Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Sorry about your anxiety, Emiliana. I hope it gives you a break soon. I am having a depression flare-up at the moment. Boo, mental illness.

I'm finally starting to be able to go to bed in my new apartment without anxiety, so that's good. However, due to another panic attack at work which a kind of horrible manager (T, I'll call her) tried to use against me, I am now about to really formalize my mental illness with my work beyond the verbal notice I gave when I was hired (to a general manager who no longer works there). Documenting it as a "mental disability" with appropriate paperwork, having and discussing a list of expected accommodations, reading up on my rights and preparing myself to stand up for them... the whole shebang. I'm half expecting it to become some kind of Big Thing with T, as in that it may escalate to the owners and possibly beyond, but dammit I shouldn't just have to put up with it when I've had two terrible panic attacks that were DIRECTLY RELATED to this woman's presence.

I'm also just kinda pissed at the situation in general. Her managerial style is just horrid, her personality at work is awful, and in general she's creating a hostile work environment for all of us that even the other managers admit to, yet NOTHING HAPPENS. My previous general manager promised to bring up my first panic attack in a meeting with the owners and yet T's actions and comments (relayed to me by a coworker) imply that she doesn't even know that this is due to mental illness, much less that she in particular is triggering my anxiety. She told the manager in charge to consider it a walk out and clock me out for the day immediately (which the manager did not do because she's aware of my issues and had guessed what was causing them that day), and threatened to write up my coworker for "attitude" when she pointed out that I had been obviously distressed for some time.

This... was a much longer mental illness rant than I had intended. Oh well. I feel a little better now.

bob, I'm glad you are easing into the new apartment.

And I'm so glad you are standing up for yourself! Light that manager up.

Yoga and other exercise seems to be helping manage my anxiety a lot. Medication didn't do much for me: gave me sleep problems and konked me out. (It was an SSRI that I took irregularly.) I haven't been to a counselor lately either. /shrug

A weird thing though is that I'm just absolutely bushed, even after 8 hours of sleep. I don't know if it's stress at work, summer blahs (I hate summer), or just not being a morning person. Probably all of the above.

Exercise helps me feel so much better, especially getting outside (preferably when it's pleasant).

Whistler wrote:Exercise helps me feel so much better, especially getting outside (preferably when it's pleasant).

Yeah, I can't wait for fall when the mornings are crisp. I get giddy thinking about it, actually.

Portia wrote:

Whistler wrote:Exercise helps me feel so much better, especially getting outside (preferably when it's pleasant).

Yeah, I can't wait for fall when the mornings are crisp. I get giddy thinking about it, actually.

SCARVES! And sweaters. I'm so excited.

Portia wrote:Medication didn't do much for me: gave me sleep problems and konked me out. (It was an SSRI that I took irregularly.)

I'm going to give you some unsolicited advice, but if you took the SSRI irregularly and for less than four weeks, it makes sense that all you got out of it were the gnarly side effects. With SSRIs all the crappy side effects come first but they (usually) diminish with time. (Some of them will stick around. I always had sexual dysfunction, though not loss of sex drive, on mine, for example, but I was given another drug to help with that and also help with anxiety.) The benefits also don't kick in, at least full force, for a minimum of four weeks.

TheBlackSheep wrote:

Portia wrote:Medication didn't do much for me: gave me sleep problems and konked me out. (It was an SSRI that I took irregularly.)

I'm going to give you some unsolicited advice, but if you took the SSRI irregularly and for less than four weeks, it makes sense that all you got out of it were the gnarly side effects. With SSRIs all the crappy side effects come first but they (usually) diminish with time. (Some of them will stick around. I always had sexual dysfunction, though not loss of sex drive, on mine, for example, but I was given another drug to help with that and also help with anxiety.) The benefits also don't kick in, at least full force, for a minimum of four weeks.

I honestly felt like the PA who prescribed it to me didn't really delve too much into what was really bothering me. I don't think I have depressive symptoms per se 95% of the time, and we've had the benzo conversation. I'm actually functioning quite well, all things considered. I'm hesitant to say the least to take any medication full-time when I don't think they've really studied the long-term side effects.

It really seems that a stable relationship and career and housing situation and mostly avoiding my family is a good way to sanity. Also, it's been a year since I've seen the Engineer (never thought of a clever pseudonym) who always had a negative effect on my temperament.

Although I still totally get random "heyyy!" texts from past flames all the time. One of them is going to Glasgow.

(Also this goes against the grain for this board but I'm glad to be out of therapy. Like, a month membership at the gym is the same cost as one hour. Do what you gotta do but for me it never really made me feel better.)

The point is feeling better, so you do you! However that works.

I definitely don't think drugs are for everyone, and everyone gets to make their own choices, but if you are looking for SSRIs to work, them's the breaks.

TheBlackSheep wrote:The point is feeling better, so you do you! However that works.

I definitely don't think drugs are for everyone, and everyone gets to make their own choices, but if you are looking for SSRIs to work, them's the breaks.

Thanks!

Portia's comments about how not thinking therapy is the be-all, end-all is against the grain of this board made me think: I was telling people to consider therapy LONG before it was really working for me. I resisted it with everything I had for a long time. Now that it's working, though, it's really working. Therapy isn't for everybody, and some people don't get much out of it at all. Some people need 4 or 6 or 8 or 12 weeks and they are good. Others (like me) apparently need several different therapists over seven years. Them's also the breaks.

Then again, I was also intensely depressed for eight years before seeking therapy, so long time making the problem, long time cleaning up, I guess.

TheBlackSheep wrote:Portia's comments about how not thinking therapy is the be-all, end-all is against the grain of this board made me think: I was telling people to consider therapy LONG before it was really working for me. I resisted it with everything I had for a long time. Now that it's working, though, it's really working. Therapy isn't for everybody, and some people don't get much out of it at all. Some people need 4 or 6 or 8 or 12 weeks and they are good. Others (like me) apparently need several different therapists over seven years. Them's also the breaks.

Then again, I was also intensely depressed for eight years before seeking therapy, so long time making the problem, long time cleaning up, I guess.

All of that makes sense. Retroactively, I wish I had more actively sought it when my mom was sick and right after she died. Time doesn't heal all wounds, that idea is crap, but I do think you can't stay in active grieving mode forever.

Right now I'm kind of in this place where therapy seems completely unhelpful, but I don't want to stop therapy because doing nothing about it seems like it's definitely not going to work?

In fairness I've only had like 5 or 6 meetings but it's still frustrating.

Do you think it's an issue with your therapist? Studies show that the single most important factor in therapeutic success is the therapist-client relationship. You can totally fire therapists. I have done it many times. If you need a recommendation, I can give you one.

Though I have also felt the same exact way. Doing nothing feels... irresponsible?... but therapy isn't fixing things. Mental health is tricky that way. The idea is to feel better, like I said above. Do whatever you think might help and see.

I'm just now starting to get significantly better, and my process looks like: weekly therapy (wherein my therapist is not warm and fuzzy and calls me on all of my stuff), meds, one billion hours of piano playing, vitamin D supplements and making myself go outside, making myself talk to people when I'm depressed ("making myself" is the correct term), quitting my job, making myself try new/hard things (writing music or writing poetry or studying for a math test), and writing writing writing.

Therapy is a great tool, but if it's just talking then Freud's therapy would have worked better than it does (catharsis and all that). That's definitely important, but what's more important (at least to me) is how I can apply that stuff to my daily/hourly/minute-ly life. It took me a long time to understand that.

I think it's partly the therapist but she's going on maternity leave so I'm switching anyways (although that leaves me with a fairly significant gap because apparently they can't process that until the start of fall semester because people are on vacation). I think she's been trying to help me see that things are more positive than I believe them to be but it just kind of comes across as dismissive that there's a real problem. ("Some of my clients don't do any homework at all, you did homework!" "Yes but I'm FAILING MY CLASSES.")

Another vote for the "therapy seems good in general but not for me." I've even liked my last couple therapists, but I don't think they were particularly helpful beyond being someone I could talk to. I'm trying to open up to people close to me instead (husband (duh!), family, far away friends whatever) and be more honest with my own feelings via writing and it has about the same effect. :/

Have there ever been studies on the types of people (especially re: demographics, education, socioeconomic status) who go to therapy and their outcomes?

mic0 wrote:Another vote for the "therapy seems good in general but not for me." I've even liked my last couple therapists, but I don't think they were particularly helpful beyond being someone I could talk to. I'm trying to open up to people close to me instead (husband (duh!), family, far away friends whatever) and be more honest with my own feelings via writing and it has about the same effect. :/

Have there ever been studies on the types of people (especially re: demographics, education, socioeconomic status) who go to therapy and their outcomes?

Hmm... I am sure there have been studies on those topics (BYU in particular has a large dataset, although has a somewhat unique demographic). The biggest variable has always been the therapists (this study says about 5% of the variation: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/73/5/914/). There are some therapists that improve outcomes really well, some are just average, and some are um, detrimental: http://www.katedudding.com/ibhi/ref-lib ... bert03.pdf

Well apparently "severe depression" is not a good enough reason to take an incomplete. According to my professor.