8 weeks on citalopram some improvement but feel disconnected

Hi David

thank you so much for answering,it's great to know we are not alone.i have very little patience with myself but plenty with others lol. So therefore I find it hard to slow down to the speed of life I'm given. Hope you are recovering to x

Hi Mel

thanks for answering, hormones were a big part of my breakdown too.Just finished my first jumper today and like you have found knitting therapeutic.i too had a very busy life style and like I said to David have little patience with myself. But I guess one day at a time is good advice.also I hate being alone with my thoughts . Thanks again sue x

Hi Sue

I know that feeling of having very little patience as never been ill in my life and my friends used to say to me Rome isn't built in a day - well it was with me.  But it was my hormones that were always driving me.

So patience I have had to learn - and only advice don't fight it!!

I know the feeling of being alone with your thoughts as after a breakdown all unresolved issues come flooding out and you go what I had that many fears!!!

Citalopram will calm that down - but I opened up to a guy who had 25 years of counselling - but is more a self discovery process and I learnt so much about how our brains work and think etc. etc.

All I can say is things do work themselves out and unfortunately it is normally the hormones fuelling the anxiety.

I have always been hyper, hyper and couldn't take the pill would be bouncing of the ceiling.  So my ovaries have run riot all my life.

Under a professor after lots of research and he has balanced me back out and I got my life back.

Don't want to bombard you with too much, but I am here and can help you through so much as our hormones control over 400 of our bodily functions and as such create chemical imbalances etc. etc.

If you want to run through your thoughts that is good but with fear the more you move towards it instead of running away from it - it shrinks it to nothing.

At the moment your lymbic part of the brain is flagging certain parts of your thoughts as don't like.  We all have lots of thoughts just coming and going all day - can rest assure you it will get better.

So feel for you and wish could be there to give you a big hug.

Mel Xx

Thank you Mel just knowing someone understands how I feel is a great help and I appreciate your kind words ....sue x

Dear everyone.

Just to confirm that nobody is alone on this site as we all suffer from anxiety and panic attacks.

It is hard to give advice as we are all so different.

Knitting and craft work is superb as it is creative.

Lots of best wishes to you all

Christine

Thank you Christine x

Hi Christine..just wanted to say, what you said is so true, anthing crafty you do that engrosses you and takes you either away from how you are now and/or to how you were before is amazing...be it gardening,knitting,sewing,dancing (yes, that was me !) or even just engrossing yourself in the daily paper crossword, it all is a healthy distraction, xxx

No probs Sue here any time you need help - wish I had found a site like this when I first had my breakdown.

My hormones have been labelled severe hence why under a professor and I mean severe my heart would stop, blood pressure drop - my pituitary would go in to overdrive and my body just couldn't cope with it all.  But any body reading this don't panic I am not a text book lady.

But I was alone for quite sometime in a fight with the medical profession whilst coming out of the physchosis that the hormones gave me going through the breakdown - that's how hyper my hormones took me.  All they said was hormones can't do this and so I  had no medication etc etc. to help.

Any hows did lots of research, training to counsel in a drug rehab, hence finding out all about neuro chemistry, etc etc.

Eventually found citalopram which has suppressed my hormones whilst the professor did research and come up with the patches I am on now. 

Got my life back and can't wait for the menopause - party!!!

But the people on here are oh so supportive and give us all the hope we need to get through.

Big hugs and love Mel Xx

p.s.  one thing I lost was my sense of achievement - so have taken on some quite challenging sewing.  Got the sew and stitch and doing the quilt, along with knitting jazzy socks.  So glad you done your first jumper.  My mum - got me to do a double cable twist hat for my first project!!!!  A bit too much lol Xx

 

Hi thanks again I have gone back to work two days a week, I help run my daughters charity shop,she is away abroad for four months so it's a case of having to.  My family seem to think I'm better now, I try to explain that I'm not but my daughter 26 really doesn't get it.hates her mum being ill, she is putting pressure on me to go out and stay with her in feurteventura with her for a couple of weeks.sometimes I think I can do it other times it panics me just thinking about it. I hate feeling like this as it is so out of character for me.my husband says it's time I just got on with it as it's not physical and only thoughts,but you know what thoughts can do to us.thanks for being there xx

Hi there Sue,

Oh boy do I. You don't know how I do. 

My breakdown actually started in Gran Canaria.  So you can imagine what I went through the first time I went abroad again!!!  But I can honestly say it was the thought of going, not the actual doing.  Once there really enjoyed it.

But now I actually spend 6 months in Spain and 6 months in England.  The travelling we have done is unreal as we live in an american rv.

Also my heart stopped and I collapsed where we used to live in the middle of no where with no neighbours.  Again it took me all my strength and courage and a lot of prayers to be able to be alone again.

I could write you a book what I had to go through.  But the thing is with fear if you give in to it you are on a hiding to nothing and the more you restrict your life the more and more it takes over and some people end up not being able to go out, etc, etc.

So I took a conscious decision it wasn't going to end up like that for me.  It wasn't going to rule my life. The same as my hormones.   I have always been such an independent person, etc. etc.

One good thing that I was taught with panic is to tell it to come on and to stand up to it, the same as our fears the more you do it shrinks real fast. 

The brain craves to feel safe and in control and the thing is after a breakdown you are left not feeling in control or any thing else your confidence just goes to the floor.

The lymbic system is our subconscious and it is where our feelings, emotions and reaction to things come from.  That is where fight, flight and freeze our automatic survival responses come from also.

So we have to reprogramme our subconscious to stop flagging things as don't like and dangerous etc.  It takes a while but once we do it stops flagging things so it is changing negatives experiences to positives, etc. etc.

I ain't no way saying any of this is easy, but we are all work in progress.  We all have fears and anxiety about things even the bravest of us have weaknesses.  I listened to the news this morning about hrt and ovarian cancer - one of my worst fears - but I have no choice but to take it otherwise I would have hyper mania thanks to my hormones and ovaries.  Think life is about weighing up pros and cons and making sure that you think really logically about things.

I hope this helps, but it is down to you whether you are actually up to going to feurteventura or not.

I can't remember if I told you this, but if we tell ourselves something more than four times our brain believes it.  That is because when we panic the subconscious has kicked in and taken our logic side of the brain offline - so you have to bring your logic back on line by telling yourself reality - which is I have been abroad loads of times before and nothing is going to happen to me.  I am safe and I can assure you citalopram will stop you from getting that low again.

Big hugs and loves from somebody that knows what you are going through and understands the reality of rebuilidng - but you do come out stronger the other side if you remember life is for living.

Mel Xx

 

You are a truly insperational lady,and I value your words and appreciate the time you have taken to write to me.

i will try to act on what you have said and hit fear head on as it is only a thought process....As scary as it can be.

thank you again Mel

all the best

Sue x

No probs Sue,

If I can help any one to recover and rebuild, it is something that is so close to my heart.

Always here for you.

Mel Xx

p.s. forgot to put we are all stronger than what we gave ourselves credit for.

Good for you girl - once you start changing those thought processes and gain ground there will be no stopping you.  But as always slowly, slowly catches a monkey.

Hi Mel, just reading this post, you said about always being hyper, and bouncing off the ceiling, I was the opposite, never nervous, not generally, not and anxious person, quite steady really and able as a scientist to rationalise that the side effects I'm having now, was on 10mg for a week then moved up yesterday to 20mg) and I am very very jumpy, was already not feeling great last week but double dose has equalled double intensity of side effects..I know it's not me as I'm not a jumpy person, I know it's just the drug but I'm so wishing it would stop, how long Mel ? Before this stops ? Do the side effects carry on when the benefits start in a few weeks or do the side effects stop ?

Getting a bit fed up with it now..though funnily enough, as my depression meant I was crying for hours daily, I haven't cried since I started taking them, just because I've been more preoccupied.pied about how crap I feel, isn't that a joke !!

X

Hi Michelle,

Sorry to hear you are having such a rough time.  Poor you.

Unfortunately there is no hard and fast rule, with me it took 3 weeks to bring me off the ceiling - but I rushed it to get it in to my system instead of creeping up took the full 20 mg because of the hyper mania from my hormones - but they did give me other stuff to counter act it - valium and sleeping tabs.

Once they are in brill.

Have you always had depression or did it just arrive. 

The only reason I ask is because a lot of woman I know who have suffered from depression has either been due to a change in pill, coil or implant or onset of hormones, postnatal or going through menopause - as they control over 400 bodily functions, including our neuro chemistry which in turn affects our moods etc. etc.

One woman I knew suffered from depression until she had her ovaries removed and then went on HRT and hasn't looked back. 

So if our hormones are out of balance it has a massive impact on us.

I hope this helps.  It will pass. However I have never had anxiety or depression - just massive highs and lows from my hormones - to extremes.

p.s.  forgot to say - loved the dancing and this will really help as it just doesn't bring in endorphins - but oestrogen etc. etc. and that is what lifts our moods.  Shame we can't dance our lives away!!!

Big hugs Mel Xx

Hi Mel,

My depression was due to suppressing events from yrs ago and not dealing with them, I also became close, platonically, to someone on my allotments, she gets on with my partner too, I'm a very all or nothing friend, to me hugs, kisses being demonstrative about it and open with ur feelings is the norm for me, it's not for her, we upset each other, she thinks my kind of friendship is suffocating and so after becoming so down about this on/off friendship for so long, I was becomming depressed, with all the repression added to it of things I hadn't dealt with from years back. I was ,still am seeing a counsellor but talking isn't enough, when your seretonin has been at such a low level for a long time, your body stops making it, because you don't want to do anything fun to get it going. I needed chemical help, I'm just finding these side effects hard to deal with, I'm like a zombie with the shakes today..and all that would make me feel better is a hug from the friend I can't be friends with anymore..😩

Hi Michelle,

So sorry to hear all of that. 

The citalopram will get in and be such a big help once in.

It sounds like your friend has issues of her own as that is why we were given feelings, etc. so that we could demonstrate them.  It is so normal to hug people etc. etc.

I am the same as you, but my first husband was rejected as a child - although he lived with his mum/dad, his mum really didn't know how to love and in turn he didn't - there was lots else - but I found it so hard to live with being a hug aholic and he found it diffcult even to kiss.

Try not to take it too personal - know it is hard.

Mel Xx

p.s.  sending you lots of big hugs and happy feelings and just let them all out.

Thanks Mel, hugs to you too x