Posted by sac on March 5, 2005, at 6:49:20
In reply to Re: Cyclothymia mood stabilizers, posted by Quincy on March 5, 2005, at 1:06:04
Hi there, I'm glad you came to this board because I know it has helped me tremendously over the years. I'm 36 year year old mother of two with bipolar II. I'm currently taking Lithium and Prozac. I've basically tried all the mood stabilizers out there. My history was depression for about 14 years and then after my pregnancies I developed mood cycling. I, too, didn't correlate the pattern for quite a while but fortunately I was being treated by a psychiatrist at the time for depression and he suggested that I need a mood stabilizing medication. I resisted this advice for about 1 1/2 years and continued on the roller coaster of mood swings which was hell. Now, I am happy to say that I like Lithium and I am pretty stable...it's a great feeling. I understand that you may not want to go the medication route as I was also reluctant. It depends on how severly you mood cycling affects your life. Many people opt to live with it and adjust without medication and that is fine. For me, I found, it got progressively worse to the point where the depressions became suicidal ones and (for my kids sake) I just needed to be able to calm that cycling and gain some predictability with my emotions. Sorry for the long post. My advice is don't be afraid of psychiatrists or medication. It saved my life. It's a great thing to have stability which many take for granted. Mood disorders, especially cyclothymia, often have a biological basis and many times medication is the main solution. This board will be very helpful for providing you with support and encouragement which is wonderful. But, as you say, when you are down you probably won't post as I did not and that's when you need the support the most. Good luck. Let us know how you are doing.
> I'm 20 years old, i havent actually been diagnosed with Cyclothymia, actually, the best that I've done is seen a counselor who simply passed off my mood swings as something related to my friends graduating from school and me feeling the loss of them a little too personally. However, I really feel like I may have Cyclothymia, or something else that's effecting me, because the i suppose, depressive times arent really triggered by anything that i can pin down, and For the past year I've been having major mood swings -- the downs are always much more obvious than the ups, and I Only recently noticed that they are in a pattern.
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> For a few days every few weeks my life will simply seem too much to cope with. Its about at least three days every three weeks I would guess when i'm feeling "down". - I will be tired and not able to sleep, and then once I do get to sleep its the hardest thing in the world to wake up again. - I always feel better if I can just sleep for three days straight and not deal with anything. I am really into the arts as a lot of you said you were, I paint and draw, and spit out stories, and I never actually concidered my creative impulses to be a part of my cycle, but the more I think of it and the more I read about you all, the more things seem to make sense. The reason I was reading these posts is because I've been worried about my mood swings, because when I feel down, I feel DOWN, and thats just not right, I mean, something is really wrong.
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> So I was wondering, sort of, How can I deal with this and not have to go to a psychiatrist or counselor, how can I deal with it by not having to take medication? Is it possible, I mean, does talking about it really help? Because I find it awfully hard to talk about it while I'm down, and harder still to talk about it when I'm feeling good because I just dont want to go there. Is that fair of me to ask? I just feel like the swings are taking me lower and lower which is why it's come to my notice that maybe there is something actually wrong with my brain and not just me being socially incapable or something.
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> thanks
poster:sac
thread:9730
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050304/msgs/466840.html