Help please.

I know exactly how it feels to have been put on anti-depressants and gain a crapload of weight. I gained over 100lbs on anti-depressants. But for your question, don't care what other people think. I know that's hard to do because it's still hard for me to do but if you do it, you'll learn to love yourself so much better and when I say don't care...I mean it to an extent. Don't care what they think you wear or eat, you're your own person and have every right to wear and eat what you like. You can either try the don't care approach or you can just tell them straight up, hey I don't like your attitude and I deserve better friends than you so if you keep it up goodbye. That's my attitude.

My advice is that you've got to get up and start taking control!! This is YOUR life and it can be however you want it to be! You can do ANYTHING you want! So start making some steps in the right direction. You don't have to do everything at once. Day 1 start by getting up, taking a shower, eating a healthy breakfast, and maybe straightening up around the house. Start putting your health as your #1 priority. Eventually get a new therapist if you don't like the one you're with. If you think your doctors office doesn't take you seriously. Go to another one. If your friends are jerks to you, then stop hanging out with them. They're obviously not good people anyways. Stay on Myfitnesspal. Everyone here is so nice and accepting and inspiring. Life is such a precious gift and there is so much to be seen and done out there...don't let one second pass you by just because you're not happy with your life today. Absolutely everything in your life can be changed. So get to it gurl! Tomorrow is a new day and you're starting your journey back to the real you! It's exciting so enjoy it!

I agree with kcantrell. I think you might need to talk to someone to try and work out your feelings and not just medicate them. You need to find out the root of why you are feeling like this. I would certainly tell your doctor how you are feeling, this is important and he/she should be able to refer you to someone. I wish you a world of love and best wishes. Please take care of yourself as you are worth it.

If you feel you won't be taken seriously at your regular doctor, go to another, or to a clinic. Do what you have to do to take care of yourself! Only you can do this, and despite how you feel, you CAN do it. I've been there, and the best gift I've given myself is to accept my illness and know when to get help.
You DO have support, and it does matter.
Please take care. I'm rooting for you to get well.
Tree

I suffer from clinical depression so I can totally relate to how you are feeling. I get like that too. The last person to reply is right. I am still learning not to care what anyone else thinks about what I'm eating and gave up caring what anyone else thought about how I dress a long time ago. In my case it's my mother who makes the worst comments about what I eat and how much I eat. Then again she has also told me my walking laps around a park is a waste of time and pointless. My friends are all super supportive of my weight loss plan and when they can will actually walk with me which makes it more fun. I was also given a tip yesterday by a nutritionalist. Omega 3 is a natural antidepresant so she recommended that I eat 2 tuna fish sandwiches per week. Unfortunately I can't eat tuna but she said it comes in a pill too so I'm going to try that as soon as I can. Just remember what a friend of mine here on MFP told me......you aren't doing what you are doing for anyone else. You are doing it for you so who cares what others think.

What I'm going to say is probably going to sound harsh, but here it is.

First off, your friends aren't friends. Friends are the ones who stick beside you through thick and thin. The ones who don't say harsh things to you or make comments about your clothes or what you're eating. They're the ones who call you to see how you're doing even if they haven't heard from you for weeks on end. They're the ones who listen even if they don't understand.

Any therapist who tells you that you won't gain weight on an antidepressant is suspect. The truth of the matter is that there's no certainty either way. Same as there's no certainty a particular med is going to held your depression. And that's where you are right now, in a deep depression, and you need help. You need to get to a psych who is willing to go the trial and error route to find what works for you. And seriously, right now losing weight should not be your biggest concern. What should be is getting a handle on your depression.

Once the depression starts to ebb then you can start to work on your weight, and at the same time find a med that doesn't make you gain or hold on to weight that still works for your depression. It took me a long while to find the right combination, but there are a lot of options out there and it can be found.

I wish there were another way to handle it, but you really need to go back to the doctors. For me it was hard as heck to go when I was at that state. But I pulled myself together and when I faced the doctor I said simply 'I feel like I'm going crazy. I can't live like this. I'm not living like this. I'm barely existing. I need help.'

If I can help in any way, please friend me, message me. I've been there.

Depression isn't something you ever completely recover from, so if you have been diagnosed with it before, it is probably rearing its ugly head again.

I've had depression and social anxiety disorder since age twelve. The depression, at least in my experience, tends to cycle-- I'll go through periods where I'm feeling fine, and then periods where I feel like utter crap. I was never able to find an antidepressant that helped-- every one I tried made me feel awful and lethargic and brain-sluggish, which was the last thing in the world I wanted. My doctor was able to help me find one drug that helped with the social anxiety disorder that I could take as needed when I knew I would be in a situation that would trigger my anxiety, and in the end that wound up helping my depression too since I was actually able to go out and be involved in the world around me without having an SAD flip-out.

You need to work with a doctor on this. They are serious disorders that can have serious consequences, and even if antidepressants aren't always the right route, a doctor is going to be able to be the most help. You might even consider speaking to a naturopathic doctor if one's available in your area, or some one who is open to those sorts of idea, if traditional medicine hasn't worked in treating it in the past. There are lots of things outside of antidepressants that can help with depression-- physical activity and dietary supplements wound up helping to bring mine under control-- but you need to see a doctor to figure out what route is best for you to take.

I have been in a similar situation. Several years ago I lost [a shocking amount] of weight the wrong way due to an eating disorder, then entered therapy and went on anti-depressants and gained around 60lbs in a year. The shock of how people treated me differently (before and after) plus the emotional and mental taxing of being "tiny" and then "huge" put me into a tailspin and I considered very bad things. At this point I was not in therapy, because I thought I could handle it alone and didn't like therapy, and I was truly struggling.

I did contact a therapist again and I think that is one of the first important steps for you. You do not deserve to be alone with this struggle. A therapist is someone who is professionally trained and also not connected to anything in your current life -- your own personal confidante who won't judge, shame, or make catty remarks about you, and who is charged with being an honest reflection of you so that YOU can see it and decide where, what, when, and if to address, change, or change your thinking.

You stated you do not want to go to your doctor because you are there a bit already. I am not sure if/where you work, but perhaps your workplace has a liason for mental health services? You can also call your insurance company or contact a locator service like http://store.samhsa.gov/mhlocator You do not necessarily need to go through your general practitioner for this and, if your insurance requires it, having documentation of your inquiries (or even an appointment lined up) might lend credence.

I know you stated you lost your confidence in your therapist because you gained weight on the antidepressants she recommended. I should note that the weight gain I experienced was not due to the SSRIs alone. I wanted to believe that, of course. My point in saying this is not to criticize you, but point out that weight gain is not something your therapist can control. Prescribing drugs is an "exact" science based on percentages and statistics-- drugs such as these are always going to have different effects on different people, and no one can speak in absolute certainties - not even the people you pay to make those decisions. The weight gain associated with these drugs is usually about 10lbs (unless you are taking about steroids, which can cause significant water retention, etc.). I speak for myself in saying those extra 50 on me were a result of laying around, eating what made me feel good, and feeling bad for myself (perhaps, in part, because the SSRIs didn't make me feel as good as they were supposed to). Again, I am just trying to clarify that, in my opinion, it would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to dismiss the wonderful advantages a therapist can offer you because the drugs s/he recommended did not turn out the way you and s/he hoped. Also, there is always hope in trying a different drug. I am not a pharmacist, so I am not recommending anything, but Lexapro is *unlikely* to lead to weight gain and, if you are one of those people who react to it unfavorably, adding Welbutrin usually helps that.

Beyond that, one of the things you can change is your friend base. These friends do not seem supportive. This may seem harsh, but out of 16 friends, there are certainly a few who you can take a vacation from temporarily. I'm not advocating giving up on these friendships because it is very important to maintain social connections - just taking a "time out" because they are not giving you what you need right now, and you are not in a state to brush off their nasty complaints. It won't make you a bad friend to take care of yourself.

Also, out of 16 friends, is there one or two who you feel closer to? How would you feel about calling or meeting one or both of them for a small chat/lunch/etc. and explaining how these comments affect you, and how you are not in a positive place right now and may need additional support and understanding for a while. It is difficult to do; if you are not comfortable doing this in person, perhaps a letter, or a phone call in which you read from a script you've already written. You may consider doing something similar addressed to your husband.

In the everyday, make it a point to do one thing per day. One! Get out of bed and paint your toenails (why? Because there is nail polish whose very purpose in life is to make someone's toes bright pink...you can't deprive it of its one goal in existence!) Put the dishes away. Put on one favorite song and dance to it. Then you have permission to go back to bed...and maybe you will, maybe you won't.

Write down 3 things you are grateful for. Maybe it's the feel of your sheets, maybe it's your husband, maybe it's the fact your husband is gone for a couple hours... Take the time to recognize something that is good, even though everything else feels bad. It is VERY HARD to do this sometimes. Be gentle with yourself in making your list. The point is not to make a good list or a commendable list or to be grateful for Dr. Jonas Salk curing polio...the goal is to remind yourself of three tiny points of light at the end of the tunnel.

Good luck. You are a person who is worth every single one of these actions, and you will be okay.

M.