I've been dealing with depression since I was a kid. I kept going by sheer bloody-mindedness pretty much the entire time, and it was hard. The thing that finally convinced me to take the damn pills was the onset of post-natal depression: I had to do for my kid what I refused to do for myself. He deserved better than a barely-functional parent.
It was a start. Counselling was the other essential part -- it helped me clear out the worst of the self-loathing. Not that it's all gone, but I've never gone back to the full-on levels I had at that point.
The depression doesn't go away -- they've given in and called it dysthymia -- but it's manageable, mostly. And when it's not, I know I'll come back up eventually.
I'm on my fourth SSRI, with breaks in between. I went off the last one because I felt it had done all it could, and I really didn't like that it seemed to make everything grey: nothing felt really awful, but nothing felt particularly good either. That was one of the things I discussed with my GP when I admitted I really had to go back on antidepressants (or dried frog pills, as I prefer to call them) a couple of years back. Fluoxetine has worked well for me, evening out my mood without greying me out. It doesn't fix everything, but getting the brain chemistry more balanced makes the rest less of a struggle.
Point being: you are harming yourself by allowing this to continue. That's stark, but it's true.
There is help available -- your counsellor is a big part of that. Another part is actively working to balance your brain chemistry.
It is no more 'giving up' than admitting you need a physio to help get a damaged joint working properly. Yes, you can keep going indefinitely, in pain. But it won't get better that way.
The first antidepressant you take probably won't be the right one. It almost never is. That doesn't mean they don't work, just that it's the wrong fit. There will be an option that helps lift your mood without messing you up in other ways -- it's just a matter of finding it.
Your life is yours, and how you manage it is your choice. But as a friend, I would very much like to see you making choices that make you healthier and (in the long run) happier.
no subject
I've been dealing with depression since I was a kid. I kept going by sheer bloody-mindedness pretty much the entire time, and it was hard. The thing that finally convinced me to take the damn pills was the onset of post-natal depression: I had to do for my kid what I refused to do for myself. He deserved better than a barely-functional parent.
It was a start. Counselling was the other essential part -- it helped me clear out the worst of the self-loathing. Not that it's all gone, but I've never gone back to the full-on levels I had at that point.
The depression doesn't go away -- they've given in and called it dysthymia -- but it's manageable, mostly. And when it's not, I know I'll come back up eventually.
I'm on my fourth SSRI, with breaks in between. I went off the last one because I felt it had done all it could, and I really didn't like that it seemed to make everything grey: nothing felt really awful, but nothing felt particularly good either. That was one of the things I discussed with my GP when I admitted I really had to go back on antidepressants (or dried frog pills, as I prefer to call them) a couple of years back. Fluoxetine has worked well for me, evening out my mood without greying me out. It doesn't fix everything, but getting the brain chemistry more balanced makes the rest less of a struggle.
Point being: you are harming yourself by allowing this to continue. That's stark, but it's true.
There is help available -- your counsellor is a big part of that. Another part is actively working to balance your brain chemistry.
It is no more 'giving up' than admitting you need a physio to help get a damaged joint working properly. Yes, you can keep going indefinitely, in pain. But it won't get better that way.
The first antidepressant you take probably won't be the right one. It almost never is. That doesn't mean they don't work, just that it's the wrong fit. There will be an option that helps lift your mood without messing you up in other ways -- it's just a matter of finding it.
Your life is yours, and how you manage it is your choice. But as a friend, I would very much like to see you making choices that make you healthier and (in the long run) happier.
If it would help to talk, you know where I am.