For the past three years, I have kept on the same medication: wellbutrin and lexipro. It has been working, but I felt with each new responsibility I had, my anxiety and depression have been overriding—in a sense—the effects of the medication. And I just found out just recently from my new psychologist that I have taking a much lower dose of wellbutrin. Well, that explained why I was still fighting off the effects, especially the physical effects of depression.
Just recently have been undergoing depression, because I had no work over the summer and because I was now living with my brother, he was financially stressed. I felt bad because as being the older sister, I should be the one helping out. But unfortunately being that I wouldn’t be returning for work till this time in August (I work in the education field), really, really stressed me out. My family had been really hard on me to find work in fast foods, since they will always need people. But I told them, one: I am not working in the restaurant field again, because it’s a fast and stressful job, which leads to number two: I am not in a psychological place to handle that kind of environment…again. When I told them this, they’re all like, “Nobody can handle their job psychologically.” Ugh! They did not understand what I mean by that. In case you don’t know what I mean by this let me give you a few definitions on this:
Psychologically: 2. pertaining to the mind or to mental phenomena as the subject matter of psychology. 3. of, pertaining to, dealing, or affecting the mind, especially as a function of awareness, feeling, or motivation: psychological play; psychological effect.
Then there is emotional exhaustion. According to wikipedia (yes I am referring to them, but I liked their explanation of the term) emotional exhaustion is
A chronic state of physical and emotional depletion that results from excessive job and/or personal demands and continuous stress. It describes a feeling of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one’s work. It is manifested by both psychologically and emotionally “drained”.
Sigh…it was just a long summer and the worst part was I was running out of my medication especially my wellbutrin. No wait…the actual worst part I wasn’t able to afford my medication. So later this month I was able to take of my bills (which I was waaay behind in) and get my medication in my next session. It was during that session, my psychologist increased my dosage for wellbutrin. This higher dosage didn’t just help with the depression, but with the anxiety well. Having the wellbutrin and lexapro act as a tag team to help with the anxiety. Sometimes I think the anxiety is more of the dominate illness, because I am always doing something; whether it’s working my two jobs, taking my classes, planning out my daily schedule or doing my errand runs. Whereas with depression, I’m too busy to undergo it. It has set in either when in the slower pace of my day or when I am extremely anxious that the depression comes in as well..
But let me tell you, it has only been two days and I’m feeling like a rock star. I feel there are parts of my brains—I wanna say the neurotransmitters—that are connecting in ways they haven’t connected before. I feel I am getting even more of a control of the emotional parts of depression and anxiety. So to notice this, to feel this is…. is amazing. But I gotta remember it only been two days… and once school and work set in for real, then I’ll see how it really help.
Living Resiliently Blog 