Struggling (long, sorry)

[trombone_babe]

Hi everyone, just want to vent how I've been feeling lately. Bit of history first, I've been on ADs pretty much constantly for the past 9 years or so, various doses and various drugs. This has kept the problem fairly well under control. However, the last year has been a bit rough, I lost a close friend to cancer a year ago, my mum died in November and my hubby has been poorly and had a major op about a month ago. During this time I've felt myself going downhill and went to the doc. He changed my meds from 40mg of citalopram to 75mg of venlafaxine, which I was assured was an equivalent dose. After four weeks of hell (tried to leave it that long to give it time to work) I went back and he doubled the dose. Now in the last couple of weeks since my hubby had his op I've been struggling to keep going, extremely tearful and so lethargic. So now I'm on 225 of venlafaxine. Trouble is I'm still waking up with a dreadful heavy feeling inside, not wanting to do anything, even things I really enjoy and I want to sleep all the time. I cry at the slightest provocation. On top of all that, I'm being very clingy to a good friend of mine who's happy for me to chat, online cos I don't get to see him in person these days. I feel a very strong need to have him hold me close while I have a good cry and I think that spooks him a bit. I'd go to my hubby, of course, but he finds me being this low very upsetting and scary at the moment. I've got to the point where I'm pretty much obsessed with talking to this guy and I think he's getting fed up with it.

I've had counselling and stuff several times before and I've never found it very useful so I don't want to go down that road again, and I'm starting to feel there's nowhere left for me to go. I feel I'm going to be stuck like this for the foreseeable future and the prospect is awful. I'm struggling to cope at work and worried that I will have to start having time off, though this is the last thing I want to do as I enjoy my job, though I have a new boss and I'm finding that difficult as well.

Sorry for the rant, just wanted to get it out of my system

 

[schizzzoid]

Have a and keep on fighting!

 

[Svenhassel]

Hi everyone, just want to vent how I've been feeling lately. Bit of history first, I've been on ADs pretty much constantly for the past 9 years or so, various doses and various drugs. This has kept the problem fairly well under control. However, the last year has been a bit rough, I lost a close friend to cancer a year ago, my mum died in November and my hubby has been poorly and had a major op about a month ago. During this time I've felt myself going downhill and went to the doc. He changed my meds from 40mg of citalopram to 75mg of venlafaxine, which I was assured was an equivalent dose. After four weeks of hell (tried to leave it that long to give it time to work) I went back and he doubled the dose. Now in the last couple of weeks since my hubby had his op I've been struggling to keep going, extremely tearful and so lethargic. So now I'm on 225 of venlafaxine. Trouble is I'm still waking up with a dreadful heavy feeling inside, not wanting to do anything, even things I really enjoy and I want to sleep all the time. I cry at the slightest provocation. On top of all that, I'm being very clingy to a good friend of mine who's happy for me to chat, online cos I don't get to see him in person these days. I feel a very strong need to have him hold me close while I have a good cry and I think that spooks him a bit. I'd go to my hubby, of course, but he finds me being this low very upsetting and scary at the moment. I've got to the point where I'm pretty much obsessed with talking to this guy and I think he's getting fed up with it.

I've had counselling and stuff several times before and I've never found it very useful so I don't want to go down that road again, and I'm starting to feel there's nowhere left for me to go. I feel I'm going to be stuck like this for the foreseeable future and the prospect is awful. I'm struggling to cope at work and worried that I will have to start having time off, though this is the last thing I want to do as I enjoy my job, though I have a new boss and I'm finding that difficult as well.

Sorry for the rant, just wanted to get it out of my system

Hi trombone babe

One of the biggest issues I've had with my problems has been I find it so much easire to discuss them online, or with people I don't know that well as someone with a dispassionate viewpoint can be a huge comfort just for the fact that they are able to discuss your issues without emotional attachment.

It can be an enormously positive thing but there are negatives. relying on someone who is not your husband is a dangerous thing at times, I know, I've been there.

You say your hubby finds this upsetting and scary? this is normal, we all get scared of things we don't understand and it's hard for anyone to understand who doesn't suffer...god knows, it's difficult enough to explain for those that do

My advice would always be to allow your partner to take care of your emotional issues, or at least attempt to, by letting him in on some of these issues you are suffering. You don't need to tell him everything. The end result might be that you find he needs a cuddle as much as you do

And it seems youre in the right place when it comes to discussing your issues. Feel free to chat away on here.

Let your friend be just that...a friend. he might well be supportive but he can't hug you at the moment and his own emotions over this might lead him to not be quite as willing to talk about this issue in the future. keep him at arms length and realise that, though he's a friend, he has the ability to be dispassionate unless you involve him too directly in your feelings...you don't want to lose a good friend

Hope I'm making sense? but we all push away from those we care most about at times and I know from personal experience that it can be to the detrement of both people involved.

Stay safe.

 

[trombone_babe]

Hi Svenhassel and thanks for your reply. Don't get me wrong, my hubby knows all about the issues and what's going on, (including the online chatting) we're very close and I get a lot of hugs from him. At the moment though I feel I need a really good cry and that upsets him. I don't get very much time away from him other than at work just now as he's off work.

Also I've had this issue of wanting a close male confidant for about the last 20 years. I always seem to need to be held by that confidant, and for him to let me literally cry on his shoulder if I need to. Despite having spent many, many hours deliberating on this, on my own and with counselling, I still don't know whether I need this more because I have a depressive episode, or whether I start a depressive episode because of this need, especially when the baton is passed, so to speak. Unfortunately I suspect that it's the latter. Something has always happened to break the emotional bond on my part (the one before this current chap was the guy who died of cancer) and then I meet someone else...so the cycle continues.

In the end it all boils down to me feeling I don't have anyone outside my household, same as my lack of success with counselling because I always feel that it emphasises my lack of support network. Both my parents are dead (not that they would have been of any help anyway) and my brother is worse than useless as far as talking is concerned. I have an overwhelming feeling of it's me & hubby against the world.

 

[diddypinks]

hi

it could be your medication change it back to how it was before???????

 

[trombone_babe]

Hi, some of it might be down to my meds, but I don't want to go back to citalopram as it had stopped working for me, which is why I changed in the first place. I'm going back to the doc next week.

 

[trombone_babe]

Well I went to the doc on an emergency appointment today and he has changed me back to Citalopram 40mg plus given me some Diazepam to take as and when as I've started to get quite bad anxiety which I've not had like this before. He's also signed me off work for 2 weeks which I've got mixed feelings about. I'm quite worried that he wants me to get off Venlafaxine in just a couple of days before starting back on the Citalopram, what effects have people had coming off quickly?

 

[rollinat]

Hi - I came off venlafaxine quickly and was on the same dose as you. I hadn't been taking it very long - couple of months probably. I felt very anxious for a few days and just a bit strange generally but part of that could certainly have been expecting to have side effects coming off. I hope you get on ok with the change-over, and that citalopram helps you as it has in the past.

 

[trombone_babe]

Thanks Rollinat, I'll see how it goes and keep posting