Aa
Old problems - need help
I am a 50 year old woman who feels like the tracks of the past keep running in her head, and I get depressed. My retired GP told me over a year ago that most of my depression and anxiety is situational. He knew my life. I now feel worried about that I could go over the edge and ruin my children's good reputations. I come from a family where mental health is treated like 'you are a loser'. My husband is with me all the way. We had our problems, but he will help me. This is what feels good now. Due to an accident my mornings are slow till afternoon. I mostly due email work and my husbands' bookkeeping. If I'm not going to work, I like to take ativan. Now, 1mg. is not strong enough and sometimes it works well with benadryl. I tried effexor RX , celexa, then cipralex. All on and off. Effexor RX for 1 year 3 years ago. I exercise and am a fitness instructor. What can I take to stop the past tracks from running in my head, make me forget the past, be able to read (effexor RX) almost ruined 2 recertifications for me due to foggy brain. I couldn't calcualate anything, and life the black clouds of depression. I feel like I'm suffering all the time. SSRI's seem to make me only feel sick.
Thank you for all of your good help. I really appreciate it.
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
The basic advice you received is good advice..I would strongly advise you to seek psychotherapy...it is the only way to diminish the power of the past to hold you slavery. It is hard wrok, but it can be done, and can bring you permanent relief...medications only suppress, that don't give you the insight and the new perspective necessary to keep you anchored in the reality of today.
My point of posting before was to add that propanolol (I've forgotten the name now, it's a beta-blocker) is thought to be able to reduce anxiety associated with events.
I'm not sure if this is new research. It sounds a little like a treatment for fear of public speaking.
The research was done by associating electric shocks with spiders.
Anxiety responses were said to be lower in people who took this medication. And that response was still effective 24+ hours later.
J
I'm not sure if this is new research. It sounds a little like a treatment for fear of public speaking.
The research was done by associating electric shocks with spiders.
Anxiety responses were said to be lower in people who took this medication. And that response was still effective 24+ hours later.
J
As you believe your now retired GP knew your life I expect you would be able to accept his evaluation of your situation.
Was it your accident that caused the anxiety and depression?
I would work on the situational factors you had previously discussed with your doctor.
If these are what are keeping you stuck then resolving them will help.
J
Was it your accident that caused the anxiety and depression?
I would work on the situational factors you had previously discussed with your doctor.
If these are what are keeping you stuck then resolving them will help.
J
Unfortunitly we can't forget our pasts..or fortunitly depending on who your talking to:)
But I will say the past is good for one thing I know of and that's discovering patterns. Patterns that have plkayed out in the past that may be repeating without someone realizing.
If you feel mesications make you too foggy then as J said perhaps you need to talk about a lower dose or get into a deeper talk-therapy, or if your not in therapy find one that you feek you can trust and open up to.
Meds are usually a temporary support while your working on issues. So perhaps taling about what's happening could help lower your feelings that you need a medication to keep you on track and turn the tape recorder off that seems to be replaying all your worries and stresses everyday.
You mention that your afraid to ruin your childrens reputation..there's a worry right there. Your fear that what your dealing with will have some effect on how people see your children because of teh way you were brought up to see mental illness. But today, although were not there entirely yet, things have changed. And having a therapist, psychiatrist is more of a norm now for many people. And when mentioned most people just shrug it off because they too have a therapist or have taken an AD or have alot of worries themselves.
Mental illness is not seen as it was even 10 years ago. Much advocacy has been done to change the stigma of mental illness and alot of education given to communities.
Were also living in hard times, and many many people are turning to professionals for extra help because of stress, depression and anxiety.
Your not alone in what your going through. And you can make progress to where you would like to be. But it's important you seek out therapy and perhaps along side of it a psychiatrist who can bettter understand what your needs are and what hasn't worked for you in the past.
General practitioners can prescribe psychotropics but they're not trained in the speciality of mental health as psychiatrists are. Or do you see a psychiatrist and I'm miss understanding?
But one thing does confuse me. You say ativan at 1mg works well, and even sometimes isn't enough. But ativan is a narcotic anti-anxiety which can make you feel a little fuzzy. And certainly all teh other medications are different. I'm just wondering why ativan even with benedryl doesn't seem to interfere with your ability to concentrate but all other meds do. Maybe a different class of meds all together.
But the ley is to be able to talk to someone. Medication can't fix anything. In most cases it's a temporary solution until someone can get some help from a therapist and figure out through talking what may be going on and how to take steps to fix it.
Those are just my thoughts. I just really don't believe a general practitioner however well they know you, is going to be able to help you make headway and progress when it comes to what your dealing with right now. I certainly understand your respect for your GP and the comfortablity of it all. But therapists and psychiatrists are specifically trained and educated to be able to help and help find the best options for you. They know more than GP's about psychotropic meds and what may work well for you at this point.
But as I said above. No med can magically change anything. Change takes work, talking and digging deep into yourself. Maybe finding oatterns and learning how to stop them and cope with them, even without meds at some point.
I wish you very well,
Amph
But I will say the past is good for one thing I know of and that's discovering patterns. Patterns that have plkayed out in the past that may be repeating without someone realizing.
If you feel mesications make you too foggy then as J said perhaps you need to talk about a lower dose or get into a deeper talk-therapy, or if your not in therapy find one that you feek you can trust and open up to.
Meds are usually a temporary support while your working on issues. So perhaps taling about what's happening could help lower your feelings that you need a medication to keep you on track and turn the tape recorder off that seems to be replaying all your worries and stresses everyday.
You mention that your afraid to ruin your childrens reputation..there's a worry right there. Your fear that what your dealing with will have some effect on how people see your children because of teh way you were brought up to see mental illness. But today, although were not there entirely yet, things have changed. And having a therapist, psychiatrist is more of a norm now for many people. And when mentioned most people just shrug it off because they too have a therapist or have taken an AD or have alot of worries themselves.
Mental illness is not seen as it was even 10 years ago. Much advocacy has been done to change the stigma of mental illness and alot of education given to communities.
Were also living in hard times, and many many people are turning to professionals for extra help because of stress, depression and anxiety.
Your not alone in what your going through. And you can make progress to where you would like to be. But it's important you seek out therapy and perhaps along side of it a psychiatrist who can bettter understand what your needs are and what hasn't worked for you in the past.
General practitioners can prescribe psychotropics but they're not trained in the speciality of mental health as psychiatrists are. Or do you see a psychiatrist and I'm miss understanding?
But one thing does confuse me. You say ativan at 1mg works well, and even sometimes isn't enough. But ativan is a narcotic anti-anxiety which can make you feel a little fuzzy. And certainly all teh other medications are different. I'm just wondering why ativan even with benedryl doesn't seem to interfere with your ability to concentrate but all other meds do. Maybe a different class of meds all together.
But the ley is to be able to talk to someone. Medication can't fix anything. In most cases it's a temporary solution until someone can get some help from a therapist and figure out through talking what may be going on and how to take steps to fix it.
Those are just my thoughts. I just really don't believe a general practitioner however well they know you, is going to be able to help you make headway and progress when it comes to what your dealing with right now. I certainly understand your respect for your GP and the comfortablity of it all. But therapists and psychiatrists are specifically trained and educated to be able to help and help find the best options for you. They know more than GP's about psychotropic meds and what may work well for you at this point.
But as I said above. No med can magically change anything. Change takes work, talking and digging deep into yourself. Maybe finding oatterns and learning how to stop them and cope with them, even without meds at some point.
I wish you very well,
Amph
Perhaps if medication is indicated then your doctor could look at a lower dosage (or possibly they would say it's not working and opt to increase it), or a different class of medication.
My personal preference is for therapy and lifestyle changes.
I don't think we ever forget our pasts. I think it is helpful to work through the issues that keep us stuck there.
I always wondered if we could just draw a line in the sand so to speak and move on without looking back. I don't think this is usually that effective as there will always be something that will trigger us to re-visit our past. Time makes a little difference but only because more memories are being created and more distance is being established between the present and that past.
I have found that ruminating on the past always leaves me feeling anxious and depressed. I think a large part is about accepting our past, we can't change it, and move on.
Working on our own self-esteem can help too. Not feeling ashamed or embarrassed about things we've said and done and for being us. Why should we constantly apologize for being who we are? We did the best we could with what we had at the time.
There are some self-help programs that are said to help with negative thought patterns. NLP or neural (neuro?) linguistic programming. Here I think they aim to interrupt memories, thoughts, etc so that we can't replay them. A bit like scratching a record or disc.
I personally think working through the issues with a therapist is the best solution.
My family are not very understanding of mental illness either. I think this just means that they have issues themselves. Why else would they view mental health issues as threatening? My mother in particular saw my mh issues as affecting her social status and also as a personal attack on her parenting skills.
The more your fear harming your children the more likely you will. What we fear we seem to have a tendency of creating.
You need to take responsibility for your health now so that it doesn't impact so severely on your children and also if anything does happen then they need to be accepting of that.
It's great that you do have some support.
I think think the solution to changing our past is to change our behavior.
"If you continue to do what you do, you'll continue to get what you've always got". Or something like that.
Best wishes
J
My personal preference is for therapy and lifestyle changes.
I don't think we ever forget our pasts. I think it is helpful to work through the issues that keep us stuck there.
I always wondered if we could just draw a line in the sand so to speak and move on without looking back. I don't think this is usually that effective as there will always be something that will trigger us to re-visit our past. Time makes a little difference but only because more memories are being created and more distance is being established between the present and that past.
I have found that ruminating on the past always leaves me feeling anxious and depressed. I think a large part is about accepting our past, we can't change it, and move on.
Working on our own self-esteem can help too. Not feeling ashamed or embarrassed about things we've said and done and for being us. Why should we constantly apologize for being who we are? We did the best we could with what we had at the time.
There are some self-help programs that are said to help with negative thought patterns. NLP or neural (neuro?) linguistic programming. Here I think they aim to interrupt memories, thoughts, etc so that we can't replay them. A bit like scratching a record or disc.
I personally think working through the issues with a therapist is the best solution.
My family are not very understanding of mental illness either. I think this just means that they have issues themselves. Why else would they view mental health issues as threatening? My mother in particular saw my mh issues as affecting her social status and also as a personal attack on her parenting skills.
The more your fear harming your children the more likely you will. What we fear we seem to have a tendency of creating.
You need to take responsibility for your health now so that it doesn't impact so severely on your children and also if anything does happen then they need to be accepting of that.
It's great that you do have some support.
I think think the solution to changing our past is to change our behavior.
"If you continue to do what you do, you'll continue to get what you've always got". Or something like that.
Best wishes
J
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