I don’t think we have a thread specific to mental health. This isn’t just my thread, open to anything.
Anyway, looks like I’m going on antidepressants in a few weeks.
I’ve been wrestling whether I’m backing into finding the symptoms in my past, or if I truly should take them. Like how people watch a TikTok and start saying “I forget things all the time, and I don’t focus on homework, I bet I have ADHD too!”
But I went into my therapist’s office last week and said “I think I could have depression” and she gave me a form and I checked “Yes I am sad in those ways” and now I might be getting pills that might be explaining lots of the last 20 years or so of my life.
But I could have talked myself out of a lot of it. Like, maybe not having fun is just adulthood, and it’s not like I have 0 enjoyment in life, but I’m not a child anymore.
I’ve been trying to do the things though to get out of this feeling on my own. Eating well, exercising more days than not, reading, learning languages, vitamin D, sleeping best I can (6 hours is unusually good). I have enough money, I have a social life. Something should make me fucking happy.
Gotta handle something unrelated medically before I go to the doc, who has always prescribed me anything I ask for. So it’ll be a bit yet.
Isn’t it like the dead of winter right now? (Well, not where I am, sunny 74 degrees on Super Bowl Sunday, where I watched outside with several friends in a campground.)
“Cabin Fever,” perhaps?
I’ll also suggest being the director of the school’s Christmas play.
It’s certainly not entirely winter, because these feelings aren’t new. However it might be worse now and have finally caused me to pursue this route.
I think for a long time I’ve been short on some things. Some of it I am sure is fixable by therapy, like thoughts of negative self-worth. Some haven’t gotten much better.
Recently I’ve done some stuff that should have been the most fun I’ve had or will have in a while. It was fine. I’m glad I did it. I fake happiness more than feel it.
Talk to your doctor sounds like a good step. I would assume that brain chemistry works like most other genetic traits in that there is a mean and a distribution around that. Diet and exercise may only be able to do so much (like with blood pressure, or cholesterol) and you might just have a lower production of something mood related.
Can you ask him to suggest ways for you to get more sleep? It’s not surprising to be depressed on 6 hours of sleep a night. Some people maaaaybe can do it, though probably much fewer than those who think they can do it and are as a result sleepwalking through life. 8 is a good goal.
I assume you are aware of all the suggestions to sleep better (no caffeine at all after noon, minimal or no caffeine before noon if the afternoon rule doesn’t work, no screens an hour before bed, melatonin, etc.)
I haven’t done a sleep study which is likely the next recommended step, with a possible CPAP or something. I have a slight propensity to snore, but since I completely stopped drinking it’s minimal to none 75% of the time. I don’t think snoring is usually causing me issues though rarely I’ll feel like I was likely snoring hard and not breathing well.
Other than that, yeah I avoid caffeine generally after 1 PM and almost always after 4 PM, exercise, I use melatonin though I’ve read it’s not good to use daily indefinitely. I’ll often have an herbal tea or a hot bath before bed, read a book, pet our cats. White noise playing. I could be better about screen time, admittedly, but I’m always in bed between 10:30-11:30, fall asleep in minutes, and then just wake up between 3:30-6 AM. I haven’t set an alarm except for rare events like an exam sitting day for years.
sleep is variable by person. do you feel rested when you wake up or wish you could sleep in some more? do you feel run down/tired during the day? its possible the sleep you describe above isn’t so bad to me (although i need more of it).
But why aren’t you trying to go back to sleep at 4 or so when you wake up at 3:30? Do you really feel well rested? Even if you do, I’d say, caffeine can sometimes mask feelings of tiredness long term. But caffeine doesn’t make you need less sleep - it just makes you feel you need less.
If you’re not having trouble falling asleep, I’d say the thing to look at is decreasing caffeine intake (even in the morning) rather than screen time. As far as I’ve heard screen time is more something with immediate impact. Caffeine intake has both immediate impact and longer term.
I’d say it’s constantly “not well rested but enough to function”. My energy level is low and not refreshing but doesn’t make me hate getting through the day.
I just can’t. Sometimes by laying there a couple hours I’ll doze for another 15-20 minutes. Often I just lay there in the dark for two hours, thinking about how I could be productive.
Yeah, my vote is for less caffeine in the “mornings” and before 4.
My rule is not to just lie there trying to sleep for more than a half hour. There are books and work printouts, whatever seems boring enough not to keep me up unnecessarily but still feels somewhat productive.
is earlier start of sleep possible or does that just shift the wake up too? you mentioned seeing docs and talking with them about it - that’s gonna be more productive than me playing catch up. so good you are addressing something that you are concerned about
I have been struggling too. There are multiple stressors in my life right now, more than the regular stuff I’m used to. (Adult kid with mental health issues living in my home.) I think I counted 10 majors events in the last 2 years, with more of them in the last 12 months.
I’m doing mostly what I can do. I could exercise more but I am struggling with that. I’m getting about as much sleep as I can reasonably get (which is also about 6 hours)*. I try to take time for myself at least once a month. Trying to give myself a lot of grace, etc.
So yeah, meds for me, but maybe not forever.
*My sleep issues have been going on most of 2 decades. Yes I have a CPAP. Yes I have spoken to multiple doctors. Sleep meds tend to make me too sleepy to work. I’ve done CBT-I, which mostly made me mad bc if sleep hygiene were going to fix this I wouldn’t have bothers the doctors. I even have a “sleep doctor” but he just looks at my CPAP data and prescribes a sleep med.
Alcohol tends to counteract caffeine, and I think I noticed you mentioned stopping drinking in a different thread, which might mean you need to recalibrate the amount of caffeine you can tolerate without it affecting sleeping patterns.
After a couple months on 6 hours average I am depressed, considerably impaired work-wise, minimal attention span, and a number of other bad stuff happen. Yes, I’ve tried it. Sadly, multiple times. I guess I’m lucky that I can do more when I try.
2016-2017 was a horrible period in my life when I needed antidepressants. I got divorced, RIF’d from my job, had an accident (a car hit me on the interstate), had another accident (I lost a few of my fingertips), and was admitted to a psych ward for a few days as I was having suicidal thoughts. I have since weened off of Lexapro. Definitely talk with your doctor about the side effects, all of them, for any of the anti-depressive drugs. Most people I know who still have depression/anxiety are on Prozac. Then they’ll switch to Lexapro. I think anything that ends with “pam” is not something I’d suggest (these messed with me, as you see from the above).
I don’t feel like I was ever a great sleeper - easily disrupted by anything, any bit of thought would keep me up for hours. I used alcohol to treat this - a few evening drinks helped me drift off, but too much was disruptive. It only got worse as I turned 40.
I quit drinking, spent a week or so of really struggling to sleep at all, and started taking unisom. Its an antihistamine, similar to benadryl, but with twice the half life. Sometimes I need a second one in the middle of the night, or a half depending on what time it is, but those nights seem to have gone from almost every night a year ago, to maybe once or twice a week now.
I feel like getting good sleep is delicate. Caffeine after lunch, not getting enough steps (10k) in for the day, eating a heavy meal late, working too late - they are all disrupters for me. A smart watch has helped me track this. I also keep the same bedtime on weekends - no sleeping in. I could journal this all better rather than just try and pin a crappy night sleep on one of the above after it happens. I guess the message here is I also felt like 6-6.5 hours was all I could achieve, but after a year of prioritizing this, getting 7.5 hours regularly has become possible.
Thank you. Along with everything in my life I’d like my sleep to get better, but really it’s not a prominent reason that I’m finally looking into medication.
The worst part is persistent thoughts of passive suicide. No significant desire to harm myself, but daydreaming that I’ll get into an honest accident, causing my substantial life insurance to pay double, and after a period of grieving my loved ones can move on without me with significant financial comfort. I won’t let people down anymore, it would be a win for everyone involved.
I’m ready to try the medication. I’m nervous, but I want to stop wanting to die.
You have to be careful with what type of anti-depressants you want to use as they have different physiological mechanisms at the CNS level.
Its completely possible this not an environmental issue for you but rather an organic one (your brain works that way). My wife takes anti-depressants and in her case its the latter.
Not sure how much research you have done but from what you have described this popped into my mind: