Oh the lovely dichotomy of anxiety. Only a cruel, annoying illness can leave you desperately wanting support while wishing everyone would just leave you alone and that the world would just swallow you up whole.
My mood’s been fairly ‘off’ lately… in the sense that I’ve been acting differently, and everything seems a billion times more intense than the normal intensity of things. However, this time everything can be traced back to me. My mood, my current workload, my current social life and all that jazz is all my fault. I’ve been riding the storm (so to say) in terms of my mood, I’ve had a few big changes to my medication, which undoubtedly has caused a little backlash, but I definitely feel that these changes are for the better… so I’ve decided to carry on with this new dosage. I’m scared that if I continue on a high dosage of medication then I will somehow become immune to it – or reliant on it. I want to be able to control my own emotions, my own mental health. Which is one of the reasons why mental illness can be, at times, so incredibly frustrating.
I want to be able to deal with things on my own, but I’m very aware that others are there to help me, to support me and to guide me. But I feel silly that I can’t control things myself. My mental health is making me feel weak, which… if anyone going through similar things ever said to me I’d tell them immediately that mental illness doesn’t make you weak, if anything mental illness pushes you, it tests your resilience and enables you to widen your threshold in terms of things that you can ‘deal with.’
There’s only so many times you can try and convince yourself that you are ‘wonderful’ before it becomes incredibly hard to believe. I know I’m ace at certain things, but apparently when it comes to dealing with things (mental health) I suck. Yes I’ve coped with a lot of things, but… I’m still having to deal with things, and it’s grown to become incredibly frustrating. I wish mental illness was something you could just push away, (or something that didn’t exist).
My current feelings towards my mental health:
Dearest Someone, 
Here you go lovely. With thanks for the day you encouraged me to make pineapple upside down cske 🙂 https://recoveringoursexemilyskyepoet.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/i-write-this-for-my-younger-selves/
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Thanks for sharing! 🙂
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I know how difficult anxiety can be, Ella. I’m sorry you’re going through something so frustrating. I understand what you’re going through with the whole medication thing. I want to take less but my psychiatrist feels I should be taking even more. I hate the idea of being dependent on medication and while I KNOW that practicing facing my fears and exercising is helping, I also think I still need additional help (medication). Still though, I don’t want to take more than I have to. Stay strong, you can get through this!
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Thank-you for your comment 🙂 the whole medication thing is frustrating because I know it helps, but I still feel a little apprehensive about it all! I read your blog earlier, I’m a big fan! 🙂
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Thanks! Yeah, I’m still apprehensive too even though I’ve been on the medication for a while. It’s frustrating too because I think my therapist and psychiatrist think I’m being stubborn. It’s not that, I just don’t want to keep pumping myself with medication. I don’t think that’s so unreasonable!
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Surely they should listen to you though? I must admit I stopped taking some of mine (not recommended) but I feel a lot calmer now, it’s weird. I think I reached a point where I was worried that they’d just keep increasing my dose rather than actually help me tackle my anxiety/PTSD. I think you try and explain to them exactly how you feel! Maybe suggest that you want to trial having a lower dose? Don’t just stop like I did, the side effects were pretty horrendous!
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Thanks for the advice. I have spoken to them. My therapist is slightly more understanding about it than my psychiatrist, but says that if I don’t work harder in terms of exercising and practicing facing my fears, the medication level would have to go up more (which sometimes I feel is a way of manipulation, but I see his point). Every time I discuss it with my psychiatrist I get the lecture on how people never want to take more medication, but then when they do, they don’t know why they were ever hesitant. Still though, I try not to cave in. I do agree though that you can’t just stop cold turkey, that’s never a good idea.
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It’s strange because I’ve never been told to exercise, but I do appreciate that different things work for different people! I have a similar situation though in that my therapist is ace and really lovely, and although my psychiatrist is lovely she does intimidate me a little ha!
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Psychiatrists tend to only know how to deal with things in terms of medication, which kind of sucks. I’m happy you like your therapist though!
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