Depression

Living with Depression isn't all that fun. Although, with the right medication I can live most days without thinking about it. Every once and a while it sneaks up on me. Without even knowing about it I am being stalked by the ugly black cloud. Sometimes the ugly feelings and anger, that are my symptoms of my depression, are brought on by a couple of things...
1. Lack of sleep, which having three little boys who never slept well to begin with makes it hard to get enough sleep.
2. Forgetting to take my meds. (Yeah I know)
3. Too much of the everyday stress. You know just the hard, messy days that parents have. The children are whiny and fighting, the dog is puking, the house is a mess. After to many days like that, I find myself in an "episode" of depression.
4. The weather. That is something in recent years I started to understand more. I have a hard time in the summer. You might think because of the rain, but I think it is more of the humidity. Since it has been cooler and rainy my depression "episodes" have been less than previous years.
5. PMS...I know you think you have bad mood swings...with depression it is more like a roller coaster.
Even with all these triggers I have to say my depression is pretty well controlled. I am happy with the medication I am on. I take Zoloft before bed and that has been keeping me out of the black hole of depression. Yes, I do feel the cloud coming down on me occasionally, but with the Zoloft I can fight it back. When my shrink thought it might be good to come down on the dose a little, I couldn't fight the cloud away. The depression seeped into my bones and I could not get rid of it. We decided to up the Zoloft again. 100mg is my magic number. Anything less and I can't shake the ugliness anything more and I feel like a zombie.
Now it took me almost 6 years to get to the point that I know what works and what doesn't. I also had to keep track of what was happening around me to know what the triggers are. Sometimes I can't catch the depression from sinking its ugly claws in, but I am getting better about coming out of it and knowing when I need help.

Why am I writing about this. Well, I guess I just want people to know, that with depression like any other disease, you are in the drivers seat. You need to take control of your own healing. No one and no magic pill can make it better, you have to work at it. Maybe not every day, but most days. Sounds a lot like life in general, it is not easy, but it is what you make of it.

Check out Depressions and Bipolar Support Alliance