Hello, my name is Tabatha, and i usually post on the Fibromyalgia, or Pain forum but i feel i have a very appropriate input to this forum.
i suffered a severe trauma, medically and emotionally that activated the aforementioned fibro. i then found out that i have the spine of an 80 year old (i'm 27) and my spinal cord is actually "touched" occassionally.
However, that is not what brings me here today. well it is, sort of... i have been in severe pain for over two years now and i have had depression since a teenager. after the miscarriage (just the start of the trauma) i tried wellbutrin which had worked in college and i tried cymbalta which was awful. then i decided i just needed to change my mindset right? wrong.
i was not getting out of bed, i was not showering, i didn't care about intimacy, relationships of many sorts and all the issues of depression. i never ate, even though i'm 100 lbs overweight, i never lost weight. i would find ways to sleep all day, by this i mean, i'm an insomniac but would do whatever i could to sleep away the day.
then i decided maybe i was bipolar, and my husband said i needed help, he had always said before that i didn't need help i just needed to get through it. i told him one day i was thinking of suicide and he said it was just a rough time. then i said, joey this isn't working, i'm existing not living, i need help. and later after that he said i needed help, we needed help, or we were divorcing.
so i went to the pyschiatrist and psychologist for the first time in 15 years. i used to have to go as a child and i was forced to talk about issues i didn't want to talk about. this time they assured me that i did not have to "re-traumatize" myself by talking about it. plus they put me on abilify.
i'm a new person now. the abilify has helped me SOOOOOOOOOOOO much. i'm up every single day. i'm working on my house, smiling with my son, talking to my friends. i went and had a total makeover, literally. i cut 11 inches off my hair, died it with red streaks, had my eyebrows waxed, got my nails done, and bleached my teeth. and although i'm still battling the depression and the anxiety and ocd that i have it helps. it is even helping me sleep.
so, now when i'm in severe pain i think to myself, i can be in pain laying down, or i can be in pain moving around, and i move around.
this philosophy can be applied in so many aspects of our lives.
i'll share what my psychologist told me to help w/the depression and anxiety:
-breathe with your diaphram (believe it or not it works), we tend to breathe with our chests and it causes oxygen shortage
-stop playing the "movies" from the past over and over in my mind, and stop anticipating the "movies" of the future (easier said than done right?!), but he said when we do this we are constantly looking back and forth and not being able to see what is right there. in order to practice he says make yourself mentally conscious of the feel of your skin on the couch, the feel of your hair, the process of "peeling potatoes".
-live life for you. stop worrying about how you are affecting others, and if you are a "burden". the only way the others around you can be happy for you or with you is if you are happy (last part is me saying that), but i know that i must be happy and love myself before i can anyone else, but that has been extremely hard. we were made beautiful and precious, and we still are we just have to remember that and not worry about everyone else.
well that is it, as this is long enough, but the abilify and advice above led me to do a total makeover and smile much more. i hope i can help someone else out.
thank you
tabatha
feel free to email me anytime at cat8201 @ live.com