Posted by zinya on November 23, 2002, at 15:22:45
In reply to Re: Effexor SR, posted by Bizzou on November 11, 2002, at 23:14:23
The post that specifically triggers this post and several specific Qs and one bigger/broader Q is Bizzou's (nice tag name :)) and a comment she/he made:
"I am quite positive this Effexor will help me but I thing that eventually you have to quit. But before I do quit these drugs, I will have resolved the inner reasons for these **inappropriate feelings**. I'm planning to see a psychologist with experience in PNL and with those two aids (effexor and PNL), I should feel better again." [**s added]
First, some clarification Q's:
a) Bizzou's post was titled Effexor SR -- is that different from XR? or perhaps a typo? or what it's called in Canada where Bizzou is?b) what is PNL ?
Finally, the meatier question which Bizzou's post prompted in referring to "inappropriate feelings." I mentioned yesterday that I'm in a time of huge loss -- of my mom in August -- leaving me as the one surviving family member (except for cousins and nieces, nephew, none of whom I am close to in our adulthoods). I have great friends who are loving and supportive and some of whom are urging me to see what i'm going through as 'normal', others of whom though now that I mention I am considering perhaps needing an a-d say "yeah, maybe so" -- reflecting both their concern, their wish to see me more active again, and their lack of fresh experience if any with this grieving process. This mix of voices mirrors my own internal voices of "give the grieving more time" vs "i *should* be moving on by now." ...
Bizzou's phrase made me think about the convergence of plenty of "things to be depressed about" - not only my mom's loss but also the 'high and dryness' of my own life and where to go from here - i had (quite willingly) resigned from my professional job (mostly cuz i didn't like where i was living) and moved back to where my mom was after 5 yrs of her being diagnosed with alzheimer's and trying to essentially parent her from 2,000 miles away. And I wound up buying a home for her to be with me because two diff. retirement homes she was in had screwed up royally enough that i just wanted her with me, but now i face a HUGE sense of zero on the horizon, a sense of absolute loss not only of a precious mom who also, consciously or not, gave meaning and sense to many big and little orderings of priorities in my life, and now there's this void of purposelessness, not knowing where i'm going -- themes echoed by others in my bereavement group whose parents' deaths were longer ago than my own. Which on the one hand weighs in on the side of feeling "well, okay, this is normal... Don't overreact to this amount of zero energy and depression." On the other hand, this extra component of also being high and dry, with a sense of relative (not supreme but relative) urgency to "get on with my life" for financial as well as other reasons yet finding no energy to even finish unboxing and moving into this house, which represents a decision that turned out to be made on ill-informed grounds given that mds had failed to diagnose that my mom's pains for a year were due to cancer and their encouragement even that i get a home and move mom in with me cuz they saw what a caring daughter i was -- all that prompted a decision to invest in a house which now feels rather like an 'albatross' and a daily constant reminder of all that is lost and wound up having only 5 months living here with mom when i'd imagined at least 5 years as realistic...
In sum, and to get to my question, how many of you would say that your feelings of depression strike you as "appropriate" vs. "inappropriate" given the realities in your life? Or does that strike you as an irrelevant Q? Are others similarly taking a-d's because of feelings that what may have once been appropriate levels of depression have at some point turned 'inappropriate'? I'm guessing many of you, like me, have total lack of energy as a final straw kind of thing that has led to a pharmacol. approach ???
I took the Depression test that was on a website on washingtonian.com mentioned by one of the posters here - apparently a classic 'test' on a 54 point scale where anything over 20 points is consdiered 'major depression' and, while it's hard to know how to quantify some of the responses, i seemed to be somewhere in the level of 15 points plus or minus. It also made me wonder if the risks of taking such meds - which I confess have been very important to hear and rather bracing to learn of on this board -- that perhaps i should be asking myself more importantly just how "inappropriate" these feelings of depression are... before risking something that could be a boon but, quite obviously, could just as easily be a new kind of nightmare given what some report here (plus my own history of trying a-ds or bipolars in past 15 yrs a few times to no avail).
Any thoughts will be MUCH appreciated - and I apologize for being so wordy. My censor is on hiatus too.
thanks :)
poster:zinya
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021122/msgs/128955.html