Things have been hard. Yesterday was a long and difficult day, and so far, today hasn't been without struggle. It's like I'm continuously, mentally fighting these thoughts that pop into my head throughout the day. Thoughts that I was too scared to voice aloud in therapy this morning. Thoughts that I know are not a representation of how I truly feel or who I truly am, and yet they appeared in my head, without warning. This has been going on for several days.
And I know that I'm especially worse because I'm switching medications. I'm in the weaning process of the old anti-depressant while I have simultaneously started up the new one. There can be side effects to being on 2 anti-depressants at the same time, and I theoretically should be having some dependence type symptoms from weaning the first. Oh and from what I know about anti-depressants, they can take up to 4-6 weeks to kick in. Can be earlier, so we will hope for that.
My therapist told me to view it like I got a really bad case of strep throat, one that resisted the first round of antibiotics and just takes weeks to get better. I would have to cut myself more slack. In the same way, with however long this medication change takes, I have to cut myself slack. I should be resting more, doing things for myself to help make things better. I shouldn't feel guilty or shameful because right now I need to do that.
I created an "affirmation wall" on our bathroom mirror earlier today, as a suggestion from therapy. I'm really happy with the outcome.
(So sometimes "doing things for myself" is not worrying about kids playing Minecraft during their playdate while I blog in my bedroom, and listen to the Minecraft background theme over and over while the boys chatter about what they're building, etc).
I'm sick of setting myself up for failure with the expectations I put on myself, especially around my depression and its treatment. I can't expect for the treatment to be fail safe, ever, I can't expect to never have bad days, and I can't expect for changes in my treatment to lead to immediate recovery.
It's pouring rain outside right now, which is just perfect, to me. It makes me feel less guilty about kids playing video games just a few minutes longer, and it sounds and feels like all my emotions can temporarily be represented by the weather.
We're going to end with some happy pictures (not that the rain picture isn't happy- for me it is). The boys and I enjoyed the hammock a bunch yesterday and took some goofy shots.
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