Depression Archives - According to Denise

Side Effects Can Suck It

24 Feb By Denise

Over the course of about 17 years of searching for the perfect medicines for my various ailments it has become abundantly clear that my body has serious issues with medication. It does not particularly like when foreign substances are introduced to it. And my body shows its dissatisfaction with my relentless attempts to cure what ails me by making any possible treatments worse than what it is treating.

Whenever you get a new medication it comes with a nice long list of warnings and possible side effects. It is quite baffling that we have so many pills for various issues and they all have a lot of the same side effects. Dry mouth, weight gain, weigh loss, dizziness, headache, tingling in your fingers, etc, etc, etc. I mean, how crazy is it that I get a medication to treat my headaches that has headaches as a side effect?

I think it is worth mentioning that my own body has yet to choose a side effect like weight loss to tell me how much it hates medication. This is one of the reasons I believe it is a plot against me. Never do I get what might be a useful side effect.

So let’s touch on a few of the lovely side effects I’ve had the pleasure of enduring.

Headache

Like I said, this one is crazy. Most of the medications I’ve taken are for preventing my Chronic Daily Headache so when I read over and over again that these meds can cause headache I just shake my head and sigh. I’ve had a few that immediately make my headaches more frequent and severe which is exactly the opposite of what they are supposed to do. Sometimes I’ve been told to wait it out and see if it is just something that will go away. That’s one of the awesomely annoying things about side effects, they may only last a little while and so you are supposed to wait around and see if they get better and then you get the good effects of the medicine.

Dry Mouth

Honestly this one is the mildest one. It does have a good aspect of making you drink more water which is good for everyone, right? So naturally I’ve had this one maybe once or twice.

Fatigue

Seriously what mother needs anything to make her MORE tired? I hate when I can barely get up in the morning, especially if the medicine happens to be for depression. I mean what the HELL? Shouldn’t something for depression make me bounce out of bed dancing a jig?

Dizziness

This particular side effect has been the bane of my existence for about 6 years. After having kids, this one has been the most common side effect of pretty much everything I’ve tried. I can’t tell you the number of times I have had to stop driving for weeks as I get past dizziness from one medication or another. And just this last weekend I went to the ER because I spent hours trying to control the dizziness and get my blood pressure back up. Of course they found nothing wrong so I’m pretty sure it was the latest migraine preventative.

Allergic Reaction

I guess I should consider myself lucky this one hasn’t happened more often. About 2 months ago I broke out in a huge and INCREDIBLY ITCHY rash after dealing with 3 weeks of dizziness from a migraine preventative. That’s right, I had one side effect I was waiting out for 3 weeks then WHAMMO, I’m hit with an allergic reaction that makes me quit the stupid medication. What a waste. And it took another week and a steroid to get the damn rash to go away.

Suicidal Thoughts

Honestly this one was the worst. And it was due to a medication for anxiety. How’s that for ridiculous? Luckily I recognized that the thoughts were out of my ordinary and stopped the medication immediately which made my brain back to my version of normal. But that was scary.

Now maybe what I should be getting from all of this stubbornness from my body is that some medication is not the answer for me. I need to find a way to heal myself from the inside. I think deep down I know that is the right thing to be working on. But, of course, it is really hard to heal yourself from the inside when I feel like utter crap all the time. It’s a paradox that you need to exert so much effort when you have so little to give. Even though we all know that if you give that effort, you will get back so much more.

I’m working on believing that wholeheartedly and turning it into action. It’s hard though. Adding all these side effects into the mix doesn’t help either.

Filed Under: Health and Wellness Tagged With: Anxiety, Chronic pain, Depression, Mental Health, Migraine, Working on myself

12 Comments

Finding My Joy

2 Jan By Denise

I have been finding it hard to write lately. A part of myself has felt frozen in time after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Although outwardly I have been moving forward and on, there is still a part of me so sad and broken over the horror. But I need to write to cope and to let out my thoughts and emotions. There will be a sadness for a long time but I am learning that even though there is sadness and heartache, there is also joy and I need to expend at least as much energy on the joy.

So, being that it is a new year and all that, I have decided to set my focus on finding and feeling my joy wherever I can. I recently went back to therapy because I have been struggling with the dark, cold fingers of depression and anxiety trying to take hold and drag me down. And just as always happens when I start back up therapy, I get schooled on my negative thinking.

Honestly my mind can craft a web of negatively around virtually anything, even something that would look to a normal person as a positive. It’s a gift, or rather, a bloody curse.

I have been actively trying to root out and stomp out my Negative Nancy tendencies and replace them with positive statements, what ifs, things like that. I even checked out a book from library written by the Dalai Lama himself to work on focusing on the positive.

No joke, I am kicking my negativity to the curb.

And, in the process, finding joy where I should have known it always was … right in front of me. Surrounding me everywhere.

I just always had my negative shades on while looking.

So this year will be a journey of finding my joy in the everyday things. Changing my negative thoughts into positive ones.

I figured I have spent so many years wasting my energy on worry, regret, sadness, anger and fear. If I spent even just a fraction of that energy on sending out positive vibes to the universe and finding the joy around me, I would be so much better off. So that is what I intend to do. No more “I can’t”. Everything is “I can”, “I will”, “I am”.

Filed Under: Health and Wellness Tagged With: Anger, Anxiety, Depression, Getting personal, Mental Health, On my mind, Working on myself

18 Comments

PYHO: Sometimes you have to up your meds

10 Oct By Denise

There has been a lot of struggle, tragedy and sadness lately. Some close and some far. I have a heavy heart for so many people lately.

For myself, I have been struggling as my anxiety and depression creeps back in. Who knows which came first, the sadness I’ve been seeing or the sadness I’ve been feeling. It doesn’t matter really.

I know that I have to step back and look at how I’m coping. Sometimes I can handle a little extra stress and sometimes I just can’t.

Honestly I hate taking medications. You would find that funny if you could see the pharmacy of crap I take for various things and my history of trying pretty much everything under the sun for my chronic migraines. I seem to be über sensitive to the side effects of most things. And, just for kicks, my body can come up with new and doctor stumping side effects. Like when an ADHD medication caused frightening suicidal thoughts and my doctor had never heard of that happening before but once I stopped the medication, they were gone.

So I try to avoid changes in medication or supplements as much as possible.

But after crying in two different neurologist appointments, I had to admit that, sometimes, you just have to up your meds.

So at my next psyche appointment we talked about options and decided a small increase would be good. It’s been about a week and a half and I can feel that it is taking the edge off a bit more that it was before.

I am still having nightmares though and trouble sleeping. I feel like there is still a cloud that I can’t shake yet.

But we’ll see how it goes. I have gotten pretty good a paying attention to my body and mind. Writing out my thoughts and feeling in this space has helped me to understand myself better.

It’s a journey, this life thing. Ups, downs, loops. What a ride.

Filed Under: Health and Wellness Tagged With: ADHD, Anxiety, Chronic pain, Depression, Getting personal, Headache, Meme posts, Migraine, Stress, Working on myself

14 Comments

Calm My Crazy: My Brain

28 Sep By Denise

Yesterday I read a post over at Babble by the awesome Cecily Kellogg about living with her broken brain. It really spoke to me because I could see myself in her words.

You guys know about my struggles with chronic migraines, anxiety, depression, ADHD. I write a lot about the pain and emotions. The never ending attempts at relief.

I can get pretty angry about it. Cursing myself. Feeling as if it is all my fault. Hating my brain.

But Cecily spoke to me. Reminded me that my brain is also wonderful.

My brain is logical. It is inquisitive. It makes me good at my job.

My brain makes me empathetic and kind. Loving. A good wife and mother.

My brain makes me who I am.

A strong woman who doesn’t give up.

Check out this post to find out more about the Calm My Crazy meme. This weekly post is for me and for you. A place to share our moment of calm. Something that brings us a little peace and happiness in a world of crazy.

Filed Under: Calm My Crazy Tagged With: ADHD, Anxiety, Chronic pain, Depression, Headache, Meme posts, Mental Health, Migraine, Working on myself

6 Comments

What Is It With 39?

8 Aug By Denise

When a friend of mine turned 39, she wasn’t taking it well. She was grumpy and just not herself. She fully admitted that her feelings about turning 39 weren’t rational. I recall thinking to myself, “what’s the big deal, it’s just another year.”

Well as we hit August and my 39th birthday is looming, I now know EXACTLY how she felt.

I am feeling grumpy about it. Angry, even. And sad. Very, very sad.

Because I am pretty sure I am part Vulcan, I have to try to think through and find some rational and logical reason for these feelings. So I started to think about what turning 39 means to me. How is it different than other years?

And I promptly had 2 panic attacks a few days apart. So it would appear that this birthday coming up is pretty damn important.

When I turned 30, I was pregnant with T and we welcomed him a few months later. Our blended family was expanding. We welcomed A when I was 31. The beginning of this decade of my life was going well.

Then things changed.

After A weaned, my hormones went insane affecting all sorts of things. Then my grandfather died and I was depressed for months. I got hit with anxiety which brought along with it bouts of lightheadedness and vertigo. And, of course, my chronic daily headaches got immensely worse.

So although my 30s started off well and full of hope, by 33 I was descending into a huge hole that I would spend the next 6 years trying to climb out of.

And I am still trying.

So I think the big problem I am having with turning 39 is that I am entering the last year of this decade of my life and the decade has pretty much sucked.

Not to say that there haven’t been good and happy times but there are always storm clouds looming overhead.

A migraine or depressive episode or panic attack can rain on any fun parade at any moment.

And realizing how hopeless that makes me feel, of course, brought on the panic attacks.

So I am trying to find a positive spin on turning 39.

Every day is a new opportunity to make better choices, to improve my life, to try to fix what is broken.

I can keep working to improve my well being in this last year of my 30s and make my 40s a better decade.

I am not hopeless. I can be hopeful.

Filed Under: Health and Wellness Tagged With: Anxiety, Depression, Mental Health, Migraine, Stress, Working on myself

18 Comments

I am grumpy and anti-social

22 Apr By Denise

Grumpy (Photo credit: mindseyeimagery)

I’m in a funk. Not funk as in 70′s retro. Funk as in blah. Meh. Hmmrph.

A few weeks back I mentioned that I was struggling with another depressive episode. After that, I was feeling it lift a bit and starting to look up.

So, needless to say, being in a funk has me a bit worried about a backslide.

Will the tears come?

The sadness and frustration?

The hopelessness?

I haven’t felt much like blogging. Or reading blogs.

Been only glancing at Facebook and Twitter. Blew off a Mom’s Night Out. Haven’t read much of my books.

Those are my “Me” things and I’ve been uninterested.

So how do I de-funk myself?

Filed Under: Health and Wellness Tagged With: Depression, Getting personal, Working on myself

2 Comments

I Needed This Today

28 Mar By Denise

Hubby and I had a long talk last night. The depression has crept up on me again. I spend so much of my time and energy trying to balance between the depression and anxiety and chronic pain. It is exhausting. And sometimes I balance OK and things are fine. And other times one of those weights I balance sneaks up and smacks me down.

I’m in a smacked down state right now. The headaches have been worse (thanks Mother Nature) and my stress is at a staggering high. The depression caught me off guard. Again. The anxiety is waiting in the wings as I sit in denial that my oldest stepson is going to go off into the world by himself to college in a matter of months.

So I’m struggling and I’m tired and I’m angry and I’m sad.

This morning I pulled my son’s schoolwork out and found this.

And it made me smile.

It made me feel hopeful.

It made me feel loved and appreciated.

And that is something I really needed.

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I love linking up with Shell.

Filed Under: Family and Parenting Tagged With: Anxiety, Chronic pain, Depression, Getting personal, Meme posts, Working on myself

16 Comments

What makes me happy

12 Mar By Denise

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.

I’ve been thinking about what is important to me because I have been completely wrapped up in the craziness of work. Obviously my family is tops on my list of most important. And I have to keep reminding myself that I am also most important.

So in thinking about what is important and about myself, I came to a realization.

I like helping people. And I like helping people by writing and by connecting.

Anyone who knows me knows that I like to listen to people and to give advice when I can. I like helping people talk through their issues and move forward. I’ve often wondered if I would have been a good psychologist.

I know, a depression and anxiety sufferer as a psychologist. Crazy, huh?

So I wondered if I could somehow marry writing and helping people and advice and stuff like that. I want to try to use my stories on my blog to do those things.

Looking at what I have been writing for the last several months, there are a lot of my personal struggles out there for folks to read and relate to.

So how do I turn that into help for others?

To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure yet.

But that’s what I’m working towards. Taking my stories and my struggles and using them to show others how to help themselves.

And doing this will help me.

Because it makes me happy to share and to help others.

Filed Under: Health and Wellness Tagged With: Depression, Self-Help, Working on myself

5 Comments

Out of the Fog Now I Need To Stop Running

9 Nov By Denise

Over the past several weeks I’ve talked about my latest run in with the evil depression monster. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it always surprises me how it seems to creep up and smack me down and all of a sudden I am dazed and at the bottom of a hole. Stupid monster needs to wear a damn bell so that I know he’s getting close. That way I won’t have to climb so far to get out.

Well, I’ve been doing so much better over the last few weeks that I have noticed my tendency to stop working on myself once I feel better. I’ve already started seeing my therapist less. I mean, why pay for sessions when I’m doing so well? Duh, it’s just like when you take some medicine to lower your cholesterol and then once it gets low, you dupe yourself into thinking you don’t need the med because it is all better. Uh, that’ ain’t how it works.

So now that I feel like I have gotten out of the fog, I need to stopping running around like a chicken with me head cut off trying to do everything I didn’t feel like doing before.

Slow down.

Figure out how to work on little things first.

Smell the damn roses!

Why is it the first instinct is to pile everything back on when you feel better? That’s how I ended up broken in the first place?

As always, a big thanks to Shell for encouraging folks to Pour Your Heart Out often!

Filed Under: Health and Wellness Tagged With: Depression, Getting personal, Meme posts

12 Comments

And Then I Broke

2 Nov By Denise

I wanted to expand a bit on the part of my I Feel Broken post last week when I actually felt myself break.

The stress has been building for a while. No one thing is to blame, it is really life in general that kept piling on.

I have this picture in my head of what my life is like. I feel like a person juggling on a high wire. The balls are all those things I am trying to keep track up. They are all the responsibilities, the to-dos, the things that I need to worry about. Kids and their activities and school. Sharing responsibilities with Hubby while also trying to spend quality time with him. Work and all that I need to do there. So many, many things to juggle.

But on top of that I am trying to juggle all of it while walking this high wire trying to keep my balance and not fall. To me, this is my well-being, my mind, my body. I struggle with migraines, depression, anxiety, adhd and feel like I am always in this delicate balance trying to keep them from taking over and knocking me down. Add in the general feeling of unhealthiness I have because I am overweight and trying to balance is difficult to say the least.

So here I was, trying to juggle and walk this tightrope and keep it all together. And the balls kept being added.

Over the last year I have taken on too much. I am the one who is home with the kids in the morning and afternoon and while they are at school, I have to work. I started to notice that I was carrying frustration from one hat I wore to the next. Annoyance with the kids would lead to annoyance at work and vice versa. I ended up putting in about 30 mins of “transition time” between work and kids so that I had a breather to unwind and reset myself. It was helpful but I still felt stressed overall.

Things are heating up at work. Lots of stuff to do and I have this habit of taking on responsibility for everything I think needs someone to watch over it. But honestly that isn’t the best thing to do. We had a particularly unpleasant meeting and I left it feeling resentful. Feeling as if all my hard work was really not doing what I wanted it to. So this, to me, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This is the day that I broke.

Now, I am not blaming work. As I mentioned, life in general had beaten me down. But this was the final blow.

I talked at length to Hubby. I felt as if there wasn’t anything I could do to put the pieces back together. I felt trapped by everything I had taken on. I was lost. And I was afraid.

Then, I had an epiphany. I guess that is what it was. I just suddenly had some clarity that I could not do everything that I had burdened myself with. I know, duh, but it was a moment when I really accepted that I could not do it all.

I had to choose.

I already knew what was at the top of my list of what I really wanted to be responsible for. My kids. I am first and foremost a mom and I really want to be a mom to them. But if was going to try to reorganize and replan my responsibilities, something had to give.

So I took a little time and decided that I had to offload responsibilities at work. Would this be the key to mending me? Would I now be whole again? No, but it is a good start. A necessary start.

Now I actually do know how to juggle. I mean with real bean bags, balls, whatever. My fifth grade teacher taught our class and we learned incrementally. Start with one in one hand. Then one back and forth with two hands. Then two, then three … you see how it goes.

So I discussed with folks at work and made some changes there. This was my first step in going back to the beginning and relearning how to juggle with less.

And you know what? It instantly helped. I felt like I could move forward and make actual progress putting all my pieces back together.

This post is linked to this meme: