It’s now my one year “anniversary” of my psych med “journey”. I just feel so frustrated.
The providers always ask me how I’m doing and if I think X drug we are trying right now helps. I always have no fucking clue.
I keep a mood log and everything, but I cannot for the life of me discern any sort of pattern for any of these. One month will be fantastic and the next month will be so horrible and painful it’s like someone is boring a hole through my body with a branding iron.
My provider is having me take the GeneSight test to figure out if there is a particular option I should be trying. But I am just so exhausted with this that I’m considering the next med to be my final straw.
I do NOT have bipolar disorder. I do NOT have chronic low mood. I do NOT have lack of emotions. I do NOT have PTSD. I have periods of extreme, unbearable intensity with periods of normal in between. I have relational trauma. Since my issues are intermittent, I cannot for the life of me tell if I am ever helped by anything.
I am currently in an intensive DBT program. While it has been a lifesaver when I have “simple” problems, it does not touch the intense pain of others.
Some research I do seems to indicate my problem cannot be even minimally helped by meds, which is incredibly frustrating. I want even just a little bit of something to help reduce my pain. :(
How can I figure this out?
I am convinced that 99% of the time, antidepressants a placebo effect. It’s like giving someone a hat and telling them they’ll feel better if they wear it. So they put the hat on, and they say they don’t really feel better. But then they’re told “oh it just takes a few months, and certainly you feel something”. And they have to agree, because they do feel something different. They feel a hat on their head when before they didn’t. But that feeling isn’t really doing anything. And maybe in a few months their life situation will change and they won’t be depressed anymore. And if they’re still depressed after all that time? Well just try a new hat, or the same one but in a different size! It feels different now, right? Different from the last hat? Maybe that’s what they need! Let’s check back in a few months and see if that works!
I’ve honestly thought the same thing for a number of years. If you look into the research, antidepressants are consistently only marginally better than placebo. Moods change over time in general and with different environmental factors. So obviously at some point your mood improves, aided by placebo.
Despite me not really believing in them, psych meds are have been part of my journey. I hate that people think that I am not trying things and giving them a fair shot. I desperately am and continue to do so. It’s just that my life hasn’t really changed in a positive way. I really, sincerely try. Like with my therapy, I take extensive notes and do my best to utilize the techniques they give me. I even had the opportunity to use some successfully this past Friday! But it only seems to help sometimes despite me trying so hard.
I will say that I don’t think psych meds are totally bunk in certain specific scenarios. People with severe biological/organic derangements like schizophrenia and bipolar 1 disorder do massively benefit from psychiatric medications.
But the difference is that with these conditions, we are giving very high dosages of very powerful antipsychotic medications. Outside of that, the human mind doesn’t seem to operate that way. The previous thought about depression caused by chemical deficiency in serotonin has been disproven.
My issues are episodic and intermittent, making a lot of this stuff harder to tackle and “treat”.
I am inherently suspicious of any type of “medicine” that you are instructed to try for 3-4 months and see how you feel on it. That’s absurd. Imagine any physical ailment where they tell you to wait 3-4 months to see if it gets better.
That’s time. That’s all it is. Time. If I give you an ointment for a sprained ankle and tell you that after 4 months it will be healed; as long as you continue to also ice it, and rest it, and do all the other things you are supposed to do with a sprained ankle. Guess what? That ointment didn’t do shit. Time and basic self care did.
Except with long term depression, time and self-care just aren’t going to cut it. But you are expected to just keep trying new “medications” for months at a time.
Hey, this sounds like me in my 20s:
I do NOT have bipolar disorder. I do NOT have chronic low mood. I do NOT have lack of emotions. I do NOT have PTSD. I have periods of extreme, unbearable intensity with periods of normal in between. I have relational trauma. Since my issues are intermittent, I cannot for the life of me tell if I am ever helped by anything.
Which lead me to decades of drinking and smoking weed. Diagnosis-wise, my therapist landed on CPTSD. Which isn’t recognized in the US. it’s (apologies if this offends any folks diagnosed with CPTSD out there) kind of a catch all for folks whose situation could be described as you’ve described here. Think of it like the IBS of mental health diagnoses. Anyways, the diagnosis doesn’t help much.
I am currently in an intensive DBT program. While it has been a lifesaver when I have “simple” problems, it does not touch the intense pain of others.
Are the intense pains the relational trauma you alluded to? Bc that’s normal. Not fun, but normal. I won’t praddle on and assume a bunch here, but usually deep hurt leads to maladaptive coping mechanisms which kind of regularly create the “simple” problems. Leaves you feeling stuck.
How can I figure this out?
So, there is no magic pill. There might be a better antidepressant. There might not be. I’ve been on several over the last decade. Landed on one that works. I know it works because I only cry when I am really really upset but I still tear up and have emotions for things like art, etc. my emotions aren’t flat. They’re under control. That’s how I know. Everyone’s different.
Here’s where folks give up: there is no magic pill. There is a cure, though. It’s exercise. I know. I’m sorry. It’s awful.
Finding the right med isn’t a magic pill. It will get your emotions under control. They’re crutches. Not prosthetics. Once you’re doing okay-ish, the only thing that’s gonna get us chronically down folks feeling better on the regular is exercising on the regular.
I hate gyms. I hate running. I hate working out near people. So, I hike. I drive to a nearby hill and walk up it. Then I walk back down and drive home.
Just like 30 mins of walking every day will genuinely make a massive difference. My pro tip: walk fast enough that you are forced to focus on your breathing. Leave no space for rumination. If you’re still ruminating, find a steeper hill or walk faster.
In my 20s, I would have never even read a response that suggested exercise was a piece of the puzzle I was trying to solve. If I never did, I almost certainly wouldnt have made it through my 30s.
No professional has diagnosed me, but from looking at things online, I seem to have traits of BPD and CPTSD.
While I appreciate the time you took to sit here and think of a response to things, I just want to say that I honestly find this sort of “exercise cures you” stuff offensive. Again, I understand you are well meaning and not intending to hurt me. I understand that it worked for you. That’s great!
I listened to the people that said exercise improves your mental health. I gave it a shot. I didn’t just give it a shot. I fully committed.
Several years back I started running. I was surprised at how consistent I managed to be for so long. I ran every other day or every third day. I was consistent for 1.5 years somehow. I never managed to commit to something that long.
But I never saw the benefit of “improved mood”. People on the internet would say “you’re just not running fast enough” or “you’re just not running hard enough”. So I did. I ran faster and faster and farther and farther. Before I ended up dropping the whole thing, I was consistently running 8 miles every other day. The longest I ran was 10 miles a few times.
I kept going further and further and harder and harder hoping I would find the magic distance or speed that would improve my life. It never did.
Running actually did impact my emotions, but in an unhelpful way. What running actually did was magnify my current emotions. You can see how this is a problem for someone who’s issue is suffering from extreme emotions. I didn’t want them to be more extreme. The happy parts were fun, but the lows would get so much worse.
I tried so hard for so long consistently and it never helped me.
Again, I appreciate your time to read and post here. But I really don’t like when people tout it as something that helps everyone when it doesn’t. Does it help some and is worth trying? Sure! But it’s not the cure all you think it is.
Yeah, that’s about what I would have said in my 20s. I know better than to argue with me in my 20s.
I was an all state athlete homie. I already believed exercise couldn’t cure shit. I was as wrong as you are.
Good luck.
Thanks for ignoring and dismissing my lived experience and inensive, sustained, consistent efforts. Not sure why age matters. I’m in my 30s.
I am not dismissing your lived experience, I have been empathizing with it.
You called a well known cure for your issues “offensive.”
Don’t expect to call folks attempt to empathize with you and help you “offensive,” and subsequently be babied. Go for a walk or dont, idgaf dude.
You can lead a horse to water… Stubborn as a mule… Etc.
Good luck. Seems you’ll need it as much as I did.
I spoke at length about how I tried very hard for a very long time at the “well known cure”. You ignored me and continued to say that that was the cure all when I literally said that it did not work for me.
I am offended because you completely dismissed this and just re-stated your original post. I am offended because it looks like you didn’t even read my response.
Here is a reduced format of what this sounds like.
You: X is the cure all
Me: I tried X and did not see a benefit. Here is my experience with it.
You: Cool story, bro but X is the cure all
If you can’t see how this is unhelpful and offensive, I don’t know what to do tell you.
I am not interested in what you have to say. I provided you help. You called it offensive. Cool. Use it or don’t.
Bye.
Thanks for ignoring what I have to say and invalidating me, friend. I hope others treat you with the same kindness you have shown to me.
Well, as a general thing, you’d look at severity of episodes and frequency.
If you get a reduction in either, the med is working. Some issues are harder to medicate, often because a lot of meds are essentially a stab in the dark when the underlying condition isn’t well understood. Since you listed a lot of things that aren’t your diagnosis, chances are that whatever the diagnosis is, isn’t going to be well understood. Not that most psychiatric issues are well understood to begin with.
Since what you did specify is relatively poorly understood, and isn’t psychiatric in the same sense as bipolar, it really is going to be a matter of trying shit until something helps. The real treatment for relational trauma is talk therapy in one form or another. The meds are there to give you time for the real treatment to work. It’s like taking aspirin to reduce pain while your body heals.
Dbt, unfortunately, takes time. A lot of time with more severe issues.
I guess what I’m saying is that you keep trying meds and hoping one helps. That’s all you can do. The meds that might help as a breakthrough option (like benzos) can’t be used long term, and actually interfere with treatment when used, so the most you’ll get in that regard is something for a few days.
In my case, the depression etc. turned out to be caused by a chronic inflammation in the gut. No wonder the antidepressants have been working like shit, except amitriptyline because it also does something to the gut.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitriptyline#Other_indications
Doctors have mostly been useless or harmful. I’ve met one good doctor during the ~30 years I’ve been ill, and one good nutrition therapist. Thanks to Mistral le Chat (chatbot) connecting some details that humans failed to notice. The treatment is now focused on killing the invading microbes from the gut wall (again), and healing the gut enough so that it can defend itself instead of requiring more and more courses of antimicrobials.I’ll assume you mean antidepressants when you say “psych med journey”.
I’ve been on many different medications over the years, and I’ve come to realize that these medications do not actually normalize you. They only shift the window. They do not suddenly make you feel better. They make the highs marginally higher and slightly more frequent while making the lows moderately less worse and significantly less frequent.
If you find that you are unhappy less often then they are working as intended. Whether you are happy more frequently is only a cherry on top. With that said, you should talk to your psychiatrist or psychologist if you still have concerns. These are good questions to have and you should share them with your doctor.
Antidepressants are one that I’ve tried, but I’ve been in different classes now.
I don’t need something to “make me happy”. I’m pretty good at that when I’m not having a rough go!
When I’m having a rough go, it feels so incredibly intense and painful, like someone is boring a hole through my body with a hot iron. I want it to help with these lows because it feels so incredibly intense and painful. When I am having a hard time, I’ll either physically have a hard time walking or I’ll do the opposite where I’m amped and trying not to jump into traffic.
I just want the intensity to be lowered a bit. It hasn’t been.
Where my mind has been at in all of this is that most psych meds seem to be little more than placebo. That is…UNLESS you have a severe “derangement” in brain function as with something like schizophrenia or bipolar 1, where very high doses of psychiatric medication are needed to have a strong effect.
But for the population outside of these said conditions, I just am not “getting it”.
If your medication is not helping with the lows then you are not responding to that medication. You are NOT doing better. Sometimes finding the right medication is a years long journey, and sometimes what you think is the problem isn’t the problem at all - it is a symptom, not the cause.
I’ll reinforce my previous statements. Continue talking to your doctor and let them know that your medication is NOT working.
I pray that you find the medication that works for you sooner rather than later.
Thank you, friend. All the back and forth, med changing, etc. has been pretty exhausting this past year. I get frustrated for a bit and then I try again. Hoping they get the GeneSight test to me soon so I can take it, even though it is of dubious utility.
You should bring your concerns to your providers and ask them, and not diagnose yourself via Google, or ask strangers on Lemmy. If they’re not satisfying your questions, ask to change providers. Can you ask any friends or family if they’ve noticed a difference since you’ve started taking different medications?
My providers know all of this stuff about me. This is what I tell them. I am not hiding anything or not communicating.
One was honest with me straight up said “I’m sorry but I and your therapist seem to be unable to give you sufficient care”.
I have tried different providers. It has the same result. I explain the nature of my “symptoms” to them and keep logs.
Occasionally a friend will remark that I am “doing better”, but then I go right back to where I was before. Other times when people remark that I am “doing better”, it’s simply that I am better at hiding it from others for a period of time.
My issues are very episodic in nature which my providers are very aware of.
