Posted by Lindenblüte on October 22, 2006, at 9:02:06
In reply to Re: Anxiety and obsessions... (*VERY* long) » MidnightBlue, posted by Racer on October 22, 2006, at 0:23:45
Hi Racer,
I made it to the bottom of your post too. It went by really fast, because your writing is well-organized.It sounds like you've created a sizeable chunk of your identity around a diagnostic label. In my case, the diagnostic label was "healthy". Imagine my surprise when I turned 27 and all hell breaks loose! No longer mentally "healthy" what AM I?
It's very natural to be sufferring an existential crisis at this point. If you wanted to maintain a sense of your identity you can do a few things
1) ask the pdoc to treat your symptoms, and tell him that you're not interested in what your diagnosis is.
2) tell yourself that you are more than X Y Z (where xy&z are labels such as depression, OCD, ...)
3) focus on the things that remain consistent in your life- the cats, the husband, the passion for fibrous fluffies and spinning, knitting?, etc that you do.
4) I sent my pdoc an agonizing e-mail where I told him that I was afraid I was only getting better and answering questions about my improvement because I wanted to "please" him.
5) Same e-mail I told him about my acute anxiety that was occuring with increasing frequency as well as my tonic levels of anxiety that he had always insisted that "cymbalta is really good for anxiety"
6) Write it down when you're at your worst. Type it out, print it. When you're feeling better, you'll want to deny it to your docs, yourself, your cats. Having a record of how AWFUL you feel is really important. Then it makes sharing it a lot easier.
7) Part of you wants to get better. Try hard to listen to THAT voice, because the other voice, that says - "resist taking [new drugs]! Don't listen to pdoc! we LIKE feeling this way!" - is a liar.
8) I'm so glad you could tell babble that you were in such discomfort. Will you be able to talk about this existential crisis with someone IRL? Your husband, or a friend, or a mental health professional? Sometimes just saying it aloud really helps.
9) You're not alone.
10) You are a complicated woman, with very interesting, diverse interests and expertise. You are multi-faceted, and that's what I like most about you. To try to reduce yourself to some list of acronyms that stand for 5/9 symptoms in a text somewhere, well, I think it's a grave injustice to yourself, and to people who admire you!
-Li
poster:Lindenblüte
thread:696648
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20061012/msgs/696699.html