Suzy,
That doctor must be an awful goof. By his standard I am 'broken' because I have chronic arthritis!? Maybe I'm 'shattered and irrepairable" because I have MDD also? The curiousity about medical school curricula is that nowhere do they squeeze in a course on communication between carving up cadavers and trying to remember the 'phone book' of pharmaceuticals. The admonition "Do no harm" in the Hippocratic Oath seems to have slipped right over the heads of the 'plumbers' and corporate grabbers who comprise the medical industry these days. We, the depressed, may seem like the 'product' that they have to manipulate back to 'usefullness/normality' and, in that sense, I suppose that when they get a patient with flattened affect and liquid posture crouched in front of them they can't help but see us in industrial terms: "that patient looks broken to me".
It's the old story of YOU having to go out and shop for a talk-therapist who suits YOU. You don't have to buy the Doctor-as-God syndrome at all. They're as fallible (and some more so) as we are. You have to seek hard and well to find a psych. with real people skills who is neither a Jim Jones, David Koresh or the inaccessible Dalai Lama. Somewhere in that spectrum is a woman or a man who sees YOU and not a product/patient/client. The big problem is finding the $100-150 per hour to buy time with her/him... there's always yoga and meditation and this here little website as an alternative to believing in the Oracle in the White Coat on Delphi.
Jeez, I must have eaten something with vinegar at lunch...
Patrick!
Laura,
Night times are tough. Did you never ask your doctor for something like Trazadone to help you sleep? At my worst times of insomnia I used Trazadone and it helped a lot. Even now when I wake at 3 or 4 a.m. I will not stay in the bed tossing and turning. I go into the living room and stare at the box for an hour or two at low volume; the tv is great for massaging the troubled mind because it's so full of unmitigated crap and especially so in the dead of night. It's so boring in fact that I can't stay awake for the next Animal Planet special on Giraffes at 4a.m. and I find I get another three hours sleep in an upright position on the couch with my feet resting on the hassock. Wooly blanket helps. I find that I fall asleep after the first 35 minutes of the George Clooney/Matt Damon movie "Syriana" every time I watch it. Buy a copy and let me know if that works for you.
Just know, Laura, that this ideation/anxiety is a passing thing. Trust in your GP to mix and match the right meds for you so that you can still the pain. I hope that your meds work better for you now that you've upped the dosage. Read Suzy's postings - there's a smart lady...I wouldn't think of suicide with a brave woman like that still in the world.
Patrick
Hey Suzy,
Here's the real dope; the woman I'm married to and who I love so much is also MDD and is on something called Cilift (some South African SSRI, I don't know the generic name for it) and it works about just as well as my Prozac does. While we're just living from day to day dealing with all the usual vagaries of Life we can come across each other and not really be sensitive to the other's mood. It's like that cat you see who is stalking nothing at all but is very concentrated in his movements and is locked into his own stalking problem: then you reach down unconsciously to give him a stroke and he jumps four feet straight up into the air and he lands and looks at you with dilated pupils as much as to say "I'll kill you the next time you do that!"
Well, either of us can happen upon the other in the kitchen or bathroom and reach out to just touch and send the other crashing into the wall with fright. Are we living on eggshells or what??!! I mean I can look as relaxed as a three-toed sloth but, when startled, I can resemble an out of shape Bruce Lee... Is there a startle-pill?
Damn!!
Glad you were having an up day yesterday - did it roll into the same today??
Patrick
Twister,
Good to hear from you again. You know, I think that Laura is right in what she says about contacting people; I know also that it's the last thing we want to do as depressives. But when we've reached a semblance of normality with the Wellbutrin or more Prozac then that is the time to go out and try talking to people. I've fixed my bad day on occassion by just exchanging a few pleasantries with the cashier at the supermarket. I've even tried honesty expecting to get silence back and it has sparked honesty coming back at me: the cashier asked me how I was that day and I replied "I feel like crap." She looked at me for a second, and without missing a beat said that her feet were killing her and that her mother with diabetes was refusing to take her meds and that she'd had enough and wanted to run away. Without smiling we reached out our knuckles and bumped fists and said "Bye". Made my day. I went home and cooked some veggies instead of having a bowl of peanuts...
Patrick
craZ,
Well, I sat down with my wife last night and asked her to drive me to an Aquafitness class once or twice a week at night. She said "Yes! Of course". Now I have to find such a course. And buy a pair of swimming shorts.
Patrick
Suzy
You're right. We need a signal. I spoke to her about it but she is still at the stage in the marriage where she imagines that any reaction like that from me is evidence that I'm 'falling out of love' with her. I have explained and explained that I live on tenterhooks most of the time even tho' I appear to be calm. She'll get it in the end.
I can't remember where I saw the Will Robinson quote - Philip K. Dick or Pat Cadigan?? I've been trying to deal with reading history exclusively and I'm duty bound to swallow all I can about the Holocaust which doesn't leave me much time for lighter stuff. I know that's crazy given my propensity to MDD but I don't want to wimp-out of the dreadful stuff just because it's grim-making. I love History and the whole Genocide thing makes me believe that truth is so much stranger than the fiction I studied for decades.
I think that you really DO have a facility with communication and that your public speaking thing should turn into a hobby/career talking about MDII and Depression and the coping mechanisms people need. As a breed we depressives need that kind of accessible coaching, support and CBT and it should come from a depressive. If I wasn't depressed at the time I, for one, would go out to hear an articulate depressive talk about the paths and journeys through a lifetime of depression.
I'm going to miss the turkey and bread sauce next week. I hope the jury duty works for you.
Patrick
Yeah Suzy,
Cilift is just another SSRI and is good for anxiety and mild agoraphobia. It's on the web and details are not very exciting. Not good for migraine suffers nor HBP people.
Patrick
Suzy,
About being "broken" and working the CBT:I know that starting CBT on this website is essential to alter what is fixed right now in my behaviour. I also know that it's a matter, for me anyway, of learning and developing habits which I already know are guaranteed to improve my wellbeing; exercise, diet, meditation and regular hours for family and myself.
I've got 60 years of bad habits to unlearn. I've dismantled some of them along the way just to stay alive which is the classic motivation (drinking and self medication)but there are many more to deal with; tempering and easing my frustration levels (raised voice and impatience, intolerance etc.) I'm not looking forward to doing it. But I know it has to be done. I had 15 years of living alone between marriages and that created a whole OTHER set of bad habits which don't sit well with family/married life. Total privacy and cooking chops at 3 a.m. and all that...
So, I'm going to start by dividing my time on this site between the pleasure of talking and reading in this support group and actually DOING the CBT sessions.
Here I go into the fray... when you start I'd like to know how you're getting along with the sessions? Okay?
Patrick
Madara,
I have at least two books which jump into my mind which have stayed with me for many years:
1. The Savage God by Al Alvarez
2. Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
Both books are not specifically about depression; the first is a personal treatise by Alvarez on dealing with suicidal ideation and weighing the value of living.
The other is a very readable, clear, no mumbo-jumbo, description of a way to exercise the body and mind to focus on a 'goal' and to relax the anxiety that goals throw back at us as we try to grasp them.
Most of Harville Hendrix & Helen Hunt's (joint authors) books are beautiful reads in CBT. Nothing is written in stone, of course, but these two people are very readable - non-pompous and jargon-free!
Patrick
No! You say it Twister!
There's way too much reverence for doctors coming from the direction of the suffering patient. There are doctors whose people skills range from total crappy arrogance to indifference all the way to caring, concerned uber-humans. With mental diseases/disorders we depressives are always at a huge disadvantage when we question the wisdom of the average interning psychiatrist. If we protest too much the irritable, indifferent doctors can always withdraw into professional silence and will let us know that we are " over reacting, acting out, being unbalanced": it's a dreadful trap for the sufferer who speaks "out of turn".
I once had an orthopaedic surgeon of repute tell me I was "stupid" for questioning him about an x-ray I didn't understand. I was supposed to stand there and nod gravely as he sputtered technologisms about the state of my own shattered ankle on the x-ray. After he swept in a regal way from the room, his attending nurse raised her eyebrows an said "You don't talk to Mister Neorex when he's talking." Talk about old school!?
I'm in favour of the way they teach medicine in Hamilton Ontario ( Uny of West. Ontario) where the beginner medical student gets down into the community trenches right at the beginning of the programme and thereby learns to talk to the 'little people' who they are being trained by the government to serve in the first place.
Harummphhh! The Old Fart has spoken.
Patrick
