Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Very vulnerable right now, can't keep up with my own mood swings

I've been avoiding the net a little bit lately, God knows I spend too much time on the net when I should be in the "real world", but also avoiding it because I'm very emotionally vulnerable. I can't keep up with my own mood swings, I feel I can't trust what I say or think anymore, because everything is so darned contradictory.

As far as diet goes, my diet is as inconsistent as my moods. I'm going through some severe mood swings and have been for a while now. Honestly, some times I'm a little too "out of it" to even remember what I've eaten or even keep track of what time or day it is. I crash into depression thinking of suicide and cry for hours and sleep a lot, then I try to pull myself up from my bootstraps and use the various techniques I've learned, the positive self-talk and using my vitamins and supplements and a bit of exercise, then I fall back into the deep depression, lather, rinse, repeat. When I'm "down", I simply don't care, I don't write in my journal like I should, it's the type of depression where I'm not willing to give anything a try, I just let the depression ride itself out. I know that's not the right way to handle it.... honestly I'm even afraid to talk about it, that's why we're thinking that ECT (shock treatment) might be my best option right now, since it is so serious, but it's doubtful we can afford something like that, I won't know for sure if we can for a couple weeks or so.

That's part of the reason I've been letting my website slide, because my moods swing so much, I'm afraid of what I say, because my words and actions are so often contradictory.

Like this morning, I woke up suicidally depressed, came home after driving my aunt to work, and laid down and started crying, and got an email from an old friend asking to chat on the internet later this morning, I knew that if I chatted in the condition I was in I would just unload all kinds of contradictory feelings and I didn't want to do that, so I got a tad bit of exercise, took my vitamins and supplements (a combination my doctors and I worked up that contains multivitamins, omega3, chromium, a "vegetable in a pill", a protein and fiber drink supplement, and something we call the "Green Drink" which is a mix of many different kinds of leaves and other greens), as well as my normal medicine, and began practicing my positive, compassionate self-dialog so that I could be in a more consistent mood when the time came to chat with my old friend.

I've done some introspection and I believe I know the heart of the reason why I keep going through this cycle - something similar to an infant throwing a temper tantrum when he can't get the toy he wants so he's just going to make everyone else miserable. It's a cycle I keep coming back to. I'm a little more frustrated now, because I spent a few years trying to teach myself with the help of groups and books and therapy and such to become more mature on an emotional level. And I can see areas where I have made progress, but, alas these cycles continue.

So, I see my problem as having many inter-linked sources that compound on each other. And I know that to be "cured" I need to continue to work on all of these aspects of my problems, the amount of change needed is overwhelming. Knowing this, in the past, I told myself it's OK to be patient and just take baby steps, work on a little bit at a time, grow a little here, grow a little there, there will be set backs, but eventually the little steps forward on each of the problems will all come together and I'll be better able to react to life in a more normal way. But it's harder to give myself that patience, that willingness, the faith and willpower than in the past.

These down swings that I have are more than I can handle. When I have a bit of an upswing, I seize the opportunity, but the up-swings don't last very long, at most a couple hours.

I think I need to develop a belief in a God, a belief I lost a long time ago as a small child. That's a tough one for me, there is a lot of baggage surrounding the concept of a higher power. When I go through my compassionate self-dialog techniques, I end up where I left off in the previous depression, my basic belief that life sucks, we're alone here in the universe, the economy is the pits, I've lost many things, and for me to get better not only do I have to challenge these beliefs, but I also have to change my diet, medicine, exercise, etc... things I've tried changing from different angles at different paces... I guess I'm just venting out some things.

So, to repeat what I said earlier, I've been avoiding the net a little bit lately, God knows I spend too much time on the net when I should be in the "real world", but also avoiding it because I'm very emotionally vulnerable. I can't keep up with my own mood swings, I feel I can't trust what I say or think anymore, because everything is so darned contradictory.

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Thinking about closing up shop...

I'm thinking about closing up shop on this blog. I've worked hard to help myself, and to take what I have learned along the way and pass it along to others who are going through the same thing.

But I've been increasingly coming to a point where I can no longer "practice what I preach". I feel it's wrong for me to keep trying to help people when I no longer have the desire or ability to be helped myself. I'm finding it is much harder for me to encourage others when all I really want to say is stay away from me, I'm losing it, becoming suicidal, and I don't want to drag you down with me while you're trying to pull yourself up.

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

I wish it wasn't so hard... so close yet so far away

I wish it wasn't so hard to go through all of this without any close friends... I mean close in the sense of distance. I have some good friends out there, who mean a lot to me, some who will chat away with me for hours on the internet... I get so sick of being in this small town where I find it hard to meet any new friends. All of the people I would call real friends live in distant states. I really wish I had a real friend I could call up and just say "hey, lets go for a walk or hang out".

It's very tempting to pack my bags, hop in my truck, and head out to all the states my internet friends live in just to have a chance to hang out and laugh and have a good time in real life. I wish I hadn't lost my job and ended up in serious debt so that I could at least afford the opportunity to indulge myself and hit the road for a week or so, but I need every penny I have to get by, not to mention to try and pay for the treatment I need. Hehe, maybe I should buy some lottery tickets lol.

Saturday, February 14, 2004

Relationships and self-love- a key issue for me

Once again I'm having to admit to myself that relationships are one of the biggest sources of anxiety and depression for me, especially so when it's a relationship with a lover or potential lover. A lot of my own feelings of hopelessness about my future center around the fact that I don't believe that I will be able to find that perfect mate, or that I'll never get to the point where I am financially and emotionally independent enough to even start looking for a mate.

Memories of failures in past relationships continue to haunt me, and sometimes even worse, the successes in past relationships frighten me even more, making me feel that I had something wonderful in the past that will never happen again.

But, in reality, the bottom line is it's really about my love for myself. It is my own self-love that I need to affirm first before any real growth can happen. I need to develop a strong enough sense of self-love before I can confidently move forward, not just in a relationship with a potential lover, but in all aspects of my life, whether it be with my family, a job, or friendships. It's the cornerstone of my own mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

This isn't some shocking revelation that just occurred to me, I've known this for a few years now, at least.

I've avoided working on this issue for at least six months now, I think. I've avoided it because everytime I make an honest improvement in my own sense of self-love, I get knocked back down; and I've grown content to stay knocked down so I wouldn't have to be knocked down again. But if I stay down here, I'm as good as dead. I must make an effort to move forward on this again. My life depends on it. I had to admit to myself today that I've been waiting for someone else to be there first, to make the first move for me so that I had someone to work together with this on, I wasn't willing to work on my own self-love alone, at least not without a potential lover helping me out. I had to admit to myself today that if I don't start to work on this myself, and for myself, first, and continue to do so, then it will never happen.

It's not going to be easy. The negative inner dialog I have is already making all kinds of excuses for me, coming up with "What if?s" and "But"s. It'll be difficult to fight this negative inner dialog and continue to affirm my basic needs and move forward, but it's what I must do. Regardless if electro-shock is necessary, working on my own self-love is still crucial or all other attempts at helping myself through shock or medication or institutions will ultimately fail. I may need all of the above, and I am attempting to acknowledge and accept what I need and see it as a chance for growth, and at the risk of sounding "girly", see it is a chance for a flower to bloom.

Stopped taking Strattera

A few days ago I decided to stop taking Strattera. Strattera is the medication I started taking a week before for Attention Deficit Disorder. My doctor allowed me the freedom to make my own judgment on the dosaging of the medicine and the freedom to decide to stop taking it at will.

While I was on the medication, I was in severe depression the entire time. Because this was also the time I was severely depressed about the possibility of having electro-shock treatments or being institionalized, I couldn't be sure whether it was the medication that was the cause of the depression or my own concerns about my future.

So, I decided to stop taking the medication and seeing if things changed. Within a day, the majority of the depression was gone. But in its place, I became quite hyperactive; I couldn't sleep, my mind kept racing. I tried walking for a couple hours, but that didn't help me fall asleep. Eventually I finally did sleep, and when I woke up I was again severely depressed, but not quite as bad as before. I still felt hopeless, but not entirely so. I haven't gone back on the medicine yet, I don't think that I will, I'll continue to monitor myself.

Friday, February 13, 2004

Wake me up when this holiday is over

Today is the 13th and tomorrow is that holiday. Two days that bring up a lot of hurt feelings. I'm really angry and depressed and hope I can sleep through enough of this until the holiday is over, I don't want to be reminded of it.

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

The Palpitating Heart: Seeing Anxiety Differently, reviewed

Short answer: two thumbs way up!

Long answer: I must admit I approached this book with a negative attitude. I figured the book would be good, but not any benefit to me. The impression I had (before actually reading it... Never judge a book by it's cover has always been my motto, but nonetheless I fall victim to doing just that...) was that this book was just for people with panic attacks that manifest themselves with symptoms of signs of heart attack, high pulse rate or erratic rhythms, shortness of breath or high blood pressure. I've monitored myself for months while having panic attacks, and I can't remember once ever having my heartbeat or blood pressure ever being outside of normal, it's always been almost square in the middle of normal. So, I figured that I would have to plow through this book, knowing it's probably good for most people with panic attacks since most with panic attacks have those symptoms, but it wouldn't really apply to me.

So, with a bit of a sigh, I opened up the book.

WOW.

Page after page starting flying by. I couldn't stop turning the pages, I was almost immediately absorbed right into it. Every other page or so I had to stop myself from running out of the room, jumping into my truck and driving to each of my doctor's offices and thrusting the book into their hands and saying "Read this NOW!". I think all doctors should read this book. I say all doctors, because, just as eluded to in this book, we all approach a doctor differently because we all see our symptoms differently, and describe them differently, and how we describe them dictates how or what the doctors treat us with. I know this first hand from personal experience and from stories told by others. Some of us with anxiety will think we have schizophrenia, and will go to a doctor and will be treated as if we are schizophrenic. Others will go thinking they are having a heart attack and be treated for those symptoms, others will think they have a bowel disease and will be treated as such, etc. We aren't all doctors, and as this book says very well, we are ill equipped to really know what is going on and how to describe it, so very often going to see a doctor won't solve our problems, it will usually just create more questions. Therefore I think every doctor should read this book.

I also loved this book because of the author's writing style and the voice he used. It wasn't another book written by a clinician, or a book written by some almost "holier than thou" person who seemed to be preaching from atop a pillar. Richard wrote from an honest, open, humble heart.

This book not only tells a story many of us can relate to, but also gives some advice and approaches to learning first to properly evaluate what sensations we are feeling, and putting them into a proper context. A large portion of the book is devoted to comparing the sensations we feel compared to the foods we consume. Richard doesn't approach this as a "follow my diet" type of thing, but teaches the reader how to find out what foods are best for him/her.
Grab yourself a copy of this great book.

Sunday, February 08, 2004

Depression and depersonalization

My levels of depression and depersonalization are quite severe. When I try to sleep, I usually end up spending hours crying in bed. My mind is overwhelmed. Sometimes I walk the streets at night, seemingly blinded by my own depression and guilt, detached from the world around me, wallowing in shame. The reality of my situation and the few options or paths I can take in my future are what is driving much of this. I don't know yet for sure how the new medication is playing into all of this, I'll have to watch how I act over the next few weeks as I adjust the dosage before deciding whether it's helping or hurting.

Having to face the fact that whether my family and I elect for electro-shock treatments, institutions, personal self-help coaching, or just living with the status-quo and hoping that I'll eventually succeed on my own, all of these scenarios in the end require a lot of emotional and financial support of my family, and I feel I've already pushed the financial support they can offer to its limits. I'm not sure if it's just my own fears or not, but I'm not sure how much longer I can realistically ask for their emotional support.

I can't help but think that the good of the many out-weighs the good of the one, and that I should pack my things and just walk out of their lives and take the burden off of them, but I'm sure they would hear nothing of that. I do know that where ever I go, my feelings, my emotions, these awful thoughts and symptoms will go with me wherever I may go. In the end, it's up to me to fix what problems I have, and I don't know how much longer I can keep putting up any effort, each day it continually gets harder, with only a few brief moments each day of having a positive can-do attitude. I can't help but feeling that I'm in some way abusing my family by continuing to ask them to support me as they have for many years, knowing that even if we do some radical procedure there is little chance any of them will bring about both a significant and long-lasting relief for me.

I spent a long time trying to balance my budget today, it was very difficult keeping my mind focused. I forgot to pay some of my bills, I had a stack of mail sitting on my bookshelf that had been lying there for a month, and trying to keep my mind focused on the task was very difficult. My aunt asks me very nicely to help her with some very small chores, but my mind races so much that when someone asks me something it is like a distraction that makes me lose the fragile grip I had on whatever I was trying to do, further making me feel hopeless and frustrated. Making to-do lists still doesn't help me much, even when I set them up so that my computer displays a message and beeps at me telling me I need to take care of something.

I do get inspired, even if it is just for a short while, when some of you email me and open up yourselves and tell me that my sharing on this website has helped you. I really appreciate that, it does help. Some of you may not be able to email me because I am still having problems with my email provider such that certain people, depending on who their email provider is, can't send me email.

I feel like I want to go and apologize to all of the people who have meant something to my life, tell them I'm sorry that my mind and emotions are crumbling around me, sorry that I am falling into a black abyss when I once had so much potential.

My family often asks me "What more can we do to help you?" and I can't give them any answers. The only answer I can think to give them is to simply let go of me, to stop worrying about me and stop taking care of me, and focus on taking care of themselves instead.

I'm currently reading a good book written by a self-publishing author. When I am finished with it, I'll talk with him and seeing about posting a review of it here, so far I think it's a book every doctor should read. If you're curious, you can find out more information in my links section or just follow this link: Reading Your Body

I finally received my copy of the movie "Awakenings" , and I cried a few times while watching it. It did inspire me for a while, inspire me to help others who are facing the same troubles as I am. It is a good movie starring Robin Williams and Robert Deniro, Williams plays a doctor who tries to help patients with extreme Parkinson's disease awaken from their coma-like states, and is based on a true story.

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Catching up

Well, I thought I'd post a lengthy post catching up what's happened over the past week.

This past weekend I was having severe depression. I think it's been over a week since I showered and I think I only put on a fresh pair of clothes once during that week. Depression born mostly out of frustration and hopelessness about the future. I had another panic attack that left me curled up in the fetal position in the closet, and many others having me curled up in bed or the corner. And smoking a lot. Monday was horrible, I had trouble getting my Xanax refilled, I spent almost a whole day without taking Xanax because I was out of it, which isn't a good thing when one is taking 8mg of it daily. So, I ended up spending a long time sitting in rush hour traffic in the pouring rain having panic attacks and withdrawal symptoms driving between my doctor's office and the pharmacy trying to get things sorted out.

I felt a little better after distracting myself playing games and such. I met with my therapist and then my psychiatrist yesterday. I went in basically to tell them that I would like to discontinue my therapy due to the fact that I can't keep spending money on something that is not helping me, even though I have a high respect for my therapist and psychiatrist. My therapist agreed, in fact he said he was going to tell me the same thing because he felt there was nothing more he could offer me in all honesty.

On the advice of my aunt, I asked them both the same question: "What would you do as a next step if I was your son, given my history?" My therapist replied that he would try to find some way to institionalize myself, but it would be hard because it is very expensive, and being admitted to an institution based on an anxiety disorder is unlikely, they are usually only willing to admit someone if they are convinced one is going to commit suicide.

My psychiatrist replied that he would use ECT, commonly known as electro-shock therapy, as a next step. I could talk for hours about the pros and cons of ECT. I've studied electronics, as well as psychology, neuroscience, and anatomy in college, read literature biased both pro and con for the use of ECT, and my opinion about the use of ECT has changed somewhat in the past year. I still think, based on what I know of the brain and electronics, that it is unlikely to be effective unless the voltage applied is high enough to actually burn up some of the neurons. I used to be stead-fast against the use of ECT, but I am now desperate and, to be honest, almost eager to give it a shot, because frankly each day suicide sounds more like the best solution.

I scheduled a joint meeting between myself, my father (possibly my aunt), my psychiatrist and my therapist next month to discuss what options we have left.

In the meantime, I'm going to spend the next week decreasing my dosage of Lamictal, and at the end of the week I'll be completely off of it.

I spent some time with my psychiatrist urging him to think outside the box. He gave me some samples of Strattera, a medication for Attention Deficit Disorder that works on norepinephrine. I've scored pretty high on written test for ADD, and my childhood history and observations of myself and some others show that I may very well have ADD. My psychiatrist isn't very convinced that I have ADD and was against the use of ADD medications because they can make panic attacks much worse; I told him that I've survived some pretty serious panic attacks, and I'm willing to take that risk on the off chance that this medication may work better than the 18 other medications I've tried so far.