Over the years, since I started my depression site, I’ve heard (read) many people say that they want to treat their depression “but without antidepressants.” I always think, “Why?” It’s just incomprehensible to me that some people have that knee-jerk reaction to medication.
Oddly enough, I have to include myself in this group. At least initially, I refused to take medication for my depression. Nearly twenty years ago, when I was first diagnosed with depression, I was in a pretty bad way. I had had two major depressive episodes in the past, without knowing what they were, but this third one was the worst, and so far, of the longest duration. By chance I read a book that helped me to recognize that what I was going through, and I promptly made an appointment with a doctor at the mental health clinic attached to the local hospital.
Read on
I know, I know, it's a total writer's cliche, but I procrastinated when I really should have been writing this SharePost. I played Lord of the Rings Online for half an hour, using the excuse that since my son and husband were watching tv, I wouldn't be able to concentrate anyway. When the tv went off, I stared at the screen for thirty seconds, and then remembered that I really needed to put a load of laundry in. Granted, I really did need to do laundry, but for some reason that didn't occur to me when I was playing LOTRO.
It's amazing how when you're procrastinating, all of a sudden the other things that you've been putting off get prioritized really high. “I can't believe that I haven't gotten around to mixing the coyote urine,” I said to myself virtuously a few minutes ago. (Yes, I said coyote urine. If you live somewhere that we do, where deer get really hungry in the summer due to lack of rain and you happen to have some tasty plants, you probably know what I mean. The only thing I've found that works is coyote urine. The deer think that a coyote's marked the territory, so they leave it alone.)
Read on.
As I mentioned in a previous SharePost, I tend to collect paper into piles. I wish it was just paper that ended up that way, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. Let’s take a tour of the house I share with my son and husband.
Living room – there’s a pile behind my desk chair. I’m not sure what it is. I think it’s a combination of books I’ve had to look at recently and my son’s drawings. I can’t decide what to do with the drawings. They’re the ones he does in afterschool daycare, and since no one helps him like they did in preschool, these are not anything special. Of course, they’re special because he does them, but are they worth keeping? Since I can’t decide what to do with them, they accumulate.
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Before my own depression was diagnosed, I dated a man who suffered from clinical depression and alcoholism. Of course, I wasn’t aware of this when I started dating him, or I never would have started. I don’t have a burning need to “fix” people. A couple of months after I started treatment for my depression, we split up. Although I think it was more or less mutual, I would not have stayed around for long in any case. I had gotten tired of trying to talk him into getting help for his depression. He had kept the alcoholism at bay by quitting drinking cold turkey, but the underlying problem, the depression, was still there. For some reason, he was dead set against any kind of treatment for his depression. He had had therapy when he was in his teens, and apparently it had done more harm than good.
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I’m reading “Green Eggs and Ham” to my son Lawrence before bed. Actually, he’s reading it to me, which is very exciting. He’s doing really well. I only have to help him with about one word out of ten. I read way ahead of my level when I was his age, and it seems that he’s going to be just as good.
The thing I’m noticing, though, is that while he’s reading, he’s wiggling around on the bed, almost falling off sometimes, although his eyes are fixed on the book. Come to think of it, he does this when we’re going over flash cards at the dining table, wiggling around on the chair. He also, which I’ve never seen in another kid, jumps up and down in place when he’s playing a video game, usually when he’s at a part that’s particularly difficult.
It dawns on me that this is probably why his kindergarten teacher told us about bodily-kinesthetic intelligence when we were discussing Lawrence’s problems sitting still in class.
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I’m looking at my desk at work, trying to figure out what to do with this sea of paper that is covering every one of the three counters that make up my cube in the Office of the Registrar at UC Berkeley. I have a pretty large cube, and as usual the paper has expanded to fill the space allotted to it. Through the day, I’ll scratch out a little space on a counter for eating or doing work. It’s definitely not an ideal situation, and let’s face it, it’s of my own making.
One of my co-workers has an unbelievably organized desk. I’m not sure where everything goes. She doesn’t have any more file drawers than I do, and she actually has fewer file folders than I do. I envy her, I really do. I wish I knew how she did it.
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“Summertime, and the living is easy.” Amen to that. I love summer. Credit it to spending much of my childhood in Florida, but I actually like being hot and sweaty. My absolute favorite place to be is on a beach with sun on my face and my toes digging into hot sand. I crave and need sunshine like a growing plant. And I think it’s safe to say that most of the population is the same way. Just think of how many people will lie outside on the grass on the first warm day in spring.
Our Judith Wurtman wrote about the having the winter blues in the summer, due to the weather in her part of the country switching between lack of sun and weather that’s too hot to go out and enjoy the sun. But what if your down mood in the summer is more serious than a case of the blues?
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As a card-carrying computer geek, I’ve been playing what are known as computer role-playing games (CRPGs) for close to twenty years. I’ll try not to bore you with too many details, but basically the structure of these games consists of gaining experience for your character by doing battle and completing quests for non player (computer generated) characters. Since the internet really started going in the 1990s, I’ve also been playing online computer role playing games. Since you’re playing with many other players (real life players), the experience is much more social, and more competitive to some extent.
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Step by step instructions here. Christmas presents, anyone?
As I said in my previous SharePost, my son’s kindergarten teacher recommended that we have him evaluated by a pediatric psychiatrist because of what I’ll call behavioral problems, for the sake of a better term. Basically, he was having trouble sitting still and keeping quiet in class. We weren’t too surprised to hear what his teacher had to say. He runs everywhere in our house and frequently blows off steam by hurling himself on the couch or doing somersaults.
While I knew it was a good idea to get him evaluated, I had some trepidation. According to reviews on a local mailing list I belong to, the only doctor in our network tends to see Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder everywhere. If we go outside our network, diagnosis and treatment could cost thousands of dollars, which we don’t have. So I made an appointment with the doctor and hoped for the best. His office sent out a form for Lawrence’s kindergarten teacher to fill out. Bless her heart, she came over the night before the appointment, after the school year had ended, to go over it with us.
Read on
Note: I published these posts in the wrong order on the HealthCentral site. I apologize for any confusion.
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