Despair and an angel named Sharon

I cried at the bad news. I cried when there was no news. And finally, I cried at the good news.

I’ve cried a lot in the last two weeks.

Sometimes I couldn’t stop crying. The tears just poured out. And one day, the particularly bad day, I knew the tears were part of a larger problem.

I learned once again that physically, I have to be on antidepressants and on the right dose of antidepressants. My depression is a medical problem, an illness.

I wasn’t sure if I should share this story. I don’t want to appear weak. It’s not easy for me to admit how dark life can seem sometimes.

But this is a blog about my journey through life with mental illness. That journey sometimes turns dark. Without warning.

Part of what I’m here to say is that if you feel that darkness, you are not alone. You are not alone. And it can get better.

Over two weeks ago, on July 20, I dropped off the prescription for my antidepressant at the pharmacy. I had run out of refills, but my doctor had given me another prescription at my last visit.

The pharmacist tried to fill it but told me that my insurance company wouldn’t authorize payment for the prescription because of the dosage.

This was nothing new. Periodically my insurance company does this. I take a higher dose than the usual, so every so often, my doctor’s office has to talk with the insurance company and get approval. The only problem is I never know when this is going to happen.

The pharmacist said she would fax the doctor’s office the request for authorization. They wouldn’t get it until their office opened on Monday.

I was OK. The pharmacist gave me a few of the pills to last a few days so I wouldn’t go without while waiting.

By Wednesday, I hadn’t heard anything, so I called the doctor’s office. I was told they were waiting on the authorization.

I won’t bore you with all the details of what followed. In summary, the doctor’s office kept telling me the authorization hadn’t come through. The pharmacist gave me all the pills she could without filling the prescription. The price for the prescription without insurance was exorbitant.

I started taking half my dose to save pills.

I did all I could to hold on, to keep fulfilling my responsibilities, to interact with others as normally as possible.

I found out fairly quickly that half the dose of the medication was not doing the job. My anxiety was sky high. I’d become aware that I was clenching my hands in tight fists. I had a hard time focusing. I had trouble sleeping.

I was simultaneously so depressed that all I could think of was how hopeless my life was. I was sure my life was never going to get back on the right track. I didn’t want to live.

Last Friday morning, I had a panic attack.

I sat on the bed and sobbed. My chest and both arms hurt. The pain made me breathless. I remember thinking that perhaps I was having a heart attack. And I didn’t care.

By Monday afternoon, I decided to do something besides wait for others to fix my problem.

I decided to call the insurance company myself.

I talked with a woman named Sharon.

“We can fix this,” she said after hearing my story and looking at my record.

She called the pharmacy while I was on the phone, then came back on the line and told me again that she would fix it so I could get my prescription. She would call me back, hopefully that day.

“If you can take care of this, you will be my angel,” I said.

“Well, I’m going to be because I’m going to call you back today,” she said.

And she did. She fixed it. I picked up the prescription Monday night.

I learned a lot about self-advocacy during this episode. There’s a lot I want to say about that. But I’ll save that for another post.

For today, I’m just thankful for medication that keeps the scary depression and anxiety at bay. And I’m thankful for angels named Sharon.

Have you received help from any angels lately?

Fighting hopelessness

Thank you for all your wonderful comments that you left on my last post. Words cannot adequately express how touched I was by all the good thoughts that you sent my way.

I am slowly coming out of the hopelessness I have been feeling, and I feel blessed for that.

My down period, I believe, came from a series of circumstances and my responses to them.

And I think it came in part from a change in medication. I think the change is ultimately good, but my body had to adjust to no longer receiving a medication it had been getting for at least two years.

One of the things I’ve done to try to help myself is to learn a little more about hopelessness.

I turned to The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression: A Step by Step Program, 2^nd Edition, by William J. Knaus, Ed.D.

He writes that in some instances, hopelessness is the reality. An example he gives is the fact that we all age. “But you don’t have to feel miserable about this reality. Even when one situation is hopeless, you can find other opportunities” (p. 144).

Hopelessness thinking is different from the real hopeless situations: “Hopelessness thinking includes overly generalized beliefs such as these: ‘My future looks dismal’; “Nothing will ever work out’; ‘Whatever I do will be futile’; ‘I will never get better’; ‘This is the way I am. I always feel miserable’” (p. 144).

As Knaus says, “unfortunate events happen, but the fatalistic resignation of hopelessness thinking is optional” (p. 145).

An example he gives is that someone may have lost his or her job, but that doesn’t mean he or she will never work again.

I appreciated being reminded that there are some hopeless situations in life. But how we react to them is so important. Giving in to hopelessness thinking is a choice. It’s a choice that’s difficult to pull out of, but it can be done.

One of the techniques Knaus gives for fighting hopelessness is what he calls the “prove it” technique. You write down your hopeless thoughts, give examples of such thoughts, and then write down alternatives.

I tried this exercise. Here’s one of my outcomes:

Hopeless thought: I’m never going to feel better; I’ll never be happy.

Example of this thought: I’ve felt bad for many years.

Alternative: I’ve felt good, too, and I can’t predict for sure that I’ll always feel bad.

And here’s another outcome:

Hopeless thought: I’ll never be able to do what I want.

Example of this thought: I’m 49 and still not doing what I want.

Alternative: That’s not true. I am doing many things that I want to do and that can grow.

This exercise helped me. Writing down my thoughts gave me something to look at and work with. And writing out my reasons for believing the hopeless thought made me see the problems with it. With the alternatives, I could argue with myself, show myself that the hopeless thought wasn’t true.

It’s more work to sit and write down my thoughts than to wallow in the hopeless thoughts, but it was worth it in my case. I began to feel like I had more control over how I felt and how I responded to things.

I plan to keep trying this exercise when I get caught up in the hopelessness thinking.

So, dear readers, I feel like I am on my way back. Thank you again for your support and caring.

Have you ever worked on negative thinking patterns in a systematic way? If so, what did you do? Does it help you to write out your thoughts?

Hopelessness

There’s nothing left of me

except

depression, OCD, GAD,

labels that sound like excuses.

There’s nothing left of me,

nothing to make me want

to reach out, to reach beyond

the labels that sound like excuses.

I’ve forgotten what I wanted

to ask for,

forgotten the words that made sense.

I’m left with labels

that sound like excuses.

I will write about what I’m doing to fight a general sense of hopelessness in a later post.

Have you ever felt hopeless?