Sought out help and now I feel even worse. What next steps are there?

[Karellen]

Hello,

I had a rant on this forum about 6 months ago about the history of my depression, anxiety lack of confidence and self-esteem. Had a few people reply with some good advice with the strong recommendation that I go back to my GP and arrange to see another psychologist/psychiatrist. So it took some time but I finally went to see a new psych and immediately took a strong disliking to her. Found someone else about 6 weeks later who I got on better with. I was also put on a few different medications by a psychiatrist that I started seeing at the start of the year. He said I most likely had both dysthymia and generalized anxiety disorder. At the moment I have started another combination of medications and will have a review of how those are working in a fortnight. I have only one full session left with my psych that is covered by mental health plan so she wants me to wait a bit before seeing her again.

So during the last few months I have been feeling absolutely terrible. I didn't know I could feel this miserable and my psych was particularly worried enough to consider hospitalization. During this whole time I have still had to go to my anxiety provoking job so I can afford these treatments. I would not mind having to spend thousands of dollars If it made life a little bit more bearable. My psychiatrist said the next step would be group therapy but that can also be expensive and probably will have to take more time off work. No guarantees with that either. 

My wits are frayed, cognition has hit rock bottom, medication has scrambled my brain, anxiety? depression? anger? frustration? I can't even explain to myself how I am feeling most of the time. I am not too sure what steps I should take next except for yelling at my psychiatrist/psychologist/gp that I'm losing my mind. Any suggestion would be appreciated?

[Kazzl]

Hi Karellen, welcome back. I'm sorry you are struggling so much at the moment and not finding medication and professionals helpful. Sadly, mental health treatment isn't an exact science and sometime it is a hard and prolonged process to find what works for us individually. The best we can do is hang on, hope, keep trying and arm ourselves with information and personal strategies until something 'clicks'. 

It's frustrating, debilitating and at times seems pointless. But it's not, because you will improve if you persist. I really believe that.

I don't know if this will help, but for me I've found that 'owning' my illness and taking control of my own treatment has helped. I'm one who hates feeling helpless, and I'm a determined, stubborn bugger. So feeling like it's my responsibility to manage this suits me, rather than passively accepting what a doctor or another professional says. Doesn't mean I don't follow instructions, especially with medication, but I know the options and choices are mine to make and that helps me fight feeling helpless.

I've also realised that medication is just one an aspect (albeit very important) of treatment. And I've taken it on myself to do other things to help - learning about my thinking patterns, recognising when I'm sliding and consciously changing what I'm thinking. Positive distraction also helps me, as does doing small tasks that are achievable and satisfying (cooking, gardening etc) and give me a sense of control over something.

These sorts of things might not suit you, but there will be others - lifestyle things and small strategies like breathing deeply, refocusing your thoughts, resting! and slowing down that might help you.

I'm sure others will be along to suggest other strategies. Meanwhile, I hope it helps to know you're not alone in this, many many people here understand and share your frustration. Keep talking to us.

Best wishes

Kaz 

[Dwwmills]

Kazzl’s post was fantastic. I can’t add much to it but I can give you my experience with my medication. I was weaned onto it slowly to try to minimise side-effects. I still managed to get slight headaches and tiredness which lessened over time. The benefits from the medication were very subtle and only came into effect after four or five months. It wasn’t like taking a headache tablet and having a noticeable effect a hour later. It was more like a gradual change of mood. Didn’t notice this until one day I was feeling more settled and happier than I had been for years. I had also been doing very intensive cognitive based therapy whilst on medication. When I started to reduce my medication it became very clear how much effect the medication was having. Each time I reduced my medication I had to work very hard with CBT to overcome the slight drop in mood. At one stage I even needed to go back up a dose to get my mood stabilised. Like you I had generalised anxiety disorder and it took me nearly 2 years from going on medication to getting control of it and coming off. I still do CBT daily.

Kazzl’s third paragraph about “owning” my anxiety was very important to me as I am a determined stubborn as well. I learnt how to do CBT through my psychologist, books and an app for my phone. This allowed me to practice it daily without having to wait for a psychologist appointment. I used my psychologist to help oversee what I was doing. I found this very empowering and I realised that I had control over my anxiety.

In your last paragraph you sound extremely angry and frustrated. This is not a good state of mind to be in to be trying to sort things out. I had similar feelings when I started this process. The big game changer for me was realising that it was anxiety that was driving these feelings. I came to the realisation that my view of the world was driven by anxiety and as such I could not trust my views. It was a very big Paradyne shift and required a great leap of faith that my psychologist’s view of the situation was much more accurate than mine. Found this very confronting as I like to be in control but it wasn’t until I started challenging my anxiety fuelled beliefs that things started to get better. By not believing in my psychologist it also allowed me to ignore areas that I really was scared to look at but needed to tackle. Accepting my psychologist view of the world also meant that I would have to tackle these things. This made the decision doubly hard.