Hi GMC7
My heart goes out to you as you face one of the most challenging times in your life. I'm so glad you came here in search of people who, through their own experience, may be able to offer a way forward.
With the medication factor, I believe that if it's perfectly designed to target exactly what's depressing us it'll work. If it misses the mark, it won't work. The reason I mention this is based on my own experience. The search for the right med can leave you questioning 'What's wrong with me? Am I so broken to the point that no meds work for me?'. Don't worry, it's not you. If you can imagine a bow/arrow/target scenario, you could call it a missed take at hitting the mark (aka 'mistake'). The person prescribing took their best shot. Again, that's no reflection on you. Btw, earlier in my life I tried about 5 or 6 different meds for depression and only one ever worked. I had to go off it pre-pregnancy. It never worked again. Over the years I gradually found other ways to manage.
In some cases, there can be so many depressing factors in play that a mixed method approach is what's going to work best for us, personally. Could involve a guidance counselor or someone along those lines who can guide us at a time in our life where we just can see the way forward in our mind. Could involve a brilliant and passionate medical detective, determined to identify clues as to what the seriously low energy we're feeling is all about. Could involve a support network that's not only going to support us emotionally but also support us when it comes to our sense of wonder. While we could sit alone in wonder, I've found it's far less depressing and more fast tracking when we've got others wondering with us when it comes to what's possibly depressing us (an open minded brain storming of possibilities we may never have considered before). Could involve a more chemically based approach, whether that involves meds or it involves figuring out how to get the body to naturally produce its own chemistry through certain means, if that's possible. Just finding someone to vent to can also be another helpful factor. Better out than in, in some cases (all that stuff going on within us). The list goes on and on. The most challenging thing of all involves 'Which approaches are going to work best for me?'.
With that deep dark well or depression, you don't necessarily feel yourself teetering on the brink of it. You may not even feel yourself having gone in. At some point you do feel yourself in there. Whether we feel the depression quarter of the way down, half way down or we can only feel it when we hit rock bottom, the goal remains the same no matter where we are in a depression. The goal is to raise ourself or be raised through exactly the right approaches. All the wrong ones just keep us in the dark.
