On depression..
I've been posting this a lot, about depression and getting depressed, so I might as well stick it here for anyone who cares:
Yeah, I've been getting [depressed] recently... My best advice is to see a therapist, and if theres nothing you can link it to you in your life through talk therapy, medication does really work. I've been on many different combos, and was losing faith because i had all these side effects, but then I really found what worked for me, and it made a world of difference. I wouldn't wake up depressed and sad and miserable... I would wake up, and that would be it.. I would wake up neutral in the morning, and with a clean slate. It didn't "blunt" my emotion, but it made the darkness subside. It made my anxieties seem not so bad, it make my life seem more manageable. I'm not attempting to diagnose you or say you need to be on meds, but sometimes the brain is funny and it gets into a funk, especially if you've been stressed out for a while. Things could be going great in your life (they are generally in mine) but I'm very stressed out with a lot of things, and its the stress over time predicament that usually lends people towards depression. But just because you go on meds doesn't mean you have to be on them forever either... its a common misperception. I majored in college in neuroscience and behavior, and I'm actually writing and submitting a paper to some journals about the actual actions of antidepressants. They don't correct a 'serotonin imbalance' (because you cant say what level of serotonin is 'normal' and you can't measure it) but rather SSRIs and some other antidepressant affect the growth of your nerves at the tips. It is the synapsing and cross talk between nerves that give rise to things like thinking and our thought patterns. When people get stuck in depression, they get stuck in similar, circular thought patterns and get into that depressive mindset, and those nerve circuit from being non-depressed aren't used as often, and the less you use them, the harder it is to use them later... the connection between nerves literally change in their responsivity. So, adding serotonin to the mix actually allows for the nerves to start growing together again, and helps you to think outside that depressive box. Now, conversely, talk therapy can do the same thing because talk therapy makes you *think* and makes you think outside that box... and now, that's why people see the most dramatic improvement in overall mindstate when they are on medication and in talk therapy, and that is why medications are said to take 4-6 weeks to have an 'effect' because really that affect is a result of the slow changes in synapses and thinking between nerves. If it were a chemical 'imbalance' of serotonin, you would think that after a day or two you would immediately feel 'better' and 'normal'. For some people this does happen, but for the majority it doesnt.
So... after being on meds for a while your brain sort of starts to reconnect... and so after a while you may not need the meds anymore and as long as you're in a strong and healthy mindset, you can taper them and your brain slowly adjusts the levels to make sure it upkeeps that same activity (it it had enough time to get 'used' to the higher levels of serotonin and neurotransmitters). I'd been on meds for years and years and years, and I stopped them in July. And I've been ok since then until recently when I've had a lot of stressful events and feel myself falling back again, but I know that being on meds again, for me, will make it easier to handle that stress because I won't get as bogged down by it.
So yeah, that's my two cents on depression and medication.
Yeah, I've been getting [depressed] recently... My best advice is to see a therapist, and if theres nothing you can link it to you in your life through talk therapy, medication does really work. I've been on many different combos, and was losing faith because i had all these side effects, but then I really found what worked for me, and it made a world of difference. I wouldn't wake up depressed and sad and miserable... I would wake up, and that would be it.. I would wake up neutral in the morning, and with a clean slate. It didn't "blunt" my emotion, but it made the darkness subside. It made my anxieties seem not so bad, it make my life seem more manageable. I'm not attempting to diagnose you or say you need to be on meds, but sometimes the brain is funny and it gets into a funk, especially if you've been stressed out for a while. Things could be going great in your life (they are generally in mine) but I'm very stressed out with a lot of things, and its the stress over time predicament that usually lends people towards depression. But just because you go on meds doesn't mean you have to be on them forever either... its a common misperception. I majored in college in neuroscience and behavior, and I'm actually writing and submitting a paper to some journals about the actual actions of antidepressants. They don't correct a 'serotonin imbalance' (because you cant say what level of serotonin is 'normal' and you can't measure it) but rather SSRIs and some other antidepressant affect the growth of your nerves at the tips. It is the synapsing and cross talk between nerves that give rise to things like thinking and our thought patterns. When people get stuck in depression, they get stuck in similar, circular thought patterns and get into that depressive mindset, and those nerve circuit from being non-depressed aren't used as often, and the less you use them, the harder it is to use them later... the connection between nerves literally change in their responsivity. So, adding serotonin to the mix actually allows for the nerves to start growing together again, and helps you to think outside that depressive box. Now, conversely, talk therapy can do the same thing because talk therapy makes you *think* and makes you think outside that box... and now, that's why people see the most dramatic improvement in overall mindstate when they are on medication and in talk therapy, and that is why medications are said to take 4-6 weeks to have an 'effect' because really that affect is a result of the slow changes in synapses and thinking between nerves. If it were a chemical 'imbalance' of serotonin, you would think that after a day or two you would immediately feel 'better' and 'normal'. For some people this does happen, but for the majority it doesnt.
So... after being on meds for a while your brain sort of starts to reconnect... and so after a while you may not need the meds anymore and as long as you're in a strong and healthy mindset, you can taper them and your brain slowly adjusts the levels to make sure it upkeeps that same activity (it it had enough time to get 'used' to the higher levels of serotonin and neurotransmitters). I'd been on meds for years and years and years, and I stopped them in July. And I've been ok since then until recently when I've had a lot of stressful events and feel myself falling back again, but I know that being on meds again, for me, will make it easier to handle that stress because I won't get as bogged down by it.
So yeah, that's my two cents on depression and medication.