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Where I've been the last month (LONG)
2 years ago
Winter break started for me mid-December. First two weeks were pretty good. Roughly New Years week, I made a change to my medication I take for depression/anxiety, the SSRI Sertraline and... well, it wasn't nearly as bad as when I tried two years ago (whew time flies) in the last week of a busy semester. In that instance, I had done the worst isolation I ever had, disappearing from everyone for a month unannounced. I returned only after my depression reached a height comparable to when I was fully, clinically depressed, a week after I went back on Sertraline begrudgingly.
Despite it keeping me in a decent mood, and keeping the depression relatively at bay, I've still felt unsure that it was right for me. After changing my psychiatrist halfway through this year after my prior one uh, showed their ass in terms of emotional intelligence (literally weaponizing their position as prescriber in some petty power move all because I couldn't properly get my face cam to work), I've had a lot more progress with my latest. We worked together on the betterment of my mental health without any strings attached. After 6 months, I believed I was ready to finally ditch the SSRI, and they would properly support me in it. This time, it wouldn't be waning off SSRI without anything else. Instead, I was prescribed something I dropped, finding out my prior psychiatrist wasn't prescribing it in the proper dosage: Bupropion. For the first two weeks after I waned of Sertraline and was on Bupropion, things were far better than the last attempt. My mood quickly bombed after that due to many irl happenings culminating in a depressive episode for roughly a week (two, but it got significantly worse in the second week). It was only in getting a refill on my ketamine late last week, and doubling my dosage for Bupropion from 150 to 300 mg early this week have I started to finally come out of it (450 mg is the max, and I don't think I'll need to go up that far thankfully).
Though the sheer amount of smaller things that added up to the larger thing of my depressive episode are too numerous to reasonably fit all of in one journal, I'll go over the most notable. First, as covered, was slowly coming to grips with the fact that the SSRI I was on for nearly 4 years only mitigated the symptoms of my depression, and not helping me work toward actually alleviating them. After that, I did my best to avoid most maladaptive coping mechanisms, replacing them with better ones. Couldn't stop the isolating for one, but for others, I tried my best in the time to foster better habits like drawing, exercise, and various forms of writing again.
Worse than just my own state, my immediate family finally had gotten Covid-19 in the last week of my semester. I tested negative days after finding this out, but obviously it concerned me greatly that despite all the safety measures we continue to practice (masks, distancing, vaccination, so on), it still infected my family. That's where my anxiety started to rise, I realize. That ship has sailed, and my family is fine now, but it bothered me for reasons I hope are obvious. Anticipatory anxiety post-semester severely affected my internship as well, but the depressive episode sealed the deal that I wouldn't get the proper amount of hours to complete the necessary amount. Both my generalized anxiety over the well being of my family, as well as the anticipatory anxiety overflowed into my social anxiety. This caused me to recede from DM's slowly over a week until the next was nearly full isolation in a snowball of anxiety and depression.
Things only worsened for my immediate family in ways I didn't know about. I hadn't found out until about midway through my depressive episode. My sister had delivered her baby 2 weeks earlier than expected due to Covid, and concerns the doctors had about her possibly having intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy due to her bile acid levels. If that and post-partum weren't enough, her husband suddenly, and quickly developed a large lump on the back of his head, the obvious concern being that it was a tumor. The Covid, early pregnancy, and other health complications all happened in a month. The day after she delivered and I was visiting was the day I found out that the baby was already showing trouble with latching among other behaviors that weren't indicative of good health in a newborn. Somehow, worse than all of that, our parents who she and her family live with (thank you 2008 housing bubble for making two adults with full-time jobs after getting bachelors-degrees have scarce housing available to them, let alone any being affordable) were not only not helping her, but actively ignoring, minimizing, and even repressing her expression of any anxieties and emotions she had. I've had a lot of issues with our parents, being the stubborn, self-centered, religious boomers they are, but knowing this behavior had her bottling it all up for a month, and seeing my mother do it in real time even as my sister tried to unbottle was... justification for being the angriest I've been in years. Usually I just get sad instead of angry, but the actual depravity of it was something so immediately offensive that I couldn't tolerate it. I got sad again pretty quick though. That gave me cause for rumination for at least a few days.
Thankfully, that is where the negative stuff ends. That day, I shut my mother down from interrupting my sister, and trying to make my sisters problems about herself. I listened to my sister through, and apologized for all that my family showed her apathy for over the last month. I gave her the best advice I could, doing the best with the info dump I received, and addressing what I could after letting her speak her mind to someone uninterrupted for the first time in a long time. After the ruminating, and with incredibly firm resolve, I made it clear to my parents that we'd have a fucking problem if they continued their behavior toward my sister, emotionally or otherwise. It seems that, although not acting much better, this was taken seriously at the least, and my sister has since been emotionally better off without my parents bogging her down.
Further good news is that me and my immediate family are mostly past the health stuff, and for the better! For me, I was consistent with stretching/lengthening tense muscles all around, and incorporating walking after meals at the least again. That's helped tremendously with my physical and mental health. I've been really up on drawing, and besides the standalone ornaments/balled toons I've been meaning to upload, I may actually upload with regularity again. Will likely include short stories for specific pieces as well. I may not be able to complete the internship over this Winter Break, but what's done is done, and I'll likely be able to petition to finish in the upcoming summer. As for my sister, it turns out the lump my sister's husband had was only a benign lipoma (basically a fat growth/accumulation under the skin), and her baby has rebounded pretty well! They have certainty about the near future for their health and well-being for the first time in a month. Checking in with her a couple times since, she's recovered physically and mentally too.
All in all... very difficult month for me, but I'm back. Hope you all have been doing well, and remember to open your windows to get some fresh air circulating when the weather and temperature allows for it!
Edit: Update finishing the journal cause FA glitched out while I was nearly done writing, and I panic posted.
Despite it keeping me in a decent mood, and keeping the depression relatively at bay, I've still felt unsure that it was right for me. After changing my psychiatrist halfway through this year after my prior one uh, showed their ass in terms of emotional intelligence (literally weaponizing their position as prescriber in some petty power move all because I couldn't properly get my face cam to work), I've had a lot more progress with my latest. We worked together on the betterment of my mental health without any strings attached. After 6 months, I believed I was ready to finally ditch the SSRI, and they would properly support me in it. This time, it wouldn't be waning off SSRI without anything else. Instead, I was prescribed something I dropped, finding out my prior psychiatrist wasn't prescribing it in the proper dosage: Bupropion. For the first two weeks after I waned of Sertraline and was on Bupropion, things were far better than the last attempt. My mood quickly bombed after that due to many irl happenings culminating in a depressive episode for roughly a week (two, but it got significantly worse in the second week). It was only in getting a refill on my ketamine late last week, and doubling my dosage for Bupropion from 150 to 300 mg early this week have I started to finally come out of it (450 mg is the max, and I don't think I'll need to go up that far thankfully).
Though the sheer amount of smaller things that added up to the larger thing of my depressive episode are too numerous to reasonably fit all of in one journal, I'll go over the most notable. First, as covered, was slowly coming to grips with the fact that the SSRI I was on for nearly 4 years only mitigated the symptoms of my depression, and not helping me work toward actually alleviating them. After that, I did my best to avoid most maladaptive coping mechanisms, replacing them with better ones. Couldn't stop the isolating for one, but for others, I tried my best in the time to foster better habits like drawing, exercise, and various forms of writing again.
Worse than just my own state, my immediate family finally had gotten Covid-19 in the last week of my semester. I tested negative days after finding this out, but obviously it concerned me greatly that despite all the safety measures we continue to practice (masks, distancing, vaccination, so on), it still infected my family. That's where my anxiety started to rise, I realize. That ship has sailed, and my family is fine now, but it bothered me for reasons I hope are obvious. Anticipatory anxiety post-semester severely affected my internship as well, but the depressive episode sealed the deal that I wouldn't get the proper amount of hours to complete the necessary amount. Both my generalized anxiety over the well being of my family, as well as the anticipatory anxiety overflowed into my social anxiety. This caused me to recede from DM's slowly over a week until the next was nearly full isolation in a snowball of anxiety and depression.
Things only worsened for my immediate family in ways I didn't know about. I hadn't found out until about midway through my depressive episode. My sister had delivered her baby 2 weeks earlier than expected due to Covid, and concerns the doctors had about her possibly having intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy due to her bile acid levels. If that and post-partum weren't enough, her husband suddenly, and quickly developed a large lump on the back of his head, the obvious concern being that it was a tumor. The Covid, early pregnancy, and other health complications all happened in a month. The day after she delivered and I was visiting was the day I found out that the baby was already showing trouble with latching among other behaviors that weren't indicative of good health in a newborn. Somehow, worse than all of that, our parents who she and her family live with (thank you 2008 housing bubble for making two adults with full-time jobs after getting bachelors-degrees have scarce housing available to them, let alone any being affordable) were not only not helping her, but actively ignoring, minimizing, and even repressing her expression of any anxieties and emotions she had. I've had a lot of issues with our parents, being the stubborn, self-centered, religious boomers they are, but knowing this behavior had her bottling it all up for a month, and seeing my mother do it in real time even as my sister tried to unbottle was... justification for being the angriest I've been in years. Usually I just get sad instead of angry, but the actual depravity of it was something so immediately offensive that I couldn't tolerate it. I got sad again pretty quick though. That gave me cause for rumination for at least a few days.
Thankfully, that is where the negative stuff ends. That day, I shut my mother down from interrupting my sister, and trying to make my sisters problems about herself. I listened to my sister through, and apologized for all that my family showed her apathy for over the last month. I gave her the best advice I could, doing the best with the info dump I received, and addressing what I could after letting her speak her mind to someone uninterrupted for the first time in a long time. After the ruminating, and with incredibly firm resolve, I made it clear to my parents that we'd have a fucking problem if they continued their behavior toward my sister, emotionally or otherwise. It seems that, although not acting much better, this was taken seriously at the least, and my sister has since been emotionally better off without my parents bogging her down.
Further good news is that me and my immediate family are mostly past the health stuff, and for the better! For me, I was consistent with stretching/lengthening tense muscles all around, and incorporating walking after meals at the least again. That's helped tremendously with my physical and mental health. I've been really up on drawing, and besides the standalone ornaments/balled toons I've been meaning to upload, I may actually upload with regularity again. Will likely include short stories for specific pieces as well. I may not be able to complete the internship over this Winter Break, but what's done is done, and I'll likely be able to petition to finish in the upcoming summer. As for my sister, it turns out the lump my sister's husband had was only a benign lipoma (basically a fat growth/accumulation under the skin), and her baby has rebounded pretty well! They have certainty about the near future for their health and well-being for the first time in a month. Checking in with her a couple times since, she's recovered physically and mentally too.
All in all... very difficult month for me, but I'm back. Hope you all have been doing well, and remember to open your windows to get some fresh air circulating when the weather and temperature allows for it!
Edit: Update finishing the journal cause FA glitched out while I was nearly done writing, and I panic posted.
