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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 6 of 6. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by tina on May 9, 2000, at 16:39:18
Hi everyone--just me here. Why is it that on the day that I see my doc I feel good and positive but the days in between suck? I'm having a very down day today but I don't know why? No precipitating events cause my depression/anxiety, it just starts. Whenever I have a good few months or year even, I can always depend on the depression/anxiety to ruin my life. I really had a great '99, did i screw with my karma in a past life? Do we all deserve this, I don't think so. I feel so bad that I'm dragging my husband down and everyone else in my family. When they see me so up and fun-loving they expect that behavior all the time but I can't do it and they get disappointed. I hate being a disappointment and hurting others, that's why most of my rage episodes are directed inward, at myself. I think I need to be punished for the disappointment and pain that brings others down but they don't give it so I give it to myself. Hitting brick walls(since highschool--no cartilege left in my right hand), cutting myself with blunt edged objects just to have the pain linger for a few days. I want to blame it all on my up-bringing and the things that happened in my childhood but I've seen others who have had worse childhoods than mine that are doing fine and are functioning, well-adjusted members of society. Why am I so weak? I just can't deal with this LIFE. Anything that others would consider normal everyday stresses turn me into a stark raving lunatic. I do want to get better, I want to live this life to the fullest and be happy. I just don't think it's in the cards sometimes. No, I'm not suicidal, I just feel so damned hopeless today. I keep asking myself Why don't I just suck it up and charge my way through it like I see other people do but I am afraid all the time. Afraid of what I can't say, success, failure? That's the frustrating part. If I could just know WHY then I feel that I could FIX it. Don't mean to bring you guys down too I just wanted to rant to people I KNEW would understand. Thanks for listening.
Tina
Posted by Janice on May 9, 2000, at 18:23:01
In reply to When?sday!!, posted by tina on May 9, 2000, at 16:39:18
Your life is probably like this Tina because you have a biological illness. And the symptoms of this illness are painful, destructive emotional ones.
Have you ever kept a mood journal to see if there are any rhytms to these mood changes--this may indicate you could have bipolar, or rapid cycling bipolar.
Hopefully, once you discover which illness (or illnesses) it is, and start treating it with the right medications, many of these symptoms should either dissappear or shrink in size.
Please don't blame yourself for an illness you had no choice over getting, and please don't believe that these terrible things you feel sometimes have anything to do with the real you.
If I were you, I'd concentrate on finding the right diagnosis. Janice
Posted by Noa on May 9, 2000, at 18:25:07
In reply to When?sday!!, posted by tina on May 9, 2000, at 16:39:18
Tina, there seem to be two basic things happening, it sounds like. First, is the rage and hurt and sadness--all the intense feelings, what Janice referred to as a kind of seizure--a flooding of intense negative feelings. Second, is the interpretaion part. You are in the habit (as so many of us are) of interpreting the feelings as a sign of your essential weakness, insufficiency, badness, whatever. What can help is to start practicing a strategy to not go automatically into that interpretation part of it, and to move toward responding to the emotional explosion in a different way, maybe one that is nurturing toward yourself, that aims to just get you through it til it passes. This means possibly letting go of the expectation that the problem will be fully understood and fixed right away. I think that to be able to say to yourself, "my job right now is just to take care of myself enough to get through this. I don't have to analyze it or understand it, or solve it. Just survive until it passes, and be good to myself while I am going through it because it is an awful experience." As paradoxical as this sounds, I think I started to get a better handle on my depression when I started to work on not disowning that part of myself, and began accepting it more. Obviously, this is a work in progress for me; I claim no great achievement toward these goals, but some progress, little by little. You are so critical of yourself, as though you brought on your own suffering. And that self-reproach, self-loathing makes it worse, doesn't it? Not that you are to blame for doing that to yourself. It is something many of us learned to do very early in life, and happens to be part of the illness itself.
As for conveying this to the pdoc (I identify with the frustration that comes with variable moods and not being in the "right" one at the doctor's office), well, one of the benefits of babble is that you can always print out your post and bring it with you to your appointment.
Posted by Noa on May 9, 2000, at 18:27:58
In reply to Re: When?sday!!, posted by Janice on May 9, 2000, at 18:23:01
Ditto, what Janice said.
Posted by tina on May 9, 2000, at 18:33:10
In reply to Re: When?sday!!, posted by Noa on May 9, 2000, at 18:25:07
No printer. I do all this on a laptop that my hubby borrowed from work. Thanks for the support though. I've been rooting around the NIMH website trying to diagnose myself properly with no luck. I seem to have symptoms of all of the disorders. Am I making this up?? My whole family has great ability to imagine things, I wonder if I'm imagining this too. Oh well, skip it. Thanks for the input thogh.-- tina
> Tina, there seem to be two basic things happening, it sounds like. First, is the rage and hurt and sadness--all the intense feelings, what Janice referred to as a kind of seizure--a flooding of intense negative feelings. Second, is the interpretaion part. You are in the habit (as so many of us are) of interpreting the feelings as a sign of your essential weakness, insufficiency, badness, whatever. What can help is to start practicing a strategy to not go automatically into that interpretation part of it, and to move toward responding to the emotional explosion in a different way, maybe one that is nurturing toward yourself, that aims to just get you through it til it passes. This means possibly letting go of the expectation that the problem will be fully understood and fixed right away. I think that to be able to say to yourself, "my job right now is just to take care of myself enough to get through this. I don't have to analyze it or understand it, or solve it. Just survive until it passes, and be good to myself while I am going through it because it is an awful experience." As paradoxical as this sounds, I think I started to get a better handle on my depression when I started to work on not disowning that part of myself, and began accepting it more. Obviously, this is a work in progress for me; I claim no great achievement toward these goals, but some progress, little by little. You are so critical of yourself, as though you brought on your own suffering. And that self-reproach, self-loathing makes it worse, doesn't it? Not that you are to blame for doing that to yourself. It is something many of us learned to do very early in life, and happens to be part of the illness itself.
>
> As for conveying this to the pdoc (I identify with the frustration that comes with variable moods and not being in the "right" one at the doctor's office), well, one of the benefits of babble is that you can always print out your post and bring it with you to your appointment.
Posted by Noa on May 9, 2000, at 18:42:14
In reply to to Noa, posted by tina on May 9, 2000, at 18:33:10
Don't get so hung up on the diagnosis perse. Diagnoses as they currently are conceptualized are only uself as long as they're useful. The theories and ways of grouping symptom clusters is not a perfect science, just an organizational tool. I agree with Janice that keeping a log of symptoms is a good idea. The meds go after symptoms more than diagnoses. And being so preoccupied with what dx you are seems to be causing more anxiety for you. Myself, I might be double depression (dysthymia plus recurrent major depression), I might be atypical depression, I might be Bipolar III. Who knows? Different docs have their pet dxes. To the extent that thinking of my problems through the lens of each of these dxes helps to suggest possible treatment options, they are helpful. But I don't think there is AN answer to which is the RIGHT dx for me. Ten years from now all of these might be in the archives or might be subsumed by another way of looking at this illness, because right now, there is still so much more to learn about what is actually going on in the brain anyway. Finding the right med is, unfortunately, still very much a trial and error process, although you can start by narrowing down possiblities based on your symptoms. Unfortunately, it means for many of us, we have to go through several meds or combinations of meds until we find one that really works for us without causing annoying or distressing negative effects. It can be demoralizing, but it helps to come to this place and commune with others in the same boat. Good luck.
This is the end of the thread.
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