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If you've recovered from depression, what did it feel like? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 hours ago by darthelmet@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I’ve been dealing with depression (and anxiety) for well over 5 years now. I’ve tried so many different medications and treatments with no apparent success. Inevitably, in the course of the treatment, the doctor will ask if I’m starting to feel better to see if it’s worth continuing the treatment, up the dose, or swap to something else. And… I never know what to say. If it’s not going to get dramatically better all of a sudden, I don’t really know how to recognize any incremental progress if it’s happening at all and without being able to do that, I might be passing on treatments that could have helped if I gave it more time.

So if you’ve been in this situation, how did you recognize progress? To the extent that you can put it into words, what did it feel like to slowly get better as you were treated?

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[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

Before I was diagnosed, I tried the Zoloft my brother wasn't taking, and that kinda put me in a numb cloud. I dealt with things better but it smashed down the good stuff too much so I gave up on that.

Tried a girlfriend's free sample pack of something that wasn't working for her, and that worked pretty well. Just leveled me out. It was harder for me to get frustrated and angry, and I just had a better baseline feeling. That was fairly early internet, so we had no clue what the pills were, so when they were gone, they were gone.

I don't know how much any of that would have helped because I was still around my family, which was the prime source of my depression.

About 9 years ago, I hit a low point in life and decided to deal with this in an appropriate manner after realizing I've had depression for about 20+ years. Doc gave me Lexapro and said it would take 2 weeks or so to kick in.

I swear the next day I felt like a new person. The doctor said it doesn't work that way, but I felt what I felt. Maybe I was just bone dry on serotonin and just a little bit was a shock to the system, who knows.

It didn't make anything better, I want to be very clear on that. Before the pills, my insides were like a sponge. Anything that happened to me would soak in and get held onto. Bad stuff from my past, my own self esteem issues, any perceived slight someone gave me, whatever, it was all soak into my head and stay there until I blew up or panic attacked, etc.

What happened with medicine is now like I had an emotional raincoat. Most of that stuff would still hit me, but it would run off instead of soak in. The intrusive thoughts were there, my stressors were still there. But I could deal with them as they came up. I wasn't still trying to get out from under a pile of them every time another hit me.

I could still get sad or depressed for no reason, but it felt like something I could handle instead of that being the only thing I could be. And that got better with time.

This year, I've been having problems again so I'm going to need to check in soon to discuss if I need to change something. I've been feeling slightly depression more often, I'm low on energy, and I'm losing interest in a lot of things I enjoy. There's no real new stressors I'm aware of, so I'm not sure what's going on.

I feel I've had a luckier time than many with medication, but even so, it isn't a silver bullet, it's still a chronic condition. Working meds just get you to the same starting line as "normal people" for you to deal with your day. You're still running the same obstacle course every day, but you're not starting way behind. Hope that was some help.