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serafaeryTherapy Friday was really nice. My therapist is excited to potentially start a new group, with me as a member. He's got five people marked for it and sounds like he wants to start with six or seven, so we'll see if it comes together. Coordinating a weekly meeting time can be tricky. I can potentially shift things around, I think it sounds valuable enough to make an effort to attend weekly.
We talked about my Dysthymia. It's a new diagnosis for me, but only because it has to persist for 2+ years to be diagnosed and we've been working together for over two years now. And it hasn't lifted. (But I've been like this since I was a pre-teen.) I'm one of those lucky "double winners" who has Dysthymia and Major Depressive Disorder, sometimes cheerfully called "Double Depression" lol. And I'm out here raw-dogging it with no medication.
Dysthymia is a persist low mood, and the descriptions are uncanny. Johns Hopkins literally uses the phrase "a cloud that never lifts," which is how I was describing it to my therapist on Friday, when he asked me how I've been. It feels as if I can sometimes blow air hard enough to disperse the fog for a few seconds to clear the air and see that things are just fine, but I can't keep the clouds away without excessive effort and as soon as I stop to take a breath they rush back in.
The molasses feeling is more severe, that's more like a real depressive episode. The clouds are not that bad, but just, never good.
I've been going to bed at 9pm and getting up at 7am, this week. Dysthymia also typically causes sleeping too much, too little, or fitfully, and also causes fluctuations in weight (hi) from eating too much or too little (whoops).
I was explaining to him that I love my Finch self-care app, but one of the sad things about it is that it has allowed me, via the daily mood check-in, to visualize just how rarely I feel good. Maybe a couple times a month do I mark "okay" or "good" as my mood (usually during or after a hike or on a lookout tower trip) and I mark my mood as "really good" only a few times a year. Well. I've had the app about 8 months and I've maybe marked that three times or four times. Again, usually during a trip or on a mountain. Although I do remember marking it one morning when I was at home, and had just pulled out of a long depressive episode, and everything seemed so sparkly and beautiful and perfect. I do get a bit of an extra boost upwards after a long bout of deep depression, sometimes. Sometimes. It's hypomania (mania but without the delusional grandiosity or disconnect from reality) and that state is actually really healthy and wonderful and also a known side-effect of MDD. It is also sadly very short lived and less frequent the older I get. My first two lovers hated it when I bounced into this high mood state because it was so out of character and high energy, they would scold me and tell me I was scaring them and sent me crashing out of it, it was sad.
Anyway.
It's probably stupid of me to keep trying to deal with this without medication. I'm just annoyed because running worked really, really well to quell the dysthymia, or at least lessen it, but my body broke down and I can't do that anymore and it's so upsetting. I keep trying to find other things and it's just not working. Swimming sucks, it requires going to a facility and bleaching my skin and hair and changing clothes and and and. Running was so simple. Just grab shoes, go to a flat trail and hop out of the car, and go. I could do it after work. I didn't have to pay. There was no suit required. Or showering. Or towels. Or gym locks.
sigh.
I will keep working on healing my feet.
I am so tired. I might skip pizza night. I want time to myself to prep for the coast. I don't know. I just. Don't feel well. I've been achey and nauseated all day. Not from any physical illness, the dysthymia causes nausea and sensitizes me to pain so every little thing just feels terrible. All of my joints ache, my head hurts, my tummy hurts, my ears hurt, my heart hurts.
I am so exhausted by this.
I realize I am very sick. But it's not so bad that I can't function. So I keep limping along in this state of half-aliveness. It's not that bad. But it's also so unpleasant. And for what. My life could be so lovely. If I just felt better.
Josh is so amazing through all of this. I can describe my experience and he hears me and nods sympathetically and offers me extra hugs and help, he tries to feed me and cheer me up however he can, he doesn't push me, it's really really wonderful. He doesn't get irritated when I complain about being in more pain than usual or about feeling terrible for no reason, he just offers me sympathy and comfort. Best husband ever.
We talked about my Dysthymia. It's a new diagnosis for me, but only because it has to persist for 2+ years to be diagnosed and we've been working together for over two years now. And it hasn't lifted. (But I've been like this since I was a pre-teen.) I'm one of those lucky "double winners" who has Dysthymia and Major Depressive Disorder, sometimes cheerfully called "Double Depression" lol. And I'm out here raw-dogging it with no medication.
Dysthymia is a persist low mood, and the descriptions are uncanny. Johns Hopkins literally uses the phrase "a cloud that never lifts," which is how I was describing it to my therapist on Friday, when he asked me how I've been. It feels as if I can sometimes blow air hard enough to disperse the fog for a few seconds to clear the air and see that things are just fine, but I can't keep the clouds away without excessive effort and as soon as I stop to take a breath they rush back in.
The molasses feeling is more severe, that's more like a real depressive episode. The clouds are not that bad, but just, never good.
I've been going to bed at 9pm and getting up at 7am, this week. Dysthymia also typically causes sleeping too much, too little, or fitfully, and also causes fluctuations in weight (hi) from eating too much or too little (whoops).
I was explaining to him that I love my Finch self-care app, but one of the sad things about it is that it has allowed me, via the daily mood check-in, to visualize just how rarely I feel good. Maybe a couple times a month do I mark "okay" or "good" as my mood (usually during or after a hike or on a lookout tower trip) and I mark my mood as "really good" only a few times a year. Well. I've had the app about 8 months and I've maybe marked that three times or four times. Again, usually during a trip or on a mountain. Although I do remember marking it one morning when I was at home, and had just pulled out of a long depressive episode, and everything seemed so sparkly and beautiful and perfect. I do get a bit of an extra boost upwards after a long bout of deep depression, sometimes. Sometimes. It's hypomania (mania but without the delusional grandiosity or disconnect from reality) and that state is actually really healthy and wonderful and also a known side-effect of MDD. It is also sadly very short lived and less frequent the older I get. My first two lovers hated it when I bounced into this high mood state because it was so out of character and high energy, they would scold me and tell me I was scaring them and sent me crashing out of it, it was sad.
Anyway.
It's probably stupid of me to keep trying to deal with this without medication. I'm just annoyed because running worked really, really well to quell the dysthymia, or at least lessen it, but my body broke down and I can't do that anymore and it's so upsetting. I keep trying to find other things and it's just not working. Swimming sucks, it requires going to a facility and bleaching my skin and hair and changing clothes and and and. Running was so simple. Just grab shoes, go to a flat trail and hop out of the car, and go. I could do it after work. I didn't have to pay. There was no suit required. Or showering. Or towels. Or gym locks.
sigh.
I will keep working on healing my feet.
I am so tired. I might skip pizza night. I want time to myself to prep for the coast. I don't know. I just. Don't feel well. I've been achey and nauseated all day. Not from any physical illness, the dysthymia causes nausea and sensitizes me to pain so every little thing just feels terrible. All of my joints ache, my head hurts, my tummy hurts, my ears hurt, my heart hurts.
I am so exhausted by this.
I realize I am very sick. But it's not so bad that I can't function. So I keep limping along in this state of half-aliveness. It's not that bad. But it's also so unpleasant. And for what. My life could be so lovely. If I just felt better.
Josh is so amazing through all of this. I can describe my experience and he hears me and nods sympathetically and offers me extra hugs and help, he tries to feed me and cheer me up however he can, he doesn't push me, it's really really wonderful. He doesn't get irritated when I complain about being in more pain than usual or about feeling terrible for no reason, he just offers me sympathy and comfort. Best husband ever.
