When You Just Ain’t Right
You know, I ain’t right. And I don’t really know where first to turn to try and find out why not. All I know for sure is that the last several years (let’s review: Got married, new husband went into full-blown manic episodes, no one knew what was going on, but he was disappearing for days on end, engaging in substance abuse, and emptying our bank account. Then I got pregnant, and Husband went floridly manic again, got hospitalized against his will, was released to rehab, got ninny psychiatrist who totally mismanaged his treatment for bipolar disorder, stayed a month in a rehab facility then moved into an apartment, because I could not have him come home just then. Later, he moved back home, we had our beautiful daughter, and before you could say “relapse,” he disappeared when she was just 4 days old. Manic episodes continued until spring when he finally went off the deep end and wound up forcibly hospitalized again, this time landing in a GOOD psychiatric facility and securing a GOOD doctor who prescribed a GOOD treatment and had him participate in a GOOD outpatient rehab program, the result of which has been sobriety and relative stability with NO manic episodes since May of 2004) have been hard, emotionally, and then the last three years (let’s review: My father suddenly and tragically died, ripping a hole out of my very heart and changing the fabric of WHO I AM, I miraculously got pregnant for the second time, and then seven weeks later lost that precious baby to a miscarriage…grief compounded by grief) have been…tragic, desperate, and then this past year since the hysterectomy has just been bizarre. I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety, grief over the definitive end of my childbearing potential, which seem to come and go whimsically, and catch me off-guard. I took one anti-depressant after another over these years, and suffered side effects galore without ever really feeling significantly better. Anti-anxiety meds (read: benzos) helped me through some tough spots, and then I’d go several months without any before needing them again.
The only sure thing is that my moods and anxiety/panic attacks always corresponded with something going on externally. You know, like lying awake at 4:00 AM wondering where my husband was, or lying awake sobbing for my lost child, or lying awake crying into my pillow because I NEED MY DADDY BACK. In other words, if things were going okay, I was fine. But somewhere along the line, especially since Dad died, something had gone KABLOOEY with the coping mechanisms that had served me for the first 35 years of my life. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around this, that some external event(s) could occur that could trigger a weakness, a malfunction, in my brain.
One day this spring, while I was discussing this with a wonderful friend–a friend who just happens to have been, for the last few years, a MUCH better friend to me than I’ve been to her, or to anyone else–who happens to be a doctor of pharmacy, not to mention having much personal experience with clinical depression and the meds that go along with it. I listed to her all the anti-depressants I’d tried, told her how none of them had worked, and asked her, “What (meaning what drug) can I try next?” She looked at me, and after just a moment’s consideration, said, “You know, Belinda, even though you’re depressed, you may not have an actual chemical imbalance. I mean, you’ve been through some pretty horrible, awful stuff, just year after year recently, and you have every right to feel despondent without it meaning that your brain is all wonky…like mine.” And then she laughed. And I saw a light. And I loved her like she was part of me, because she got it. And then she told me the hard part.
She said, “Sometimes, you can’t even live life ‘one day at a time.’ Sometimes, you have to live it in 30-minute increments. You can do almost anything for half an hour, no matter how badly you don’t want to. So on days when I just want to stay in bed with the blinds drawn, I make a deal with myself to go out to the barn and groom one horse. By the time that’s done, I might look over at YOUR horse” (she’s been keeping Misha for me for way longer than I meant for her to) “and decide that his mane needs detangling, so I brush Misha’s mane. Then I might want to clip his bridle path, and before you know it, I’ve spent half the day out in the sunshine, DOING something, instead of wallowing.”
Just when I had decided that Kerri was the most brilliant, insightful woman on the face of the planet, she confessed to having developed this coping mechanism after hearing a version of it in the film, “About A Boy.” She said, “Yep. 10 years of therapy and I finally learn something useful from a Hugh Grant monologue in a movie. Not the book–the MOVIE.”
She IS brilliant, my friend, and she’s definitely onto something. I can’t help but think that, since no AD has helped me feel better–not really–that whatever is wrong with my brain, it’s not something that an AD can “fix.” I’ve been off the most recent AD, Wellbutrin, since early March, with no noticeable effect at all. I don’t feel better, I don’t feel worse. Just the same. The anxiety symptoms have abated (I’m not having falling-down panic-attacks in Wal-Mart any more), but are still present to some degree, in proportion to what’s going on in my life. Every once in a while, I suddenly get HOT all over, start sweating from head to toe, my nose runs like a faucet, my heart pounds, and I just need to be HOME.
Something is particularly difficult about mornings, about just getting out the door. Once I’m out, I’m pretty good for a few hours, but my calm seems to have a shelf-life, and I need to get back home in the afternoon. I like to plan things pretty far in advance, but I have trouble committing to things in advance. Anti-anxiety meds help. I’m not wild about how they make me feel, i.e. slightly dopey, but I do use them when I need them.
And then there’s the hormone angle, which I don’t even know for sure how to approach. Something has GOT to be going on there, since the weirdness has escalated by, um, a bunch, since my hysterectomy last fall. When I first came out of surgery, on estrogen deprivation, I literally felt, for the first and only time in my life, that I had lost my mind. It’s like nothing I can describe–the misery, despair, agony, anxiety–the certainty that it’s never going to be better, ever. After a couple of weeks, I was able to start estrogen replacement therapy, and it was like a miracle…at least to a point. It made the extreme crazy go away, but like I said at the beginning of this post, I still ain’t quite right. But then, I’ve never had the dosage checked or adjusted, so there’s a thought…
And I can’t help but think that a large part of what keeps me “down” and anxious is the disarray of my lifestyle–I keep Bella clean, fed, loved, dressed well, entertained, cared for…and that’s almost (but not quite) the limit of my motivation…and THAT is my motivation for this effort. I don’t know yet if it will work, but I know that to have peace and calm, I must first have order. I need it, Bella needs it, Alex needs it. And I need to provide it. I’m on my way, I hope…the house is still a mess, but I’ve done certain chores more regularly this week, and my family has had a hot, homemade, nutritious meal on the table every night this week, with NO takeout. That’s got to be a start. And Alex, bless his ever-loving-heart, cleaned the living room today, which lifted my mood unbelievably.
I’d love to hear from anyone who’s been through, or is going through anything similar, especially from the hysterectomy angle. Or not. Just whatever. Can you just have bad things happen to you and suffer a shift in actual brain function? (Yes, these are questions for my shrink, but my next appointment’s a couple weeks off. Humor me.)
Adapted and significantly augmented from a nearly simultaneous post at www.ninjapoodles.com
September 30th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Yes, you can ABSOLUTELY suffer a shift in brain function just by living through successive stressful events. I’m not a doctor, I have just spent a huge amount of time reading about why/ how people become depressed. Your friend Kerri can tell us maybe if there’s much truth to this. Many studies show that enduring significant stress over long periods of time actually physically changes your brain. It causes your brain to form different connections and, therefore, creates new patterns of thought. Those patterns are physical, not a personal weakness, and lead to anxiety, depression, self-doubt, worst-case scenario thinking, etc…
Does that make sense? Do you think this may hold some truth for you?
September 30th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Cait–YES, and thank you! This is precisely what I’m feeling instinctively, but I just didn’t know if it had any validity in fact. The last 8 years of my life have just been one horrific event after another (with enormous blessings, like my daughter, sprinkled in, of course), and I feel like it’s changed who I am.
Lots of times, when I’m moping around, I have the conscious thought, “I remember being happy.” Because I WAS happy, almost 100% of my life! This state of being is foreign to me.
September 30th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
I think (and I am not a medical doctor nor do I play one one TV) that while a massive event or chain of events can change brain function temporarily, it’s the pattern that we get into after that that really changes us. I think our brains are elastic, and that the pattern has to be reinforced to really settle in and change our body chemistry.
I do wish that there was more study done on the effect of hormones in women and brain chemistry. Not that I want the dismissive mentality of “oh, she’s just on the rag” to come back, but because I think that if we understood our relationship to our hormonal flux better, both monthly and over our decades of life, that we’d manage better.
Like your friend said, sometimes it’s those 30 minutes at a time, pushing to do just something, ANYTHING for 30 minutes rather than wallow, because usually that 30 minutes leads to doing something else, and something else.
I just might take 30 minutes and have me a Chocolate Cake Emergency
October 1st, 2007 at 1:46 am
I lost an ovary and a fallopian tube about a year ago during a rough pregnancy. And I was left with the wicked ovary…or so I believe. I now have PMS 3 weeks a month and normalcy almost for a full week a month. A panic disorder survivor for 25 years now. And yes hormones out of balance enhance all things good and terrifying. My new theory is that I am Estrogen dominant and all those exoestrogens out there are causing a surge of insanity that is quite difficult to control…google exoestrogens and estrogen dominance…It is true that some women I know have claimed miracles once their hormones were balanced by mindful patient gynecologists. And lo and behold the mental health balanced in suit. See your OBGYN it may be why you get HOT and panicky…and are becoming far more agoraphobic.
October 1st, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Belinda, thank you for your honesty and sharing your struggles with us. I am not a doctor but I have dealt with some of these same issues for most of my adult life and maybe I can offer some thoughts.
As a young adult I found that I suffered from PMS much more than my peers. I turned into a different person. I felt like the “real” me was easy-going, cheerful and funny. But this emotional, depressed monster would overtake me and I could do nothing to stop it. I can remember as a freshman in college locking myself in the bathroom, curled up on the floor, sobbing for HOURS. My roommates thought I was nuts and no one knew what to do. The bathroom scenario was a regular event for me. At the time, I was 18 and naive and I didn’t make the connection with my menstrual cycle. I just thought I missed my high school boyfriend.
By the time I was 25 I started making the connection with my cycle. I changed birth control pills and it all got worse. It was on a tricyclic (I think that’s what it was called) and within a DAY of taking the 3rd color pill in the pack I completely lost it. I changed pills and it got better, but never got to what I would call a “normal” level of PMS. I ended up needing anti-depressants/anti-anxieties to do the final balancing.
All this to say that YES, hormones ABSOLUTELY can mess with your head and getting them leveled out can help TREMENDOUSLY. I am 41 now and today I am finally the “real” me that I knew was always in there. It took lots of trial and error with different birth control pills and different ADs and AAs but I DID finally get there.
My advice would be to attack this from both angles. Get some hormonal help first and then use ADs or AAs to do any final tweaking, if needed. TRUST YOUR GUT. You know you don’t feel right so keep working at it. Get your hormone levels checked. Find the right level. There is hope, but you need to find a GOOD doc who does FOLLOW-UP. My biggest pet peeve are docs to put you on a med and send you on your way, never having you come back to check in and do tweaking if needed. I have a WONDERFUL doc now that has me come in every 3 months to check in and do tweaks if needed. Over all these years what I’ve learned is that periodic tweaks have been needed as I age and things change in my life. You may or may not be the same way, but if you don’t feel quite right then you need tweaking.
Lastly, for a long time I questioned whether my moods were due to life circumstances or to a brain imbalance. How do you know? For me the measuring stick has become this – is my reaction to this event within the realm of normal or is it over the top? What I found was that my “episodes” didn’t happen for no reason, they were always triggered by a stressful or upsetting event. The problem was, my reaction to the event was usally much more extreme than what the situation warranted. Is it upsetting to do laundry and have a unique and irreplacable garment ruined by red dye that bled off of another garment? Of course it is. But does it warrant a complete meltdown of hysterical sobs and locking onself in the closet? Uh, no. So even though you have had horrible things happen to you in the last several years, if your reaction is overly extreme OR you are unable to pull yourself out of the depths after an reasonable amount of time then you do need help. And that is absolutely okay.
I hope this helps. Whenever I read this blog my heart goes out to those who are struggling. Oh how I understand! I have been there and for so long! But there is light at the end of the tunnel. You just have to persevere and keep tweaking tweaking tweaking. You can be yourself again – you really can!!!
Susan
http://lemonmargaritas.com
October 2nd, 2007 at 10:52 am
Thankyou for a great post. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou. From someone going through some changes too:
On the childbearing years: I recently learned that I am not advised to become prg. again. (I was working on a one to two year plan toward getting prg again, so this was VERY HEAVY news). I found out I would be in the high risk category from the heart doctor – over 35, high blood pressure recently discovered, and that the medication for the blood pressure I have to take is incompatible with prg. Just started on the blood pressure medicine 3 days ago, and I wish I had started it sooner. It takes about 4 weeks for it to kick in, so I am still waiting for it to kick in. Hormones: on and off for Policistic ovaries for so many years. (Now I am currently thinking no more of them, like you are thinking about the depression drugs).
What I think of what I´ve been going through: I don´t see any tragedy that led me to this stage in life where my heart just goes 300 miles an hour and the blood pressure sky-high everytime I hear something stressfull that should be considered utterly “daily”. So sometimes there is no need of the “major” stress “event”, see? I just had enough of the minor things.
I had been feeling weird, on and off, for maybe an year, and now I am feeling this thing about pounding heart everyday more than two times a day. So, what I am doing (some started a month ago, some two days ago, so no guarantees here):
– taking the advice one thing at a time. The same thing I keep teeling my 10 year old son. I like your advice on the 30-minutes increment. This is good stuff.
– paying attention to my breathing and NOTHING ELSE when I start to panick if I have the opportunity – meaning, if I am home. (And sometimes I don´t have the opportunity,I am at work, driving, whatever, and sure, then the damn attack will have to subside for itself and I keep remembering that it DOES, and so it does). This makes me stop thinking about the reason for panicking (unless, of course, I am panicking about breathlessness, but this hasn´t happened after the pneumologist advised me there was nothing wrong with my lungs)
– going to the doctors for check-up. Included: dentist, pneumologist, alergist, gynecologist. I am fed up with psychological analysis. I spent two years doing it before this recent crisis and was not able to see all this me blowing up coming along the line. In some sense I decided it was time I allowed myself to see myself with my own eyes without the filter on the analysis. I had to start feeling responsible for myself again, and the analysis was not making it happen. I was just going there throwing all the stuff out and was doing nothing about me, only about the kids (good for them, but I don´t need to feel myself more responsible for them. I already feel this too much, and do a lot for/with them).
– I am an avid reader. I am not reading books again about depressive events. And I do have a lot of them on my shelves, so they will just have to sit there for the time-being (until I can face them again, maybe in another life). I just stopped reading “Falling Man”, from DonDelillo, about 0911. I read instead “A Three Dog Life” by Abigahil Thomas – though the events in her life are sad, she describes them in a positive point of view (the book is great, and she is always doing this, bringing the best out from major life events). I wish I was like her.
– Trying to know who I am, not who I should be. Good daughter, perfect mother, etc. I am just who I am, and if someone does not like it, I can´t even say I am sorry truthfully, and that is it. Still, I am facing this process of finding out who I am very fluid – I grew up thinking I would grow up to be one defined person, and now I see this is not true – I am in constant change. But maybe we all are. Allowing myself space for this fluidity has been hard but liberating.
– Taking positive advice, not negative. Trying to formulate things I want to do, (instead of those I don´t); thinking that most of the things that afflict me are totally OUT OF MY CONTROL, so not worth my worrying. Worry about the things I do have control and DO SOMETHING about it. Taking myself to the doctor, dentist, etc included (I hate doing it for myself – I start imagining worst case scenarios – but I do take the kids – despite imagining worst case scenarios too). I found out that taking myself to the doctor is indeed liberating, since I stop worrying after I have a diagnosis (high blood pressure, asthma, etc). I do feel ridiculous asking the worst-case scenario questions for myself, but I DO IT ANYWAY. Even though I feel ridiculous at the time I ask, I feel relieved after that. And that is who I am. Who I am now. And tommorrow I will find out who I will be for the day.
– I can´t avoid some people. Some are family. So now whenever I receive a full acount of what is going wrong on one of this person´s life, I say that everything in mine IS GREAT. FULLY GREAT. This person just leaves right away. And the other one – family – who keeps giving me advice on the phone and doing nothing on sharing time with me (just advice or her interests, never mine), I keep asking back about her, very incisevely (what about your blood pressure? When was the last time you took it? But aren´t you supposed to be taking your hormones?).
– Talking to my friends. Letting them know who I am. Listening to their advice. And sorting out those who are indeed my friends and those who have nothing more in common with me, just with the “perfect” that is no longer there.
– Devising possibilities: life without another baby in the future (how it could be GOOD); life with an adopted kid (how it could be GOOD too); moving abroad once again (POSITIVE points). No negative anymore. I am pondering the positives (this is very hard, my brain is a toddler learning the skills to do this).
– Events that are unavoidable and set me off: (someone here at the office has a very young child in the hospital for hospitalar pneumonia, the child was in very bad condition but now is doing better): keep reminding myself that I am a living creature, and that all living creatures share their burden with one another. This is part of life, this sharing, nothing that is special about my condition. And that right now I can´t listen to many details because otherwise I would be the one needing help. Saying this aloud to this person, though a part of me thinks this is unfair with him. And knowing that this child´s life and the anguish felt by her family is out of my control too.
Tanks for a great blog. AND THANKS FOR NOTICING POSITIVE POINTS. We all need this. I do for sure.
Luciana
October 2nd, 2007 at 6:52 pm
I love your readers and I’m thinking of you. I don’t have much other than that to add.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Thank you for sharing this. I knew things had been bad at one time, but I had no idea.
I love ya to bits sweetie & you know I am always here to listen.
hugs