Having More Good Days Than Bad

[tayannhar]

I was diagnosed with PND in September 2016 (my daughter was born in November 2015) and started seeing a psychologist and taking medication in January 2017.

I was constantly feeling overwhelming feelings of sadness and having intrusive thoughts. After trying several brands of medication, I have now been taking a different one for approx. 8 weeks and have noticed I am having good days in between the bad days.

I'd say roughly, the intrusive thoughts are 50% less than they were, and although I still have feelings of sadness, they are not as constant as they were (touch wood).

I am hoping that this is a sign that I am on the road to recovery from PND. But I was just wondering, for those of you who have suffered from depression and recovered, did you notice good days popping in between the bad days? And if so, did they become more frequent?

[Croix]

Dear Tayannhar~

Welcome here to the Forum. PND is a horrible thing to have to go through and I"m very glad you are wise enough to get medical assistance. Coming here too is a pretty good idea as there are many who will have experiences that can be used to help.

Trying differing brands of medication is not unusual, unfortunately treating depression is not an exact science, a certain amount of trial and error is involved - all people are different I guess. My depression came from another source.

To answer your specific question I found that it was not a sudden total improvement. Like you I went though a very long period of trialing different medications which did not seem to improve matters, in fact some made things worse. Eventually though I started taking one that did improve my outlook.

If I remember correctly - it was a fair while ago - I noticed an improvement almost straight away which gradually increased. This was however in 'waves'. I would go though periods of feeling better, then worse again, though this gradually evened out as the better days became much more prevalent.

Nowadays I'm pretty good, not 100%, as I have other problems, but definatly in a life of love, ability, higher self regard, energy and accomplishment.

It may be your regime will still need tweaking, normally your doctor will be able to give you some idea of how long to leave things to stabilize before looking again.

As I also suffer anxiety I find the app for my smartphone called Smiling Mind to be a good tool when trying to alter mood or repetitive or unwelcome thoughts. Exercise and distraction also help.

I'd suggest having a look at sections of The Facts menu above for further information and also having a browse here on the Forum to see how others have coped in similar circumstances.

We would like it very much if you posted again to say how you are going

Croix

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi Tayannhar,

Thanks for your post.

I just wanted to recommend a site that is a little more focused on PND and that is PANDA. They have forums specific to what you're going through where as BeyondBlue can be a little more broad.

Hopefully you might be able to find more people to connect with here.

If you'd like to have a look the link is below -

https://panda.saneforums.org/

[geoff]

hello Tayannhar, to answer your question, yes, absolutely, and I know what PND feels like, because my wife (ex) had it, but I also had it as well.
Some days will be good so everyone believes that you have overcome it in total, however it doesn't stop the next day or any other day where you feel as though you're back to where you first begun.
This doesn't only happen with people suffering from PND, but any type of depression the same could happen, but, you must never degrade yourself if the next day you aren't feeling well, because as time goes on, these bad days will become less frequent, and remember these good days are when you are slowly building up your strength, and that's definitely a positive sign.
I couldn't be any more happier than you are, but please keep your appointments, whether you are well, just as when you have an off day, because feeling well is when you think that you don't need to see your doctor/therapist, please don't believe that, because your strong points need to be told to them for any future support. Geoff.