Posted by holymama on June 21, 2004, at 17:18:51
Over the past year I have been seeing my first therapist and trying out medications for the first time in my life. After going manic on an antidepressant, my depression has been rediagnosed as bipolar II. It's been a rough year, trying many meds, in the hospital once, very unfunctionally depressed much of the time. When I get depressed I lose interest in everything, have very negative thoughts, think about suicide, need a lot of help caring for my kids.
My question is this. How much of bipolar depression (and the swing the other way) is a habit -- a learned behavior -- that might be able to be changed with therapy? My husband, therapist and I have diffeering theories about my depressions. Personally, when I am depressed, the right medication change feels like a 'light switch' has turned on in my head, and I feel better. My negative thoughts turn around and start spinning the other way -- positive and hopeful. I feel like this must be chemical, and I feel like I have very little control over it -- I'm relying on medication now to get better. My therapist reinforces this belief (or maybe helped me form it). She tells me when I am depressed that she can't really do therapy with me, so I just go in and kind of complain and figure out how to 'get though it' until medication works. She says to treat it as if I have the flu. My husband has a problem with that. He thinks my therapist should be helping me change my attitudes and my negative thinking so that I can help pull myself out of a depression. He doesn't like how she treats me as if I have no control over it and should rely on medication.
While I feel insulted by my husband's comments that 'I can control my depression', I feel there may be a grain of truth, as if I've learned over time that once I start getting depressed, I'll be there for a while, so I'll just settle into it. But also, fighting it all of the time is damn hard work, feels like it doesn't work, and it really does feel like my moods take me for a ride. Any thoughts of the role of therapy in treating bipolar? ~~Autumn~~
poster:holymama
thread:358724
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040614/msgs/358724.html