When things aren't adding up in your life, start subtracting

When I’d spent the better part of four years on meds for depression, anxiety, and ADD- and my symptoms were only getting worse it was past time to take a deeper look.

When I was unrecognizable to my husband as the stable, sane, solid, handle-a-crisis and hold-it-all-together person I’d always been, and had instead become irrational, irritable, overly-emotional, and unable to follow through on the simplest of tasks, it was past time to take a deeper look.

He saw a direct correlation to when I started on ADD meds to handle the workload and tasks of a promotion, and a subtle but distinct shift in my personality. I’ve normally had a high tolerance for dealing with life and whatever shit it could throw at me. Sure, I’ve had a baseline level of anxiety for as long as I can remember, but I’ve always been able to USE it, to channel it into something productive, and to fuel my ambition. I was RESILIANT, and anxiety was generally not something that CONTROLLED me.

I started down the path of symptom- chasing, and it was a total dead-end. What started as needing something to help me focus while I worked on the more challenging aspects of my job (ie, those times I needed to sit still and stare at a computer screen) began a spiral of symptons that ended up with my doctor wanting to look into more severe disorders.

But it was more than that. 

I was such a mess that I was barely able to function. I was just plain shitty at my job and couldn’t understand what was going on- this was not the person I'd known for three decades. I think it took me so long to figure it out because it had literally become hard to think at all.

Say, for example, that you’re supposed to be somewhere at a certain time. There are a whole bunch of micro-steps that get you there: what will traffic be like at that time of day, what’s the parking situation? How much time do you HONESTLY need to get out the door? Do you have kids you need to drop off on the way? Is a run to Starbucks in the cards?

When your brain isn’t working properly, when your executive function fails (yay, prefrontal cortex!), it becomes an ever-increasing challenge to function on such a basic level. Stimulants used for treatment ofADD/ADHD affect neurotransmitters in the brain, and we’ve known for a long time that patients with ADD have reduced activity in their prefrontal cortex.

But much of what I was going through was a side effect, NOT an independent disease. The severely exacerbated symptoms I was dealing with pointed directly back to the various medications I was taking, and accepting symptoms such as suicidal ideations as a side effect of a depression medication was bad math!

When things aren’t adding up in your life, start subtracting.

Time to get off the meds.

It was time to stop relying on pharmaceuticals as a crutch and re-teach my brain how to function on its own.

It’s taken months, and I still struggle with my ability to fully think things through on levels I know I’m inherently capable of, even with ADD. I find myself needing extra time to think through the micro-steps to accomplishments. I still have moments where something (a movie, an Instagram post, or a news article) will hit me way irrationally deep in the feels and it takes everything I have not to burst into tears, but I’m finally to a place where I CAN go through that process. 

Most days now, I can think my way through a situation, see a moment or a thought as separate from myself, prioritize tasks, take a deep breath, and focus enough to move on without getting lost in it. I'm getting my resiliency back, and regaining control of my own life.