Those of you who know me well are aware that I struggled with depression1 and anxiety for a long time. As best I can tell, it started way back in my sophomore year of high school and continued until last year or so. That's round about eight years of awfulness.
Shortly after I moved up to Oregon with James, I decided enough was enough and went to the doctor... even though I'd been a few times in college and that experience was less than successful.2
Well, I started a different medication (Wellbutrin) which seemed to work wonders, whereas the traditional SSRIs hadn't been helping. And then I started going to therapy every week. That was back in, say... September 2011. And guess what? Last week was my last therapy visit, because I've been doing so well for so long without regressing. My psychiatrist, my therapist, and I all thought I'd probably end up with postpartum depression, but it never happened despite the enormous stress I've been under. So I don't need any more therapy.
I had also kind of expected that I'd need to take the antidepressant forever since I was severely depressed for an entire eight years. That's pretty bad... theoretically, if you let depression run its course untreated it should last two years and go away. Mine didn't, obviously. So I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to get off an antidepressant if I ever found one that worked.
But guess what? My psychiatrist thinks I will likely be able to get off of it two years after the start date. Woot! I find that very encouraging. Hopefully there will be permanent changes to the synapses in my brain so I don't go nuts any more. Woot! (I think a lot of my recovery has to do with the fact that my thyroid is also being treated successfully now. If I had to guess, my depression started when the thyroid disease started.)
Anyway, I want to celebrate. Therapy is hard work, yo. It's hard to pull yourself out of an unmotivated slump. As I've expressed in earlier posts, it's a shame I couldn't get this all figured out earlier... because then I might have gotten a 4.0 GPA, had a social life, and made more money during college. Everyone would have been blinded by awesome.
I am much more motivated now. I am especially struck by my ability to establish new habits... I was always really, really, really awful at that. Starting about the same time as the depression did (who would've thought?) I had the most difficult time keeping up with things that should have been easy... like (gasp) daily hygiene things. Those of you who've had depression understand. It was just so... hard. I'd do them maybe every other day. I had a hard time doing other daily habits like reading scriptures and writing in my journal.3 And now? Now that all is better? I can do all of these things and it's no big deal. Heck, I even look forward to them. Woot!
Love and synapses,
Jenna
1 This is a fairly good description of what depression can be like. Also funny. Be warned, though, it has three bad words in it.↩
2 The nurse practitioner wouldn't believe that I was majoring in neuroscience because it was interesting. Clearly I was majoring in that to prove to everyone that I was really smart, and I didn't major in something more sensible like English because I was afraid that others would think I was dumb. And my depression would go away if I switched to a better major like Home and Family Life. ... ... ... Wait, really? I can't help but wonder if this woman would have suggested the same thing to a guy. Yes, it was a woman who told me this.↩
3 I'm almost ashamed to admit one of the big reasons why it was so hard for me to establish habits because it was so completely irrational. I had this almost irresistible need to start at the number one, meaning, that if I missed a journal entry on Sunday, I couldn't start my journal again until the next Sunday (or the first day of the month... or January 1 of the next year) because that was the first day of the week. Even worse, I felt the need to start a new journal after I skipped a day, because I'd sullied my perfect record. It didn't really matter that I'd only filled half a page and there were eighty empty pages left. It was imperfect and needed to be trashed. It's like that for visiting teaching, too. If I miss a month, I feel so strongly like I can't start over again until January. ... I know, it doesn't really make sense, but... I just... yeah. I'm getting over it. That's a little OCD element to my depression. It's easier now to override the urge to start at number one. ... Thank goodness.↩
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