Daisies and Bruises

The past two days have been a bit strange for me since I’ve increased one of my antidepressants, Wellbutrin. My doctor gave me the okay to do so last week but I wanted to wait until after Christmas so any side-effects didn’t ruin my holiday. I feel a little flu-ish today and I did yesterday too, hence not posting here.

I was on this higher dosage of Wellbutrin over a year ago but cut it down after realizing its connection to my chronic headaches. Cutting my dosage down last December helped my headaches but it also increased my depression. I ended up having to quit a job that I loved and the ups and downs of therapy got to me a lot more. I considered going to the hospital more than I had for a while. So, just before Christmas I called my doctor and said that I needed to go back up to my old dosage.

Tonight’s Twelve Days of Christmas assignment is for you to practice some self-awareness by taking a look at your daily life. How has your mood been lately? What daily habits are you happy with and which would you change?

I’m going to talk more about healthy lifestyle habits as we approach the new year, but for now we can reflect on our habits of 2011. Where are you compared to this time last year? Look at your social life, your spiritual life, your work life, and your home life. What is better and what is worse?

For me, I noticed the following symptoms of my depression getting out of control lately:

- frequent feelings of hopelessness

- very depressed mood without a trigger (ie. in the morning I’d wake up feeling depressed, without say, spilling my cereal as a trigger to my mood plummeting)

- little energy and decreased desire to do anything

- feeling more isolated

- not caring about my future

There were events in my life that started the downward spiral: crashing my car in August was a trigger for me and I had to move to a different apartment as a result. Then I started a support group that upset me more than I thought it would. I got a puppy that is an out of control peeing machine (but cute as hell).

Those things were stressful! So it makes sense to me that my mood is down but it’s not going back up on its own, even when I do the following lifestyle antidepressant actions that usually work for me:

- eating healthier

- maintaining a sleep schedule (bedtime and rise-times)

- making sure to do at least one social activity a day

- being mindful of caffeine intake and my iron levels

- treating myself to a new book or doing another self-nurturing activity

I feel like things are worse for me now than they were this time last year but I’m trying to start 2012 on the right foot. I’ll keep you posted on my moods and habits and maybe it will help you examine your own.

Expect some goodies in the next few days! Pretty things to download and links to happy and useful pages. There has to be some gift giving during Daisies and Bruises’ Twelve Days of Christmas!