New blog post – #antidepresants the good and the bad

Before I start I want to shout out to my visitors from other countries, I’ve had visiters from Argentina, Ireland. England, Israel… It’s very cool to see all the different countries.

My doctor started me back on Remeron. This is the medication that worked really well but caused me to gain 25 pounds in two months and caused me to go on huge shopping sprees. I had no self-control. He added Limictal to the Remeron, he’s hoping that the Lamictal will temper down the self-control issues of the Remeron. I’m already feeling better but I’m already gaining weight. I weigh more now than I’ve ever weighed in my life. It’s so frustrating. I have a huge (pun intended) weight problem. My BMI puts me in the morbidly obese category. I could literally die from being too fat. It doesn’t help that I have achilles tendonitis. I can’t take part in any excersize right now. My doctor is worried that any excersize could exacerbate my tendon issues. Hey that’s great, I’m hugely fat and I can’t even take the dog for a walk because I might rupture my tendon.

It was all I could do last week not to give up on all this shit. I spend $210 a month in copays between the weekly group therapy, the weekly DBT (which I just started but I hate), the biweekly one-on-one therapy, the monthly meeting with my psychiatrist and all the medications. I could lease a new car for that amount of money.

I’ve also left my appointments lately very frustrated. Two and 1/2 years I’ve been in therapy. I feel like I should be feeling some positive affects but I’m leaving my appointments angry and frustrated. I really don’t like the DBT, the psychologist who is doing it with me has only been through it with a couple people and she spends half the time reading directly to me out of the book. I’m an adult and I can read, I don’t need to pay someone to read to me. It doesn’t feel like she’s ever prepared in advance for me. I teach, if I taught like that I’d have riots in my classroom. I’m going to give it eight sessions, two down six to go, if I still hate it I’m going to drop it.

Group has also been frustrating, last week a woman was talking about how much she hates that her daughter has gained weight. She was making comments to her daughter that were going to make her extremely self-conscious of her weight. She was also worried that she couldn’t love her daughter as much if she got fat. I’ve always believed that I’m unloved and unlovable because of my weight and here is someone telling me that it’s true. I left group feeling horrible. I wanted to self harm because I felt so incredibly bad about myself. How is this supposed to help me?

With all the negative crap I did have a good day yesterday. I actually had the energy to get things done in the yard and I spent a nice few hours with my boys.

As an obese person it just

#PTSD or something else? #suicide

I haven’t written in a while, I had a really rough night at group back on the 23rd and I’ve been holding back writing about it. One of the guys in the group was talking about his recent break up. He was talking about his isolation, how alone he felt. He was worried that he would be alone, that he wouldn’t be able to find someone. This is a young, good looking guy. I’m an overweight, unattractive middle-age woman. I could feel his feelings. It was overwhelming me, I had started the night in a good place but these feelings began to pull me down.

Dr. G asked me what was going on and for some reason the events that lead up to my only suicide attempt were on my mind. I told the story of giving up everything then moving half way across the country to be with someone only to be dumped. I was stranded, I was behind on all my bills. I was so many miles from home and my car was going to be reposesed. I called so many people, they tell you when you are feeling suicidal to ask for help. I asked everyone I knew for help. I was lost and I didn’t know what to do. I was living in the backroom of a woman’s house I barely knew because she felt bad for me after the break up. I was so alone, I felt so isolated and there was no one who could help me. It sounds so weak now, but back then I was so overwhelmed. I ended up drinking a 6 pack of beer and taking 60 sleeping pills. I didn’t know you could survive after taking 60 sleeping pills. I meant to die. This wasn’t a cry for help. This was the only way out that I could find.

Obviously I didn’t die but the pain of that experience was teriible. The next day I ended up having a panic attack. I fell back into the same hole. It was awful. I’ve never had a panic attack before.

Yesterday I told my therapist about the incident about how isolated I felt, how hopeless. I feel that way a lot these days. The isolation is always hanging over me. Even when people are around me I struggle with the idea that it will end too soon and then I’ll be alone again.

Tomorrow is mother’s day. It’s a doubly painful day for me. My relationship with my mother was horrible. She didn’t protect me from my stepfather, she wasn’t there. Her alcoholism was so bad that I despised being around her or even talking to her on the phone because she was always drunk. My relationship with my own kids is rough because I feel like such a horrible parent. Their special needs are so intense and my emotional state is so bad right now that I’m struggling to be there for them. I’m feeling it from both sides.

I just want to crawl in bed and give up this weekend. I already slept too much today and my dreams were very disturbing – no help there.

New blog post #depression #BPD #naltrexone

Spring break is almost over, I did have a good day yesterday. I went out with some friends for a birthday, It was one good day out of nine. That’s not a good ratio. The first few days of my week off were horrible, I was barely able to function my depression got so bad. I made sure I had at least one thing all the other days so I wouldn’t fall into that hole again. Either group, therapy, or I went into work even though I could grade from home I knew that I needed other people around me.

I call myself an emotional vampire. If I don’t have another person’s emotions to feed off of my mood sinks to zero, it becomes unmanagable.

Today is the ony day I didn’t have anything scheduled and I’m definately sinking, struggling.

My psychiatrist put me on naltrexone. It blocks the endorphins that your body produces when you take opiates, it has also blocks the endorphines released by self-harm. He’s hoping that the lack of reward will lessen my urges to cut.

The other day I accidently burned my hand on soup, it poured over my hand. The pain was indescribable and it wouldn’t go away. I had my hand in a bowl of ice water for 90 minutes. If I tried to remove my hand from the water the pain became to intense. I blame the naltrexone. Normally when you are hurt your body releases endorphines to lessen the pain, instead now I get to suffer? I spoke to my therapist about it but he wasn’t sure about the details of naltrexone and doesn’t want me to stop taking it. All I can think is that if I get hurt in any way it’s going to hurt more than necessary than usual. It also means if I ever end up in the emergency room with severe injuries they can’t use any opiods to manage my pain. I’m not thrilled with this and I will have to bring this up with my psychiatrist in two weeks when I see him again.

4 Divisions of borderline personality disorder #bpd

I’ve really been srtuggling with the borderline diagnosis. I never act out emotionally around other people and that seemed like the “difinitive” BPD trait. But then I read this… High-functioning, in-acting and now it fits. I kept thinking that it wasn’t really me, the doctor made a mistake. Now it seems like it is really me.

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The Four Divisions of BPD
A first-level distinction along the Borderline continuum
There are four generally accepted divisions within Borderline. It is theorized that the next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders will distinguish the four major categories, similar to how other disorders such as Bi-Polar have been categorized.

Low-Functioning, Out-Acting: generally unable to hold a job, pay bills, live unassisted; generally acts inappropriately to others, screams, yells, makes groundless accusations, engages in extreme projection.

Low-Functioning, In-Acting: generally unable to hold a job, pay bills, live unassisted; generally directs frustrations inward in the form of self-mutilation, extreme negative self-talk.

High-Functioning, Out-Acting: generally able to hold a job, keep things together; generally will “keep their cool” in a public forum like the workplace but will lash out at loved ones or those who “should be able to take it.”

High-Functioning, In-Acting: generally able to hold a job, keep things together; generally will “keep their cool” in a public forum like the workplace but will lash out him or herself in private over their anger and frustrations unspoken.
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Spring break and #depression don’t mix – removed the stitches #self harm

Today was the first day of spring break and I already know it’s going to be bad. I stayed in bed until almost noon. I only got up when I had to let the dog out. I think I would have stayed there all day if I could have but the damn dog kept barking at me. I guess It’s good I have the dog or I wouldn’t get up at all.

I removed my stitches today. I wasn’t about to pay a copay just to have someone cut the stitch and pull it out when I could do it myself. I still feel really stupid about cutting myself like that and I can’t talk to any friends about it because no one knows that I self harm. It’s not something I want to share. I can tell my therapist, although this isn’t going to please him, and I can tell my support group but I’m not going to tell my friends. I don’t want them thinking I’m soft even if I am.

I started the naltrexone. It’s a medication for opiod addicts to stop the endorphins that makes taking opiates feel good. It can also help those who self harm by not allowing the endorphin release that happens when the person self harms. I love that I’m given something that takes away my only coping mechanism and I don’t start DBT therapy until Wednesday which is supposed to help me create coping mechanisms. Whatever.

The naltrexone gave me a rocking headache this morning. I took a couple advil and it went away. I’m really hoping that I don’t wake up with a headache every day.

I hate that I don’t have any money. Spending money makes me feel good, another one of those coping mechanisms. Except I won’t have any money until Friday so I can’t even go shopping to kill time. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through this week. Day one and I feel so damn low already.

Really stupid + #selfharm = E.R. and #stitches

I hate that I self harm, I hate even more that I struggled for three days to not harm and made it until 4:30 on Sunday afternoon. A three day weekend is torture for me, include a holiday and it’s worse.

I got a new pocket knife the other day…stupid.
I didn’t think that maybe a new pocket knife might be sharper than the knife I’ve had for the past 5 years…stupid
I cut too deep and had to go to the E.R. …really fucking stupid.

I’ve never had stitches from self harm. I’ve had to superglue a few cuts but nothing that worried me enough that I went to the E.R…Until today.

They actually brought me back into the mental health area of the emergency room. As soon as I realized where I was headed I got nervous. They had emergency health services ask me questions. The H.E.S. guy triaged me out, he said that I didn’t need a full mental health work up.

So I have one long stitch, that looks like it would be 8 single stitches except since the cut was very clean and straight he just kept going back and forth without cutting the thread. Odd, I didn’t know something could be stitched that way. I shouldn’t have watched him do the stitches though, I liked how it looked while he was doing it. Not good.

Home, tired, and feeling really stupid and embarrassed.

What happened to all my plans? #family #depression #holidays #notalone365

I grew up with two alcoholic parents. They divorced when I was young and holidays were not the large extended family affairs that my friends had, and I was jealous. Both of my parent’s had families but they were far away, my father’s were half way across the country and my mother’s family lived in Europe so there wasn’t any extended family support.

I made a promise to myself that I would have a large family when I grew up. What I didn’t realize was that by not learning how to emotionally connect with people I was destined to be a loner, alone, and lonely. I am easy to get along with, I’m outgoing and gregarious and yet I can’t cross that line from being an acquaintance to a friend. People talk about the cookouts, barbeques and family get-togethers and my heart breaks. Why is it so hard for me? Why am I so lonely, why don’t I have places to go on the weekends and holidays? Why do I always feel like an interloper, a fake?

On Monday people will ask me how my holiday was and I will tell them fine and quickly throw the question back at them. I will hear story after story of family events and I will wonder what the hell I did wrong and why I couldn’t fulfill that dream of having a big family. I will wonder what the hell is so wrong with me.

Only one parent #autism

I’ve been having an extremely hard time with my autistic son. He lives with his other mom and just visits me. Lately he’s been having a harder and harder time controling himself. He’s been getting too hard for me to handle alone. He behaves differently with his other mom, she’s better with him than I am. He flipped out at me again the other day. These days every visit is a flip out.

The last visit He was throwing things at my head, swinging at me, telling me that he wanted to stab me with a knife, and saying that I belonged in jail.

I wish I knew what to do, between my own mental health issues and his I am completely overwhelmed. We cut the visits down and actually stopped them last week. We’ve stopped them occasionally to give us both a break but we’ve always started them back up.

Today my ex told me that my son told her he wants a dad. A child of two moms occasionally asks that but she asked him why. He said because he only has one parent. She asked him what he meant that he has two moms. He said that she was his only parent that he wouldn’t be seeing me anymore.

… That sound you just heard was my heart breaking into little pieces.

Right now I’m completely shut down. I’m not emotionally feeling anything. I’m numb. It’s not good for me to stay in this place for too long. Self harming has been the way I come back from this, but I’m not going to do that. At least I’m going to try to not do that. My therapist has said that when the emotion is too much to bare that you need to stay in the moment. Feel the emotions that they can’t stay that horrible forever. But what do you do when you’ve shut down. Sitting with my emotions now is meaningless because I’m so overwhelmed that I’m not feeling anything. How does that get better?

Such a dark place to live #depression

The weekend was rough, really rough. I was in such a dark place. Usually I would have group tonight but Dr. E is on vacation so no group tonight. I felt so low, the time just crawled by. I know the worst thing for someone struggling with depression is to be alone but I didn’t have anyone to spend it with and even if I did I didn’t want to pull them down into my hole.

Because of the difficulties with my kids I haven’t had them on weekends for a while. I know that my health isn’t up for dealing with their special needs I also know that it leaves me alone more often.

The pressure in my chest doesn’t want to go away. The emotional struggle, the emotional pain, sometimes it feels like it’s killing me.

A holiday weekend is coming up, a long weekend and a holiday. Those are harder for me to handle. I have anxiety just thinking about it. There’s a week vacation coming up, the idea almost sends me over the edge with anxiety.

#doxepin #BPD #antidepressants #depression Feeling so low…new blog post

I started taking 10mg of doxepin a week ago, it’s supposed to help me sleep through the night, but if I do wake up it’s supposed to help me fall back asleep faster. I’m also still taking 2 mg of Klonopin both at night.

My dreams had mostly gone away while on the Klonopin, as the effectiveness of the klonopin lessened the dreams increased. Since I’ve added the doxepin it’s like dreaming on hyperdrive. I tend towards uncomfortable/unhappy dreams or nightmares. Lately they’ve been overwhelmingly sexual. While some people might like that, I just find it frustrating. I don’t have an outlet beyond taking care of it myself and that has in itself gotten frustrating. I find myself waking up at 2 in the morning from the very intense sex dreams very turned on.

I’m still not sleeping through the night. I’m waking up at least 2 or 3 times per night. The worst part is my mood. I feel so fucking low and so damn tired all the time, is it just a side effect that will wear off or is this how the medication affects me. The only way to tell is to wait it out as long as I can stand it.

I hate the antidepressant rollercoaster.