Hello everyone.
I am new to this forum and have been labelled as "bipolar II." For seven years I have taken the various meds the doctors prescribed, all of which eventually stopped working. I wonder why this happens, to begin with. Does brain chemistry rebalance over time to reestablish the older pattern? If so, then why? The body is generally very "wise" in functioning; if this is so, then why might we need this rebalance?
Second, after my seven years' experience with psych drugs, the ones I took in any case did nothing to heal or cure or even alleviate my "illness." They masked it, and sometimes have made the pain easier to handle - on the surface - but on deeper levels the pain was always there. The drugs just made me incapable of focussing my mind, concentrating, remembering, so I could not so clearly perceive and thus document and note my emotional condition to myself and others.
Recently, partly because I developed seizures as a result of one of the most recent medications, I took myself off all meds. At this point, I would rather have the pain of severe depression in full force rather than return to the twilight life of the person I used to be on psych meds. I have made a pact with myself that I will not succumb to this pain, but do my utmost to work with it, not against it, and see where this takes me.
It occurs to me that some of us with co-called "psychiatric disorders" may be the ones who perceive life most clearly. Existence in human form is painful. We are born, at least some of us, with an enormous capacity for love, for human connection, and yet, according to the nature of things, there is no single thing we love that we can hold in perpetuity. Aside from that, there are all the disasters caused by man and nature as well as all the various disappointments of desires and expectations. And so on. In the end, we see from the experience of others that our bodies (at least) die and everything we worked for and accumulated is no longer of any use to us. I think it is natural and even quite reasonable to be sad, given the certainty of impermanence and the surety of suffering.
I have observed a few things since I really began to take note of the depression without the mask of drugs. It begins not as "mood" or "negative mind pictures," but as actual physical sensation in throat and upper chest. From that point it develops into the negative thoughts of past/present/future that those of us with depression know. As these images begin to take shape, as I "remember" or put them together, I try to focus on something simple and "present," like some physical object that exists concretely in front of me - anything without a particular emotional colouration. This helps. By this, I turn off the negative, hurtful, painful "tapes" that begin to play inside my mind and they become unreal to me.
Does anyone else reading this have useful, simple, practical strategies they use when depression begins?
I am just at the edges of beginning to learn how to handle depression skillfully and without drugs, so I am grateful for anyone else's help.
... idiots. Needless to say it did not help and it took me along time to find one that would actuall work with me.
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