my hands are shaking and my brain is imploding in withdrawal from the breastfeeding-safe antidepressant I've been taking for the past year; but I'm also hopeful that my new drug of choice, a stronger antidepressant not approved for nursing moms, will help me to begin clawing out of the tunnel I've spent the past year living in - the muffled no-man's-land between depression and normalcy. I'm hopeful that I'll finally experience an alternative to depression other than flatness, the dulling of emotion that came with my last medication. I'm hoping to begin feeling again.

I expected the day of Noah's first birthday to feel like a milestone, exciting and momentous; but I didn't realize it would be feel like such a personal achievement for me. Yesterday's silly Elmo party hats and dirt-and-worm cupcakes mean I've survived the past year, a tornado of a year that began with Noah's arrival in our family and ended with the deaths of both of our cars. In the past year I have survived leaving my career to be a stay-at-home mom, and the resultant loss of not only a job I loved, but the financial security of two incomes and the underrated relief of daily interaction with people who wiped their own bottoms and spoke in complete sentences. This year I've comforted a toddler through night terrors, temper tantrums,

hope

sibling rivalry, and potty training. I've learned to cook healthy, low-budget food that looks enough unlike healthy, low-budget food that a three-year-old will still eat it. I've followed my husband into a new city, unemployment, and an eight-month stay in his parents' basement; and I've developed new respect and love for him throughout all of it. I've applied for food stamps. I've bought gas with loose change. I've learned to like my in-laws. I've watched my son grow from voracious, breastmilk-sucking remora to voracious, peanut-butter-and-jelly-eating toddler. I've stumbled through months of sleep deprivation. I've learned how to pick paint colors, I've plowed through carpet samples for the perfect one, I've argued with my husband and my mother-in-law that my carpet choice was more perfect than theirs. I've moved my family into a new home, and I've adapted to my role as Supermom, Susie Homemaker, queen of my own castle.