Reply #16: Food's probably the only thing I haven't had issues with [View All]

[geniph]

(knock on wood). I don't know why, it's just never been much of an issue. I do quit eating when I'm really in a bad state, but it's not anorexia, I just don't have the energy to deal with seeking or preparing food. I used to have issues with OCD behavior, too, but mostly anymore it's OCD thinking, not the behaviors - I can keep the behaviors somewhat under control.

What I point out to people who expect drugs or therapy or whatever to "cure" them in six weeks is, how long did it take you to become depressed? In my case, I've been learning my depressive responses for more than 40 years. I expect it will take just as long to totally unlearn them. But they can be unlearned. It's not what happens to you that makes you a depressive, in my experience - otherwise everyone who had traumatic experiences in their lives would be horribly depressed. And we've all met those sunny, optimistic, happy people who've had horrible lives. The reason is that they learned different RESPONSES to stress. Depression is a LEARNED response to stress (not all of it, of course, but a lot of it). It can be unlearned. You can teach yourself different, healthier responses to stressors. It isn't easy, it isn't quick, but it does work.

I've been totally self-teaching myself cognitive behavior therapy, mostly because I'm a bit too resistant to therapy from someone else, and group therapy was absurd to me (it turns into a Can You Top This Queen For a Day My Life Is Worse Than Yours cryathon). It doesn't always work, but it sure beats the hell out of the alternative (uncontrolled depression and anxiety).

Drugs can be very helpful in breaking the unhealthy emotional cycles that lead to depressive thinking and OCD-type responses. In my case, it was that never-ending tape loop in my head, "she shot herself, she shot herself" - I had to stop that tape loop and force myself to not respond to stressors with immediate suicidal ideation. In order to stop that repeating mental cycle, I had to have drugs, at least at first, to be able to hear anything else. I weaned myself off of everything but Valium, which I only take occasionally and in small doses when I find myself falling into bad old emotional habits. But I did the weaning very gradually and slowly.

You're so right about lifelong antidepressant use - everyone I've known on long-term drug therapy did, at some point, decide that all they could notice was the side effects and try to quit. I've seen enough people end up back at the ER in leather straps with a Haldol drip to know that THAT isn't the way to go!