Anxiety and/or depression discussion.

greenfrogs

carzony wrote: »

I must ask the GP if they can check your history. I couldnt imagine they'd be allowed...
I know they can check your history with the social welfare but the doctor records I think are impossible to access for any third party..

No I don't think they can get that information. They may request a medical cert. I got one before I had this illness. I think it focuses on any illness which would impair your ability to do the job.

scrimshanker

greenfrogs wrote: »

I think people with anxiety are generally put on lower doses than people with depression. The way I look at my meds is that they are providing me with serotonin because I don't have enough of it in my body whereas most other people do. It's a simple reasoning but my doctor explained it that way.

I actually have been wondering if I've always been low on serotonin. All my life I've had a really noisy stomach, like massively so. If I got hungry my stomach would be so incredibly noisy everyone could hear. Then once I ate my stomach was busy making noisy digestion sounds I was reading that the majority of serotonin is found in the gut... And since going on an SSRI the stomach symphony has stopped almost completely. It's kinda making me think my levels must always have been low... I don't know if that's rubbish

Carzony, the increased dose might help a lot. I started on 10mg, which really did nothing for me other than shut my stomach up. It was only when I went up to 20mg that I noticed some psychological benefit (edge taken off the anxiety).

NicoleW85

Are we allowed to discuss what medication we are on?

carzony

NicoleW85 wrote: »

Are we allowed to discuss what medication we are on?

yes

heyday30

Most gps will prescribe the lowest dose of a certain medication. With the view to reviewing on monthly basis.
It can take some time to find a correct dose for the person involved.
I know this is frustrating cause of the timeframe, but it's better IMO than being on too high a dose

NicoleW85

Cool! I'm on Sertrimel 100mg - it's anti anxiety/depressant combined. I've only just had it increased but some days feel like I could do with an extra 50mg! I'm a real stress head and the meds help take the edge of it but I wish I could handle my emotions without getting worked up! Oh and without the sadness that comes with it! Wouldn't we all Eh??

greenfrogs

scrimshanker wrote: »

I actually have been wondering if I've always been low on serotonin. All my life I've had a really noisy stomach, like massively so. If I got hungry my stomach would be so incredibly noisy everyone could hear. Then once I ate my stomach was busy making noisy digestion sounds I was reading that the majority of serotonin is found in the gut... And since going on an SSRI the stomach symphony has stopped almost completely. It's kinda making me think my levels must always have been low... I don't know if that's rubbish

Carzony, the increased dose might help a lot. I started on 10mg, which really did nothing for me other than shut my stomach up. It was only when I went up to 20mg that I noticed some psychological benefit (edge taken off the anxiety).

It's all so complicated. I have ibs and I didn't notice any difference when I went on anti-depressants. I am on a high dose though. Anxiety and depression are common in ibs sufferers. And there seems to be studies that show a depletion in serotonin can cause ibs. This is quite interesting.

Gongoozler

Just on the job thing. Your job will not be told if you have anything wrong with you, should you have to go for a medical. The doctor is only allowed to disclose whether or not you are deemed fit for work. The only time a doctor can disclose something is when they think you are a danger to yourself or others. Or if you give permission.

If the drugs are legal your job has no business in knowing what you're on.

Hugo Stiglitz

Gongoozler wrote: »

Just on the job thing. Your job will not be told if you have anything wrong with you, should you have to go for a medical. The doctor is only allowed to disclose whether or not you are deemed fit for work. The only time a doctor can disclose something is when they think you are a danger to yourself or others. Or if you give permission.

If the drugs are legal your job has no business in knowing what you're on.

Yeah for my most recent job there was a piss test during the medical. Before you pee, there's a sheet you fill in with your current medication. The nurse didn't question any of it or enquired further about why I take it.

greenfrogs

Dreading my interview tomorrow. Dreading the fact I don't have therapy until the end of the week. I'm afraid the interview will not go well and I will be in a horrid mood until Friday. I want to skip it. I know I won't but I really really want to. I feel I have been in my own cocoon for the last few months and now I am returning to the real world and I am not prepared.

Wilberto

greenfrogs wrote: »

Dreading my interview tomorrow. Dreading the fact I don't have therapy until the end of the week. I'm afraid the interview will not go well and I will be in a horrid mood until Friday. I want to skip it. I know I won't but I really really want to. I feel I have been in my own cocoon for the last few months and now I am returning to the real world and I am not prepared.

But, on the other hand, the interview could go brilliantly and you'll be in excellent form for the rest of the week.



Positive thoughts and all that!

greenfrogs

Thanks. Positivity is good.

I think I'm just unhappy at the moment. I live at home and am beginning to find my mom very overbearing and negative. Maybe I am projecting my negative feelings onto her but I need a break from here. I need to move out. However I am not financially prepared to and to be honest not well enough to. What scares me is the thought of never leaving here. Or moving out and losing my job again and having failed again.

scrimshanker

Freaking out here about the referral, I dunno what will happen during it, where it will be. Oh my god.

Greenfrogs, do you think it would help to go through some interview prep?
what areas can you be asked about? Do you have post-it notes you can do sorta question family-trees? Start with a parent area question (Say... Each core competency would be a parent area), then work out what different child questions might come up in that area. Answer those questions, then imagine you're the interviewer, what would you ask you? They're the grandchild questions.

That way you could prepare yourself for likely different lines of conversation.

Then maybe go through some random lines of conversation you might have with a friendly person you meet, say at a work do. How would you introduce yourself?

If you want to practice some of this by PM or whatever I'm here all evening.

Hugo Stiglitz

scrimshanker wrote: »

Freaking out here about the referral, I dunno what will happen during it, where it will be. Oh my god.

It'll be grand, Scrim. They'll be there to help you out. Be brutally honest with them and don't be embarrassed, they will have heard worse before.

Have you heard anything such as date for it yet?

scrimshanker

No, it was friday evening I went to the doc so dunno when I'll hear. Jesus. I don't think I want to tell them everything. I feel like if I tell them about the incident (technically statutory rape?) when I was 15 or 16 (can't remember what age) then it'll all snowball.

Hugo Stiglitz

scrimshanker wrote: »

No, it was friday evening I went to the doc so dunno when I'll hear. Jesus. I don't think I want to tell them everything. I feel like if I tell them about the incident (technically statutory rape?) when I was 15 or 16 (can't remember what age) then it'll all snowball.

Jesus, sorry to hear of that Scrim. *hugs*
Maybe it would be best to tell them though. Like if that incident is what is fuelling your issues, perhaps it'd be best to address it head on.
Hope I'm not talking BS there.

scrimshanker

Hugo Stiglitz wrote: »

Jesus, sorry to hear of that Scrim. *hugs*
Maybe it would be best to tell them though. Like if that incident is what is fuelling your issues, perhaps it'd be best to address it head on.
Hope I'm not talking BS there.

I kno what you mean but I really just want to bury it, so I'm afraid of mentioning it in case everything snowballs and too much emphasis is put on it.

Anon2013

Having a really bad day today, making myself ill worrying about my health. Going to go away for a couple of days maybe tomorrow or Tuesday. Just think removing myself from the situation helps.

Hugo Stiglitz

scrimshanker wrote: »

I kno what you mean but I really just want to bury it, so I'm afraid of mentioning it in case everything snowballs and too much emphasis is put on it.

I can understand that. Have you brought it up with anyone else?

Anon2013 wrote: »

Having a really bad day today, making myself ill worrying about my health. Going to go away for a couple of days maybe tomorrow or Tuesday. Just think removing myself from the situation helps.

Sorry to hear that A. Where are you thinking of going away to?

Roquentin

scrimshanker wrote: »

No, it was friday evening I went to the doc so dunno when I'll hear. Jesus. I don't think I want to tell them everything. I feel like if I tell them about the incident (technically statutory rape?) when I was 15 or 16 (can't remember what age) then it'll all snowball.

i think you should tell the therapist if you have one.

Anon2013

Sorry to hear that A. Where are you thinking of going away to?[/quote]

Thanks Hugo, might head down the country to the south, the folks have a holiday home down there. It's in the middle of no where, Internet connection is bad, so it's like a little peace of heaven. Though it could also be the perfect setting for a horror film, see there is the negative coming out in me again!

Hugo Stiglitz

Anon2013 wrote: »

Sorry to hear that A. Where are you thinking of going away to?

Thanks Hugo, might head down the country to the south, the folks have a holiday home down there. It's in the middle of no where, Internet connection is bad, so it's like a little peace of heaven. Though it could also be the perfect setting for a horror film, see there is the negative coming out in me again![/quote]

I live down south! *dons hockey mask and starts up chainsaw*

Anon2013

I live down south! *dons hockey mask and starts up chainsaw* [/quote]

Haha best lock the doors so!!! But seriously it's surprising how having no Internet makes you stress less.

Hugo Stiglitz

Anon2013 wrote: »

I live down south! *dons hockey mask and starts up chainsaw*

Haha best lock the doors so!!! But seriously it's surprising how having no Internet makes you stress less.[/quote]

I'm glad that that'll be you some peace, my friend.

Will you bring some books or other entertainment with you to pass the time? Or head for walk etc?

Anon2013

I'm glad that that'll be you some peace, my friend.

Will you bring some books or other entertainment with you to pass the time? Or head for walk etc?[/quote]

I'll have books, crossword puzzles, knitting and sewing. Well they are the things I usually do down there and the odd bit of baking. Have a shift in work on Friday so I will only get three days. Oh well hopefully it might stop the irritable bowel acting up! All my own doing and stressed induced of course.

heyday30

Anon that sounds like heaven.
Wouldn't mind Fcuking off somewhere quiet too.

Moods are fairly unpredictable lately. Sane to crazy/ paranoid in a few hours.

Anon2013

Moods are fairly unpredictable lately. Sane to crazy/ paranoid in a few hours.[/quote]

Heyday I know what you mean. One minute the next your crying angry or having a panic attack and then your asking yourself am I actually insane. I often try talking to myself (not insane at all) telling myself I am in charge of what goes on in my brain! I must tell myself to shut up about 50 times a day!

heyday30

Sounds familiar anon. Constantly telling myself to cop on n shut the feic up.

Moods are exhausting!

mocha please!

I'm having a tough time of it.

My mind is racing, and I've this weird mixture of anxiety but also complete recklessness, like I just couldn't give a crap. I feel like I'll never get better and I'm finding it hard to care that I won't. But I don't have any suicidal or self-harm thoughts, nothing like that. I mean, I would like to get better, but it's been so long that I don't know what normal me feels like anymore. I don't see what my future will be like. I want me in it, but I can't imagine me in it.

The staff moved me from my bedroom in the hospital into the shared ward on Friday night. It's basically a ward with three beds and huge glass windows overlooked by the nurses station. I hate hate hate it there, I feel like a monkey in a cage. Saturday morning, they tried to have me move my stuff from "my" bedroom down to the shared ward. I said that if I wasn't sleeping in "my" room that night, I'd be sleeping in my own bedroom at home in my own bed. A bit of a stand-off ensued, they got the registrar on call to come over, and eventually I was allowed keep my room. Which helped, a bit. But I've to face the "consequences" now when I meet my own consultant in the next day or two. The nursing staff do not appreciate ultimatums like that ... but I just can't seem to get across to them how important it is to me to have my own little bit of enclosed space, where I can close the door and close the curtains and maybe it's agoraphobia or something, but not really ... it's more that I can't stand the instability of being moved bed to bed, ward to ward. I know no one would like that but most people would accept it as being for their own good and just part of being in hospital. But I just can't, it completely unearths me.

I've this weird internal conflict, where I can't seem to find the motivation to care about getting better. But I've the biggest motivation in the world - a toddler son who I adore, and I'm constantly missing him and every time I check my phone I can't stop looking at photos of him. I need to get home, I'm just afraid that he'll stop associating me with home, that he'll be confused when I come back there. That it'll feel to him like one of his creche workers suddenly move into his house. They see him a hell of a lot more than I do anyways!

My parents and sister visited today, along with my partner and son, I tried to put on a brave face for my parents. It didn't work though, my sister called to ask how I am because I seemed very down. Oh well.

I'm dreading the meeting with my consultant because I think I'll just come across as flippant, and arrogant, when it's not really the case. I'm going to suggest that I have a few nights at home, to ground myself and refocus, before continuing with the programme I'm on (or starting a more relevant programme.) I think she'll say no to that, and I'm really unclear on my rights if she does say no. I honestly feel it's what I need, but I know I won't be able to communicate it in the room with all her team there scribbling away and her being the expert and me babbling away and trying to communicate when I seem to have lost the ability to do so anymore. As far as I know she could decide to detain me here if she considers me to be a danger to myself or others - I'm absolutely not. I just need to remind myself that I have a home and a family, where I'm loved, where I belong. I just need my baby to have me there to put him to bed at night and wake him up in the morning.

I feel like the nurses just see me as a pain in the arse at this stage.

I wish I could disappear. I wish I could live the rest of my life as an observer on the outside. I wish I could feel less, but only because I feel too much. Sometimes I wear my headphones when I'm not even listening to anything - just because they muffle the sounds and sensations of the world. Sometimes I wonder if I have Aspergers or something. Or hypochondria!

I wish I could go back and relive the past 18 months. Do it all differently. But in a weird way, if I was a better mother, would my son have turned out differently? Because as he is, he's perfect, and I wouldn't change a thing about him. Everyone says he's the proof that I'm a good mother (even if I'm messed up in the head myself!)

My head hurts.

Gremlinertia

I wrote a long reply to you Mocha and it disappeared. :mad: anyway one thing I thought was perhaps you should show your post to your consultant.. It's perfect I think for them to get some insight.

Hugs for you, mind yourself I hope you get back to your room soon.. I was never able to sleep on wards, so I get you.