new drug

[bertha katzenengel]

ugh

hey, i made a rhyme

I called my psychiatrist. "Hey, the *** is working great for me, for my *** and ***. But tell me WHY I am suddenly getting really, really sad over things I've been able to avoid being sad about for years?"

For example, I just stepped outside. It's raining and very cold. I was wearing socks, jeans, a t-shirt. I imagined for a minute having to be outside dressed like this. Like a homeless woman. I began to weep. Not uncontrollably, not hysterically, as with a particular trigger. Just with desperate sadness.

My psychiatrist said that this sudden "unaccountable" sadness is a sign that the drug is working. And the reason is so elementary that I'm surprised I didn't think of it myself.

I have the incredible ability to block things that hurt -- to block them so completely that nothing bothers me.* I'm not even aware I'm doing it. I can block sadness and despair about homelessness so well that I can go outside half dressed, shiver, think of a homeless person, feel regret, and go to the computer and increase my monthly giving to Second Harvest -- without shedding a tear. I can say "there's nothing I can do - I am already doing everything that I am capable of."

I'm not even aware that I'm blocking this terrible sympathy or empathy or whatever it is that makes me grieve because I can't go get the first homeless woman I can find and build her a bedroom in my basement.

Because of this new drug, I couldn't block it this time. I thought of a homeless woman trying to stay warm in this god forsaken weather AND protect herself AND plan where to find food tomorrow AND figure out how not to get her stuff stolen AND how to avoid arrest for being homeless -- AND try to sleep. And I couldn't stop thinking of it, couldn't avoid it, couldn't block it, and I cried.

On the one hand, YAY for the first time in years, a palpable, visible effect of a drug directly toward the worst symptom of my depression.

OTOH, FUCK.

Twice I have known, maybe 3-4 seconds before it hit, that an earthquake was coming. This is the exact same sensation; it's just taking longer for the shaking to start.

* Except this trigger.

[Droopy]

1. I've heard it said that in therapy you will feel worse before you feel better

if it is working. I'm not sure that the same thing happens with drug therapy or not. When I started taking meds I instantly felt better. I started to become sane for the first time in ten years in a matter of minutes and it was like pure enlightenment. However, we're talking about an anti-psychotic here which is probably not what you are taking.

It seems to me that people who have what they call "triggers" are suffering from some deep seated, unprocessed reaction to abuse. Usually childhood abuse. If that is the case with you then maybe you are now starting on the road to processing that abuse.

[bertha katzenengel]

2. 86-99 - 13 years in therapy resolved a great deal

Just in the last couple of years, things have come up, new things obviously unprocessed. I have a new therapist here in the DC area, and this psychiatrist is brand new.

AAMOF this is an anti-psychotic. Of course I balked, but she said that she prescribed it "sort of off-label." It performs things I need, but she's not treating me for psychosis, I'm not psychotic.

Droopy: :hug:

[hedgehog]

3. There was an article in Newsweek a few months back about using

EKG to diagnose mental illness. Here's the kicker: there is no pattern that identifies depression or mania or schizophrenia etc. However, the patterns do identify which drugs would probably be effective. For example, Pattern A responds to Prozac, Pattern B responds to Risperdal. The oddest discovery is that waht the EKG suggests may be different from what the patient and everyone around him or her sees. Thus for the person who is clearly depressed, the EKG may suggest an anti-psychotic and the person responds.