Awkwardness

MakanJuu · Dec 22, 2013

Well, it's been a weird couple of months. For weeks now, I'd pretty much entirely lost the will to do anything. Not just writing, but really anything at all. Now, I finally got to see some new movies for a change, only to realize that, I think, storytelling is my only reason for existence. Seriously, I've lost my entire DVD collection & video game collection and my ability to check things out from my local library and have no income... and it affected me in a way I never even realized. It seems, the feeling of sitting through and enjoying a great story and knowing that it's out there and people loved it and it's at least possible for me to have the same is pretty much the only motivation I have in life to even try to continue being a part of this world.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to kill myself, but without film all I have is anxiety forcing me away from everything in the world and OCD telling me it's not worth my time trying to be a part of humanity, because I'll just fail at everything and lose anything and everything I make for myself over and over until there's nothing left and I'm dead. Film is the only thing in life that gives me the hope to even try...

The last month or so, every time I've tried to write, I simply couldn't even attempt it. Even things like fanfiction that I just do for fun- even ones that never were meant to or will be seen by anyone. If I tried to force the issue, my mind just blanked out. Not even compliments, or people begging me to continue certain stories were enough to fuel me. And all the realization of that has done has made me agitated, depressed and angry. I couldn't even put in any effort to continue trying to get a job, not even for the constant embarrassment of being forced to go to the store with my disabled mother and have her pay for all our things, or for the motivation of things I absolutely really wanted or needed. Even my therapist is about ready to give up.

Now, this week, I finally have my library debt paid off and I got some new movies and, bam, my thirst for it all is back. And all I can think is... this is seriously sad. That's what I've been reduced to? I literally have that little will to even survive anymore and the only thing that gives me the will to do so is seeing representations of people and places I'll never see or visit and that don't exist...

What the hell is wrong with me? :Huh:

GardeningMomma · Dec 23, 2013

This is not really what you're asking, but if your therapist is ready to give up, get a new therapist. That's not to say he or she is a bad person. I have friends who are in social work and therapy. They are simply people. Sometimes they aren't a good fit for each person, even if they want to be. Find someone new.

If you have no motivation as you're describing, it sounds like you're incredibly depressed to me. You don't have to be suicidal to need help.

Take care of yourself.

TheOneOverThere · Dec 23, 2013

Sounds like you are depressed to me, and you have my sympathies, its not a great place to be in mentally. And seeking help from a professional is def something I would reccomend.

Allthough I would point out that to me, movies, writing and any other art for that matter is just a way of trying to understand the human condition. Lets face it, we are all put on the earth, and we are pretty much clueless as to why, or how to cope with the uncertainty, but yet ultimate certainty of our existence. But that itself can be a gift.. Sure this world is complicated and hard to understand at times, but the fact that we create all these things to try to understand it in some way, is beautiful in itself. And you are a part of that even if you "just" watch a movie, a movie would mean nothing without an audience to experience it. The act of exerpencing reality itself is a worthwile pursuit. Maybe it would help if you try to get writing be a product of some part of that experience, instead of trying to create something "new". I think motivation and purpose is simply a need or feeling within us to experience something or let others experience what we feel. And the feeling of failure is just us creating expectations of reality to be a certain way, and it doesnt turn out quite that way. Create less expectations, and be proud that you are part of humanity is what I am saying I suppose.

Hope this helps

zenjenn · Dec 24, 2013

I agree with the assessment that you are depressed, my friend.

I'll also share my belief that I think this is incredibly common with intelligent and creative people. I mean my gawd, we creatives mentally *reside* in a space of sheer wonder where we are ostensibly gods. Then we have to emerge from our isolation and face reality and cope with paying bills, pumping gas, trimming our toenails. How frigging mind-numbing and futile is that?

Even without clinical depression, I do think a lot of creatives have flashes of how *uninspiring* non-creative things (aka reality) can be.

First you need to get help to see if there is a chemical imbalance and whether meds might help...

But whether you require medication or not, you need to find a way to engage with reality in a meaningful way. Religion, a social group, a hobby that enables you to connect with others, a way to find meaning in your work, volunteerism, etc.

This is the kind of thing a good therapist will help you with to - directing you to find meaning in the *world*, and not just in your isolated creative space.

dondomat · Dec 24, 2013

Well, Howard Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti were/are in the same place, and are generally accepted as titans.
...Stories read give patterns on meaning, logic, and consolation, if not hope. Spreading this is a fine motivation too.

Anninyn · Dec 24, 2013

Another vote for depression. It's very similar to how I feel when the depression is at it's worst. Thanks to a good therapist and time I now accept 'any writing at all' as good enough when I'm like that.

If your therapist isn't working any more, seek a new one. Also, back to the doctor with you to check for physical reasons if you haven't already (thyroid problems, severe anemia etc can all contribute to the feeling you describe)

When I'm like this, I don't push myself. I don't write on my 'projects'. I just try to enjoy it. Write silly little scenes that occur to me with no thought for the future. I take pride in every sentence, because it is such an effort on a day where I can't even get changed out of my nightwear. Hopefully you can find your way out of the fog soon.

Getting joy from small, silly things is part of the process, and you shouldn't feel bad about it.

Chris_tine · Dec 24, 2013

Wish you all the best if you decide to go to therapy, I speak on experience that is quite an step to take and a very personal decision but I sincerely hope it works out for you.

Not much more to add to what others have said as they have given you fantastic advice. Just hang in there, try to write if you enjoy it, without really expecting too much to come, just for the sake of it. I also agree with zenjenn as unfortunately, creative and intelligent minds tend to suffer more from melancholy and depression than other characters.

Once! · Dec 24, 2013

MakanJuu said:
Even my therapist is about ready to give up.

Are you sure about that? Or is that just how you feel?

It sounds like you might need more help than we can give you. If not this therapist, then another. I wouldn't worry about how you find inspiration or confidence. When I was at a very low ebb, I found strength in the film "It's a wonderful life," of all places. If a movie helps, then take that help without the slightest regret.

Whatever helps, as long as it's legal !

dondomat · Dec 25, 2013

For the majority of the reading public 19th century German philosophy is pretentious, incomprehensible, vaguely Nazi crap, which is best used when dissected into nifty on-liners for online signatures. The 19th century Russian novel is viewed as a needlessly complex period romance.

However, when we take off the moron hat and the cretin eyeglasses, it becomes clear that certain very adult questions are outlined, defined, and even almost answered in these very fields, if one has the patience to look, and the humility to admit that perhaps one and one’s friends and doctors are not omnipotently smart demi-gods who get how the world works.

The 19th century lessons include the following, if one is not provincial enough to presume to know what the author means by ‘will’ and ‘idealism’ before actually reading said author:

The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer, 1844

Be honest in analyzing the overall situation:

IN boundless space countless shining spheres, about each of which, and illuminated by its light, there revolve a dozen or so of smaller ones, hot at the core and covered with a hard, cold crust, upon whose surface there have been generated from a mouldy film beings which live and know this is what presents itself to us in experience as the truth, the real, the world.

Yet for a thinking being it is a precarious position to stand upon one of those numberless spheres moving freely in boundless space without knowing whence or whither, and to be only one of innumerable similar beings who throng and press and toil, ceaselessly and quickly arising and passing away in time, which has no beginning and no end ; moreover, nothing permanent but matter alone and the recurrence of the same varied organised forms, by means of certain ways and channels which are there once for all.

Remember that you are in many ways a puppet of animating forces for whom your personal happiness is of no account:

For it is not the individual, but only the species that Nature cares for, and for the preservation of which she so earnestly strives, providing for it with the utmost prodigality through the vast surplus of the seed and the great strength of the fructifying impulse. The individual, on the contrary, neither has nor can have any value for Nature, for her kingdom is infinite time and infinite space, and in these infinite multiplicity of possible individuals. Therefore she is always ready to let the individual fall, and hence it is not only exposed to destruction in a thousand ways by the most insignificant accident, but originally destined for it, and conducted towards it by Nature herself from the moment it has served its end of maintaining the species.

The human individual finds himself as finite in infinite space and time, and consequently as a vanishing quantity compared with them. He is projected into them, and, on account of their unlimited nature, he has always a merely rela tive, never absolute when and where of his existence; for his place and duration are finite parts of what is infinite and boundless. His real existence is only in the present……... But the present is always passing through his hands into the past ; the future is quite uncertain and always short. Thus his existence, even when we consider only its formal side, is a constant hurrying of the present into the dead past, a constant dying. But if we look at it from the physical side ; it is clear that, as our walking is admittedly merely a constantly prevented falling, the life of our body is only a constantly prevented dying, an ever-postponed death : finally, in the same way, the activity of our mind is a constantly deferred ennui.

Every breath we draw wards off the death that is constantly intruding upon us. In this way we fight with it every moment, and again, at longer intervals, through every meal we eat, every sleep we take, every time we warm ourselves, &c. In the end, death must con quer, for we became subject to him through birth, i and he only plays for a little while with his prey before [he swallows it up. We pursue our life, however, with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible, as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although we know perfectly well that it will burst.

However, do not jump to conclusions: your senses and mind are limited by biological and social programming. There's more to things than you imagine or, indeed, may ever imagine.

All that empirical science can teach is only the more exact nature and law of these events. But now at last modern philosophy, especially through Berkeley and Kant, has called to mind that all this is first of all merely a phenomenon of the brain, and is affected with such great, so many, and such different subjective conditions that its supposed absolute reality vanishes away, and leaves room for an entirely different scheme of the world, which consists of what lies at the foundation of that phenomenon, i.e., what is related to it as the thing in itself is related to its mere manifestation.

Be prepared to see which of your characteristics are biologically determined, and which are under your control—they are the ones that you can choose to influence to realize yourself as an individual:

It was mentioned above that in order rightly to portray man, it is necessary to separate the character of the species from that of the individual, so that to a certain extent every man expresses an Idea peculiar to himself, as was said in the last book.

The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1872

Deep down everyone feels the terror and hopelessness and cultural coping mechanisms are created:

Now the Olympian magic mountain opens itself before us, showing us its very roots. The Greeks were keenly aware of the terrors and horrors of existence; in order to be able to live at all they had to place before them the shining fantasy of the Olympians.

Their tremendous distrust of the titanic forces of nature: Moira, mercilessly enthroned beyond the knowable world; the vulture which fed upon the great philanthropist Prometheus; the terrible lot drawn by wise Oedipus; the curse on the house of Atreus which brought Orestes to the murder of his mother: that whole Panic philosophy, in short, with its mythic examples, by which the gloomy Etruscans perished, the Greeks conquered--or at least hid from view--again and again by means of this artificial Olympus. In order to live at all the Greeks had to construct these deities.

The Apollinian need for beauty had to develop the Olympian hierarchy of joy by slow degrees from the original titanic hierarchy of terror, as roses are seen to break from a thorny thicket. How else could life have been borne by a race so hypersensitive, so emotionally intense, so equipped for suffering? The same drive which called art into being as a completion and consummation of existence, and as a guarantee of further existence, gave rise also to that Olympian realm which acted as a transfiguring mirror to the Hellenic will.

Scientific method can provide a shield of sorts against the meaninglessness and horror:

Anyone who has ever experienced the pleasure of Socratic insight and felt how, spreading in ever-widening circles, it seeks to embrace the whole world of appearances, will never again find any stimulus toward existence more violent than the craving to complete this conquest and to weave the net impenetrably tight. To one who feels that way, the Platonic Socrates will appear as the teacher of an altogether new form of "Greek cheerfulness" and blissful affirmation of existence that seeks to discharge itself in actions--most often in maieutic and educational influences on noble youths, with a view to eventually producing a genius.

But science, spurred by its powerful illusion, speeds irresistibly towards its limits where its optimism, concealed in the essence of logic, suffers shipwreck. For the periphery of the circle of science has an infinite number of points; and while there is no telling how this circle could ever be surveyed completely, noble and gifted men nevertheless reach, e'er half their time and inevitably, such boundary points on the periphery from which one gazes into what defies illumination. When they see to their horror how logic coils up at these boundaries and finally bites its own tail--suddenly the new form of insight breaks through, tragic insight which, merely to be endured, needs art as a protection and remedy.

Storytelling/art is a wonderful mechanism if one is not ready to become a mystic recluse:

With this chorus the profound Greek, so uniquely susceptible to the subtlest and deepest suffering, who had penetrated the destructive agencies of both nature and history, solaced himself. Though he had been in danger of craving a Buddhistic denial of the will, he was saved by art, and through art life reclaimed him.

On the Eve, Ivan Turgenev, 1860

Joining nature's dance is preferably a conscious choice:

'Yes; she is a wonderful girl,' Bersenyev repeated after him.

'And she the daughter of Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov! And after that people talk about blood, about stock! The amusing part of it is that she really is his daughter, like him, as well as like her mother, Anna Vassilyevna. I respect Anna Vassilyevna from the depths of my heart, she's been awfully good to me; but she's no better than a hen. Where did Elena get that soul of hers? Who kindled that fire in her? There's another problem for you, philosopher!'

But as before, the 'philosopher' made no reply.

Bersenyev did not in general err on the side of talkativeness, and when he did speak, he expressed himself awkwardly, with hesitation, and unnecessary gesticulation. And at this time a kind of special stillness had fallen on his soul, a stillness akin to lassitude and melancholy. He had not long come from town after prolonged hard work, which had absorbed him for many hours every day. The inactivity, the softness and purity of the air, the consciousness of having attained his object, the whimsical and careless talk of his friend, and the image--so suddenly called up--of one dear to him, all these impressions different--yet at the same time in a way akin--were mingled in him into a single vague emotion, which at once soothed and excited him, and robbed him of his power.

He was a very highly strung young man.

It was cool and peaceful under the lime-tree; the flies and bees seemed to hum more softly as they flitted within its circle of shade. The fresh fine grass, of purest emerald green, without a tinge of gold, did not quiver, the tall flower stalks stood motionless, as though enchanted. On the lower twigs of the lime-tree the little bunches of yellow flowers hung still as death. At every breath a sweet fragrance made its way to the very depths of the lungs, and eagerly the lungs inhaled it. Beyond the river in the distance, right up to the horizon, all was bright and glowing. At times a slight breeze passed over, breaking up the landscape and intensifying the brightness; a sunlit vapour hung over the fields. No sound came from the birds; they do not sing in the heat of noonday; but the grasshoppers were chirping everywhere, and it was pleasant as they sat in the cool and quietness, to hear that hot, eager sound of life; it disposed to slumber and inclined the heart to reveries.

'Have you noticed,' began Bersenyev, eking out his words with gesticulations, 'what a strange feeling nature produces in us? Everything in nature is so complete, so defined, I mean to say, so content with itself, and we understand that and admire it, and at the same time, in me at least, it always excites a kind of restlessness, a kind of uneasiness, even melancholy. What is the meaning of it? Is it that in the face of nature we are more vividly conscious of all our incompleteness, our indefiniteness, or have we little of that content with which nature is satisfied, but something else--I mean to say, what we need, nature has not?'

'H'm,' replied Shubin, 'I'll tell you, Andrei Petrovitch, what all that comes from. You describe the sensations of a solitary man, who is not living but only looking on in ecstasy. Why look on? Live, yourself, and you will be all right. However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words, because she is dumb. She will utter a musical sound, or a moan, like a harp string, but don't expect a song from her. A living heart, now--that will give you your answer--especially a woman's heart.

"So, my dear fellow, I advise you to get yourself some one to share your heart, and all your distressing sensations will vanish at once. "That's what we need," as you say. This agitation, and melancholy, all that, you know, is simply a hunger of a kind. Give the stomach some real food, and everything will be right directly. Take your place in the landscape, live in the body, my dear boy.

.....
Shubin too, got up. 'What sort? What you like, so long as it's there. I will confess to you that I don't believe in the existence of different kinds of love. If you are in love----'
'With your whole heart,' put in Bersenyev.

'Well, of course, that's an understood thing; the heart's not an apple; you can't divide it. If you're in love, you're justified. And I wasn't thinking of scoffing. My heart's as soft at this moment as if it had been melted. ... I only wanted to explain why nature has the effect on us you spoke of. It's because she arouses in us a need for love, and is not capable of satisfying it. Nature is gently driving us to other living embraces, but we don't understand, and expect something from nature herself.

'Ah, Andrei, Andrei, this sun, this sky is beautiful, everything around us is beautiful, still you are sad; but if, at this instant, you were holding the hand of a woman you loved, if that hand and the whole woman were yours, if you were even seeing with her eyes, feeling not your own isolated emotion, but her emotion--nature would not make you melancholy or restless then, and you would not be observing nature's beauty; nature herself would be full of joy and praise; she would be re-echoing your hymn, because then you would have given her--dumb nature--speech!'

Shubin leaped on to his feet and walked twice up and down, but Bersenyev bent his head, and his face was overcast by a faint flush.

'I don't altogether agree with you,' he began: 'nature does not always urge us ... towards love.' (He could not at once pronounce the word.) 'Nature threatens us, too; she reminds us of dreadful . . . yes, insoluble mysteries. Is she not destined to swallow us up, is she not swallowing us up unceasingly? She holds life and death as well; and death speaks in her as loudly as life.'

'In love, too, there is both life and death,' interposed Shubin.

In the 20th century, this philosophical approach acquires a more detailed artistic layer—existentialism, and a more detailed systematic layer called Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysis; declared unscientific and useless and bad for the individual and society by the pharmaceutical lobbies and religious mind-healer systems, and yet, curiously enough, utilized to considerable success by those who actually have to compete on a market for people’s hearts and minds—i.e. the entertainment and advertising industries. If one is brave enough to take the plunge into what Xanax shamans will certainly decry as a harmful insanity, I recommend, in this case of depressive vegetating, Melanie Klein.

MakanJuu · Dec 26, 2013

Sorry it took a while to get back on. I can only get online at the library and they were closed over Christmas.

Well, I'm at least starting to see why my therapist keeps asking if I'm depressed. Although, weirdly enough I honestly don't really feel depressed. I guess it could still be a possibility on some level. I don't know how else to describe it other than it almost feels like programming. As in every time I want to try to do something, I just hit a wall and desperately don't want to. I haven't the slightest clue what that means or could possibly be and, apparently, I don't think my therapist does either...

I should say, more so, my therapist is just clueless as to what to do and is running out of time because, in my area, if they can't identify a specific issue and make improvement in so many sessions, they have to drop the client.

At the very least, though, I did get a chance to write a little bit last night, and even that was a fight to start.

zenjenn · Dec 26, 2013

Makan, depression also doesn't always manifest in the same way. It doesn't always mean you are weepy or suicidal or even sad. If you are experiencing apathy and emotional numbness, that is also a kind of depression.

I experienced postpartum depression after the birth of my first child. My medical caregivers at the time asked me all the normal questions such as, "Do you want to hurt yourself? Do you want to hurt your baby? Do you cry for no reason?" The answer to all those questions was 'no', so I assumed I wasn't depressed. And I think to some extent that's the role of the medical community; they are there to safeguard against dangerous consequences to the health of their patients. They didn't even concern themselves with the fact that while not dangerous to myself or anyone else, I was just walking around as a shell of my former self.

What I did have was anxiety (just restlessness, jumpiness, and inability to sleep well), apathy, and total lack of emotion. I wasn't sad, but I didn't feel anything. I didn't even love my baby. I wasn't even sad about not loving my baby, because I felt nothing.

My hormones thankfully stabilized on their own through the natural course of recovering from childbirth, but it took nearly a year. Now that I know what I know about depression, I wish I would have been diagnosed and treated. Because my depression just manifest as numbness and apathy, I was never a danger to myself or anyone else, but I missed out on fully enjoying life for nearly a year, and caused a lot of pain to my husband and other family members.

Hopefully that's helpful in evaluating whether you are depressed or not. And if you do get a depression diagnosis, medication isn't *always* a permanent thing (and even if it is, there's no shame in it.) Sometimes it can just break the cycle of apathy so you can find the energy to eat right, exercise, engage in social interaction more, and make other lifestyle changes that will combat depression naturally.

Reziac · Dec 26, 2013

zenjenn said:
I experienced postpartum depression after the birth of my first child.

I have a friend who is chronically depressed. The ONLY time she's not depressed is when she's pregnant. (Consequently, she has 9 kids.)

I also read a study somewhere that noted women who went on the Pill immediately after giving birth had a far lower incidence of PPD.

Put the two together, and it occurred to me that PPD may well be nothing more than cold-turkey withdrawal symptoms following 9 months of high levels of progesterone... so the obvious treatment would be progesterone therapy.

And here's a study which found the same:

http://www.naprotechnology.com/depression.htm

zenjenn · Dec 26, 2013

Interesting. I always thought it would make sense that there is a hormonal treatment. For me my depression lifted like a fog when my baby weaned. Seriously. I think there was something about lactating that kept me in an emotionally dull haze.

MakanJuu · Dec 26, 2013

Yeah, that does sound like me. I've been largely just going back and forth like that for a few years.

Maybe I'm just sleeping too much. That's the only real thing that's changed recently & someone warned me that too much sleep can change hormone levels in the brain and cause depression. Of course, thinking on that, I can't really tell whether that's a cause, or an effect.

Either way, though, it makes sense. I was sleeping more out of boredom & now I, at least, have some thing(s) to do.

Reziac · Dec 26, 2013

zenjenn said:
Interesting. I always thought it would make sense that there is a hormonal treatment. For me my depression lifted like a fog when my baby weaned. Seriously. I think there was something about lactating that kept me in an emotionally dull haze.

You may be quite correct -- several related articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactation#Secretory_Activation

http://www.mindandmuscle.net/articles/progesterone-and-prolactin/
(Don't discount the expertise of the bodybuilding community when it comes to hormone effects.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17984948
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3559194
However another study disagreed:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/866543
But results might be very different in a population also experiencing progesterone withdrawal.

frimble3 · Dec 26, 2013

MakanJuu said:
Well, I'm at least starting to see why my therapist keeps asking if I'm depressed. Although, weirdly enough I honestly don't really feel depressed. I guess it could still be a possibility on some level. I don't know how else to describe it other than it almost feels like programming. As in every time I want to try to do something, I just hit a wall and desperately don't want to. I haven't the slightest clue what that means or could possibly be and, apparently, I don't think my therapist does either...

I should say, more so, my therapist is just clueless as to what to do and is running out of time because, in my area, if they can't identify a specific issue and make improvement in so many sessions, they have to drop the client.

At the very least, though, I did get a chance to write a little bit last night, and even that was a fight to start.

(My bolding) Maybe your therapist suspects depression, but, because you don't think you have the 'classic' symptoms (sadness, wanting to end it all) you downplay the symptoms you do have? Maybe when you go back after the holidays, lay it all out for the therapist, suggest that it might be depression, or at least worth treating as though it is?

Reziac · Dec 26, 2013

MakanJuu said:
Well, I'm at least starting to see why my therapist keeps asking if I'm depressed. Although, weirdly enough I honestly don't really feel depressed. I guess it could still be a possibility on some level. I don't know how else to describe it other than it almost feels like programming. As in every time I want to try to do something, I just hit a wall and desperately don't want to. I haven't the slightest clue what that means or could possibly be and, apparently, I don't think my therapist does either...

Get your thyroid checked. Seriously. Borderline hypothyroidism is often undiagnosed, and is a big cause of that unmotivated feeling, not to mention sourceless depression. In crude terms, you wind up with low blood sugar to the brain.

Oldbrasscat · Dec 27, 2013

Reziac is right. And don't let them get away with an overall thyroid level, either. There are several different subcategories of thyroid hormone and you can come out with an aggregate in the normal range, but if one of them is below normal, it can cause problems. And the doctors won't see it unless they test for each hormone. If they insist on doing an overall, and it comes out in low normal, insist back that they do the individual ones too.

Reziac · Dec 27, 2013

Oldbrasscat said:
Reziac is right. And don't let them get away with an overall thyroid level, either. There are several different subcategories of thyroid hormone and you can come out with an aggregate in the normal range, but if one of them is below normal, it can cause problems. And the doctors won't see it unless they test for each hormone. If they insist on doing an overall, and it comes out in low normal, insist back that they do the individual ones too.

I went undiagnosed for 30 years (I have Hashimoto's with poor T4=>T3 conversion, and the broad ignorance about thyroid issues in the GP population has forced me to become a pocket expert... thank the gods for the Journal of Endocrinology). "Oh, you're not overweight, so it can't be your thyroid." BULLSHIT!! there are dozens of other possible symptoms, and depression/lack of motivation/brain fog is a big one. (Others include fibromyalgia, fatigue syndrome, insomnia, restless leg syndrome, hair loss which MAY affect only body hair, enlarged spleen, lots of belly fat despite being skinny elsewhere, craving sweets, dry eyes/mouth, and swelling in the tip of the nose!)

And as Oldbrasscat says, don't rely entirely on the TSH test that's the only one they'll usually do -- it's a crude indicator at best, and at worst may be utterly useless. (TSH levels have never been studied in normal people, only in thyroid replacement patients.) And if one brand of med doesn't work for you, try another. They are NOT equivalent. And how you FEEL is a much better indicator of your status (and required dosage) than any tests.

MakanJuu · Dec 27, 2013

Thanks for the thought. Anything's worth looking into if it'll fix the problem.

Awkwardness

MakanJuu

GardeningMomma

Enough about me.

TheOneOverThere

Yeah, thats the one.

zenjenn

Minion Wrangler

dondomat

Anninyn

Stealing your twiglets.

Chris_tine

Writer & Marketer in the making

Once!

Still confused by shoelaces

dondomat

MakanJuu

zenjenn

Minion Wrangler

Reziac

Resident Alien

zenjenn

Minion Wrangler

MakanJuu

Reziac

Resident Alien

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

Reziac

Resident Alien

Oldbrasscat

Making stuff up...or maybe sleeping

Reziac

Resident Alien

MakanJuu