On Friday, after our couples couseling session, my husband and I headed into Boston for an overnight date. The last time we had been away overnight together was last October to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. That trip had been our first overnight alone since the birth of our son. What I noticed both this past weekend and back in October is that we seem to slip pretty comfortably back into our pre-parent relationship when we are alone and away from our house and our daily routines.
We went into our time away this past weekend both feeling stressed and somewhat irritable. For me it was the end of the school year with all of activities that were winding down coupled with a visit from my sister-in-law who is moving down south and wanted to store a few things in our basement. For my husband, it was the end of one long work project, and the beginning of another in addition to gaining a new supervisor and finding out that he would have to travel to Singapore this week.
Our counseling session helped us to blow off some steam in a constructive way which I think helped us to move beyond our day-to-day troubles once we arrived at our hotel room. We enjoyed a relaxing late afernoon and evening filling most of our time with conversation. One of the things that having a child has robbed us of is the luxury of time to delve more deeply into each other's lives. Not having these moments together means that we start to lose our connection to one another which makes those instances when we are in conflict with one another more adversarial.
When my husband isn't traveling, we have about 45 minutes at the end of a weeknight in which to synch up our schedules, exchange any relevent updates and briefly check in with one another. Being peace loving people, both my husband and I avoid conflict; so, I know on my end, on those evenings when time is scarce, I don't bring up anything controversial. If I am feeling overwhelmed or slighted or I think there is a problem with our budget for the month, I simply put it aside until there is more time to talk. I think this is a healthy practice except for the fact that sometimes these things get pushed aside for weeks if my husband is traveling or we have a busy weekend. As a result, instead of being addressed in a calm constructive manner they explode out of me. The other side of this, of course, is that I give the impression that everything is going fine, so instead of recognizing that there is a problem brewing, my husband gets blindsided.
This has been the dance of our marriage for over six years now. The good news is that I can now see the pattern. The work ahead is learning to behave in a more constructive and loving way. I think the first step is creating more space to be alone and talk. So, it is time to get the old calendar out and putting date nights on the schedule!
Monday, June 21, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The noise inside my head
I drove my son and my neighbor's daughter to school today instead of having them ride the school bus as usual so that we could make a trip to the public library. They are both in afternoon kindergarten, so we didn't need to be at school until 12:15 pm. We stayed a little too long at the library, so we were already running late when I got stuck behind a slow moving truck. Normally, this type of thing rolls off me. So what, the kids will be a little tardy to school. However, today was the day that the children were bringing flower stems to give to the school principal who is retiring after 19 years of service. This was happening in the school lobby as the students lined up to go to their class rooms. As we inched along behind the truck, I found myself frustrated and tense. I was giving myself a good mental beating for not being more organized. And, then I noticed what I was doing...I had made up a story that the kids would be disappointed, my neighbor would be upset with me and that the staff of the school would be put out that the children were late. None of this had happened, but I had imagined myself into an awful situation. Once I recognized what I was doing, I took a deep breath, eased my foot off the gas pedal and let go of control over the events yet to come. My body relaxed and I no longer felt like running down the car ahead of me or yelling at the kids who were beating each other over the head with their flower stems.
My meditation teacher often tells us that while our ego mind is important and useful to us...it also bullshits (her word) us all of the time. Even with medication, my mind likes to make up stories. It occupies itself during the day by spinning yarns. I never really feel alone because whether or not I am in the same room with other people, my mind is still holding debates or lengthy, in-depth conversations with friends, loved ones, colleagues or even those who have passed on.
Through meditation I have learned to watch my mind and how it works. I try to watch without judgement and with loving compassion. My mind is a protector, a problem-solver and a storyteller. Its purpose really is to help me, but what has taken me some time to appreciate is that it is not my true self and often, though not always, works from a place of fear for my safety.
My meditation teacher often tells us that while our ego mind is important and useful to us...it also bullshits (her word) us all of the time. Even with medication, my mind likes to make up stories. It occupies itself during the day by spinning yarns. I never really feel alone because whether or not I am in the same room with other people, my mind is still holding debates or lengthy, in-depth conversations with friends, loved ones, colleagues or even those who have passed on.
Through meditation I have learned to watch my mind and how it works. I try to watch without judgement and with loving compassion. My mind is a protector, a problem-solver and a storyteller. Its purpose really is to help me, but what has taken me some time to appreciate is that it is not my true self and often, though not always, works from a place of fear for my safety.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Raging in my own bowl
After writing yesterday's post and then reflecting upon it, I think it is important to note that I am not weaning off of the anti-depressant without being under the care of a psychiatrist. I also don't want to give the impression that medication isn't a useful or necessary element of healing. I finally agreed to medication after many years of depression because, as a mother, I didn't feel I could parent my then three year old child without help. I am grateful for the relief it gave me.
I shared my blog post with a very dear friend yesterday and she asked many good questions. One was about how I felt the medication impacted my emotions. Today, I want to try to characterize how I felt my emotions changed after I began taking the medication. I think a better word for how the medication changed my moods is that it dulled the negative ones. They didn't feel as sharp. I felt sadness, anger, revulsion, frustration, guilt, longing; however, these feelings were blunted. I didn't experience the same kinds of mood swings that I had in the past. Feelings like anger, frustration, sadness or isolation weren't as disruptive to my day-to-day living. I didn't feel as stuck in them. There wasn't this lingering fear that whatever the negative emotion might be that it would last forever. I found that I didn't suffer from busy mind as much...trying to solve a problem constantly....reliving an awkward moment over and over again...obsessing that someone didn't like me or that I was being intentionally left out of things. I wasn't as reactive or constantly poised for battle. I played the"if only" game less often and the conspiracy theories faded away. However, I didn't feel like myself. I wondered if I would ever write again. Would I ever feel deeply enough to be moved to write a poem or a story.
During the first month on the medication, I was reminded of a poem by Anne Sexton entitled For John, Who Begs Me Not To Inquire Further that I had to read for one of my litarature classes in college. In it, Sexton is describing her depression. The first time I read the poem, it resonated powerfully for me. I felt she had described very succintly not only her experience, but mine as well.
The lines:
I had raged in my own bowl many times. That was how I defined the obsessing, the replaying tapes of past events, the games of If Only.
As I noticed my emotions blunting, I also thought of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf and many other writers who struggled with mental illnes and depression. What role did depression play in their genius? I want to be careful here because many of these women and men ended his or her own life. I don't want to confuse their ability to write masterpieces with the mental struggles they endured or suggest that mental illness is the price for great works of literature. Reflecting upon these questions now, I don't think it is fair or even answerable to ask, "what if medication had worked for them? What might we have lost? What might we have gained?" However, I have come to understand that these questions were my way of attempting to figure out the value of my strong negative emotions. I found myself questioning the value of anger in women and questioned whether I was being forced into silence through medication. I still ask myself this question today.
As Sexton's poem suggests to me, depression isn't simply about raging in one's own bowl. It extends outward and envelops one's family and friends. I agreed to finally see a psychiatrist because I was worried for my son. I did not want my problem to become his problem. I grew up in a household weighted down by alcoholism and depression and I did not want that for my child. However, there was a small voice within me that kept crying out..."but it's not just me! I am angry for a valid reason! Can't anyone see the injustices here." I thought for sure the first time I sat down with the psychiatrist and tearfully explained my plight that he would be able to see what I saw: that it wasn't just me...it was a whole world of injustices, misunderstandings and inconsistencies. If all of these things could just change, then I wouldn't feel so bad. Instead, he listened very patiently and very calmly as I described how I felt, then excused himself for a few minutes and returned with a sample bag of Lexapro. He gave me instructions for how to gradually start taking the medication and scheduled a follow-up appointment to see how I was doing. There was no further discussion. No time to argue. I was simply sent home with my little bag of pills.
Lexapro made me very, very sick, so we next tried the generic form of Prozac, fluoxetine. Once I got up to a regular dose of fluoxetine, I started to feel better. After about a month or so on fluoxetine, I remember returning home after a morning walking my dog in the woods on a beautiful fall morning and noticing how lovely the landscaping was around our townhouse. The sky was clear and blue. The air crisp and refreshing against my skin. As I took in my surroundings, I noticed that I felt happy and calm. I allowed myself to notice it and be with it because it seemed as if it had been a very long time since I could remember feeling happy. This seemed to be as good a reason as any to continue to take the medication. Maybe there was something more for me than dark feelings, isolation and self-loathing. Maybe I was really someone who needed help because my biology didn't enable me the kinds of relief others experienced.
About three months into taking fluoxitine, after talking to my psychiatrist about wanting to try to have another baby and that I hoped to breast feed after giving birth, I switched to sertraline, the generic form of Zoloft. I have been taking one form of anti-depressent or another for nearly three years. In that time, I have had my ups and downs. I've had three miscarriages, coped with the stresses of my husband's very busy travel schedule resulting in long stretches of single-parenthood, the grief of losing my brother, my father-in-law and my great aunt, supporting my mother through some of these loses and the complexities of watching my mother watch her father age. My life isn't perfect, but it has been a lot better. So, why would I want to try coming off medication?
I shared my blog post with a very dear friend yesterday and she asked many good questions. One was about how I felt the medication impacted my emotions. Today, I want to try to characterize how I felt my emotions changed after I began taking the medication. I think a better word for how the medication changed my moods is that it dulled the negative ones. They didn't feel as sharp. I felt sadness, anger, revulsion, frustration, guilt, longing; however, these feelings were blunted. I didn't experience the same kinds of mood swings that I had in the past. Feelings like anger, frustration, sadness or isolation weren't as disruptive to my day-to-day living. I didn't feel as stuck in them. There wasn't this lingering fear that whatever the negative emotion might be that it would last forever. I found that I didn't suffer from busy mind as much...trying to solve a problem constantly....reliving an awkward moment over and over again...obsessing that someone didn't like me or that I was being intentionally left out of things. I wasn't as reactive or constantly poised for battle. I played the"if only" game less often and the conspiracy theories faded away. However, I didn't feel like myself. I wondered if I would ever write again. Would I ever feel deeply enough to be moved to write a poem or a story.
During the first month on the medication, I was reminded of a poem by Anne Sexton entitled For John, Who Begs Me Not To Inquire Further that I had to read for one of my litarature classes in college. In it, Sexton is describing her depression. The first time I read the poem, it resonated powerfully for me. I felt she had described very succintly not only her experience, but mine as well.
The lines:
I tapped my head
It was a glass, an inverted bowl.
It is a small thing
to rage in your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself;
it was you or your house
or your kitchen.
I had raged in my own bowl many times. That was how I defined the obsessing, the replaying tapes of past events, the games of If Only.
As I noticed my emotions blunting, I also thought of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf and many other writers who struggled with mental illnes and depression. What role did depression play in their genius? I want to be careful here because many of these women and men ended his or her own life. I don't want to confuse their ability to write masterpieces with the mental struggles they endured or suggest that mental illness is the price for great works of literature. Reflecting upon these questions now, I don't think it is fair or even answerable to ask, "what if medication had worked for them? What might we have lost? What might we have gained?" However, I have come to understand that these questions were my way of attempting to figure out the value of my strong negative emotions. I found myself questioning the value of anger in women and questioned whether I was being forced into silence through medication. I still ask myself this question today.
As Sexton's poem suggests to me, depression isn't simply about raging in one's own bowl. It extends outward and envelops one's family and friends. I agreed to finally see a psychiatrist because I was worried for my son. I did not want my problem to become his problem. I grew up in a household weighted down by alcoholism and depression and I did not want that for my child. However, there was a small voice within me that kept crying out..."but it's not just me! I am angry for a valid reason! Can't anyone see the injustices here." I thought for sure the first time I sat down with the psychiatrist and tearfully explained my plight that he would be able to see what I saw: that it wasn't just me...it was a whole world of injustices, misunderstandings and inconsistencies. If all of these things could just change, then I wouldn't feel so bad. Instead, he listened very patiently and very calmly as I described how I felt, then excused himself for a few minutes and returned with a sample bag of Lexapro. He gave me instructions for how to gradually start taking the medication and scheduled a follow-up appointment to see how I was doing. There was no further discussion. No time to argue. I was simply sent home with my little bag of pills.
Lexapro made me very, very sick, so we next tried the generic form of Prozac, fluoxetine. Once I got up to a regular dose of fluoxetine, I started to feel better. After about a month or so on fluoxetine, I remember returning home after a morning walking my dog in the woods on a beautiful fall morning and noticing how lovely the landscaping was around our townhouse. The sky was clear and blue. The air crisp and refreshing against my skin. As I took in my surroundings, I noticed that I felt happy and calm. I allowed myself to notice it and be with it because it seemed as if it had been a very long time since I could remember feeling happy. This seemed to be as good a reason as any to continue to take the medication. Maybe there was something more for me than dark feelings, isolation and self-loathing. Maybe I was really someone who needed help because my biology didn't enable me the kinds of relief others experienced.
About three months into taking fluoxitine, after talking to my psychiatrist about wanting to try to have another baby and that I hoped to breast feed after giving birth, I switched to sertraline, the generic form of Zoloft. I have been taking one form of anti-depressent or another for nearly three years. In that time, I have had my ups and downs. I've had three miscarriages, coped with the stresses of my husband's very busy travel schedule resulting in long stretches of single-parenthood, the grief of losing my brother, my father-in-law and my great aunt, supporting my mother through some of these loses and the complexities of watching my mother watch her father age. My life isn't perfect, but it has been a lot better. So, why would I want to try coming off medication?
Monday, June 7, 2010
Little Earthquakes
I feel a shift coming on and the need to begin writing again in a more formal way. I created this blog in order to have a place to capture my experience as I move through this shift, where ever it takes me.
Music and dance are in my mind and body today. My blog title is named for a song by Peter Gabriel and this blog post is named in honor of a song by the same title sung by Tori Amos. What these songs have in common for me is that they both ring true to my experience being a woman, dealing with anger and silencing myself. I feel drawn to start dancing again. I studied belly dance for eight years when I was in my twenties. That experience helped me to heal the split between my mind and my body and has been a very important part of my healing process. I learned from my dance teachers that old wounds get stored in the body and movement is a way to release and heal them. I have also found dance, particularly belly dance and other forms of interpretive movement, to be a form of meditation.
I am trying to come off of the medication I take for depression. I have been on it for nearly three years now and while I am grateful for the relief it has given me, and to a certain extent the numbness, I feel it is time to see what life is like without it.
For me, depression presents as irritability and a welling up of anger. I entitled this blog post Little Earth Quakes because that is what the past week has felt like. There have been little tremors or maybe to mix the metaphor a little...brief, but powerful erruptions of anger. Before I went on medication I struggled with this anger and the question, "Was it justified?" According to the enneagram, I am the peacemaker. I crave balance and harmony. Often I push down my feelings in order to maintain peace with the other's around me. Through the practice of getting to know myself better, I have come to realize that the bursts of anger are a result of pushing down my wants and needs to a point where I no longer have the ability to deny them.
I think the depression medication colludes with me to push down my wants, my needs and my hurts. It dulls my feelings so that they do not overpower me. As a result I brush things off, I cast things aside, I don't listen to myself. I maintain that happy harmony. I become invisible. And then I become angry.
As I write this, I wonder whether I can trust my thoughts. Is this just my mind's way of keeping me sick? Shouldn't I stay on this medicine so that I can maintain the numbness...my stepford wife facade. If I don't take it, won't I simply become the mad woman in the attic?
I asked my husband last night if he had any input about the medication. His reply was, "Keep taking it." The answer stung. I had been irritable and much of it had been directed toward him. For a moment I agreed with him. Yes, we cannot go on living like this...but, I began to think, if I never get angry or irritable how will things change? If I stay numb, how will we ever go deeper?
I haven't been happy in my marriage for a long time. Not because I don't love my husband or feel attracked to him. I do very much. But we have created separate lives and our way of coping has been to push things down, deny them and to try to keep the peace. As a result, we have grown apart. I don't remember the last time we had sex, let alone snuggled together on the couch at the end of a day. I know my husband loves me, but I often don't feel loved. I don't see or hear or feel the things that would provide concrete evidence and with the medication I lost the desire to ask for them. I feel my husband is suffering as much as I am, but he doesn't say it. I don't know where to begin to connect with him or be loving towards him because I haven't any idea what he wants or needs he doesn't give me many clues, even when I ask. I wonder if he would have spoken up about how he was feeling about my mood if I had not asked.
So, last night, I stood in the kitchen and let my grief and my anger boil over and I shared what I had been feeling for months and now years. And, my husband listened and after the tears dried and the waves of anger passed I felt closer to him...and peaceful. I felt connected in a way that I had not for a very long time. It was a healing that I was not getting from medicine. When I allowed the anger to boil over, I was being present with myself, acknowledging and expressing how I felt in that moment. Staying with myself and my feelings. Not denying. Not pushing away. Riding the wave of the tremors until they naturally came to stillness.
Music and dance are in my mind and body today. My blog title is named for a song by Peter Gabriel and this blog post is named in honor of a song by the same title sung by Tori Amos. What these songs have in common for me is that they both ring true to my experience being a woman, dealing with anger and silencing myself. I feel drawn to start dancing again. I studied belly dance for eight years when I was in my twenties. That experience helped me to heal the split between my mind and my body and has been a very important part of my healing process. I learned from my dance teachers that old wounds get stored in the body and movement is a way to release and heal them. I have also found dance, particularly belly dance and other forms of interpretive movement, to be a form of meditation.
I am trying to come off of the medication I take for depression. I have been on it for nearly three years now and while I am grateful for the relief it has given me, and to a certain extent the numbness, I feel it is time to see what life is like without it.
For me, depression presents as irritability and a welling up of anger. I entitled this blog post Little Earth Quakes because that is what the past week has felt like. There have been little tremors or maybe to mix the metaphor a little...brief, but powerful erruptions of anger. Before I went on medication I struggled with this anger and the question, "Was it justified?" According to the enneagram, I am the peacemaker. I crave balance and harmony. Often I push down my feelings in order to maintain peace with the other's around me. Through the practice of getting to know myself better, I have come to realize that the bursts of anger are a result of pushing down my wants and needs to a point where I no longer have the ability to deny them.
I think the depression medication colludes with me to push down my wants, my needs and my hurts. It dulls my feelings so that they do not overpower me. As a result I brush things off, I cast things aside, I don't listen to myself. I maintain that happy harmony. I become invisible. And then I become angry.
As I write this, I wonder whether I can trust my thoughts. Is this just my mind's way of keeping me sick? Shouldn't I stay on this medicine so that I can maintain the numbness...my stepford wife facade. If I don't take it, won't I simply become the mad woman in the attic?
I asked my husband last night if he had any input about the medication. His reply was, "Keep taking it." The answer stung. I had been irritable and much of it had been directed toward him. For a moment I agreed with him. Yes, we cannot go on living like this...but, I began to think, if I never get angry or irritable how will things change? If I stay numb, how will we ever go deeper?
I haven't been happy in my marriage for a long time. Not because I don't love my husband or feel attracked to him. I do very much. But we have created separate lives and our way of coping has been to push things down, deny them and to try to keep the peace. As a result, we have grown apart. I don't remember the last time we had sex, let alone snuggled together on the couch at the end of a day. I know my husband loves me, but I often don't feel loved. I don't see or hear or feel the things that would provide concrete evidence and with the medication I lost the desire to ask for them. I feel my husband is suffering as much as I am, but he doesn't say it. I don't know where to begin to connect with him or be loving towards him because I haven't any idea what he wants or needs he doesn't give me many clues, even when I ask. I wonder if he would have spoken up about how he was feeling about my mood if I had not asked.
So, last night, I stood in the kitchen and let my grief and my anger boil over and I shared what I had been feeling for months and now years. And, my husband listened and after the tears dried and the waves of anger passed I felt closer to him...and peaceful. I felt connected in a way that I had not for a very long time. It was a healing that I was not getting from medicine. When I allowed the anger to boil over, I was being present with myself, acknowledging and expressing how I felt in that moment. Staying with myself and my feelings. Not denying. Not pushing away. Riding the wave of the tremors until they naturally came to stillness.
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