Posted by bob on March 31, 2000, at 21:24:21
In reply to Re: Does depression = feeling very sad?, posted by DC on March 30, 2000, at 14:28:15
Wow--someone who actually knows about learned helplessness. Certainly, the cognitive-behavioralists will tell you that's one component of it....
> With lack of feeling being such a strong symptom, it seems odd that so many people say that anti-depressants prevent them from feeling things. I have found, for instance, that I don't have the same emotional reactions to sad movies while on ADs.
Maybe that has something to do with the variety in our neurochemical make-ups (certainly more than anything cognitive or behavioral). I certainly felt that loss of the ability to feel for the 2.5 years I was on SSRIs. Apparently, the biological aspect of my disorder has more to do with norepinephrine and dopamine than seratonin ... maybe all that massaging of my seratonin levels contributed to it.
Certainly, tho, my depression played a HUGE role in not feeling. Like everyone else, what I feel (or don't feel) is far more than sad, but deep, profound sadness always accompanies my worst depressive episodes ... it's the last (bale of) straw.
Going the other direction, I spent most of December and January in a great deal of pain and sorrow -- perhaps the worst depressive episode I've had in a decade. The crasy thing about it all was that I knew I was feeling that way because my meds and my therapy had brought me *UP* to that place where I could begin to feel and begin to care again.
... the problem, of course, being that my life was so shitty, caring about it was not necessarily the best thing for me to do! ;^)
my two cents,
bob
poster:bob
thread:28459
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000321/msgs/28602.html