I think the thing I wrestled the most with as I learned about mental health was my expectations. When I was first diagnosed with post-partum depression (PPD) and started on an antidepressant, I thought I would feel better within a week. Some of that came from how I responded to coming home after having expatriate depression (see previous post on this topic) a few years prior: for me, coming back to my home and to my familiar life brought me almost back to baseline within a week or so. You can imagine my horror when the psychiatrist told me that it would take 4-6 weeks to see a full effect from the antidepressant, and 2 weeks to even see a mild effect. Needless to say I was very disappointed.
Once I had PPD after my second child was born and realized that I needed to be full-time on antidepressants (not just after having children), I had other expectations in the back of the closet ready to be brought to life and stomped on. I thought I would magically feel good all of the time and be healed from all mental illness, I believed I would naturally display more resilience and grit, and I imagined that I would automatically have more control over my feelings. Let me lay these three fallacies out a little more...
The first one I mentioned is I think one of the most normal, but also the most harmful cognitive distortions that can beset people dealing with healing from any kind of mental illness/addiction. As I expressed in my previous post, I have had to learn that normal life also includes some downs and griefs. Life is not an opioid pillow where you float around all day long in bliss and contentment. What taking medications, exercise, and having a wonderful support group have done for me is made it so when those disappointments come, I can grieve, and I can keep going. I don't become non-functional, even when I am dealing with the monster PMS that comes from perimenopause (young women, be afraid, be very afraid...). I grieve when people I love pass away and I get frustrated when my lawnmower locks up on me with only three strips of grass left to mow. I sometimes don't get enough sleep and am irritable, and I even get mad at people (I know you're all SHOCKED to learn this about me). I still have depression/anxiety and they still do pop up every now and then and I get to do a self-assessment of tweaks that need to be made for a fuller life.
On a related tangent, I want to interject that I have depression/anxiety and some other labels. I, however, am not depression/anxiety. I hope you have a chance to listen to the podcast I just posted about because there is a lot of talk about identity and labeling. It is in long-form narrative, so set some time aside to take a walk, crochet or mow the lawn while you are listening.
I am just so fascinated by grit and resilience. How is it some people are naturally just so full of it and others not so much? At the risk of bringing up the same old example, my partner, Derek, is the most grit-ful person I have ever met. Sure he's white and upper-middle class male, but he also navigated his parents divorce as a young teen, served a two-year mission in Siberia as an older teen, and has continued to live with and love me. If that doesn't constitute resilience, I honestly don't know what does! I credit some of this definitely to personality, but I also like to give his family of origin a lot of credit for being loving and supportive all of the time, even while going through some tough times. If there's anything that our adoption training has taught us, it's that having parents who set firm boundaries but still express oodles of affection and love can truly change brain chemistry and levels of felt-safety. I myself am not blessed with a personality that lends itself to bouncing back, but guys, the older I've gotten and the longer I've lived in a safe network of loving people, the most grit I feel like I've learned to deal out. I feel more positive in negative situations and can be more of a peacemaker (as a parent must be) than before. This is not to say I have magically become grit-ful. I definitely haven't in by any stretch. But I'm improving, and honestly, what more can a person ask than to improve? That's what the billion dollar industry of self-improvement has taught me anyway... ;)
A library's worth of books could be written about control and mental health. Heck, there already are judging by Amazon's offerings. For some reason, I had this thought that antidepressants would automatically change my thought patterns and turn me into someone who was more charitable, less irritable, and more able to handle change. It certainly took the edge off of things, but I would say anti-depressants gave me the opportunity to begin working on the genesis of thought processes that would trigger my amygdala and send me off the deep-end (so that I was catastrophizing and over-generalizing all over the place). What helps me get out of the rut of these well-worn thought patterns has been intensive therapy and self-examination. (It also helps to know that I have trauma in my history that needed to be painfully pulled out, dusted off, and worked through before healing can happen. Unfortunately, this can be a seed that germinates into unhealthy behaviors.) An important aspect of control of course is that people who have mental health illnesses can display controlling behavior in an attempt to feel better about the lack of control they may experience in their environment/own thoughts. I know for myself that the more stressed I am, the more I start yelling at people to pick up their crap and do their chores!
There are so many false expectations and cognitive distortion that can come with mental illness, and I don't have time to list them all. Let me offer a link to a nice article that can get you started in looking into some of the minutiae of these behavioral patterns:
https://psychcentral.com/lib/cognitive-distortions-negative-thinking#definition
Please know that change doesn't happen immediately, but contrary to what some talking heads may say, personal change can happen. It takes time and dogged perseverance, and the willingness to step out of your comfort zone and to ask for help, and above all, being patient with yourself.
Photo note: he has been hereby renamed, "Mr. Amygdala"...
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