Posted by KimberlyDi on July 24, 2003, at 10:44:21
In reply to Re: personal thoughts » CherC68, posted by zinya on July 23, 2003, at 17:55:30
Zinya (and Cher),
I'm in complete agreement thinking that poor Cher has too much piled on her plate to deal with. Drugs aren't the fix-all in life. If a person is on AD's and a spouse cheats, it's still gonna hurt! I wish we were all "real life" friends instead of cyber-friends. Then we could all march over to Cher's house to pitch in and help.
KDi in Texas> hi Cher,
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> please -- and to mercedes too -- i wasn't meaning for anybody to feel they 'should' have responded to that music post ... It just started being relevant to so many people talking about music but i wasn't sure if people already had read my thoughts on the topic.
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> Heaven knows, i get lost in the posts here and sometimes miss some posts i onlyrealize later i didn't even see ... I'd swear sometimes in fact, that they weren't even there previously, as if they "snuck in" belatedly into my list :))
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> hmmmm
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> Well, Cher, what i was referring to is a sense i've been getting increasingly lately from your posts of the avalanche of things you're dealing with and i debated mentioning here (in part so anyone else, like mercedes for example, who disagrees with my interpretation could chime in -- as well as obviously you yourself) and i feel a bit funny giving an unsolicited "diagnosis" cuz also, heaven knows, i'm no diagnostician... But several recent posts of yours have increasingly led me to think that with what you are dealing with in your life just even in terms of your hands, but then with so much else, of managing your whole house amid floods and storms and so many other things you've gradually shared bit by bit plus just even the "usual" wifely and motherly and employee stresses that come with the territory, you've had an avalanche of things beyond the norm... And it has made me think that maybe what you're dealing with is "normal depression/anxiety/stress" rather than a "clinical" one which is due to biochemical imbalance that requires or would benefit from these a-d's. It made me begin to think that maybe your inner instinct that made you quit the Effexor was a totally right instinct, and with others having not worked either, maybe it's telling you that your biochemistry doesn't need an a-d. Maybe the problem is that you've been totally overloaded with too much-- starting with, most basically, the pains of your hands which would make anyone in pain, which always makes a person constantly irritated and zapping your strength etc etc...
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> For years, I kept coming back to a sense that maybe for me too it wasn't really a biochemical thing each time i tried one and had a bad reaaction and quit -- and i could still wind up coming to that conclusion with Effexor too, but so far it's been something i could stick with longer and give it a "real try" and maybe it's telling me that there is some biochemical thing it's "fixing."
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> Now, heaven knows, i'm in no position to be doing this long-distance "analysis" of what you're dealing with. But the more i would hear you describe BOTH all the ENORMOUS hassles (which is an understatement) that you've been coping with AND on the other hand how i hear signs that say to me you are still able to do things (as odd as it sounds) like laugh hysterically or vibrate with music and talk with such delight about your cousin's band ... Things that -- and maybe here it's just me whose experience is too unrepresentative -- but i feel like if mine is "clinical depression" as I finally decided maybe it is, i can't even imagine (even yet) having the energy to laugh hysterically -- which I wish i could do again (but, please understand, i'm not minimizing how crazed you were feeling then)... Maybe that's a bad basis for seeing a contrast, which is why i'm giving an example for you to see what it is i'm basing this on, but even in your "breakdown" on Monday, you struck me as having the kind of breakdown that any sane person SHOULD have had in that situation. You "deserved" to have a "breakdown" in the midst of all that - and as you described how you started laughing on the phone with your husband about it ... I don't know, maybe i'm totally wrong, but it just didn't sound like what i'm coming to think this "clinical depression" thing is.
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> Unfortunately, i think most doctors prescribe way too readily without really plumbing the depths to figure out what kind of depression we are feeling when we say we're depressed. Cuz more than ever, i feel like i'm realizing there's "depressed" and then there's "depressed" -- and i don't want to make one with a capital "D" more than the other cuz each one is surely just as daunting as the other, but i think one of them can benefit from drug therapy cuz there's a biochemical component and the other one can't. And at least one of these "other" kinds of depression would seem to be from an accumulation of life circumstances that leads to depression and anxiety.
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> I feel like i'm babbling and you might totally disagree with me - I hope only that i'm making clear what i mean to say, which i'm not at all sure about. Does this make sense to you? If it does, it would make sense of your stopping the a-d's and maybe mean that if you see a pdoc, you might want to pose this question first of whether an a-d is even appropriate for you rather than just assuming one is and trying to find a different one that would work. Maybe with xanax or whatever, the reason you like it is because it's the one thing your body's biochemistry is missing and so maybe that's enough to help and then hopefully if your hands can find relief and all this avalanche of crises can abate... Or do you sense that there's a whole other kind of depression that i'm forgetting about in your situation that does feel like something biochemical to you?
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> Well, now i *really* feel like i'm babbling, so i'm gonna quit and hope i haven't said anything that comes across as 'invasive' or presumptuousness but if i have and you want to tell me to "mind my own business" i'll understand, though of course i hope not :)) And, again, of course, it does feel presumptuous of me that i'm saying any of this cuz i don't even know myself whether what i have is "clinical depression" or what it looks or feels like, not to mention that there must be a lot of variation across people ...
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> anyway, these were thoughts that had started to occur to me, and it seemed like if i just kept them to myself that -- even if you disagree with my interpretation -- maybe it would be helpful to you to hear it and know whether it sounds reasonable to you or not... That is, if i've even been clear :)
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> okay, enough!!
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> love and hugs,
> zinya
poster:KimberlyDi
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030723/msgs/244853.html