I was in third grade when I had my first depressive episode. I only vaguely remember it, as a period of time when I was so miserable I made my parents nuts. And there was no real reason for me to be miserable, though I remember blaming it on the fact that I didn't have any friends. I was painfully shy by then, and a target for bullying.
It's always been a part of my life since then, though I wasn't diagnosed til my late teens. My first shrink was when I was still in middle school, and she was worthless. My parents were still in heavy denial, not wanting to believe there was something genuinely wrong with me. And the shrink basically just confirmed everything they said, and sent me off home 'all fixed.' Only I wasn't all fixed.
It's followed me around, coming back every few years at first. Then every year. Then every two months. Every episode was worse. I went through three therapists, four medications. I dropped out of school (twice), I quit a job, I lost my ability to be independent and had to move back in with my parents (twice). I was an inevitable train wreck.
Things are a little different now. I like to think that I cope with things a lot better than I did. I have a shrink that I like well enough, a psychiatrist that I adore, and a medication that keeps me from completely going over the edge (so far.) I love the medication I'm on now, and I want to stay on it. It's the only thing I've ever taken that has made me feel like the me I know best, rather than like a shoddy reproduction of me ironed flat and toneless. It also doesn't strip me of my sexual and/or affectionate nature. The problem is that I'm on the maximum recommended dose. I didn't start there, but it seems every six months to a year, I have to up it just a little. And I think I need to again, but god, I'm not prepared for the hell that is switching depression meds.
I don't think my boyfriend is either. I know where I am right now. I'm in that gray land, the twilight between depression and a bad day. And I can't even bring myself to tell him, because he can't fix it, but I think he'll probably try. Or he'll be too attentive and make me feel worse for drawing attention to my own dysfunction.
Self-efficacy is a little like self-confidence, it determines whether or not you believe that you're capable of achieving a certain goal. One of my textbooks says that it can be a bad or good thing, when it comes to a stressor or difficult life situation. In the face of something that is beyond your control, it is likely to cause greater distress. Maybe that's one place I shoot myself in the foot. It isn't that I don't believe I can conquer my depression. It's that I do believe that, but I probably can't.
I still have moments of fear that I am fighting a hopeless, losing battle by trying to stay alive at all. That kind of thinking is what frightens me the most. Sometimes my body wins out over my mind, and I find myself completely locked up and unable to physically accomplish what I am mentally prepared for. I remember blacking out a few times early in high school ... suddenly finding myself somewhere else without knowing how I got there.
But I know it isn't all brain chemistry. The depression is, but my fucked up inability to tell anyone I'm afraid, or hurting, or angry? That isn't brain chemistry. Somewhere back there, something broke me, and hid a few pieces beyond my reach. Something forged a connection in my mind, and maybe at some point there was conscious thought associated with that connection. There isn't anymore.
How do I unlearn something that feels like an autonomic reflex?
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