Natalie Thinks

7 July About 3 weeks ago I realised I was declining into a depressive episode which I wrote about in my previous blog about my chronic depression click  here  to read .  So this week I began to feel my mood lift a bit. Why? I’m so glad you asked. 1.         Well firstly I upped my medication.  I really can’t stress the importance of this enough.  As I wrote previously, depression for many people means lacking the emotional and mental will to do what needs to be done .  So even though we know all sorts of things we could do that might help, like calling a friend, going for a walk, doing a project, we feel unable to do these things.  That’s why it doesn’t work to tell depressed people to ‘do something positive’, or ‘snap out of it’.  It’s literally our ‘snapping’ function that is impaired.  Medication is really the only thing that changes this. 2.         I eased up on myself.  Th...

So… I just realised I am probably depressed and have been for some months now.  This may seem like a strange statement to make, but I am no stranger to depression, so I thought I would have recognised it straight away. I have experienced various levels of depression, on and off, throughout my life. Possibly starting around when my mom died when I was 13, but maybe preceding that time (causes and triggers are for another day). In the early years I just sucked it up and carried on.  Luckily for me I could manage like this and my depression was not severe enough to take me to darker places. Until I had two kids, and a business, and a church running from my lounge, and my father had a massive stroke.  Then I wasn’t really managing anymore, so I lay on the couch for a while and then I went to see a counsellor who finally gave me ‘permission’ to go onto medication.  She actually encouraged me to go onto anti-depressants, considering my long history of depleted se...