my history of mental illness.
It's been about a week since my last post. Unfortunately, I've been struggling for topics. But I have been wanting to talk about my history with mental health, because I think it has had a major impact in my adulthood.
When I was a child, I remember being quite depressed and anxious. I had very extreme fears of monsters and I remember having nightmares of things that children shouldn't even be aware of. Through middle school and preteen years, I continued to be depressed and anxious. Although this started to be influenced more by external causes (like not feeling popular enough). I would say this wasn't as prominent in high school, though.
Into adulthood, I still suffered from the nightmares though. I think I was 24, and I mentioned something about it to my doctor. A few nights before, I was having dinner with my boyfriend (who I lived with) and I asked him how he cut his hand. He did manual labor for work, and was very accident prone, so I wasn't really surprised he had hurt himself. He looked at me with complete shock and was upset that I couldn't remember. I thought he must've told me and I just didn't remember. Well, come to find out, I had actually scratched him in my sleep.... to the point where he woke up and was bleeding. I had been waking up with scratched all over myself, that I had been inflicting. So I mentioned this to my doctor, because there was no way it was normal. She wrote me a prescription for Klonopin and sent a referral to their psychologist for counseling.
I LOVED counseling, but not having health insurance at that point, it unfortunately wasn't feasible for me to continue. But I did go for a couple months and gained a lot of insight from it. She also helped me to identify some triggers for my anxiety, like caffeine.
Around the same time, I had decided I needed to break up with my boyfriend and this was understandably causing me some additional stress. So when I went to my follow up with my doctor, this was brought up and she decided I needed to introduce an antidepressant, Celexa. Initially, Celexa was the most amazing thing but then I quickly reverted back. A few months after moving out, I did end up in a pretty bad depression. This was probably the worst period of depression I had experienced, and there were days I would sleep for about 16 hours at a time.
The next few years brought some changes in my work situation, and this also brought doctor changes. I would go to appointments and I would tell them my antidepressants weren't working and then I would receive an increased dosage. However, I continued to get worse. I worked, drank alcohol, ate junk food, and slept. I couldn't even get the energy to sleep in my own bed, so I'd always pass out on my couch. I just came to a point where I couldn't live like this anymore. It didn't make sense that I was on this strong dosage (at this point, Zoloft) and I still could hardly function. I made the decision that I needed to set aside my pride and make an appointment with a psychiatrist.
So I went to my first appointment and it was life changing. She initially recognized I was having an adverse reaction to SSRIs. So she instructed me to ween off those, and to start Welbutrin.... and to begin taking Vyvanse for ADHD. I left the appointment, picked up my new prescriptions, took them, and took a nap. When I woke up, the Vyvanse had kicked in and it hit me how the world was supposed to look.... and I cried. I had never been so in-tune with my surroundings and I realized everything I was missing.
However, over the next few years, there were more changes and getting a prescription for Vyvanse is difficult. I moved back to my hometown, which is small and my resources were limited. I found a psychiatric nurse practitioner, who was not authorized to prescribe Vyvanse or Adderall by her company. So she prescribed me Concerta, which didn't really have the same effect. She also kept mentioning she had a suspicion that I had Bipolar 2 or Cyclothymia and not ADHD. So she asked me to try Lamictal and to stop taking Concerta, since I wasn't having much benefit. A couple months later, she moved and I had to start the search someone new.
My regular doctor agreed to continue filling the prescription for Lamictal until I could find a new psychiatric practitioner. I did eventually find someone, but let me tell you, it was not a good experience. She agreed with the Bipolar diagnosis and felt the need to continually increase my dosage of Lamictal, and even wanted to prescribe me with anti-psychotics. I continued to tell her I was not comfortable with this, but she refused to listen.
Lamictal was beneficial for me, BUT it gave me some bad anxiety. It was to the point where I began feeling like I was on the verge of losing control of my mind and I was going to be taken over by the anxiety. It also started taking me back to the unrealistic fears that I had as a child. I'm not going to lie, I began to Google "when anxiety turns into psychosis" and "early signs of schizophrenia" because it was that bad. I was constantly in fear. I had explained this to the psychiatric nurse practitioner I was seeing, but she saw this as a sign I needed more medication, I guess.
Thankfully, it was at this time when I found a therapist I could connect with. Our early sessions were heavily focused on the anxiety and the bad experiences I was having with my prescribing NP. I told her I wanted to stop taking Lamictal, because I fully believed it was the source of my anxiety. We talked a lot about how I felt like my NP was treating me like I was defined by the diagnosis and that I wouldn't be able to function without these large doses of medication. However, my therapist felt as though I could function without the medication (I mean, I did for the first 30 years of my life), and that she had heard similar bad experiences from other patients.
So as I'm writing this, I'm free of medications and also free of anxiety. Currently, therapy is one of my most treasured activities. I feel as though I have made so many personal strides in the past few months. Actually, my last appointment is what inspired me to start this blog. So, you will definitely be able to read about my sessions in the future.
Thank you for reading this with an open mind. I hope that I didn't jump around too much, since it is a lot of information to stuff into one post. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to comment.
Until next time, much love and abundance. 💗
When I was a child, I remember being quite depressed and anxious. I had very extreme fears of monsters and I remember having nightmares of things that children shouldn't even be aware of. Through middle school and preteen years, I continued to be depressed and anxious. Although this started to be influenced more by external causes (like not feeling popular enough). I would say this wasn't as prominent in high school, though.
Into adulthood, I still suffered from the nightmares though. I think I was 24, and I mentioned something about it to my doctor. A few nights before, I was having dinner with my boyfriend (who I lived with) and I asked him how he cut his hand. He did manual labor for work, and was very accident prone, so I wasn't really surprised he had hurt himself. He looked at me with complete shock and was upset that I couldn't remember. I thought he must've told me and I just didn't remember. Well, come to find out, I had actually scratched him in my sleep.... to the point where he woke up and was bleeding. I had been waking up with scratched all over myself, that I had been inflicting. So I mentioned this to my doctor, because there was no way it was normal. She wrote me a prescription for Klonopin and sent a referral to their psychologist for counseling.
I LOVED counseling, but not having health insurance at that point, it unfortunately wasn't feasible for me to continue. But I did go for a couple months and gained a lot of insight from it. She also helped me to identify some triggers for my anxiety, like caffeine.
Around the same time, I had decided I needed to break up with my boyfriend and this was understandably causing me some additional stress. So when I went to my follow up with my doctor, this was brought up and she decided I needed to introduce an antidepressant, Celexa. Initially, Celexa was the most amazing thing but then I quickly reverted back. A few months after moving out, I did end up in a pretty bad depression. This was probably the worst period of depression I had experienced, and there were days I would sleep for about 16 hours at a time.
The next few years brought some changes in my work situation, and this also brought doctor changes. I would go to appointments and I would tell them my antidepressants weren't working and then I would receive an increased dosage. However, I continued to get worse. I worked, drank alcohol, ate junk food, and slept. I couldn't even get the energy to sleep in my own bed, so I'd always pass out on my couch. I just came to a point where I couldn't live like this anymore. It didn't make sense that I was on this strong dosage (at this point, Zoloft) and I still could hardly function. I made the decision that I needed to set aside my pride and make an appointment with a psychiatrist.
So I went to my first appointment and it was life changing. She initially recognized I was having an adverse reaction to SSRIs. So she instructed me to ween off those, and to start Welbutrin.... and to begin taking Vyvanse for ADHD. I left the appointment, picked up my new prescriptions, took them, and took a nap. When I woke up, the Vyvanse had kicked in and it hit me how the world was supposed to look.... and I cried. I had never been so in-tune with my surroundings and I realized everything I was missing.
However, over the next few years, there were more changes and getting a prescription for Vyvanse is difficult. I moved back to my hometown, which is small and my resources were limited. I found a psychiatric nurse practitioner, who was not authorized to prescribe Vyvanse or Adderall by her company. So she prescribed me Concerta, which didn't really have the same effect. She also kept mentioning she had a suspicion that I had Bipolar 2 or Cyclothymia and not ADHD. So she asked me to try Lamictal and to stop taking Concerta, since I wasn't having much benefit. A couple months later, she moved and I had to start the search someone new.
My regular doctor agreed to continue filling the prescription for Lamictal until I could find a new psychiatric practitioner. I did eventually find someone, but let me tell you, it was not a good experience. She agreed with the Bipolar diagnosis and felt the need to continually increase my dosage of Lamictal, and even wanted to prescribe me with anti-psychotics. I continued to tell her I was not comfortable with this, but she refused to listen.
Lamictal was beneficial for me, BUT it gave me some bad anxiety. It was to the point where I began feeling like I was on the verge of losing control of my mind and I was going to be taken over by the anxiety. It also started taking me back to the unrealistic fears that I had as a child. I'm not going to lie, I began to Google "when anxiety turns into psychosis" and "early signs of schizophrenia" because it was that bad. I was constantly in fear. I had explained this to the psychiatric nurse practitioner I was seeing, but she saw this as a sign I needed more medication, I guess.
Thankfully, it was at this time when I found a therapist I could connect with. Our early sessions were heavily focused on the anxiety and the bad experiences I was having with my prescribing NP. I told her I wanted to stop taking Lamictal, because I fully believed it was the source of my anxiety. We talked a lot about how I felt like my NP was treating me like I was defined by the diagnosis and that I wouldn't be able to function without these large doses of medication. However, my therapist felt as though I could function without the medication (I mean, I did for the first 30 years of my life), and that she had heard similar bad experiences from other patients.
So as I'm writing this, I'm free of medications and also free of anxiety. Currently, therapy is one of my most treasured activities. I feel as though I have made so many personal strides in the past few months. Actually, my last appointment is what inspired me to start this blog. So, you will definitely be able to read about my sessions in the future.
Thank you for reading this with an open mind. I hope that I didn't jump around too much, since it is a lot of information to stuff into one post. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to comment.
Until next time, much love and abundance. 💗
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