Sticking it Out (The Difference 48 hours can make when the crazies strike!)

Tuesday afternoon I was moving from busy to frantic. Only a week earlier we had record snowfall in my area and it had broken tree limbs all over the city and put thousands out of power. We were slated for another big storm and I felt like I had a lot to do to get ready. The DH had been out of town before the big storm and had been pretty upset by the damage to our trees. He wasn't angry at me but I always take it personally--internalize it and make myself nuts trying to find ways to make it so he will never be angry again. Which is why I was going into frantic-crazy mode Tuesday afternoon.

I spent hours that day (probably 5 or 6) cleaning up the yard, mulching the garden, shaking remaining leaves off our trees, and taking the trampoline down. The first couple hours I was really proud of myself for all the hard work and the progress I was making. I was even humming, "Have I Done Any Good in the World Today?" as I cleaned some leaves out of my widowed neighbor's window wells. But the more tired I got and the more the kiddos got in my way, the more I started to second guess myself. My brain started up telling me that I wasn't doing a good enough job and that the DH was going to come home and be mad because I didn't do things his way--which is sort of a Pure O obsession for me, these hypothetical arguments in my head and the conviction that my DH is going to hate me forever (which is really all in my head; the DH and his attitude/actions have very little to do with it). The DH and I had a short phone conversation that afternoon which I misinterpreted and used as a fodder for the crazy. I began to be afraid of what was going to happen when he got home and started getting more and more frantic in my efforts to make it so he wouldn't--couldn't--be angry at me. (Hm? What's that you say? I should call my therapist and address this issue? Yeah. I know. I should.)

I had also babysat for a friend all day while she went to the temple. Not to mention it was the day after Halloween and we were all fried from the previous evening's festivities. I was tired.

The big kids came home from school and I had to get Princess N off to Activity Days. I got everyone in the car and made it down to the Church and then zoomed home to finish up the backyard work,do some cleaning inside, and make dinner. Then I remembered there was a writing deadline that I needed to submit something for. And then I realized it was raining, the temperature was dropping, and half the trampoline stuff was strewn all over the backyard.

We got home and I started working as fast as I could. But things just kept going wrong. The trampoline parts were stuck together and when I tried to stack them in the garage they crashed all over and made a huge mess where the DH usually parks his car. I had too many dirty dishes to do before I could cook dinner. The file I needed to submit wasn't on the computer I thought it was and my hands were shaking from anxiety. The kids spilled jelly all over the floor and stickiness on the floor is a pet peeve of the DH and I started to lose it. If I'd been frantic before by the time I had to go back to the Church to pick up Princess N I was in complete panic mode.

Driving home Mr. J started yelling at Supergirl E for "thinking a bad word but not actually saying it" and Supergirl E and Princess N started screaming back. I knew that the DH was home staring at the jelly on the floor and my heart was racing. Traffic was heavy and the kids kept getting louder and louder in the car. My hands were still shaking and my heart was racing. I was convinced we were going to end up in an accident. So I started yelling at the kids. A lot. And then felt very bad and started apologizing.

We got home and the DH was cleaning the jelly off the floor and I was a complete wreck. I demanded he come outside and started yelling at him for being so angry with me. He replied that he wasn't angry and I went into how angry he would have been if I hadn't accused him of being angry. Things spiraled from there as the kids watched from the window.

And then, I kid you not, the Relief Society president pulled up in my driveway. (Hi, Coffinberry!)

Low point, anyone??

She's actually a friend of mine and I appreciate her advice and perspective, but it was still pretty embarrassing. Nobody likes being caught at their worst, even when the people catching you love you.

She helped me calm down enough so that I could stop freaking out and make some dinner. But I spent the rest of the evening fight the crazy in my brain. After yelling at the DH the crazy talk in my brain changed from "the DH will be mad at you and your life will be ruined" to "You don't deserve to live. You are a failure and a waste of space. You need to be punished. A lot. You deserve to suffer and be in pain for the kind of person you are." It was terrible. I was trying not to cry too much, but the urge to punish and harm myself was very strong. I can only think of a handful of times it has been stronger. Of course, the worst part of it is that I could see all of it in my head. Technicolor visions of suicide and self-mutilation. Blech.

I knew I needed to get out of my head. Fast. I focused on dinner and turned on some music, repeating the lyrics in my head while singing them out loud. Anything to put the brakes on the hamster wheel of insanity in my brain. I ended up listening to a Mumford and Sons songs over and over. A couple lines from "The Cave" worked as a sort of mantra, "But I will hold on hope/And I won't let you choke/On the noose around your neck./And I'll find strength in pain./And I will change my ways./I'll know my name as it's called again." The lines were soothing and repeatable and, inexplicably, I associated it with baptism and taking on the name of Christ and I started to calm down.

I got through dinner and bedtime but the urge to punish myself was unrelenting. I had a huge headache but didn't want to take any medicine. I was exhausted but refused to go to bed. I didn't really want to hurt myself but I wanted to do something to make the punishing thoughts go away so I ate Halloween candy until I was sick to my stomach. And I drowned my sorrows in a couple episodes of Friday Night Lights. Another lovely low point to my day.

My sleep that night was troubled and the kids were up several times. Around 3:40 am, I gave up on sleep and decided I could take some medicine, even self-punishment was still heavy on my mind. So I went to the kitchen and took some ibuprofen. Then I stumbled across the Conference issue of the Ensign. I thumbed through it and finally came to Elder Utchdorf's talk, "Forget Me Not." (I keep trying to insert a link here to the actual talk but it's not working; sorry.) My head was still muddled enough that it was hard to feel the Spirit but I knew I needed to read the talk anyway. I think I read it in a frenzied manner several times but the only part that made sense to me was this:

Dear sisters, many of you are endlessly compassionate and patient with the weaknesses of others. Please remember also to be compassionate and patient with yourself. . . Sisters, wherever you are, whatever your circumstances may be, you are not forgotten. No matter how dark your days may seem, no matter how insignificant you may feel, no matter how overshadowed you think you may be, your Heavenly Father has not forgotten you. In fact, He loves you with an infinite love.

It had been a dark day. Overshadowed seemed a good descriptor for my mental state. Patience and compassion with myself sounded foreign but good. I told myself to wait this current bout of crazy out. Give it a day or two and see where things were.

So yesterday was a couple days later. A quick rundown: the wonderful neighbor who usually watches the baby when I have to go help out in kindergarten couldn't watch the baby, the DH forgot he was supposed to drive Mr. J to preschool, I lost my car keys, and a dog peed on my daughter's backpack at the bus stop. Later that day, I got to work on the allergen-free desserts I was supposed to be bringing to our school's Harvest Festival and burned two entire batches. After making an extra trip to the store, I got all the kids in bed and was then up until 11:00 at night finishing up the treats. It was a terrible day. I mean, since when do dogs randomly come up and pee on people's backpacks?? The fact is, though, it all worked out. I didn't lose my temper. I didn't want to hurt myself. I didn't hate myself. I didn't even panic. My family was okay. I was okay. The terrible day was okay. 48 hours after the crazy had reared it's ugly head, I was all right.

I'm still a little emotionally hung over from everything; I'm feeling a little tender and my fuse is short. But it passed. So, I guess I just wanted to pass that on to any of you who read this and might be struggling. No matter how many good days you have, your mood disorder will strike again. BUT, be patient with yourself and remember that God loves you. Wait it out, seek help, and be glad when the RS president shows up during your worst moment. Don't do anything you're going to regret because things will get better! I promise. I've been there and I promise.

*hugs*

Laura

p.s. A big thanks to those of you who stop by and tell me that my blog has been helpful to you. Those kinds of comments mean the world to me. I'm not alone--you aren't alone--we are in this together.

4:30 AM (or Early Morning Musings on Viruses and Emotional Styles)

It is actually 4:30 in the morning. And I am actually blogging. Not because I am an early riser. No, my baby is sitting on the floor fussing intermittently and playing with some toys. She gave up sleeping about a week ago so I have too. Sometime during the crazy that came after Mr. J was born I gave up sitting in dark rooms trying to rock calm an uber-fussy baby back to sleep. It makes me nuts so I come out and let them sit and play for awhile and then take them back in their rooms and go through the bedtime routine to get the child back to sleep. Hence the blogging.

The Little Cannoli and her brother, Mr. J (who is now three and a half years old; I sure do need to update my sidebar pic!), both have RSV (see above pic!) and I have spent the last week not sleeping. The three of us are miserable. I finally lost it this afternoon. Crazy Mommy reemerged with her volatile yelling and intrusive thoughts and intermittent bouts of crying. Within this haze of fatigue, steamy treaments (you know, when you turn on the shower and the sink as hot as they'll go and sit in the bathroom waiting for the coughing to subside), and doctor visits a single thought has emerged: I am an emotional endurer. (BTW, for some good practical advice on RSV check out this website.)

Now this emotional style isn't one of Oprah's easily identifiable ones. In fact I wonder if this isn't a particularly Mormon emotional style. I think int might come from the Mormon idea that if we just stick things out long enough we'll eventually get some blessing out of all the difficulties that surrounds us. We like to call this enduring to the end. But just like so many of us mistake spiritually enduring to the end for simply suffering through stuff, emotional endurance can get skewed too.

I'm not being very clear here. I think I should back up a little.

This quotation from Elder Wirthlin (Oh, how I loved his talks!) sums up spiritual endurance nicely. He says,

The question “Why me?” can be a difficult one to answer and often leads to frustration and despair. There is a better question to ask ourselves. That question is “What could I learn from this experience?” . . .The gospel of Jesus Christ includes enduring to the end as one of its bedrock doctrines. Jesus taught, “He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” And, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed.” Some think of enduring to the end as simply suffering through challenges. It is so much more than that—it is the process of coming unto Christ and being perfected in Him. . .Enduring to the end means that we have planted our lives firmly on gospel soil, staying in the mainstream of the Church, humbly serving our fellow men, living Christlike lives, and keeping our covenants. Those who endure are balanced, consistent, humble, constantly improving, and without guile. Their testimony is not based on worldly reasons—it is based on truth, knowledge, experience, and the Spirit.

See? Enduring to the end isn't actually about suffering; it's about staying true to ourselves, our covenants, and our God.

Likewise, emotional endurance shouldn't be just about powering through hard times. I had a lot of signs that my breakdown this afternoon was coming. I knew I was tired and I knew that tired=crazy for me. Fatigue makes my brain slippery and I fall back into all those old depressed habits very easily. But instead of listening to my inner voice and slowing down during this time of turbulence, I told myself I was going to emotionally endure this now matter what--and I kept telling myself that until I couldn't endure any longer, my emotions became unmanageable, and I fell apart. This faulty emotional endurance is very much like a virus that I keep getting infected with whenever life gets tough.

I think a better emotional style might be emotionally resilient. My spur-of-the-moment, 4:30 am definition of this is that I would be aware of those little warning signs that some crazy was coming down the pipe. I would be okay with cutting out the peripheral stuff, allow myself to feel whatever manageable frustrations I'm feeling, and remind myself that eventually I will not feel this way and things will get better. That way I wouldn't have to power through so much and wouldn't end up on the road to Breakdown-ville.

I remember early on during my therapy days my therapist telling me that the point of therapy was not to bail me out when I was at my wit's end but to teach me how to avoid getting there in the first place. That's what I'm talking about. I think it was something I was pretty close to after my struggles of winter 2009. It's the emotional style I need to reclaim.

Well, it's now been half and hour and hopefully the Little Cannoli is ready to sleep again. I'm certainly ready to! But, if you feel so inclined, tell me what your emotional style is. Are you an endurer/power-through-it-at-all-costs kind of person or are you something else?

What's the Word for. . .

being happy for someone that their life is going well but wishing, just a bit, that they were falling apart because then you'd have some company?

See, I'm still doing well. Really well! And I'm so relieved. I was talking with my psychiatrist and we both agreed that at this point I seem to be out of the woods mental health wise. And while she cautioned me against overdoing it and stressing myself out we both breathed a sigh of relief. Postpartum depression can strike any time during the first year so I'll be seeing my psychiatrist every so often to keep an eye on things, but I'm, well, happy.

It probably helps that the Little Cannoli is a much more even-tempered baby than my other ones. She already sleeps better than her older brother. She smiles and coos when she sees me. She's only two months old and already I feel like she's been part of the family forever. These swelling, happy feelings inside me must be what other new moms feel all the time!

But, to be honest, this happiness makes me a little jealous and a little sad about what I've missed with my other babies. How wonderful it could have been.

That little bit of jealousy and that little bit of sadness are familiar. See, after my second baby when I really started talking about my PPD experiences a few of my other mommy friends would say, "Yeah, it was like that for me too. I was so depressed." Relief would flood through my mind and I would feel like I wasn't alone. Like maybe I wasn't as screwed up as I thought I was. Like all of this struggle had a purpose. Like maybe there was hope for me.

But then none of them ever had more than one PPD episode. I was (am) the only one to have gone through it over and over again. I was (am) the only one whose life is constantly affected by a mood disorder. They all got over it and moved on. I never did.

Hope evaporated. Purpose was lost. And with those two things went perspective. I gave up on thinking I was ever going to be in a place where I could roll with the punches. I accepted that I was a little tweaky and tried to find ways to make the tweaky-ness work for me.

But now I feel like I'm approaching the elusive non-tweaky state of normal. So naturally (hah!) I'm relieved and a little suspicious. There's a part of me that is always looking for warning signs that I'm on another downturn. There's part of me that thinks I must be in some sort of magic state of denial. And there's a huge part of me that feels like I've betrayed my former self. I see women around me all the time who I think might be suffering from this and I want them to know they aren't alone. I want them to know that PPD is hard but it doesn't have to destroy you. I want to be there with them and support them on their journey.

But I know that when you are really down having someone tell you that you'll get over it someday isn't all that helpful. I know that hearing another woman crow about how good it feels to not be hurting doesn't do much good. What does help is having someone sit with you and accept you even when all the protective layers are ripped away. Having someone inhabit that emotionally elemental existence with you--even just for a little while--does more to clear the head and heal the heart than any amount of platitudes and well wishes ever will.

And I'm worried that my current happiness makes it so I can't sit with another woman and share her experience. That was a kind of loss I never expected. Normal is nice--convenient, really--but I never want to forget that don't have to be normal to be a good mom. Just being where you are and take care of yourself and your babies is good enough. Just because some of people are finding normal doesn't mean you've been left behind. Depressed and okay can coexist. Depressed and happy do work together.

Not So Happy Holidays

I hate to be a downer, but, well, I am depressed so it's to be expected.

The holidays have not been so happy thus far. I've been trying really hard to take all the awesome advice you guys gave me following my post Thanksgiving crash. Most of the stuff you guys mentioned (like waiting to put up the tree and making my DH do all the clean-up) will have to wait until next year to be implemented, but the big thing I've held onto is this: Do less stuff.

My mood cycles have been getting deeper and faster; I feel like my good days are fewer and farther between and my bad days are much, much more intense. I forgot how consuming and exhausting it actually is to be depressed. The other night I found myself crying helplessly while reading my kids their bedtime stories. My voice was fine, but my mind was lost and tears were rolling down my cheeks. It was so strange and awful and, um, depressing.

So it was a good thing I scaled back about a week ago. And I mean seriously scaled back. In the name of doing less I bailed on planning my first grader's "Holiday Fiesta", the ward choir, a Sunday School lesson, visiting teaching, and two family gift exchanges (I really am sorry guys!!), I gave up working on my calling, and we decided to draw names as a family to cut down on all the shopping. When I had finished the last email and the final phone call to let people know I was opting out I sobbed with relief. (Note to self: most people were very understanding and polite. They won't hate you if you back out of something!) With all that stuff out of my brain I remembered how to get dressed, how to feed my family, and how to start cleaning my house. I know it sounds stupid, but when I am on a downturn even the simplest tasks are like trying to solve a Rubik's cube. Adding all the craziness of the holidays is like trying to work that *%^$# cube with my toes.

I did hold on to a few things, though. They were things that I felt like embodied the spirit of Christmas best. We still picked names off the angel tree and shopped for families in need. We still sent out Christmas cards because family connections are too important to let go of (I only sent out 20 and it still took two hours to get everything packaged and sent). We still made treats to share with the neighbors--although I did make a lot fewer than usual; we gave out 6 half loaves of pumpkin bread--because (besides Halloween) it is the only time of year we talk to them. And I think I'm taking my kids caroling next week. Those things feel good when I do them and they have a long term purpose behind them so they're keepers.

There are still some ways I need to scale back for next year. The ward Christmas party is up in the air for me. I don't do well with lots of noise and big crowds. And it always makes my kids stay up too late. The same goes for the Relief Society party. There's just so much pressure with that kind of stuff when I'm feeling low. It doesn't lift my spirit. It just reminds me of how far down I've gone. Hmmm. . . any ideas for a small group party that was more service-instead-socializing-oriented that can be implemented on a ward level? (I do better with a task. Just sitting and talking with people I barely know is soooo hard.)

Anyway, if you all are feeling the pain this holiday I hope you know you're not alone and it's not wrong. It's just the way we depressives react to stress and it's okay. I came across this video by Therese Bochard at Beyond Blue that was really meaningful to me. She has some good idea about how to take care of yourself during the holidays (SEE--sleep, eat right, and exercise!), but mostly it's just good to know that other people have been there and are making it work.

Oh, and yeah, I do have an appointment to see the psychiatrist. The supplements just don't cut it and I don't like teetering on the brink. I mean, the other day I was actually thinking getting hospitalized might be a nice break. That's not a good sign. Especially not when there's a little person trying to grow and thrive inside me.

*sigh* 'Tis the season.

_Ecology of a Cracker Childhood_( a reader response review)

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray

I am having an extremely intense reaction right now.

As I type my chin is chattering uncontrollably. My teeth are rattling in my head like muted machine guns. My back is tightening in small spasms, up and down and at random, and I keep rolling my shoulders and stretching my neck to offset the tremors. If I try to hold my back and shoulders still I tic and twitch like someone with Tourette's. My breath is ragged between my teeth and I sound like I am freezing to death. Unless I clench my jaw. Then I can drag my breath through my nose. But it won't come fast enough and it makes me shake my head which makes me nauseous.

My body is out of control but my mind is not. I've been here before and I know what it is. I am panicking. In a severe way. I haven't had one like this in quite a while. I did this once after orienting a new Primary teacher to her class, after having a argument with a friend, before singing for Enrichment (which I enjoyed doing anyway; I hope they ask me again some time),after a New Year's Eve party, and while giving birth to my second child. Usually, I curl up in the fetal position or try to find a yoga pose that calms my body and just let it shake out. Because there is no controlling this. It's like a roller coaster; once you're on the ride you have to keep your arms and hands in the car and remain seated until the ride has come to a complete stop.

So what brought this on tonight? A book. Actually, a paragraph. The written word, when wielded with thought and effort, is powerful. The book is Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and the paragraph goes like this:

Daddy [who was genetically predisposed to manic episodes/bipolar disorder] said that after lunch he began to feel unusual sensations. He felt shaky, his insides turning to gelatin, then shakier, as if he operated a noiseless and invisible jackhammer. He couldn't calm down. His heart sped up, beating like a crazed vulture inside his chest. By the time [his friend] delivered him to his door, he no longer controlled much of his body, the mind chopped from it the way you'd chop a chicken's neck, leaving the carcass to go dancing off in it manic convolutions of nerve endings. He had begun to hallucinate (p 92).

Yep. It's like that. Postpartum depression is like that. Uncontrolled anxiety disorder is like that. My body remembers it. My muscles, my nerves, my bones, they know it. They've memorized it. It is second nature to them.

Ecology is a memoir of the best kind: honest and soul searching. For Ray, who can list relative after relative who suffered from mania and whose own father took three years to recover from his nervous breakdown, mental illness is a specter that looms in every shadowy corner and every unuttered word. Ray takes to the woods, the almost extinct longleaf pines, which her parents say bore her, for her salvation. She looks to her ecology to ease the pain of her genealogy.

I haven't finished the book yet, but I find myself wanting to tell the author that her ecology will never solve her genealogy. Our environments shape us, but our parents made us. The answers are in them and in loving them--maybe even accepting them.

When, as an adult, Ray questioned her father about his nervous breakdown he wrote her this letter:

Mental illness, or nervous breakdown as some call it, is nothing to be afraid of, or to put it in better perspective, nothing to live in fear of [. . .] Thirty years ago I had what people call mental illness. I call it one of the greatest experiences of my life. I would not erase it from my past even if I could. I would not sell it for a million dollars. Its value to me cannot be measured. I can only assume that God allowed it to happen and was with me all the way through it--one in the Church said mental illness is of the devil, which I do not agree with.

It taught me: 1) greater love for people. 2) greater love for the earth, the trees, the hills, the valley, the streams, the soil, the animals. 3)the future is everything. 4) My wife is me. 5) to love my family. 6)the true value of my sanity, my health, my well-being. 7) to respect our Creator. I will not list the minuses because everybody knows what it would be like to be called crazy [. . .]

In closing, I would like to remind you of what our Creator said many times. Fear not.

Perspectives like his are almost as scarce as the longleaf pine and, I daresay, have as big a need for nuturing.

Vulnerable today

Yesterday the weather was beautiful. 70 degrees with a blue sky and slight breeze. We went with friends to the park so the kids could ride their bikes and play on the toys. They smiled and screamed and laughed. We watched the birds on the pond--the usual ducks and Canadian geese and an unusual blue heron--as they listed about and ate and finally flew away. I was energetic and happy. I didn't need a nap. We played and read books and I looked them in the eyes and told them how much I loved them.

Today it is 38 degrees and cloudy. Even though you can't see the rain it is falling--a fine mist that you don't even realize is veiling your sight until you look down and see the ground is wet and you are wet and everything is cold. It will be snowing by noon. The spring snow is going to kill the blossoms on the fruit trees and maybe even the lilacs. This is spring in Colorado.

The weather has put me in a funk. Since the clouds hid the sunrise my body doesn't realize it's supposed to be awake. It makes me feel like a ghost. I am lonely and missing everyone today--especially and inexplicably my little sisters, the one who lives in Wisconsin and the one who died. It made me cry when I dropped my oldest off at kindergarten, although I smiled until I was alone outside the building so she wouldn't know. I feel like I'm in limbo. Like I have to will myself into reality. But I'm not sure that I want to.

Or maybe I feel like a jelly donut. Like I can't contain my being. Like there's too much going on inside me, my emotions are stuffed too tight. Whenever I look at my three year old or listen to my 1.5 year old talk my heart swells with love and I can't breathe and it feels good but it hurts too. I'm all soft and squishy with my insides oozing out of places they aren't supposed to be. It makes me a feel a little sick.

Or maybe I'm a turtle who's lost her shell. I am smaller than I ever realized I was and I'm unprotected and no matter where I go or what I do I won't ever be at home. May Swenson called this "Living Tenderly." Going without a shell is like wearing my skin inside out so the nerve endings are sticking out where the hair should be and I am reeling with the sensations.

That's what today is like. I'm gritting my teeth and taking it slow. I'm taking deep breaths and chanting my mantra (I can go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. Yes, it's the first line of the Desiderata. My therapist said I was the first patient she ever had who quoted poetry to her while meditating. I think she should have paid me for that visit.) I'm trying to find reasons to smile. I'm trying to find places to store my emotions, so they can cool and condense and soak back into the water table of my heart, instead of letting them boil off into the ether. That way I'll have them when I need them.

The Hardest Thing About a Mood Disorder

What is the hardest thing about having a mood disorder? You might expect me to answer the fatigue or the weird looks I get from people when I tell them what I'm dealing with. Or maybe it would be the simple act of taking a pill every morning. The emotional implications of that are weighty enough, let alone the actual remembering. Heck, you might even guess it the few and far between yet very real suicidal hallucinations. But nope. It's not even that.

The hardest thing about having a mood disorder? Finding a psychiatrist.

All the articles and commercials and TV shows will tell you that the only responsible way to do antidepressants is through your psychiatrist. Sure you can get a prescription from your general practice doc, but he is probably so unaware of the ins and outs and complications that the odds of you getting something that actually works are pretty slim.

And then there's the self-medicating aspect. Having a psychiatrist is supposed to be keep people from doing dangerous things like going randomly cold-turkey off their meds or upping their dosage on bad days and lowering on good days. Psychiatric medicines aren't like Tylenol, people! Their effects take weeks to kick in and weeks to wear off. Psychiatrists are the dudes who are supposed to help us crazies navigate all that.

Of course, that means psychiatrists would actually have to be available.

Awhile ago my therapist recommended two psychiatrists for me. Neither of them were covered by my insurance but I thought I'd check them out. I had a few questions to ask them but I never got past the price. Intake exam: $300 dollars. Follow-up exams: $150. Out of pocket.

That sent me to my insurance website. I spent over an hour figuring out their system and how to tell who specializes in what and making a list of covered people and where they practiced. A couple weeks later I carved out the time to make the calls. After working through some bad phone numbers and crossing some dead-ends off the list, I got this lovely message:

Chirpy Robot Lady, "Press 1 if you would like to schedule a new patient exam"

(I pressed one.)

Chirpy Robot Lady, "We are not accepting new patients at this time." *click*

That's right, I got hung up on. Another hour down the drain.

I have some serious medicine questions--Husband and I are contemplating baby number four and want to talk with someone knowledgeable about the risks and medicine and other PPD issues--that I want answered and I know my OB and my family practice docs (and the internet!) can't answer them. I've spent the last couple weeks trying to drop my dosage--slowly, ever so slowly--and the results have been headaches, nausea, increased yelling (mostly at my kids), and fast-cycling, extreme emotions. That last one is usually a sign of big trouble.

I like to think I'm a pretty rational and responsibly disordered gal, but I'm beginning to feel like my hands are tied! My sister suggested figuring out if my insurance has a patient's advocate system that could help me muscle my way in to a psychiatrist. I've also heard that therapists can sometimes get you in, but I don't think my therapist is associated with anyone.

What's a girl to do? Do you guys have any ideas?

Defining Recovery

I ought to clarify. In my post, That's It! I Quit!, I talked about possibly quitting my meds. Several of you were sweet enough to worry about me and I wanted to thank you. I appreciate all the support I get from my readers. It means a lot to me to know I'm not alone. So I wanted you to know: I didn't quit my medicine. I'm still popping my pill each morning. I figure I should wait until we are in a more settled place or until I have a real medical reason to stop or until I'm better.

Which brings me to my most recent quandary: what does it mean to be better? When talking about a possibly chronic mood disorder, is there a point where the sufferer knows that they are through the worst and will reach a full recovery?

I honestly don't know.

For me, this whole depression "adventure" has been a series of ups and downs. It's not that I'm manic or anything like that, it's just that whenever the good times are rolling there's a part of me that wonders how long it will be before I get a stick in my wheels.

Maybe I feel that way because my depression really took off as postpartum depression (I had anxiously depressed phases in high school but nothing I really perceived as chronic until the third trimester of my first pregnancy). Feeling bad and crazy is hopelessly entangled with mothering because the two happened together. It takes a lot of effort for me to tease apart what is the depression and what are my instincts as a mother and, as an Latter-day Saint, what is inspiration from God. Maybe as long as I'm mommy-ing I'll struggle with this.

Or maybe I feel like my depression is always lurking because I had three babies in four years. That's a lot of stress--a lot of ups and downs--even for normal women. There are a lot of benefits to having kids close together (they are such good buddies!), but there's no doubt that it is also hard.

Or maybe the ups and downs are just the nature of the illness.

The first time I started antidepressants, when my oldest was four months old, I thought that my antidepressant was basically like a supplement. You know, my body didn't produce a certain substance so I would take a pill that would give my body more of that substance. Eventually, I thought, my body would take over and start producing the correct amounts on its own.

Turns out antidepressants aren't that straightforward. Nobody is exactly sure how they work. All the stuff about serotonin (or any other neurotransmitter) being more available in the brain is true, but no one knows exactly what the brain does with the extra stuff. And nobody really knows why some brains don't produce the correct amounts in the first place. We know there's a relationship between hormones and neurotransmitters and we know there's a relationship between general health and mental health, but we don't know the exact nature of those relationships.

It's popular to compare the use of medicine to treat mood disorders to using insulin to treat diabetes. I like the comparison a lot and use it myself when talking with others but a recent conversation with a clinically depressed friend made that comparison even clearer to me. When I told her I wanted to quit my meds she said she'd been there too but she figured it was like diabetes. "A diabetic can't just wake up one morning and decide their to quit taking insulin," she said. "It's not like their diabetes is going to go away just because they learned to manage it. It's an illness and it's chronic. Depression is the same thing."

That was quite a blow for me. I had always looked at this depression thing as something I was going to overcome. I guess it was ridiculous but I really thought that maybe one morning I could wake up and know that I would never have to deal with the crazies again. But it's not like that. You don't get better from clinical depression. All my therapy, all my medicine, all my thinking and writing, is only managing the symptoms. None of it is fighting the illness at it's source because we don't know the source. Or maybe we do. The source is me. It's who I am. It is my life. It is my existence--my body, my soul, my mind, my everything--that feeds my depression.

So what does all that mean for recovery? When you have a cold you wait it out and eventually the symptoms pass. You wake up one morning and know you're not going to be blowing your way through a whole box of Kleenex. Not so with depression. The symptoms will always be cycling around. How do you recover from something like that? What does it mean to "get better"?

Maybe it doesn't mean anything at all.

The slowest roller coaster you've ever been on

I think I was thirteen when I realized, for the first time, that, like, emotions are, like, totally like a roller coaster. I think it took me a couple years to realize that my epiphany really wasn't one and that teenagers has been saying that for years.

Imagine my surprise when, ten years later, as I was sitting and rocking my second baby in my arms, a therapist (the one I didn't like) said to me "You know, I always like to tell people that emotions are like a roller coaster." She had pursed her lips in a thoughtful way and knitted her brows a bit as she said this so I could tell she was serious. I managed not to laugh. As she continued I was surprised to find she did have something to add to the cliche.

What she pointed out was that our emotions take us for a ride and, just like on an amusement park ride, you can't get off once they've really got going. One of the keys to understanding our emotions is to notice them when they are just revving up and get off the ride before we end up doing more loop-de-loops than we care to count. After all, the park attendant will probably let you off if the ride has only gone a few feet. But there's no getting off once you're to the top of that first big hill.

I ended up liking the roller coaster analogy and have spent a lot of time mulling it over--especially in relation to my depression. So here's my twist on the tired cliche: depression is like a slow motion roller coaster.

Take my last couple weeks as an example. There was a really interesting discussion going on at A Motley Vision and LDS Publisher about publishing LDS poetry. It got me all fired up and I started throwing together a business plan for getting LDS poetry back on the LDS literature map. But then the baby got an ear infection, the two year decided it was time to potty train, the four year old had three panic attacks in two days, I got asked to sub for Primary last minute, and it randomly snowed. I guess I was riding a bit high on my poetic excitement, but I assumed the momentum would carry me out to a great business proposal. Unfortunately, my ambitions got derailed and each setback knocked me further down from my high. The thing is, though, I didn't realize it until I found myself screaming at my two year old for asking to eat breakfast on the floor.

Looking back, that morning was classic depression for me. I had to pray for the strength to get out of bed. I had to pray for patience while nursing the baby. I didn't want to give the kids their good morning hugs and I had to keep shushing them because so many negative thoughts were flying around my head their little voices just made everything too loud. (According to my cacophonous depressed brain I am so stupid, fat, lazy, mean, and stiffnecked that there is no hope for me and I should just give up.) Given what was going on inside me it was no wonder that I lost it. But I was completely surprised because I hadn't noticed what was going on inside. I had known I was stressed and not sleeping enough, but I hadn't realized how each thing was adding up and pushing me further and further down the roller coaster track. And that is how depression is like a slow motion roller coaster. It is so sneaky that you don't realize you're about to be hanging upside down until you already are.

Of course, on a slow motion roller coaster it also takes a long time to get right side up again. The baby is still sick, the two year old is still potty training, the four year old is still brittle and I am still on edge. I think I have spent more time in "time out" for my poor behavior than the kids have! Which I think they secretly like because then they get to watch more TV. On the plus side, I have been able to bite my tongue a couple times and I even rallied to get some yard work done today. I'm still feeling a little lopsided, but I don't think I'm absolutely upside down anymore. (I have to give credit to my husband for a lot of this. He did the dishes and made sure I got a nap on Sunday!) I guess it really doesn't matter where I am though. I just have to keep repeating the mother's mantra: This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. . .and before I know it I'll realize the ride is over. For this time anyway.