A look at Depression

This is a post from a friend who recently decided to try the antidepressant Lexapro.
She describes some really interesting emotions that I've been trying to put into words for myself since becoming a mother.

The parenting itself is everything I dreamed it would be, but occasionally the hormone changes toss me through a loop. I've spent 96% of my life being ecstatically happy. Now I find myself in a new phase of life. Hormone shifts in my body with pregnancy, nursing and weaning have at times, left me feeling so confused and out of control of my own body, I can't always access the happiness I want to feel. Happiness that once came to me with very little effort.

Yes, there are something like 3 million people on medication in the world at this time, but since reading this post I've realized that I'm not alone with my specific thoughts and feelings on the subject. This point of view comes at the discussion from a prospective of what we are feeling the moment we chose to seek for help. As we constantly analyze ourselves and determine what we need and how to seek it. 

It is that shifting moment of realization that we are not fulfilled, we are not hopeless we are not going to continue to exist this way! The moment when you say "I will dedicate myself to a new cause" - of finding the happiness I was created and intended to experience.

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Carly's post :

When you're depressed, you take only what comes to you, and let people have whatever they want from you.

This is because you don't care. You care enough to be alive and appear functional but that's about it. It's like those people aren't real and you aren't real. With that feeling you tend to become self absorbed, but not care about yourself. Because your emotions only extend to the bare minimum.

Depression works like cancer. Before a person gets cancer, they have the choice to live either a healthy or unhealthy life style. If you live healthy, you're much less likely to get cancer even though it's no guarantee. The extent you can blame getting cancer on other sources depends on your environment. Perhaps pollution could cause it. Or if someone locks you in a cage too small to exercise and feeds you crappy food, you certainly have limitations on choosing a healthy life style.

Depression is the same way in that you can choose positive thoughts, but depending on your environment, you have limitations to accessing positive beliefs. I have had some level of depression for the past five years. I blame people's inconsiderateness, high school, and myself. By the time I was able to think positively, all I had left was my logic. I had positive beliefs, but they didn't matter because I couldn't feel them. Somewhere along the line I had already developed "cancer" (depression as a disease, not a normal emotional reaction) and once you have it, you have it. A healthy life style can't change the fact you have cancer. Once depression starts, it spreads without you asking it to.

So, once you've reclaimed positive thoughts and you still don't feel better... You begin to obsess about your past and your future, because the present never gets any better. You either ignore current plans to schedule your happiness in your future goals, hoping that something will magically cure you... or you pick at the past. You figure out how you can gain closure on situations, make someone understand something they did to you, or have others forgive you. Closure is good to have and can help people heal ties with each other, your past is always an important part of who you are today, and planning your future is good too, but picking at these things is irrelevant to who you are now (Your past is like a stage. You may have been a tadpole once, and your past is still part of you because you remember how to swim from being a tadpole... but now that your a frog you swim in a different way... It's not necessary to remember to swim using a long wavy tail because you don't have one anymore.) I've learned to appreciate and use the past... not regret.

I began to understand this by myself, but after a lot of hesitance, I've finally decided to try Lexapro... which helped me fully believe the positive thoughts that I was already logically aware of. Lexapro is like my chemotherapy (On the plus side, I've never felt less socially anxious in my life. I can comfortably look into people's eyes and not feel nervous or guilty for some irrational, unidentifiable reason.). It almost feels like I'm not even taking a medicine, but I still hope to go into remission and try to get off the medication this summer to see if I feel happy without it.

The only negatives is if I really think about it, I can tell my emotions aren't as pure. However, I'm able to sustain emotions now. My emotions may have been more pure before, but they were like sparks that would just flicker away, whether it was sadness or happiness. Antidepressant truly means antidepressant, not happy pill. I'm not happier because the pill itself makes me happy. I'm happier because I can feel my emotions, and because I can do that, I can choose happiness. It works like a tranquilizer... when you feel sad, you still can feel sad, but you can only drop to a certain point before the medicine stops you. This kind of works the same way with happiness. Yet despite it's tranquilizing effects, I have more energy. I feel motivated and more alert. It's nice.

I think medication is great for those who really do have depression and those who it really works for. I know other people who have had good experiences on medicine and others who have had it horrible. It just depends on the person and their body... If possible, I only think it should be used like a crutch... something you only need until you heal. Or like a Tylenol. It helps you get rid of a headache, but it also covers the source of the problem. If you only have a headache for a fever, why not pop a pill? But if the headaches are caused by some deeper problem, you need to get the real problem checked out medically instead of just covering it up. That's why medicine is usually recommended in conjunction with therapy.

Anyway, we'll see what happens when I get off it, and hope this post is of some help to anyone who is either depressed or unsure on their opinions about depression and antidepressants.

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I recently read a blog quote from a woman named NieNie who was severely burned in an airplane accident,

NieNie said "I am not my body"

This has awakened me to another reminder that I am a spirit from God, sent here to have a body and gain different experiences that will help me grow. My body is temporary, but my spirit is eternal.


I've never tried antidepressants, I'm not sure I'll ever go that route. 1) My spurts of depression don't seem to last longer than 6 months at a time. 2) I'm scared to death of them. 3) I've learned with super hard work my feelings can be replaced with new and better ones.
The things that have worked for me have been:

• Prayer
• Meditation
• Consistent exercise
• Asking the Lord to forgive me often
  
• Reading scriptures
• Filling my life with wholesome things to look at and read
• Going to bed at a consistent time (even if it means taking Melatonin every night to get there)

With that being said - I hope to publish deeper thoughts about these feelings when my next downer comes. I think it will give us all some tools to analyze and hopefully bring into prospective that these things are real, but they can also be controlled with dedication, love for yourself and persistence.

Frankly, my friend - you deserve the best. The Lord wants the best for you.
My prayers are always with those of us who feel this way.