I Spent Years Waiting to Feel Better

There was a time when I thought feeling better would happen after the next appointment.

Maybe the next therapist would say something that finally clicked.

Maybe the next medication would be the one.

Maybe this dosage.

Maybe that combination.

Maybe I just needed to give it another month.

For more than thirty years, I was told I struggled with depression.

And for many of those years, I did what we are usually told to do when something isn't right.

I got help.

I went to therapy.

I took medication.

I changed medications.

I went back to therapy.

I stopped.

I started again.

For a long time, I kept waiting for that moment when I would wake up and think, “Oh. So this is what better feels like.”

It never happened quite like that.

And that frustrated me more than I admitted at the time.

Looking back, I think part of me wanted a quick fix.

I didn't call it that.

I probably would've been offended if somebody had told me that was what I was looking for.

But I was tired.

When you've felt emotionally heavy for a long time, waiting four weeks, six weeks or eight weeks to find out whether a medication might help can feel like forever.

And antidepressants really can take several weeks to have their full effect.

Sometimes certain things like sleep, appetite or concentration change before our mood does.

Different people can also respond very differently to the same medication.

One woman can finally feel some relief on something that makes another woman feel worse or gives her side effects she can't tolerate.

I didn't fully appreciate that back then.

I just knew I wanted to feel better.

There were so many medications over the years that I couldn't tell you now which ones did what.

Some didn't seem to change much.

With others, it felt like one thing got better while something completely different showed up to take its place.

It became exhausting.

Take this.

See how you feel.

Come back.

Change the dose.

Try something else.

Wait again.

And somewhere in all of that, I started wondering what I was doing wrong.

That was one of the hardest parts.

I was treating finding the right medication like a test I was somehow failing.

Now I know there isn't one antidepressant that works best for everybody.

Finding the right treatment really can involve trial and error.

That doesn't make the waiting less frustrating when you're the one living through it, but I wish I had understood that earlier.

Maybe I would've been a little less hard on myself.

Therapy was its own story.

My ex-husband was in the military, so we moved every few years.

That meant every few years I had to find another therapist.

If you've ever spent months getting comfortable enough with someone to stop giving them the cleaned up version of your life, you already know where I'm going with this.

You finally get comfortable.

You finally stop sitting there thinking about how weird it feels telling a stranger your business.

You finally get to the point where you don't have to explain every person in your life before you can explain the actual problem.

Then you move.

And there I was again.

New city.

New therapist.

New paperwork.

New room.

New person asking me to start at the beginning.

And in my head I'm thinking, “Which beginning? We could be here awhile.”

There were times I found therapists I really connected with.

That's what made leaving harder.

Finding somebody who understands you isn't automatic.

A therapist can be completely qualified and still not be the right therapist for you.

That part deserves more attention than it gets.

There are different kinds of therapy for depression.

Some focus more on the way our thoughts affect how we feel and behave.

Some look more closely at our relationships and what is happening in our lives.

Some focus on helping us slowly get involved in everyday life again when we've started pulling away from everything.

I didn't know all of that when I first started therapy.

To me, therapy was therapy.

You sat in a chair.

You talked.

Someone occasionally asked you a question that made you stare at the wall for ten seconds.

That was pretty much my understanding of the whole operation.

What I learned over time was that the person sitting across from me mattered just as much as the fact that I had gone.

I needed to trust her.

I needed to feel comfortable enough to tell the truth.

And I needed enough time with them to actually get somewhere.

Moving every few years made that difficult.

Sometimes I felt like I spent so much time starting therapy that I barely got the chance to settle into it.

For years I was looking at therapy and medication as the things that were supposed to make me better.

Then something changed in the way I saw it.

They could help me.

They could support me.

They could give me another way of looking at something.

But neither one could go home and live my life for me.

I still had to make decisions.

I still had to look at relationships that were wearing me down.

I still had to notice the way I talked to myself.

I still had to admit when I kept allowing something I already knew was hurting me.

I still had to decide what kind of life I wanted.

That realization wasn't dramatic.

There was no big movie scene where I suddenly understood everything.

It was more like an uncomfortable truth that kept following me around until I finally stopped arguing with it.

No matter how much help I received, there was still going to be work that belonged to me.

That doesn't mean depression happens because someone isn't trying hard enough.

I want to be very clear about that.

Depression isn't a character flaw.

And needing medication or therapy doesn't mean a woman hasn't worked hard enough on herself.

What I mean is that, for me, treatment became one part of the picture instead of the whole picture.

That changed the way I looked at it.

Today, I'm not taking medication for depression, and I'm not in therapy.

That's a personal decision.

It is not a recommendation.

I can't tell another woman when she should take medication, when she should stop it or when she should leave therapy.

Those decisions belong between her and the professionals who know what she's dealing with.

And stopping an antidepressant suddenly can cause problems, so that's something that should be talked through with the person prescribing it.

My decision came after many years of both medication and therapy.

At some point, I felt like I had learned enough about myself to try managing my life differently.

I knew there wasn't going to be a quick fix anymore.

Oddly enough, accepting that made things easier for me.

I stopped waiting for something outside of me to make every difficult feeling disappear.

I started paying closer attention to what I needed, what I was tolerating, what I was avoiding and what kept showing up in my life.

For me, that mattered.

But I also leave room for life to change.

If there comes a point when I feel like I need therapy again, I'll go back.

If I ever reach a place where medication needs to be part of the conversation again, I'll have that conversation.

I don't feel the need to make some grand declaration that I'll never need either one again.

Life has humbled me enough to stop saying never.

This may be the part that surprises people.

I don't regret therapy.

I don't regret trying medication.

Even with the frustration.

Even with all the starting over.

Even with the medications that didn't seem to help.

Even with the therapists who weren't the right fit.

Those years taught me things about myself that I still use.

Some of what I learned in therapy didn't make sense until years later.

Have you ever had somebody tell you something that you weren't ready to hear, then five years later you're standing in your kitchen thinking, “Well, she was right.”

Annoying.

But true.

I also know now that treatment for depression isn't one size fits all.

For some women, therapy may be enough.

For others, medication may be an important part of getting through the day and being able to function.

Some women may need both.

And when the first treatment doesn't help enough, there are other options doctors can consider.

That's one reason I don't like the idea that if the first medication or first therapist doesn't work, we've reached the end of the road.

Sometimes the first thing isn't the thing.

Sometimes neither is the second.

Frustrating?

Absolutely.

Hopeless?

No.

I wish I had understood that getting help wasn't supposed to turn me into a different person.

I think I expected to eventually reach some permanent version of myself who never struggled again.

She never showed up.

I'm still me.

I still have hard days.

Life can still knock the wind out of me.

There are still times when I have to pay attention to myself and admit, “Something isn't right here.”

The difference is that I know myself better now.

I know what it feels like when I'm starting to withdraw.

I know when I'm carrying too much.

I know that ignoring myself doesn't make anything disappear.

And I know asking for help again wouldn't erase anything I've learned.

Maybe that's one of the biggest things thirty years taught me.

We don't have to prove that we're okay by refusing help.

And we don't have to stay in treatment forever just because it once helped us.

We can pay attention.

We can ask questions.

We can be honest when something isn't working.

We can change course with the right support.

And sometimes we can admit that we still don't know exactly what we need yet.

There's room for that too.

I spent a lot of years waiting to finally feel better.

These days, I don't think about it that way.

I pay more attention to whether I'm living in a way that feels honest to me.

Whether I'm taking care of what needs my attention.

Whether I'm listening when my mind and body are telling me something instead of waiting until they're practically screaming.

I don't know what I'll need five years from now.

Neither does anyone else.

But I know this much.

If I need help again, asking for it won't mean I've gone backward.

It will mean I noticed.

And after all these years, I've learned that noticing ourselves is sometimes where everything begins.

#EvolvingWomanhood

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