Posted by CEK on May 24, 2006, at 12:50:59
In reply to Re: I am TIRED of medicaition and the system!!!!!, posted by Anna5 on May 24, 2006, at 11:20:33
> I reduced down medication for a couple of months and then finially stopped taking it March 24th evening. Spring break from March 24th afternoon to Sunday April 2nd to have some time to see if I had any major withdrawal symptoms. Then after that there was five and half weeks of classes left. I delt with 4 tests, 4 papers, group presentation, and doing a final exam project. I remember for about two weeks after stopping medication that I slowed down cognitively, it took me twice as long to do things and was also fatigue, now at week 9 I am doing good not as fatigue as I was and cognitively its slowly picking up.
> I am not smart, I just work hard and ask for help when I need it. I have a wonderful support system.
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> I have been dealing with the real underlining issues in my life that no amount of medications can ever fix. I have got this far in my life is because I am determined to work on bettering myself.Anna, you have to be very proud of yourself to have been to have accomplished what you have. I wish to reach that point someday. I have alot of unresolved issues from years gone by(I'm 31) that I haven't dealt with properly. I've just supressed them and tried to go on. Besides all of the excess emotional baggage, I believe a big part of my illness is in my genes. My mother has always suffered with depression, my father is an insane mean manic bipolar (although he refuses to admit it, and he has been hospitalized by force in the past because of mentally snapping) his parents were major alcoholics and my mom's mom suffered from depression and panic attacks. My sister suffers from panic attacks also. It seems like the poop has basically rolled down hill in my family. I had been diagnosed with major depression in 2000 and it never went away even with medicine. I think it was because the medicine was not a magic pill to take away all the things that were bothering me inside and unless I delt with those things properly, I think the depression will always be here. I am now diagnosed with the depression and bipolar 2. My moods and the way I feel about things change every couple of hours. At times I feel like I can beat this and become all I ever wanted to be. I feel like I can come to deal with the past and move on. Then within a couple of hours I'm back to hopeless and suicidal. I'm on Lamictal now and Klonopin. I'm only 2 weeks into the Lamictal so I still have to wait and see how it will work. I've gone to a psycholgist for 3 months and was doing neurofeedback and life coaching with him. He tried working on CBT with me, but that is so hard when I am so negative now about most things in life. He didn't work on past issues because he didn't think that would help anything. I know I have to deal with the past issues or else how can CBT work for me. I've got to deal with what has made me so negative and finally completely shut down to ever be able to try to think of things less negative. I've bought some self help books to try to work through issues, one is a trama workbook. I've tried to sit down and work on the workbook, but it is going to involve reliving it all over again and it is too painful. I know I have to, but I'm scared to dive back into the pain. I know the pain is still here, I guess I just supress it and live feeling empty and negative instead. Besides living with a verbally abusive alcoholic father, rejection from my only living grandmother(she died in 1993 and I have had hard feelings toward her even though she is dead)my husband had an affair in 2000 that changed me completely ever since. I thought that the issues with my dad and grandmother were a thing of the past and that I had moved on with how I felt about them until I had a little therapy in the hospital recently and it all came out that the pain is still alive inside me. I never confronted them and held it all in. Because of my fathers treatment of me and all in my immediate family, I have a strong emotional rage toward men of authority in my life.(my boss in particular that treats me alot like my father did and does.) I am very sensitive to things people do and say and am hurt very easily. If I don't cry over it, then I'm ready to come out fighting and cussing. For 4 years after the affair, I relived it day after day, even dreamed about it. Songs, movies, places, even my husband cutting his fingernails reminded me of it.(he did this one evening before he stayed out all night with the other woman, and he still to this day doesn't cut them around me.) I obsessed about it all the time and cried everyday for 4 years over it until one day I said I was through with it. The only life I was destroying was my own. I then tucked it away neatly with all the other things. I thought I had it beat, but it's been beating me all along. It has taken away all good emotion that I once had, love, my sence of humor, sexual feelings, and nothing brings me joy anymore. Sorry to let all of this spill out. It just happened. How did you find the strength within yourself to accomplish what you have? No one's life is perfect and I know I'm not the only one to has been cr*pped on, but I guess I'm not as good at dealing with it as some are. I'm hoping that the meds that I am on will help me get my emotions under control so I can then be able to come to terms with the past by therapy, books or whatever. I was on Effexor for almost 6 years and I believe that it just helped me suppress things more. It made me be able to deal with it all better so I thought. I think if I had never started the med, I would've dealt with the problem then, instead of being drugged into a false state of everything's ok. The med allowed me to be cr*pped on my so many people and instead of standing my ground and doing something about it, I let it roll off my back. Yet it didn't roll off onto the floor. It rolled down inside of me to fester. Your post has given me hope and I thank you for posting what you said.
poster:CEK
thread:630883
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060520/msgs/647834.html