Well it's been a long time, but a lot has happened! I changed to citalopram, I've finished my degree, got a new job which I love and started to come off the meds all together.

I have started a new blog to chart my progress in coming off and you can read the first post here:

http://delilah42.wordpress.com/

It's not easy coming off especially negotiating with the doctor over the best way to come off. But I feel so much better these days, I have more responsibility in my new job, but I'm away from the bullys and work with "normal" people!

D

x

Well I've not posted in ages and I bet you've forgotten about me. My life has been generally good lately and I've been waiting for my CBT appointment to come through. It hasn't. I'm still getting on well at the new hospital, but am struggling to get over what happened before. I will post a longer blog later.

I've not posted lately, but I've had a good week. After deciding to set myself small goals I've finished my presentations, tidied my huge pile of books and papers, and planned my revision for exams. The healthy eating goal and winding down before bed haven't been started yet, but I hope to work on the latter this week by planning to go to bed early. I absolutely love the hospital I'm at now and told one of the nurses this week that I didn't want to leave and go back to the old one! I'm sure it will have its fair share of problems but at least everyone is laid back and really care about each other. My new boss, let's call her Mary,is a lot more understanding about mental illness and illness generally. She suffers from Lupus which is an illness where the immune system attacks the body and causes scaring. I have to confess that this week has not been a complete bed of roses. I had a cold at the weekend and felt really low and cr*p. I couldn't work out why. I self harmed for the first and only time by scraping skin off my knee with a scalpel. The pain I felt matched the pain I could not feel in my head and distracted myself from it. I've had the scab all week to remind me how weak and silly I was doing it. I won't do it again. I had to write about it to get the confession out in the open. Today I will have a lovely relaxing bath and go to bed early.

I finally had my first CBT session today and it was good but really hard. I found it really uncomfortable talking about my perceptions about myself. It seems that my anxiety and worry is about my performance and when I perform well and I get confirmation from others, I feel good about myself. When I think I've done badly I worry about others saying so and I feel physically bad and my stomach is like butterflies. She asked me why and I said that I felt I was less of a person and that if I was told I did well I felt like a "proper person". It seems that I try for perfectionism to make sure that I do not go through this process. I told her I had always been in competition to be the best and that maybe it was to get attention from my parents, because I had always tried to perform better than my twin sister, Elizabeth. She is now referring me for the more intense 12 week CBT, so more waiting.

 

You know, writing this has reminded me about something Elizabeth told me about when she was at University. She said she went to see the counsellor once and it turned out that she was seeking praise for doing well, but was not getting any. She said that since then she has always set herself little goals so that when she achieved them she felt good that she had achieved something and could praise herself. Things like setting herself the task to tidy her room and feeling pleased with herself when she had. I think that for a long while now, when I plan to do something I have struggled to do it because of my depression and this has fed into the negative cycle above, resulting in me not feeling as good as "everyone else"

 

I think I will set myself a small task each day, starting with small easy things and then feeling good and rewarding myself when I do them. Today I will do a little bit towards the presentation I need to write. I'm pleased that I did some yesterday and I will do some today!

 

I think the reason I have been feeling "just ok" and unexplainably down and negative this weekend is because I have not achieved the things I wanted.

 

Future goals to work on:

Start eating more healthily

Wind down for an hour before bed so that I sleep well

Plan when to study (must be careful with this one to save myself from "failure")

Reward myself for each small goal achieved

Now to get on with that presentation ...

Well things are looking up this week! I started my secondment and its going really well. I feel like I've fitted in already and everyone seems really nice. They were short of staff yesterday and got thrown in the deep end a bit and swam. I feel pleased and think I'm making a good impression. I think I'm pretty much over the withdraw of stepping down on my tablets too. The future seems to be looking up at this new work place. I will have to go back in about a years time but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. My motivation and energy has been at an all time low for months but I'm thinking that now I'm happy at work rather than anxious, stressed and down trodden, that my motivation might slowly return. I have certainly felt more able to do things when I get home from work this week. Looking back, no one Listened or respected me. I was made to feel that my opinions and problems did not matter. I was so unhappy in that atmosphere and thought that because they were all so critical of me that I was rubbish at my job and rubbish at communication. There was so much bitching behind people's backs that it really got me down. Where I work now they say my communication is much better than 2 and a half years ago (I now work with the senior staff member who has been making sure I was being trained properly the whole time I was at the other hospital) They seem pleased with the progress I've made in the last 3 days. I hope now that I will be able to start getting better. I think it will be a slow process to get back to being the old Delilah but I think the way is up now, not down.

Thanks Anne-Peneloppe and Amy, I have been feeling low this weekend and I needed someone to tell me to keep going on the lower dose of Paroxetine. I'm still feeling pretty rubbish today, I'm so tired and have a headache but I'm back home with my husband and that has cheered me up. I'm no good at saying how I feel and I wish I could write poetry, but I think I get better at writing every day. I feel recently that life speeds by and leaves me behind trying desperately trying to keep up. I'm starting my secondment next week and feel I have so much to do before then. I'm meeting my study group on Friday and I have done no research. I don't seem to recognise myself. I used to be super organised and dependable, now I'm disorganised and rely on others to bail me out. At least I have understanding friends. I know all this makes little sense but I'm trying to understand how I feel. I used to have social anxiety disorder (I'm not sure if it is a disorder or extreme shyness, but that's another blog) but since the medication this has got better so I wonder if the disorganization is partly due to this and partly due to the depression. I'll try sticking to the lower dose for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

On Monday this week I saw my Doctor to get another prescription. I've been on 40 mg paroxetine since November and was fed up of being on a high dose, so asked if I could drop it and she reluctantly agreed to drop the dose to 30 mg. So far I'm pleased to say I've not had the horrible side effects that people talk about on the internet. No brain zaps, no headaches, no nausea etc. However, I've been visiting my family this week without my husband and I've been feeling extremly spaced out. I feel sad and miss being able to tell my husband how I feel. My parents don't understand what I'm going through and don't understand why I'm on anti-depressants when they cause so many side effects and cause withdrawal when coming off them. For this reason I've not really told them much about how I'm feeling. I feel tired and feel like crying, I'm not sure if I just feel lonely or whether I should go back up to 40 mg. I think that because I'm not getting withdrawal that I should persevere. I haven't felt like this for months.

I don't want to waffle on about how I feel, but I hope it passes soon.

:(

D