![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneHaving accidentally run out of anti-depressants last spring, I was unable to get a new scrip before they had completely left my system. Because I was unhappy with the medication I was on anyway, I decided to go without SSRIs for the summer until I could see a psychiatrist and discuss trying something different. (And establish a bit of a baseline so I could compare my mental states, since I haven't been off escitalopram and before that citalopram since 2006.)
The summer experiment surprised me a bit. After the drug left my system, there was a short, violent period of misery, which is in line with what I've read about the withdrawal. But after that, I was pretty much fine, just a bit moodier.
But for the last month we've been toppling into autumn and I've been oppressed by a gradually increasing anxiety about the advent of winter. I know from November to April I'm going to be crushed into the ground under that enormous cannonball of terror, misery, ennui, apathy and exhaustion. I've been trying to fend it off with "At least it's not here yet!"
Last winter was still the worst winter I can remember1, even though I was both medicated and getting the benefit of a sunlamp for the first time. It isn't that the sunlamp didn't work. On the contrary, I hardly ever felt like crying last year (which was new), and also the sunlamp had the basic effect of making me feel awake but utterly without energy, instead of asleep and utterly without energy like in other years.
I think it was because social anxiety is the most draining thing that happens to me, and performing in social situations is absolutely the most terrifying and exhausting thing I ever have to do. Just showing up at that once-a-week classroom assistant course - in a different town, for five hours, at night, with an hour and a half roundtrip on the public bus, plus waiting at a bus stop, something that sends me into adrenaline red-alert - takes all my energy for the entire week. (In fact, in the darkest part of winter, I had to skip several weeks because seven days wasn't long enough to recover after the last class.) (I think it was the coldest one since I've lived here as well, which might have had something to do with it.) My ideological issues with dippy hugbertism and my paralyzed perfectionism don't make dealing with class any easier. (I put off the homework out of fears about my Swedish-linguistic competency, then get increasingly guilty about it even though it's voluntary, which leads to avoiding other things I'm less afraid of out of an illogical conviction that it would be wrong to do it first when it's less important.)
Just now I was trying to decide what to do about my hair and accidentally looked at a picture of myself taken on my way back from class last fall. The dam of "It's not time yet" broke, and the dread and tension and terror slammed into me all at once. Grace period over.
Obviously, good medication can make a difference. I know this from experience. So that's the first step. But going by last winter it's not actually good enough, so I'm trying to make resolutions (to see my friends regularly, to get some sort of regular exercise) that might help with the SAD. Unfortunately (yet undeniably poetically!), social anxiety keeps getting in the way of these ideas ("I'm lonely and miss my friends! ... But WHAT IF I can't make entertaining conversation?" / "I enjoy swimming! ... But I can't go to the swimming hall by myself: swimming halls are scary". Etc).
1. My first Finnish winter was the second worst - Wax and I had just moved in together so I felt less secure, and I was completely unprepared for the lack of sunlight; I didn't even realize that I WAS seasonally affective. I just spent a lot of time on the kitchen floor with my back to the wall, crying. I was still medicated at the beginning of it, though, and I went to Alabama for 2 weeks at Christmas-New Year's, which recharged my solar batteries. I definitely remember that my energy levels were better then than last year.
The summer experiment surprised me a bit. After the drug left my system, there was a short, violent period of misery, which is in line with what I've read about the withdrawal. But after that, I was pretty much fine, just a bit moodier.
- I'm highly seasonally affective (especially up here in Finland), and my unmedicated period fell in the middle of summer, so I got lots of sunlight.
- I'm more anxious than depressed, and most of my anxiety is social anxiety. The unmedicated period fell at a time when, because Wax was on vacation and my school assistant course was in recess, I didn't have to perform socially, or even go much of anywhere by myself.
- My family visited for one month, and I honestly am not sure if that affected my mood for the better or for the worse. I looked forward to the visit, and I've always been a really family-oriented person, and now they're gone I've missed them a lot, but on the other hand, I'm an introvert and the constant GO-GO-GO while they were here put me under some stress, which I responded to by becoming a bit short-tempered.
But for the last month we've been toppling into autumn and I've been oppressed by a gradually increasing anxiety about the advent of winter. I know from November to April I'm going to be crushed into the ground under that enormous cannonball of terror, misery, ennui, apathy and exhaustion. I've been trying to fend it off with "At least it's not here yet!"
Last winter was still the worst winter I can remember1, even though I was both medicated and getting the benefit of a sunlamp for the first time. It isn't that the sunlamp didn't work. On the contrary, I hardly ever felt like crying last year (which was new), and also the sunlamp had the basic effect of making me feel awake but utterly without energy, instead of asleep and utterly without energy like in other years.
I think it was because social anxiety is the most draining thing that happens to me, and performing in social situations is absolutely the most terrifying and exhausting thing I ever have to do. Just showing up at that once-a-week classroom assistant course - in a different town, for five hours, at night, with an hour and a half roundtrip on the public bus, plus waiting at a bus stop, something that sends me into adrenaline red-alert - takes all my energy for the entire week. (In fact, in the darkest part of winter, I had to skip several weeks because seven days wasn't long enough to recover after the last class.) (I think it was the coldest one since I've lived here as well, which might have had something to do with it.) My ideological issues with dippy hugbertism and my paralyzed perfectionism don't make dealing with class any easier. (I put off the homework out of fears about my Swedish-linguistic competency, then get increasingly guilty about it even though it's voluntary, which leads to avoiding other things I'm less afraid of out of an illogical conviction that it would be wrong to do it first when it's less important.)
Just now I was trying to decide what to do about my hair and accidentally looked at a picture of myself taken on my way back from class last fall. The dam of "It's not time yet" broke, and the dread and tension and terror slammed into me all at once. Grace period over.
Obviously, good medication can make a difference. I know this from experience. So that's the first step. But going by last winter it's not actually good enough, so I'm trying to make resolutions (to see my friends regularly, to get some sort of regular exercise) that might help with the SAD. Unfortunately (yet undeniably poetically!), social anxiety keeps getting in the way of these ideas ("I'm lonely and miss my friends! ... But WHAT IF I can't make entertaining conversation?" / "I enjoy swimming! ... But I can't go to the swimming hall by myself: swimming halls are scary". Etc).
1. My first Finnish winter was the second worst - Wax and I had just moved in together so I felt less secure, and I was completely unprepared for the lack of sunlight; I didn't even realize that I WAS seasonally affective. I just spent a lot of time on the kitchen floor with my back to the wall, crying. I was still medicated at the beginning of it, though, and I went to Alabama for 2 weeks at Christmas-New Year's, which recharged my solar batteries. I definitely remember that my energy levels were better then than last year.
