Newsweek had a recent article about anti-depressants and how they may only really work for those with severe depression. I can’t say I believe much of what I read in the media, but I was caused to ponder my own ideas of my own depression. I wouldn’t tolerate any description of it other than ‘mild’… until now. I did a little research and found that I do fit the description of severe depression, especially the bit about how depression permeates every corner of my existence all the time full stop. Anti-depressants have worked wonders for me and only after years of therapy and medication have I realized that depression was the air I breathed – the whole being of my life. Because I have had these symptoms for as long as I could remember, it was normal to me. I would read descriptions of depression by famous people being a deep dark hole or something. I didn’t even know I was in a hole. I had hardly ever seen daylight to know I lived in a hole. I thought my few brief forays into mild happiness were manic periods.
Whether anti-depressants work for those with mild depression, I cannot say. I don’t recommend putting to much stock in the health claims of mainstream media. If anti-depressants work for you, don’t let a magazine cover tell you they don’t… Besides, I am sure there are lots of folks out there who think they have only mild depression (because, like me, they live way too far into the dark depths of depression to know how far they are in it) and in fact have a much stronger depression that could very much benefit from meds.
To circle back to body acceptance, a large component of my depression is a disconnection with my body. Intuitive eating is extremely difficult when you have little connection to your body and even all the helpful questions (like: what do I want…: something hot, cold, crunchy, salty, etc…) can hardly stir any body/mind connection at all. Years of trying and reading tips on implementing IE and therapy did little to shake the rust off the lines of communication between my mind and body. I only know this now, because I happen to be on a medication that has given me a far stronger sense of communication of mind and body. Thank you, Zoloft. I don’t know if my ability to sense my body’s needs is anywhere near the range or normal. What I do know is that I feel so much better being able to understand what my body needs. The willingness to do what I need to do is there. I’ve worked on that for years without realizing that what I very much lacked was and understanding of what I needed… what is the point of willingness if you don’t know what it is productive to be willing to do? Heh.
I suspect there are many people out there like me who, for whatever reason, need more than appetite questions to get in touch with their bodies. If you are anything like me, take heart and don’t give up the fight of finding healthy ways to get in touch with your body’s needs and your appetite. Intuitive eating is so very worth it.
–AngryGrayRainbows
Angry Gray Rainbows 
I just started on lexapro about 2 weeks ago and started therapy a month ago. I had been feeling deeper down into a depression than I had in a long time. I no longer even got pleasure from my vices (compulsive shopping mostly) and started to stop functioning. I’ve been feeling better lately and even though I’ve always acknowledged that my “normal” was pretty crappy, but that’s just the way I am. I was starting to think that I didn’t really need a therapist, that I just needed to snap out of it (that’s what I think about everything, but it’s never that easy when you’re truly sick). It really all hit me how very serious my problems are when my therapist said to me, “You know, you -loathe- yourself. You hate yourself so much, that if you were someone else, you’d kill you.” I cried the whole way home just because I realized how deep this thing went. I’m hoping lexapro will help me.
Jasmine,
I hope Lexapro helps you too. I can relate 100% to your (and your t’s) description of your depression. Please know that if Lexapro isn’t the right med for you that there are sooooooo many meds out there that it isn’t hard to find something better, so you hang in there, okay?
Dunno if this will help you… but one thing that helps me when my depression is really bad is telling myself that I am someone else… that this me that I hate so much doesn’t even exist. I will tell myself that I am someone that I actually can feel compassion for and it helps take the self-hate pressure off me and take better care of myself. It may not work for you… we all have to find our own coping tools, but just in case I’m throwing it out there for you. If you ever wanna just ramble or vent, feel free to visit our open threads. Depression is something that Sassy and I can really relate to.
Fellow survivor of the black vortex here. Depression certainly didn’t stem from body issues with me, but the two have been completely intertwined.
I got a diagnosis of severe atypical depression after two years of eating and sleeping constantly and desperately willing my stupid self to get over that infuriating survival instinct. After many stabs at different meds, Effexor essentially flipped a switch in me. The world became an entirely different place, not just from the hell I’d been in recently, but from my whole down-on-myself life.
I’ve gone off it temporarily a couple of times out of some misguided sense that it was “bad” to be on medication. I fell back into hell once, and I now have a “moderate, chronic, atypical” diagnosis to hang on my wall or whatever. The drugs have added to the weight I gained before treatment, but I wouldn’t trade them to look like Christina Hendricks.
So, to me, the whole “you HAVE to lose weight for your HEALTH” thing seems so overblown and hysterical. Longevity is not what’s important. Happiness is what’s important. I want to pursue that happiness for whatever time I have left, rather than wasting time and energy on crap like diets and caring what other people think of me.
Jasmine, my fingers are crossed for you. Whenever I hear of someone with depression, I want that switch flipped for them so bad. All the best. Really.
So, to me, the whole “you HAVE to lose weight for your HEALTH” thing seems so overblown and hysterical. Longevity is not what’s important. Happiness is what’s important.
Trabb’s Boy, I could not agree more. I have panic disorder, and more than anything else, it has shown me that health is about more than just vitals and that how you feel is much, much more important than how you look. I cannot even imagine a scenario in which I’d trade the emotional stability and just basic ability to function I have when on Zoloft for the 15-20 extra pounds I weigh when I’m on it. Not in a million years. Anybody who thinks they’d rather be thin and unhappy than fat and happy must not ever have truly been happy, in my opinion.
To the issue of IE, I cannot eat intuitively when I’m off Zoloft (which has been a miracle drug for me), because my intuition is all skewed. When my panic disorder is really bad, I start getting anxious about anything and everything I put into my body, and obsessing about how it might potentially make me feel. Following my instincts when I’m in that state, I probably wouldn’t eat at all, or only eat when I was feeling sick enough that I knew I had to. When I am on the Zoloft and managing my panic attacks and anxiety better, it’s so much easier to eat intuitively, because my intuition is relatively sane. 😉
Yeah, it can be so hard to tell that you’re depressed when you’re caught in the belly of the beast. I vividly remember the first time I started to surface from an episode. I was walking along and I felt really wierd. Being the introvert I am, I started listing emotions and trying to correlate them to this wierd feeling. It wasn’t annoyed, or worried, or angry, or confused. What could it be??? Okay, examine the list for commonalities. Well, all these emotions were negative. !!! !!! !!! Oh. I was happy.
It had literally been so long since I’d felt happy that I had to go through this whole process of intellectual analysis to recognize the emotion.
What really sucks, is that I’d wondered if I were depressed and gone to one of those articles that lists the symptoms and concluded I didn’t fit them. I didn’t cry all day. I didn’t stay in bed all day. I enjoyed things as much as I’d ever enjoyed them (not having the insight to realize that I didn’t get much enjoyment ever). I functioned and did what I needed to do. I would have completely denied being depressed until that epiphany.
A later episode I knew I was depressed, and I was so not worth a doctor’s time and it was just too much work to get help.
Celexa is my SSRI. Helps immensely.
I can’t say much about medication, because medication didn’t work for me. Not because it didn’t jive with my body chemically; it was because I wouldn’t take it.
Medication is touted as the be all to end all for depression – and it is not. Unfortunately for the medical community, peoples’ bodies metabolize medications differently, so that a drug that works well in a study with X type people will show less promise when prescribed to a Y type person.
I was diagnosed with moderate depression, as a result of Borderline Personality Disorder. Convinced that the medication would turn me into a zombie, I refused to take it. I was truly convinced that those giving me the medication were trying to brainwash me (paranoia, which can be another symptom of BPD). I took the medication for over two months, and didn’t like feeling like a “zombie”. BPD is characterized by mood swings, sometimes severe, and when on the meds, I didn’t get my “fix” of those energizing emotions (anger, critical, and to a lesser extent, excessive happiness, and confidence in my superior creativity)
So, as you can see, the pills were not really effective. It took a long time, a lot of mistakes, and a lot of ups and downs to realize that I needed to stop.
I started on Prozac late 2008, and it helped immensely. But, of course, after 4 months, I stopped taking the drug. It felt as if I couldn’t “feel”….I missed my “ups and downs”, and it felt as if, creatively, that I was circling the drain.
I told my therapist this, she sympathized with me, and took me off the drug. I told her that I no longer wanted drugs – talk therapy would have to be enough.
She was fine with that – but she did let me know that without the “help” that Prozac gave me, I would be more susceptible to depression and mood swings.
I really hope that Lexapro helps you, Jasmine. I know that Prozac works for me…but I would rather avoid medication, because I know that I wouldn’t take it regularly, and you have to take it as prescribed to get the full benefit.
Good Luck!
I read the articles too and a few things jumped out at me. The part that most intrigued was that this study was a review of many, many studies. It was a meta study obviously not done by a pharmacuetical company. I didn’t want to believe it but I am open to the fact that there may be some truth to it. The results seems so counter-intuitive to everything I have experienced. The article notes that most antidepressants are prescribed by general doctors rather than psychiatrists. I would also have have preferred that the counter argument had been more scientific and statistical rather than an individual story.