Posted by yardena on August 21, 1999, at 6:54:15
In reply to Re: Life on Meds...Approaching 40, posted by Dee on August 20, 1999, at 23:48:04
Wow.
Thank you for the support.Being able to express my feelings on this forum, and receiving all of this incredible support has been so helpful as I struggle through this latest episode of gloom and doom. Hopelessness is one of the most devastating aspects of depression, and this particular episode hit me hard with severe despair and hopelessness. Getting through the other symptoms (lack of motivation, loss of interest, loss of enjoyment, negative self evaluation, shame, self loathing, disruptions in sleep, etc.) is only possible if I can hold on to some hope that it will not last forever. With this episode of depression, I felt such a profound loss of hope that things will ever change. I think some of that came accross in my posts about the future, although by the time I reached out to all of you, I had been able to pull out of the deepest despair a bit to consider the possibility that a change in meds might actually help.
I notice that what I needed to do when things became so bleak, was to kind of suspend the action by "handing over" some symbolic power to my therapist and psychopharmocologist. What I mean is that since my own thinking was clouded by a desparately gloomy outlook, I made the decision to suspend my thinking for a while and rely on my therapist's apparent belief that there IS hope for me. That allowed me to consider the idea that maybe, just maybe, another (there have been so many) medication change might help. This brought me to that place where I began to consider the future (rather than feeling there is no future for me), a future in which I need to continue to take a hefty concoction of medications, and still might have to struggle with occassional episodes of severe depression. Asking myself the question, "what will my future hold", I turned to all of you and that has really helped me.
Thanks for the support.I love this forum. I haven't been frequenting it for very long, but I have found the participants to be intelligent, informed, and very supportive. Dr. Bob, thank you for making it available.
poster:yardena
thread:10326
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991028/msgs/10456.html