Posted by Noa on January 18, 2001, at 8:41:25
In reply to Re: Dysthymia--Saw a new pdoc--Better visit, posted by SLS on January 16, 2001, at 19:19:10
Scott,
For years, I swung like a pendulum between despair and optimism, but the optimism was always very precarious and fragile, so I had to cling to it hard.
Each time I came out of a depression, I was convinced it was gone for good.
When the depression started being more and more recurrent, and worse each time, I started to fear feeling optimistic. When I would start to feel better, I would be hypervigilant for any signs of low mood. And a bad day, or even a bad moment, would signal to me that my hope was in vain, I was doomed to fall again into the pit of hellish deprssion.
In therapy, I have been working on accepting my illness as chronic, on bringing together these two lives I have led--the optimist who hopes/feels/wishes depression is in the past, and the desapairing depressive who feels life will never get any better and isn't worth living.
It is hard, but I am learning to see both of these parts of myself as me, to not have the pendulum swing so drastically, to be able to move from depressed mood to non-depressed mood more fluidly and flexibly, to not have a bad moment signal the downward spiral, to not have to have the shadow of terror ruin my good days--terror of losing the progress, the hope.
It is still a struggle, but I am stronger at this. I still get angry at myself when I have a bad moment or day, but I am better able to tell myself that it doesn't mean the remission is gone for good. And I am better (not fully) able to tolerate the idea, when in a better mode, that even this good mood might be interrupted from time to time by depressed moods. I don't like it, but I can tolerate it.
My wish would be to be rid of this forever, but I am able to be more realistic, and paradoxically, I am feeling much better because I can accept this.
Does this make sense?
poster:Noa
thread:51794
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010111/msgs/51940.html