Finding HopeComing Off Phenelzine
Posted on September 27, 2017
Just over a month ago, I decided to change medications. It was a long time coming but I eventually managed to speak to my psychiatrist and we came up with a plan. The first step was weaning myself off the Phenelzine and the second was going drug free for at least a couple of weeks to make sure it was out of my system before trying the new medication. I kept notes to track any patterns in mood and since I couldn’t find many accounts of coming off Phenelzine when I searched online, I thought I’d write about my experience. As always, this is only my experience, which will be specific to the dosage I took and the duration for which I took it.
Week 1
I was already on half of the prescribed dose so, to start the weaning off process, I went down to a quarter of the prescribed dose. Very quickly I felt very irritable, snapping at people over things that normally wouldn’t bother me. I was also overly emotional and ended up in tears a lot, sometimes multiple times a day.
Week 2
In the second week, I stopped taking the Phenelzine altogether. My anxiety skyrocketed and remained really high, higher than it’s been in a long time. My mood was also very fragile, so even small things made me very upset and depressed.
Week 3
In week three (the second week without any medication), I felt completely exhausted; some days, I was so tired that I could barely get out of bed. I was very depressed and felt blank, empty, completely disconnected. It was like everything just bounced off me. I’ve gone through periods of feeling like this before so, even though it isn’t pleasant, it wasn’t unfamiliar.
Week 4
Although I’d already been off the Phenelzine for two weeks, I decided to wait a little bit longer before trying the new drug. It was two weeks minimum and I’ve always been very sensitive to medication so I wanted to make sure it was completely out of my system before starting the next one. I didn’t want any chance of an overlap distorting that experience; I didn’t want to risk writing off something that could help over something as small as a few more days. For that last week, I was just really tired. My mood seemed to stabilise a bit and everything just felt less turbulent. It was that settling of my mood that made it easier to think more clearly and I felt ready to try the new medication.
It’s worth pointing out that my mood has been consistently low throughout all of this. I’ve had a couple of days where I felt a little bit lighter but on the whole, I’ve been feeling very depressed, hence the change in medications.
And now I’m onto the next stage: trying the new medication. I’m nervous but I’m really ready not to feel like this anymore.
Keeping A Personal Library
Posted on September 23, 2017
From a very young age, I’ve had a fear of forgetting things. Not little things, like what I need to take with me when I leave the house, or the door code at university, but the details of my life: how I survived the traumatic breakup of a friendship, how I felt at the concert of my favourite singer, what I was thinking when I started going to therapy. The little details of the big events, the things that have made me who I am.
To that end, I kept diaries. I’ve done so my whole life but the catalyst for my compulsive writing occurred just before I turned nineteen, when I was forced to take a gap year because my anxiety, depression, and social anxiety had become so bad that I just couldn’t cope with the course I’d intended to do. Suddenly I had a lot of empty time and a lot of chaotic thoughts to fill it. So I started filling notebooks, with stories, moments, quotes, and memories that I was terrified of forgetting. I would write non-stop for days, until either I fell asleep over the pages, or my hand cramped up so badly that I just couldn’t keep going.
While it was clearly an odd behaviour, no one, not even myself, thought much about it. I’d always been a writer, having written my first ‘book’ before the age of six. I’d gone on to write a twenty thousand word story at twelve, and since then, I’ve experimented with poetry, essay writing, blogging, and pretty much any other kind of writing you can think of. Now, at the age of twenty-three, songwriting is my true love, but my passion has always been for words: to express, to describe, to explain. So writing a lot wasn’t weird.
But as my anxiety in particular got worse, I tried to write even more. I’d write down the most minute details: what I ate at every meal, the plot intricacies of the TV show I was watching, the lyrics of each new song I listened to. I was absolutely terrified of forgetting each detail that had contributed to the person I was that I felt compelled to write everything down, so that I didn’t lose one single puzzle piece. It was taking up all of my time, literally, and that was without anything particularly significant happening.
When significant things did happen – the disintegration of an important relationship, the death of my much-loved cat, the introduction of a new medication – the writing became a serious problem. Over that period of approximately a week, I wrote about ninety pages, and over twenty thousand words. It’s true that I was working all the emotion out, figuring out how I felt – for me, writing is the best way of processing stuff since I can’t write as fast as I think, giving me the time to really think everything through as I write it down – but it was taking over my life. Still, I didn’t think anything of it. It was what I had to do to get through some really hard stuff. And even if I’d wanted to, I don’t think I could’ve stopped.
In September 2014, I started university. Suddenly things were happening. A lot of things. I was commuting to London, meeting literally hundreds of new people, and taking a load of new classes on subjects I’d never studied before. I also had a huge amount of homework; I felt like I was working all the time. So trying to write about everything that was happening became an impossible task. But not doing it caused me suffocating anxiety. It was a catch-22, and it took me months to catch up with myself. In January 2015, this was diagnosed as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
In the last four years, I’ve written over a million words. Over time, with some good medication, a fantastic therapist, and a lot of hard work, I’ve become better at managing the anxiety and I’ve become better at managing the compulsion. I no longer need to write down what I eat for every meal, what I do every minute of every day, although I still struggle against including every song lyric I love (I’m a songwriter – it’s research, right?!). But having said that, I still need to write a lot about how I’m feeling and how certain events make me feel. It really helps my frantic brain slow down and understand everything that’s happening to me. Of course, there are still certain things that cause my writing to go into overdrive. For example, I wrote more than twenty pages after a recent ninety-minute therapy session.
I have a complicated relationship with my writing. Writing is something I enjoy, and keeping a diary is a positive experience for me. But it’s the compulsion to do it, the unbearable anxiety when I don’t, the constant panic that I’ll forget things… These things make my life miserable. The longer I go without writing, the harder it feels to breathe. Having a complete history of your life, being able to go back to an important moment and remember how you felt… it sounds nice, right? Well, it would be if I had any choice in the matter.
13 Things That Don’t Make My Depression Worse
Posted on September 16, 2017
I’ve been struggling with depression on and off for about five years now and that’s added up to a lot of bad days. Over that time, I’ve tried a lot of things and talked to a lot of people. And the best advice I’ve ever been given is ‘don’t make it worse’. Well, step number one is ‘don’t make it worse’, step number two is ‘try to make it better’ and that always rang true with me. In my opinion, the most important thing about coping during periods of depression is getting through it.
You can worry about making things better when you’re feeling okay but when you’re feeling awful, that’s too big an ask. These things on this list aren’t life changing. They’re not going to banish the depression or quiet the anxiety. But they have helped me to feel better, even if it’s just the smallest amount. And that’s where you have to start. So I thought I’d list them here. Maybe they’ll help some of you too.
1. Journaling – I’m a huge advocate of writing stuff down, for two reasons. Firstly, I think it really helps with the processing of emotions. A lot of the time, I feel like my thoughts move very quickly and to write them out, I have to really slow down. That allows me to make different connections, explore the depth of the emotion, and really think things through. I find that so, so helpful. And the second reason is that it allows me to let go of everything that’s happening to me. I’ve been keeping diaries for a long time and this is something that has really helped me. All of these big emotions make my head feel very full and it can feel hard to breathe but when I write it all out, it’s like I can let it all go. I compare it to backing up my hard drive: I know it’s safe and I don’t have to actively hold onto it or worry about forgetting things, something that often feels like it takes up a lot of energy.
2. Looking at the sky – I’m serious. There’s a little park across the street from my house and recently, I’ve found myself heading over there in the early evening (when it’s empty and quiet) and taking a moment to lie in the grass and look at the sky. There’s something about it that really calms me. I can feel my ribcage opening up and it gets easier to breathe. It kind of feels like, with the sky above me, there’s finally enough space for my emotions to leave my body. I don’t know if this works for anyone else but humour me. Try it and see how you feel.
3. Playing with or stroking an animal – There’s something about animals that can be incredibly calming. They’re so mindful, so completely present in what they’re doing. Spending time with my dog or my cat is something that’s really helped me over the last few years. Focussing on them, for me at least, makes everything fade into the background for a little while.
4. Washing your face – Simple but true. Sometimes, washing my face just feels like a fresh start.
5. Buy something (cheap) online – I say cheap because I know money is a cause of stress for a lot of us, but when you’re having a bad day, having something to look forward to is important. And sometimes there’s nothing in the diary so you have to create it yourself, even if it’s something simple, like a pretty notebook. Knowing that something nice is going to arrive in a couple of days can help you keep going.
6. Doing something that takes all of your concentration – If you’re feeling up to it, doing something that takes great concentration is really good because it prevents you from thinking too much and ending up in a spiral of negative thoughts. My preferences are playing the piano or doing origami.
7. Doing something you don’t feel pressured to be good at – A while ago, a friend suggested trying something like painting because it was something I’d never really done and therefore it didn’t matter if I wasn’t any good at it. It was a good idea in theory but in practice, all I could focus on was how I couldn’t make it look how I wanted it to look. To me, it was bad. So that just made me feel worse. But when I picked up poetry, I discovered I didn’t mind what the outcome was. I just did it because I enjoyed it and I think that’s because it was linked to something I was already skilled at. I’ve been writing in some form or another for years so while this form of it was new, the basic skills weren’t. It was already something I was comfortable with. So, if you’ve had the same problem, perhaps try something similar to a skill you already have: a different art form, a different sport, even a different type of puzzle. I’ve found that doing something purely for enjoyment can help, giving you a sense of accomplishment at a time when you may not feel very accomplished.
8. Having fresh flowers around – I don’t know about the logic of this one but there’s something about having fresh flowers in my room that just gives me a little pick-me-up.
9. Watching a movie or TV show – Sometimes you just need a break from your own life and watching (or rewatching!) a TV show or movie and getting really involved with characters can do just that.
10. Take a break from responsibilities – This is obviously not a long-term strategy but giving yourself a period of time where you aren’t required to do anything can recharge you. For a little bit, you can avoid things that make you feel invalidated and not feel guilty about the things you should be doing. That takes up a lot of energy and having a break from that just allows you to recover some energy so that you feel more capable when it’s time to start again.
11. Organise something – Putting things in their proper place can help give you a sense of control in a time you where everything may feel completely out of your control. I actually find this quite helpful when I have to make big decisions. Jumping straight to the big things can send me into a panic so I kind of warm up by organising my computer desktop, putting everything in the correct files.
12. Going to concerts – This is obviously a harder one to orchestrate because you can’t just conjure up a concert when you’re feeling depressed (although looking forward to one can be helpful too). Concerts can be difficult (especially if you struggle with anxiety as well as depression, like me) but in my experience, there’s something about live music and that group emotion that can make you feel very alive. And you’re completely focussed on that moment in time. Emotions feel more vibrant, after feeling very faded by depression and they stay with you, allowing you to relive them afterwards. There’s something very special about going to concerts, especially when it’s an artist or band that mean a lot to you, and I’ve found those experiences can really lift me out of my depression, even if it’s only for a little while.
13. Changing your bed sheets – I don’t know about you, but there’s something about sleeping on clean sheets that just makes me feel better. If I’m in a bad place, I need someone to help me do it but it always improves my mood.
So that’s my list of things that don’t make my depression worse. Hopefully this has helped or given you some ideas for when you’re feeling really low. And if you have any suggestions, leave a comment below!
Finding Hope 