![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Mental Health: When the Meds Work
Dec. 9th, 2019 09:02 amWarning for frank talk about Mental Health. Your mileage may vary. This is my journey and I hope it helps others to be able to talk about their mental health. I want to help remove the stigma of mental illness so that it can be talk about and people who need help are able to find it.
This year I went through some big changes in my life both good and bad. There came a point that tipped me over into a dark pit of emotion I could not crawl out of. We all have our limits and I hit mine hard.
Since then I have gotten help and therapy to get myself in probably the best place mentally that I have been in quite a long while.
A large part of it has been the various medications that I have been put on. After some adjusting with adds and drops, I am feeling more in control of myself and my life.
We started with my lack of sleep. I have a fitbit which gave me data I could share. It showed that I was getting 4 to 5 hours at most and my deep sleep was practically non-existent. This is not good for one’s body over time. In fact, it is very bad for one’s body. Now I am getting that deep sleep that my body has been craving and gone to 7 hours on the average. It is amazing how much that one thing has helped me. I used to have about 6 hours of good time per day if I was luck. Now I have so much more and can get so much more done.
I have another medication that helps balance my mood. That is a little trickier because everyone’s brain is the same and different at the same time. There are medications that work for one person’s depression and does chuck all for another. We found one that leveled me out and helped me to go back to being me. I can look back and see how bad I was doing. I was blaming health issues for what turned out to be depression. A lot of my pain is now a dull roar rather than sharp and causing me to not be able to do things. Again, this has helped my productivity increase a lot.
As things got better, I started to notice some other issues that were emerging. They had been there for a while however I was dealing with these other issues that I thought it was part of the whole problem I was having.
My biggest problem after we got all the others sort out was lack of focus. I used to be able to laser focus on something and work on it until done. I could work through the details of a project and break them down. I was sleeping and I didn’t feel like my world was going to end at the drop of a hat. However, I was still hitting a wall trying to get things done which was very frustrating to me because I assumed once medicated properly, this would not be a problem.
After a couple of months and some long discussions with some testing, my doctor added another medication that has turned night into day. Apparently somewhere along the way my brain went to the side of attention deficit disorder. A mild version of the disorder but still very annoying. There is a third medication I take which allows me to do things again and not get totally overwhelmed. My memory is improved, and I don’t find myself spinning my wheels and getting frustrated. I can make a plan and execute it like I could back in my younger days. It is a glorious feeling.
I found that if a medication doesn’t seem to be working there are plenty of others to try. And finding the right doctor/therapist is very important to getting back to normal so the first one you meet might not be the one you stick with. There has to be a chemistry and trust between the patient and their doctor. I think this is even more important in terms of metal health.
Right now mentally I am feeling better than I have in years. This has allowed me to get things done in a timely fashion. That is a great feeling. I feel accomplished for the first time in a long time. Now I want to keep this trend going.
I am grateful for medicine that allows me to be a functioning adult.
This year I went through some big changes in my life both good and bad. There came a point that tipped me over into a dark pit of emotion I could not crawl out of. We all have our limits and I hit mine hard.
Since then I have gotten help and therapy to get myself in probably the best place mentally that I have been in quite a long while.
A large part of it has been the various medications that I have been put on. After some adjusting with adds and drops, I am feeling more in control of myself and my life.
We started with my lack of sleep. I have a fitbit which gave me data I could share. It showed that I was getting 4 to 5 hours at most and my deep sleep was practically non-existent. This is not good for one’s body over time. In fact, it is very bad for one’s body. Now I am getting that deep sleep that my body has been craving and gone to 7 hours on the average. It is amazing how much that one thing has helped me. I used to have about 6 hours of good time per day if I was luck. Now I have so much more and can get so much more done.
I have another medication that helps balance my mood. That is a little trickier because everyone’s brain is the same and different at the same time. There are medications that work for one person’s depression and does chuck all for another. We found one that leveled me out and helped me to go back to being me. I can look back and see how bad I was doing. I was blaming health issues for what turned out to be depression. A lot of my pain is now a dull roar rather than sharp and causing me to not be able to do things. Again, this has helped my productivity increase a lot.
As things got better, I started to notice some other issues that were emerging. They had been there for a while however I was dealing with these other issues that I thought it was part of the whole problem I was having.
My biggest problem after we got all the others sort out was lack of focus. I used to be able to laser focus on something and work on it until done. I could work through the details of a project and break them down. I was sleeping and I didn’t feel like my world was going to end at the drop of a hat. However, I was still hitting a wall trying to get things done which was very frustrating to me because I assumed once medicated properly, this would not be a problem.
After a couple of months and some long discussions with some testing, my doctor added another medication that has turned night into day. Apparently somewhere along the way my brain went to the side of attention deficit disorder. A mild version of the disorder but still very annoying. There is a third medication I take which allows me to do things again and not get totally overwhelmed. My memory is improved, and I don’t find myself spinning my wheels and getting frustrated. I can make a plan and execute it like I could back in my younger days. It is a glorious feeling.
I found that if a medication doesn’t seem to be working there are plenty of others to try. And finding the right doctor/therapist is very important to getting back to normal so the first one you meet might not be the one you stick with. There has to be a chemistry and trust between the patient and their doctor. I think this is even more important in terms of metal health.
Right now mentally I am feeling better than I have in years. This has allowed me to get things done in a timely fashion. That is a great feeling. I feel accomplished for the first time in a long time. Now I want to keep this trend going.
I am grateful for medicine that allows me to be a functioning adult.
