Posted by Bob on September 11, 1999, at 19:33:59
In reply to Re: I need a reference point!, posted by Noa on September 11, 1999, at 18:37:41
dj -- I check on some of the same sorts of things. Am I afraid of facing the people at my office? Does the crush in the subway make me jittery? Can I keep my thoughts on one topic for more than half a minute? When I have a tough or unpleasant task to do, do I do it anyway or do I realize half an hour (or five hours) later that I'm in the rut of some compulsive act (like sitting in front of my computer playing Civilization! ;^)? If I've got good answers to all of those questions, then I can start looking at my baseline mood and seeing where I'm at. Fortunately, all of those complications are pretty much in control, but my mood is pretty low.
> Can you say more about why you were so devasted by your girlfriend's and your pdoc's comments? I think I understand but I'm not sure.
Hi Noa!
The reason these were so devastating is related to something you talked about. One of the many reasons I avoided therapy for so long was because I was convinced this was something I could fix--that one day I'd be done being depressed. I think one of the milestones in my therapy was the day about one year into it that I said to my therapist, outloud and with conviction, that I needed her help. I think more recently another milestone was admitting to myself that while my condition may have been exquisitely complicated by my environment, there is a genetic countermelody to this (maybe its the main melody) that I will have to cope with for the rest of my life. I don't think I can ever be healed ... only that I can try to manage it as best I can. That line of thought still makes me tremble. It can make the future terrifying. It makes my past look like a wasteland that could have been avoided if I or my parents had only gotten me the help I needed anytime in the last 30 years.I was trying to cope with all of that shit landing on me at once when my girlfriend and pdoc hit me with how lucky I was to find this combination. It was like, "you mean THIS is what I have to look forward to? if I'm LUCKY?"
I've heard the same about dropping a med then picking it back up. I was hypomanic (probably) on just 10mg/day of zoloft. When I crashed, I started seeing my pdoc ... he said with my history, I should have been kept on meds for at least a year before any consideration of going off. My doc and my therapist at the time I went off suggested it because they thought it had worked--that I had been through some acute episode and now they could focus on my panic disorder, the symptoms of which were far more pronounced at the time. By the time I got back on zoloft, even 150mg/day was doing little more than keeping me from sinking any deeper. I've been a very poor responder to SSRIs since.
Back on your birthday thread, Noa, I remember you saying something about *never* having an up cycle or something like that, in response to a comment from someone who is BP ... with the "gallows humor" we tend to have around here, sometimes the difference between comments from BPs vs. UPs can be amusing ;^) .... I used to know how you feel. When I read An Unquiet Mind, toward the end I got downright jealous of Jamison because there she was, saying how if she had the choice to do it all again she'd still want to be BP because of how wonderful those highs were. I had a taste of that, and I'm jealous as hell about it. Not only do I have rotten genes, I have the *wrong* rotten genes!! 8^P
I guess it gets back to one of my favorite lines from Boorman's Excaliber--when Arthur takes a drink from the Grail and is healed. he says something like, "I had never known how empty was my soul until it had been filled." It's a feeling I'm terrified of regaining and just as terrified that its gone forever.
poster:Bob
thread:11426
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990829/msgs/11440.html