Add-on

There was quite a reaction from my last post. I really didn't expect it. I had 150 views in a 24 period and a lot of replies. A lot of people came to me concerned about me not taking my medicine, and also people offering me money for the meds and/or my school bills. It was of course nice seeing all the support I had, but it wasn't something I was expecting. I did want to add something though, maybe it will make people feel better:

This particular medicine is an "add-on". My mood stabilizer is my main med. The antidepressant is to help with the depression symptoms. The one I stopped, the antipsychotic, that is a little different. And I am trying to think of the right way to phrase it. Basically it helps keep me a little more sane. I was started on it when I was in the hospital. Soooo, even though it was not good that I just stopped taking it without consulting my doctor, it was not an extreme move as it wasn't my mood stabilzer. I think hearing "antipsychotic" makes it sound extreme. It's not always. Sometimes it's just an add on. Anyway, as of today I am back on it.

There isn't much to this post, I just wanted to get that out there to those who were concerned. I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been reading. When I started this blog I didn't think many people would read, and respond! But having 150 views in a day is pretty amazing. So thank you :)

Anxiety and anger

I haven’t felt like writing lately. Don’t really feel like writing now. But’s it’s been a while, or at least seems it, since I did a proper post. Trying to figure out where to start..

Ok I’ll start with this: I haven’t been taking my antipsychotics. I ran out and haven’t wanted to pay the insane price of getting a refill. If someone else told me they were doing this I would tell them that it’s not a valid reason to stop taking their meds. Especially without telling their doctor. I’m not being smart about this, I know, I know. I am probably going to get more tomorrow. Ok, now you have a bit of background information.

My mood hasn’t been great the past two weeks. I had some days of bad anxiety, followed by a really good day, followed by a couple days of rage. Which was just bad. Starting with the anxiety, I do not know what it was coming from. It was mainly when I was out of the house. I just had this feeling of wanting to be at home. But once I was at home I was very anxious. This was very hard to deal with because I’m not being prescribed my anxiety meds anymore. So I was stuck, really not knowing how to make myself feel better. As for the anger, I’m not going to go into detail about these couple days. It was just bad. At first I didn’t know where all this anger was coming from. Then this little idea popped into my head: Maybe it’s because I stopped taking my Abilify. However.. from the research I did on stopping Abilify, the only side effects are insomnia, hallucinations, delusions, and mania. And I wasn't experiencing mania. So I don't know.

I saw my therapist today. We talked about my mood but I didn’t tell him about stopping the med. I was not up for a lecture. As you can see I’m not making great choices about this. Anyway, we talked a bit about strategies, which clearly I need. I don’t have any. For the anxiety I relied on a medication that didn’t work properly anyway. For the anger I usually punch or kick a wall. Not the right way of dealing with it. With depression I also don’t have anyway to deal, but that is going to take more effort I think. For now I’ve been given two things to start doing when my mood is not good: exercise and breathing techniques. Exercise is something I always work on getting into a routine with but I keep failing. I just feel I have too many things I should be doing with my time. I need to try to make it more of a priority. As for the breathing, I was pretty much required to do breathing exercises in the hospital. But they didn’t teach me how to do any of these exercises properly so it’s not something I continued to do. My therapist walked me through an exercise today and we are going to do more work on it in the coming weeks.

And that was therapy today. I also saw my advisor which is always fun. Unfortunately I was meeting him to register for summer and fall classes and we learned very quickly that I can’t register because I owe money for this semester. So I need to come up with $300 fairly soon so I can register. This kind of put me in a bad mood today but I am trying not to worry about it. Money seriously sucks though.

I feel like I should have something more to say. I’m not very happy with this post, but whatever. I’m going to do some pilates and work on school work.

50 things about me

I hope you enjoy this. It was fun putting the list together.

1. I'm scared of penguins

2. I love chocolate way too much

3. I have never seen Avatar, The Godfather, or Hunger Games

4. I am very uncomfortable with my body and have been diagnosed with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (which I might do a post about sometime)

5. Tabbouleh is my favorite food, but I've never made it myself

6. I don't pay attention to the news, which is something I'm working on

7. I've met Jared Leto three times

8. I think wine is awesome

9. I like to hug my cat probably too much

10. I'm very interested in schizophrenia. If I ever went as far as getting a doctorate I would want to work with people with schizophrenia, that and working with women with postpartum psychosis

11. I tend to do things at the very last minute, I work better under pressure

12. Since having my daughters I've been very sensitive to cold

13. I have nine tattoos

14. My doctor once threatened to call the police on me

15. My favorite color is blue

16. My favorite class I've taken so far is Abnormal Psych, Research Methods in Psych is a close second

17. I don't own a hairbrush, I never brush my hair

18. I really want a turtle

19. I have a year's worth of Marie Claire, Parenting, and Psychology Today magazines, and I haven't read any of them

20. My two favorite movies are Silver Linings Playbook and Pride and Prejudice

21. My two favorite TV shows are 24 and Homeland

22. I wish I was taller

23. When I was seventeen I was sure I would move to New York one day

24. "Monkey" used to be my nickname

25. I had blue contacts for a long time. I don't wear them because they don't make them in my prescription and it's too expensive to buy them without a prescription

26. It is actually impossible to get contacts that fit my eyes 100%. I am right in the middle of two "sizes"

27. I love my glasses but I don't wear them often because for some reason they make my eyes more tired than when I wear my contacts

28. I hate coffee

29. I'm not very good at drinking water

30. My worst job was working as a receptionist in a hotel

31. I am scared of flying

32. I am blessed with the ability to sleep, I can usually sleep anywhere with no problems

33. I love cereal but I never buy it because I will eat pretty much all of it in one go

34. I had braces

35. I hardly ever remember my dreams

36. White Oleander is my favorite book

37. I've never done any illegal drugs or smoked a cigarette. It's something I'm very proud to be able to say

38. If I could speak any language other than English, it would probably be Arabic

39. I really want to go to Greece

40. I am a morning person

41. If I decide to do something I have to do it right away

42. I have a love/hate relationship with my hair

43. I am 26 years old

44. I'm 5'3"

45. I was hospitalized for three days when I had mono

46. My meds make me shake really bad

47. According to my husband they also make me snore

48. My favorite city is London

49. When trying to eat healthy I have a very hard time giving up soda

50. I owe too much money to Victoria Secret 

5 Things I'm loving right now

Healthy Helpings fruit snacks. We buy these for the girls... I eat most of them. Each pack is only 70 calories and there are 45 (I'm convinced more) packs in each box. And the best part may be the price.. less than $6. The only downside is you can't stop at one pack.

Oranges, I can't get enough. I'm not great with fruit though, I'm wayyyy to picky. If I find one thing wrong I probably won't eat it. Why? I don't know. I'm picky about food in general.

Medicine. My girls have been sick the past week, one with pneumonia. Thankfully with the help of this antibiotic they are much better.

I absolutely hate my communications class. Hate, hate, hate. Can't say it enough. HOWEVER, I'm enjoying reading the text book. I hate the class because of all the writing. Which is funny, since I like writing. My problem in the class is I can never write as much as she is looking for. If the assignment calls for 600 words, I'm lucky if I get to 400 before I run out of stuff to say.

 My new fruit strainer. It's cute and pink and shaped like a strawberry. I actually wasn't going to get this but my three year old was with me at Wal-Mart and saw it and went crazy for it. It was $2 so decided to get it. But with all the fruit we eat in this house it will come in handy. It already has made washing fruit much easier.

I know these types of posts may be boring for most, but they are fun for me. I am also working on a list of "50 things about me" which may be interesting for anyone that wants to get in my head a little more.

Therapy and juice

This post is not about anything in specific. Just thought I would write a bit.

I am absolutely exhausted. I did not get a chance to take a break from 8am-5pm. I was so relieved at 5pm when I got home.  I had a few appointments plus taking/picking up my daughter from school. May not sound like much but it was a jam-packed day. One of the appointments was about my daughter at school. She has been in the special education program for a communication disability, and today was her yearly meeting. They have decided that she no longer has the disability and no longer needs to be in special education. I’m excited for her.

I also had therapy today. It went well. We talked about me doing group DBT instead of just doing the therapy with him. I don’t think I’m someone who would do well in group therapy but I promised I would look into it. We talked about my current mood versus my mood at my appointment last week. I told him there wasn't much of a difference. Then he took out his fancy doctor notes and put on his reading glasses. I was "distant", "unresponsive", and a few other things that I can't remember. Turns out I wasn't as stable then as I thought I was. 

We also talked about psychological testing for kids with ADHD. Yes we got a little off topic. We talk a lot about psychology, even if it has little, or sometimes nothing, to do with me. I like these talks a lot, especially when I’m having a tough time cause they cheer me up. I’ve also figured out that if I ask him a psychology question right at the end of a session I get some extra time. Like today, I was leaving when I asked him what this object was. He explained what it was and then gave me an awesome mini lecture on the ADHD testing. Anddddd he did some of the tests on me. I passed, although some of it was tough!

After that I went to the store to get some juice. I picked some random juice off the shelf.

When I got to the register I found out it was 90 cents. 90 CENTS!! That's crazy!

I've felt pretty down about my weight and the fact that I can barely fit in my clothes, some clothes I can't fit in at all. So I decided to go on an actual diet. Then I found this:

.... oops. To make up for it I got a mango.

I really am going to watch what I eat. I promise. For me though it's going to take some practice. I'm also going to try to get back into pilates. I did some last night and surprising I was able to do more than I thought. I'm very sore today, we'll see how much I'm able to do tonight :)

I'm in a good mood despite the exhausting day and some other stressful things going on. Wish I was this stable all the time. Hopefully by writing about my good days I'll have something to look back on when I'm having a tough time. Maybe it will help. 

Ok, this post was much longer than I meant it to be. Not sure how many of you stuck around til the end. Thank you to those who got this far :)

Postpartum Depression

My three year old has not been feeling well and has been constantly crying the last few days. I feel so bad that I can’t seem to keep her happy. However I’ll be completely honest, this has been hard to deal with even more than it should be. It is bringing back memories of her newborn days, when I was hit with postpartum depression. Last night I had a very hard time staying calm and fell asleep quietly crying to myself. Much like how it was three years ago.

Like depression in general, postpartum depression is awful. What should be some of the best moments of your life is some of your darkest. I remember one bad night when I found myself carrying my newborn into my mom’s bedroom and telling her that I felt like I hated my baby. I’m crying just thinking about that. Of course I didn’t hate her, I just couldn’t figure out how to work the love properly. I was stuck in a place where I couldn’t help myself and others couldn’t help either.

I had postpartum depression with both my daughters, more seriously with my first. With her I developed it instantly. Breastfeeding didn’t work out which made me feel like a failure. She also had trouble feeding from a bottle. I was sleep deprived, sad, scared, angry. With my second daughter I was fine until she was about two months old, around the time I stopped breastfeeding. I had stopped because she didn’t seem to be getting that much and wasn’t putting on weight. Again, I felt like a failure. For the second time I couldn’t provide my child with something that should have been so natural.

How did I come out of it? Time. I don’t think anything in particular happened that made everything so much easier and clearer. Slowly things just got better. I know I was lucky, I didn’t have PPD very long. There are a lot of women out there who may suffer for years. I just hope that most women out there do not suffer that long in silence. Women need to feel they can reach out and get help, whether it is in the form of therapy or medication.

I don’t get asked often what exactly I want to do as a social worker/therapist. This is it. To help women who suffer from postpartum depression. I was not lucky enough to have a professional to talk to during this time for me, I hope to provide what I couldn’t have to someone who needs it. I want to help women be able to enjoy the happiness, excitement, and love of having a child.

TMS

I’m alright. Right now I’m alright. Five days ago I was not alright. Where did this sudden dark cloud come from? No idea. I made some very bad choices too that hurt myself and those around me. I was far from alright.

I sent a message to my therapist about what happened the past week and he called me yesterday morning to come right in. I told him I felt like a failure. In all aspects; at school, work, as a mother, as a wife. I do not know what caused me to feel like a failure. I do not feel that way now.

I am annoyed that things like this keep happening and I never understand what causes them. Honestly it’s like I just wake up one morning and I’m in such a horrible place. And I wake up another day completely fine. How is this even possible?

Anyway, switching the topic a little. We discussed yesterday how I am not responding to meds very well. He told me if things do not improve I could consider transcranial magnetic stimulation. I’m pretty certain that I wouldn’t do it, simply because it doesn’t seem to be something that is very popular. However, I am doing research on it. Side effects seem to be very low. Might be a problem getting the insurance company to cover it though. But again, I don’t think I would ever do it.

What am I going to do then? Keep trying different meds in hopes that one day we find something that works. When will that day be?

Also as a side note. I am no longer filtering who is able to see this blog. It's out there now. A little scary but whatever :)