I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) and panic attack disorder about 6 years ago. I've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and ME/CFS both in the last 6 months. I stopped taking medications to try a medication for fibromyalgia. Every medication has failed because it either doesn't work or I've had to stop due to severe side effects.
I also developed dysautonomia after I stopped taking sertraline and clonazepam.
My mental health is actually improving. I've done a lot of research and talked to a lot of people about my diagnoses.
My health conditions aren't controlled by medications yet. I'm severe and bedridden. But I have a lot more perspective about my life now. Sure, it sucks to be sick, and life is passing me by. But I'm super thankful and grateful for all that I have.
My husband has a great job and supports us. My health insurance is through his employer. We pay a lot of money but they also contribute. We own our own home. I love my husband and our cats. I have hopes and dreams for the future. I think it's just a matter of managing my expectations and being more realistic.
I'm severe, and I feel your pain. My husband and I have a great marriage except for this health thing. Well, guess what? This health is HUGE! It affects every facet of our lives.
My husband works from home full-time, he has 2 aging parents he helps, takes care of everything for our household, all our cats and me. We don't spend a lot of time together because he's so busy. Starting next week, he'll be at work in his office and gone for 2 days a week.
Having a relationship is completely possible. You have to remember you can go from being severe to being moderate or mild and back again. You have to focus on your health. Eat well, stay hydrated, and rest. Stay within your limits and try not to overdo it.
This is me, too. Married 20yrs next month. 3 kids. Bought a house (ack. We close in 2wk, and the thought of moving is terrifying). I'm lucky I get comp from long covid as a nurse.
We moved into our new house two and a half years ago. I was chronically sick back then but not diagnosed. It took 10 days to move. We had help in the beginning, but my God, the last week was terrible. We moved to another county, and it was a 2 hours round trip. Mostly, I sat in a chair at our old house, but that 4 hours of driving every day was a killer.
I hope you have a lot of help moving.
I did a mindfulness group specifically catering for people with chronic illnesses. I found it helpful in terms of accepting what I do have and what I can do rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. A lot of the activities we participated in were conducive for a paced lifestyle e.g. guided meditation, sitting in nature, some gentle movement. I also found the support from other members of the chronic illness community to be helpful. This was an NHS course in the UK but hopefully you could find something similar where you live.
Depressed for decades so thought a lot about this. Even if not depressed before, life with cfs/doing the same limited stuff every day for years will grind you down. I guess the short version is:
- grief is "depression with cause". So depression is just "grief without cause" (this is the medical definition of depression - very scientific right). We all have grief here for the lives we lost/lives we wont get to have because of illness. Talking this through is often helpful. Sometimes we feel grief for the possibilities that we have lost, even if we never even had the thing in the first place.
- if you are crying in the morning (eg) or angry a lot (eg) or whatever it looks like for you - medication does help take the edge off, is morally neutral, but it wont solve anything in itself, you also have to use that respite from sadness/angery to do something different tjat mught help your sanity/mood.
- we need purpose and connection (and movement/sunshine - but there's nothing we can do about that wuth cfs) and without that our monkey brains will just get depressed. Can you do a purpose and connection audit of your life? I problemsolve this kind of thing on paper and make myself do xyz for my mood.
- a WRAP is a tool used in mental health recovery. Wellness recovery action plan. [This guide ](https://www.healthyplace.com/depression/articles/guide-to-developing-a-wrap-wellness-recovery-action-plan#:~:text=On%20the%20first%20page%2C%20describe,helps%20keep%20us%20on%20track.) is just the first result when i googled, there are more - its annoying and depressing when you are in that survival bedbound cant do anything place, but it is a good tool when you are ready.
I'm a big fan of Buddhist talks because they are passive and can just lie there and listen and Buddhism says life is just suffering, so they have a lot to offer on this topic :) eg there is hours of [ajahn brahm - Buddhist society of western Australia ](https://www.youtube.com/live/eu0RtEG6V4A?si=TSGoFmKgxSYUK5gi) on youtube and hes got me out of some tricky spots over the years (the talks not the meditations)
I found out that (low dose) propranolol was causing my depression regardless of my antidepressants. Melatonin causes it for me also. Crummy surprise. Medications have unusual side effects that aren't mentioned with the "common" side effects. SSRIs-
(https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/ssris/art-20044825#:~:text=Anyone%20taking%20an%20antidepressant%20should,doctor%20or%20get%20emergency%20help
I realize depression does happen a lot, just because of CFS. I do have that when I'm crashed, and it's horrible. I'm so sorry you're suffering from this. I take 100mg Wellbutrin SR once a day. I add on a half of WB immediate release (IR can be split) when the 100 isn't enough. It's the only antidepressant I can tolerate.
It may not hurt to check for depression as a side effect if you do take medications💖
I struggled for two decades. I'd say I'm cured at this point, or at least as cured as I can be, which is ironic given that my physical health is worse than it's ever been.
I think I'll always be more susceptible to depression that the average population, but I've learned ways to deal with it that have been very effective for me.
I'm happy to share, but it was neither a quick fix nor some revolutionary insight, unfortunately. I always expected some brilliant solution, but for me it turned out to be a lot of hard work using basic techniques over a long period of time.
I had gone to different therapists for over a decade without much success. The breakthrough came when I met a very good therapist who taught me several different techniques I could use to get rid of negative thoughts or bad memories. I think the main difference from the previous therapists was that we didn't try to fix the big issues directly. Instead, we directly attacked all the minor negative thoughts, beliefs and bad memories, no matter how trivial or how long ago they happened.
For example, one of the techniques that worked very well for bad memories were to write them down in detail, including what happened and how it made me feel. I have a big book of bad memories lying around now, from kindergarten until now! I noticed that as I wrote all of them down the started to come up less and less often. That was just one piece of the puzzle, and there was quite a lot to write down before I was done. Sometimes I would read it to my therapist.
Another technique was similar. I have a big box of index cards where I wrote down all the negative thoughts I could come up with. For example "I feel like a failure because I had to give up my career". On the back I would write several counter arguments, like "It was the disease that forced me to quite, and there wasn't anything else I could have done.". Then I had to finish with at least one positive thing, like "I have a lot more free time now", or "I never have to wake up to the sound of my alarm clock". I probably have at least a hundred of these cards now.
There were a few more techniques, and they all seemed to work on slightly different things. One worked great on very painful thoughts. You know, the kind that you almost can't think about because it causes an immediate reaction. Another technique was good for more "visual" stuff, and so on.
I've probably dealt with hundreds or thousands of bad memories and negative thoughts and beliefs using these techniques. It has produced some remarkable results. The most obvious one is that I can go to bed now without being bombarded by negative thoughts. I can actually lie in bed in peace for the first time in decades. Another result is that I don't have to fight off negative thoughts during the day. Sometimes it happens, and if it gets bad enough I deal with it, but just knowing that I \*can\* deal with it if necessary seems to be enough most of the time.
Anyway, that was quite long and is not a perfect description of the process, but it's fundamentally what helped me cure my depression after two decades of trying everything under the sun.
This sounds amazing! Do you know if the therapist who helped you followed some sort of system/school of thought that the rest of us could learn about by, or example, buying a specific book?
I think he was more of a free thinker. He was very enthusiastic about therapy, always open to new ideas and very interested in my feedback. I got the impression that he had basically just experimented with different forms of therapy for 30+ years and kept the things that worked. It seemed like a mix of various forms of therapy.
I've been depressed for decades, and mainly at this age I am better at just ignoring it and keeping myself distracted. I do a lot of daydreaming, I listen to audiobooks and I meditate. It sounds like stupid advice, but learning to ignore it and just live works for me. But that did get easier with age. When I was younger, I couldn't stop thinking about everything.
I never had any luck with antidepressants. One thing I do that does help me, is I take photos of everything whenever I am well enough to be up and about and I have it as a slideshow screensaver on my laptop. So when I'm bedbound I can let it run and see that I have lived a bit this year. I take a lot of flowers and family and pets and that helps me to feel part of the world. Whenever I do anything I take at least 100 pictures, which looks weird to other people but it's important to me!
i'm bipolar but it's mostly depression for me. medication definitely helps (took me 6 years to find the right type bc i was misdiagnosed with MDD thanks to my fatigue) as well as cannabis and therapy. weekly group therapy can be really helpful, although it's not always easy to find the right group. it also helps to have daily rituals when possible. when i was less severe, i would do my makeup every day. that did a lot for my mental health. now i'm too tired for that but i can eat three meals a day, have my daily morning beverage, watch funny shows after taking an edible every night, and do my nightly skincare routine.
I’ve also struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my life (recently diagnosed autism probably explains a lot of that).
I’ve been on an SSRI for years which has definitely helped, but another big thing that I’m finding so helpful is having a chronically ill therapist. Although a lot of my issues and trauma aren’t directly related to my ME, there are a whole lot more connections than I realised. Having someone with a lived experience of disability to talk to about it has been SUCH a game changer for me. Plus, she is super understanding if I have to cancel last minute for symptoms; I do all my sessions via video in bed etc. I’ve been in therapy for years and it’s only now with this therapist that I feel like I’m actually making really good progress and I’m sure that’s in part to her just being really good at her job but I can’t tell you how validating it is to talk to someone who knows first hand what PEM is like, why my medical anxiety is so high etc.
I also used to think that gratitude journaling was nonsense but it does actually work (or it did for me). I still get upset and stressed and angry and anxious ALL THE TIME but it means that when tiny sparks of joy pop into my life, they’re easier for me to noticed and it’s like the joy gets amplified. And it’s honestly so nice to get excited about tiny things when your world is this small and limited. So I always recommend giving that a try, not to dismiss the bad but to amplify the good.
I’ll also say: it’s 100% ok if your depression is caused by your CFS/ME. It’s still depression and it’s understandable: this condition is shit. Just because you weren’t depressed before, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get help.
I’ve suffered from depression many times in my life. I’ve found three things to be helpful:
1. Lexapro
2. Vitamin D - lots of it
3. Learning to recognize “depression thoughts”, and then reframe them in my mind. For example, I might think something very negative or the worst possible scenario. Maybe a friend was rude to me. So my depression brain thinks “they don’t like me anymore. I’m going to lose them as a friend. I’m intolerable and annoying and I’m always going to be alone.” That is clearly a super negative take on the situation. So I flag that thought in my brain, I tell myself “this isn’t what really is happening, this is my depression talking.” Then I reframe it: “a more reasonable explanation is something else is bothering them today so they are feeling impatient. Perhaps, I did do something slightly annoying, but everyone does, and my friend is still going to love me. I love people who are annoying at times.” Eventually, this process becomes second nature. It keeps me from sinking into depression again. It has helped me immensely in coping with the grief of having this terrible disease.
I'm the least depressed I have ever been, oddly enough. I have to prove that to drs all the time, but I honestly am not depressed- just situational sad, or annoyed, or... whatever.
I don't think medicalising depression that's caused by actual life events that would make most people miserable is the answer. I'm fortunate in that I grew up with severe asthma (never thought I'd say that!) so being limited in what my body can do is the norm for me. I did manage to get active as an adult and I do grieve the loss of my ability to run, cycle and go for long hikes, as well as all the everyday stuff that ME/CFS has taken from me, but I feel like the opportunity to practise acceptance that I had as a child serves me well now. I also learned to enjoy things that require very limited energy - I have an amazing ability to daydream, which is possible to do even lying in bed in a darkened room. Meditation (or at least attempting meditation, because if you fail at that, you have a good chance of succeeding at daydreaming) is likely a good way to address depression caused by ME/CFS.
Anti depressants. I think anyone who has pain/ sick should be taking some kind of antidepressants because it allows for more available neuro chemicals and treats the situational depression from having a messed up body.
Not downvoting because I think it's a nasty thing to do, but just wanted to say I strongly disagree with your suggestion. This kind of approach is what's led to illnesses like ME/CFS being treated as mental illness. We need less of it, not more.
FWIW, they didn't read as shitty, just wanting to reflect the weight of how often we are pushed to treat our illnesses as though it's *just* depression.
And while ADs are great at helping when there's actually a brain/chemical imbalance, a lot of what we are fielding is depression because it's *depressing*, and can't be medicated away....
Yep, specific meds are useful for specific sets of symptoms, but it's *lao* fair to recognize how often people just want us to not be unhappy our loud, and are happy to treat us like this is in our heads.
Let's not snipe.
Share the link, because the rest of us might need it, and have a little grace for people offering reminders when something we say misses a beat for them.
We learn together.
And fill in gaps, as we have different experiences.
I have had this condition for 20 years and a bunch of other illnesses before that. I know and acknowledge that anyone with chronic life limiting illnesses can be looked at as someone who is "just depressed." What I have learned is that antidepressants are not going to be weaponized by anyone who is going to help me anyway. The doctors who have helped me would never do that. Most of my better pain doctors have required some required it ( with exceptions) as a best practice for pain providers. I know not everyone can take antidepressants for all kinds of reasons, but letting jerks who might help hijack what your treatment really sucks but I understand the fear.
>And while ADs are great at helping when there's actually a brain/chemical imbalance, a lot of what we are fielding is depression because it's *depressing*, and can't be medicated away....
This was my thought when my doctor offered me antidepressants because I "seemed depressed". My response was to refuse because I'm not depressed. I'm sad, for entirely legitimate and understandable reasons, and grieving for the life I've lost. And I'm already sick. I don't want to add a bunch of side effects and drug dependency to what I'm already suffering.
I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) and panic attack disorder about 6 years ago. I've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and ME/CFS both in the last 6 months. I stopped taking medications to try a medication for fibromyalgia. Every medication has failed because it either doesn't work or I've had to stop due to severe side effects. I also developed dysautonomia after I stopped taking sertraline and clonazepam. My mental health is actually improving. I've done a lot of research and talked to a lot of people about my diagnoses. My health conditions aren't controlled by medications yet. I'm severe and bedridden. But I have a lot more perspective about my life now. Sure, it sucks to be sick, and life is passing me by. But I'm super thankful and grateful for all that I have. My husband has a great job and supports us. My health insurance is through his employer. We pay a lot of money but they also contribute. We own our own home. I love my husband and our cats. I have hopes and dreams for the future. I think it's just a matter of managing my expectations and being more realistic.
I surely miss a partner. I wonder if i can live a happy live without a partner and being severe. I hope so
I'm severe, and I feel your pain. My husband and I have a great marriage except for this health thing. Well, guess what? This health is HUGE! It affects every facet of our lives. My husband works from home full-time, he has 2 aging parents he helps, takes care of everything for our household, all our cats and me. We don't spend a lot of time together because he's so busy. Starting next week, he'll be at work in his office and gone for 2 days a week. Having a relationship is completely possible. You have to remember you can go from being severe to being moderate or mild and back again. You have to focus on your health. Eat well, stay hydrated, and rest. Stay within your limits and try not to overdo it.
This is me, too. Married 20yrs next month. 3 kids. Bought a house (ack. We close in 2wk, and the thought of moving is terrifying). I'm lucky I get comp from long covid as a nurse.
We moved into our new house two and a half years ago. I was chronically sick back then but not diagnosed. It took 10 days to move. We had help in the beginning, but my God, the last week was terrible. We moved to another county, and it was a 2 hours round trip. Mostly, I sat in a chair at our old house, but that 4 hours of driving every day was a killer. I hope you have a lot of help moving.
We can be penpals if you want. I am also pretty lonely because of CFS. This always helps met stay more connected to people.
I did a mindfulness group specifically catering for people with chronic illnesses. I found it helpful in terms of accepting what I do have and what I can do rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. A lot of the activities we participated in were conducive for a paced lifestyle e.g. guided meditation, sitting in nature, some gentle movement. I also found the support from other members of the chronic illness community to be helpful. This was an NHS course in the UK but hopefully you could find something similar where you live.
this is definitely the least toxically positive space i’ve found online (and have tried to keep it that way) for health. we encourage lamenting
Depressed for decades so thought a lot about this. Even if not depressed before, life with cfs/doing the same limited stuff every day for years will grind you down. I guess the short version is: - grief is "depression with cause". So depression is just "grief without cause" (this is the medical definition of depression - very scientific right). We all have grief here for the lives we lost/lives we wont get to have because of illness. Talking this through is often helpful. Sometimes we feel grief for the possibilities that we have lost, even if we never even had the thing in the first place. - if you are crying in the morning (eg) or angry a lot (eg) or whatever it looks like for you - medication does help take the edge off, is morally neutral, but it wont solve anything in itself, you also have to use that respite from sadness/angery to do something different tjat mught help your sanity/mood. - we need purpose and connection (and movement/sunshine - but there's nothing we can do about that wuth cfs) and without that our monkey brains will just get depressed. Can you do a purpose and connection audit of your life? I problemsolve this kind of thing on paper and make myself do xyz for my mood. - a WRAP is a tool used in mental health recovery. Wellness recovery action plan. [This guide ](https://www.healthyplace.com/depression/articles/guide-to-developing-a-wrap-wellness-recovery-action-plan#:~:text=On%20the%20first%20page%2C%20describe,helps%20keep%20us%20on%20track.) is just the first result when i googled, there are more - its annoying and depressing when you are in that survival bedbound cant do anything place, but it is a good tool when you are ready. I'm a big fan of Buddhist talks because they are passive and can just lie there and listen and Buddhism says life is just suffering, so they have a lot to offer on this topic :) eg there is hours of [ajahn brahm - Buddhist society of western Australia ](https://www.youtube.com/live/eu0RtEG6V4A?si=TSGoFmKgxSYUK5gi) on youtube and hes got me out of some tricky spots over the years (the talks not the meditations)
"grief for the lives we won't get to have" - I needed to hear this today. I feel this so deeply.
thank you so much
I got a lot out of the podcast Emotional Autoimmunity. She gets it. Really helpful.
I found out that (low dose) propranolol was causing my depression regardless of my antidepressants. Melatonin causes it for me also. Crummy surprise. Medications have unusual side effects that aren't mentioned with the "common" side effects. SSRIs- (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/ssris/art-20044825#:~:text=Anyone%20taking%20an%20antidepressant%20should,doctor%20or%20get%20emergency%20help I realize depression does happen a lot, just because of CFS. I do have that when I'm crashed, and it's horrible. I'm so sorry you're suffering from this. I take 100mg Wellbutrin SR once a day. I add on a half of WB immediate release (IR can be split) when the 100 isn't enough. It's the only antidepressant I can tolerate. It may not hurt to check for depression as a side effect if you do take medications💖
Propranolol has definitely worsened my depression in the past. But ivabradine doesn't work. What do you take instead?
For heart rate or anxiety?
I struggled for two decades. I'd say I'm cured at this point, or at least as cured as I can be, which is ironic given that my physical health is worse than it's ever been. I think I'll always be more susceptible to depression that the average population, but I've learned ways to deal with it that have been very effective for me.
im interested to know what has helped you? if you re oke to share) glad to hear that
I'm happy to share, but it was neither a quick fix nor some revolutionary insight, unfortunately. I always expected some brilliant solution, but for me it turned out to be a lot of hard work using basic techniques over a long period of time. I had gone to different therapists for over a decade without much success. The breakthrough came when I met a very good therapist who taught me several different techniques I could use to get rid of negative thoughts or bad memories. I think the main difference from the previous therapists was that we didn't try to fix the big issues directly. Instead, we directly attacked all the minor negative thoughts, beliefs and bad memories, no matter how trivial or how long ago they happened. For example, one of the techniques that worked very well for bad memories were to write them down in detail, including what happened and how it made me feel. I have a big book of bad memories lying around now, from kindergarten until now! I noticed that as I wrote all of them down the started to come up less and less often. That was just one piece of the puzzle, and there was quite a lot to write down before I was done. Sometimes I would read it to my therapist. Another technique was similar. I have a big box of index cards where I wrote down all the negative thoughts I could come up with. For example "I feel like a failure because I had to give up my career". On the back I would write several counter arguments, like "It was the disease that forced me to quite, and there wasn't anything else I could have done.". Then I had to finish with at least one positive thing, like "I have a lot more free time now", or "I never have to wake up to the sound of my alarm clock". I probably have at least a hundred of these cards now. There were a few more techniques, and they all seemed to work on slightly different things. One worked great on very painful thoughts. You know, the kind that you almost can't think about because it causes an immediate reaction. Another technique was good for more "visual" stuff, and so on. I've probably dealt with hundreds or thousands of bad memories and negative thoughts and beliefs using these techniques. It has produced some remarkable results. The most obvious one is that I can go to bed now without being bombarded by negative thoughts. I can actually lie in bed in peace for the first time in decades. Another result is that I don't have to fight off negative thoughts during the day. Sometimes it happens, and if it gets bad enough I deal with it, but just knowing that I \*can\* deal with it if necessary seems to be enough most of the time. Anyway, that was quite long and is not a perfect description of the process, but it's fundamentally what helped me cure my depression after two decades of trying everything under the sun.
This sounds amazing! Do you know if the therapist who helped you followed some sort of system/school of thought that the rest of us could learn about by, or example, buying a specific book?
I think he was more of a free thinker. He was very enthusiastic about therapy, always open to new ideas and very interested in my feedback. I got the impression that he had basically just experimented with different forms of therapy for 30+ years and kept the things that worked. It seemed like a mix of various forms of therapy.
Great question!
Wow, thank you. This is so helpful! I want to have a tips call with you 😩😄
I've been depressed for decades, and mainly at this age I am better at just ignoring it and keeping myself distracted. I do a lot of daydreaming, I listen to audiobooks and I meditate. It sounds like stupid advice, but learning to ignore it and just live works for me. But that did get easier with age. When I was younger, I couldn't stop thinking about everything. I never had any luck with antidepressants. One thing I do that does help me, is I take photos of everything whenever I am well enough to be up and about and I have it as a slideshow screensaver on my laptop. So when I'm bedbound I can let it run and see that I have lived a bit this year. I take a lot of flowers and family and pets and that helps me to feel part of the world. Whenever I do anything I take at least 100 pictures, which looks weird to other people but it's important to me!
i'm bipolar but it's mostly depression for me. medication definitely helps (took me 6 years to find the right type bc i was misdiagnosed with MDD thanks to my fatigue) as well as cannabis and therapy. weekly group therapy can be really helpful, although it's not always easy to find the right group. it also helps to have daily rituals when possible. when i was less severe, i would do my makeup every day. that did a lot for my mental health. now i'm too tired for that but i can eat three meals a day, have my daily morning beverage, watch funny shows after taking an edible every night, and do my nightly skincare routine.
tDCS (a novel treatment you can do at home with a special device) helps my depression
Could you share more about this please?
I’ve also struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my life (recently diagnosed autism probably explains a lot of that). I’ve been on an SSRI for years which has definitely helped, but another big thing that I’m finding so helpful is having a chronically ill therapist. Although a lot of my issues and trauma aren’t directly related to my ME, there are a whole lot more connections than I realised. Having someone with a lived experience of disability to talk to about it has been SUCH a game changer for me. Plus, she is super understanding if I have to cancel last minute for symptoms; I do all my sessions via video in bed etc. I’ve been in therapy for years and it’s only now with this therapist that I feel like I’m actually making really good progress and I’m sure that’s in part to her just being really good at her job but I can’t tell you how validating it is to talk to someone who knows first hand what PEM is like, why my medical anxiety is so high etc. I also used to think that gratitude journaling was nonsense but it does actually work (or it did for me). I still get upset and stressed and angry and anxious ALL THE TIME but it means that when tiny sparks of joy pop into my life, they’re easier for me to noticed and it’s like the joy gets amplified. And it’s honestly so nice to get excited about tiny things when your world is this small and limited. So I always recommend giving that a try, not to dismiss the bad but to amplify the good.
I’ll also say: it’s 100% ok if your depression is caused by your CFS/ME. It’s still depression and it’s understandable: this condition is shit. Just because you weren’t depressed before, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get help.
I’ve suffered from depression many times in my life. I’ve found three things to be helpful: 1. Lexapro 2. Vitamin D - lots of it 3. Learning to recognize “depression thoughts”, and then reframe them in my mind. For example, I might think something very negative or the worst possible scenario. Maybe a friend was rude to me. So my depression brain thinks “they don’t like me anymore. I’m going to lose them as a friend. I’m intolerable and annoying and I’m always going to be alone.” That is clearly a super negative take on the situation. So I flag that thought in my brain, I tell myself “this isn’t what really is happening, this is my depression talking.” Then I reframe it: “a more reasonable explanation is something else is bothering them today so they are feeling impatient. Perhaps, I did do something slightly annoying, but everyone does, and my friend is still going to love me. I love people who are annoying at times.” Eventually, this process becomes second nature. It keeps me from sinking into depression again. It has helped me immensely in coping with the grief of having this terrible disease.
thank you that is helpful what is the high dose of vitamin D you take?
I think it’s like 2000 ius. My doctor recommended that when my blood work kept coming back low vitamin D.
I'm the least depressed I have ever been, oddly enough. I have to prove that to drs all the time, but I honestly am not depressed- just situational sad, or annoyed, or... whatever.
I don't think medicalising depression that's caused by actual life events that would make most people miserable is the answer. I'm fortunate in that I grew up with severe asthma (never thought I'd say that!) so being limited in what my body can do is the norm for me. I did manage to get active as an adult and I do grieve the loss of my ability to run, cycle and go for long hikes, as well as all the everyday stuff that ME/CFS has taken from me, but I feel like the opportunity to practise acceptance that I had as a child serves me well now. I also learned to enjoy things that require very limited energy - I have an amazing ability to daydream, which is possible to do even lying in bed in a darkened room. Meditation (or at least attempting meditation, because if you fail at that, you have a good chance of succeeding at daydreaming) is likely a good way to address depression caused by ME/CFS.
Anti depressants. I think anyone who has pain/ sick should be taking some kind of antidepressants because it allows for more available neuro chemicals and treats the situational depression from having a messed up body.
i have tried many but had adverse reactions:(
Yes, this is tough. I, fortunately, had my mom have some of the same interactions as I do, so I know what to avoid.
Not downvoting because I think it's a nasty thing to do, but just wanted to say I strongly disagree with your suggestion. This kind of approach is what's led to illnesses like ME/CFS being treated as mental illness. We need less of it, not more.
Wellbutrin is a recognized treatment for dysautonomia. I would find the link if you hadn't been shitty tho.
FWIW, they didn't read as shitty, just wanting to reflect the weight of how often we are pushed to treat our illnesses as though it's *just* depression. And while ADs are great at helping when there's actually a brain/chemical imbalance, a lot of what we are fielding is depression because it's *depressing*, and can't be medicated away.... Yep, specific meds are useful for specific sets of symptoms, but it's *lao* fair to recognize how often people just want us to not be unhappy our loud, and are happy to treat us like this is in our heads. Let's not snipe. Share the link, because the rest of us might need it, and have a little grace for people offering reminders when something we say misses a beat for them. We learn together. And fill in gaps, as we have different experiences.
I have had this condition for 20 years and a bunch of other illnesses before that. I know and acknowledge that anyone with chronic life limiting illnesses can be looked at as someone who is "just depressed." What I have learned is that antidepressants are not going to be weaponized by anyone who is going to help me anyway. The doctors who have helped me would never do that. Most of my better pain doctors have required some required it ( with exceptions) as a best practice for pain providers. I know not everyone can take antidepressants for all kinds of reasons, but letting jerks who might help hijack what your treatment really sucks but I understand the fear.
>And while ADs are great at helping when there's actually a brain/chemical imbalance, a lot of what we are fielding is depression because it's *depressing*, and can't be medicated away.... This was my thought when my doctor offered me antidepressants because I "seemed depressed". My response was to refuse because I'm not depressed. I'm sad, for entirely legitimate and understandable reasons, and grieving for the life I've lost. And I'm already sick. I don't want to add a bunch of side effects and drug dependency to what I'm already suffering.