Mindspin

Have you ever seen those jugglers and acrobats who spin plates on the end of sticks? Look at that picture. That woman can spin five plates on sticks in each hand and still able to balance another upside down acrobat spinning with her toes!

Now that’s what I call multitasking!

I am not a literal plate spinner, of course. I wouldn’t even attempt it. I don’t even have the coordination required to swing my belly dancing veils in a seductive manner and I don’t think my TMJ related neck pain would allow me to upside-down a toe spinner.

I am a plate spinner of another sort.

We’ve all familiar with the expression “I have a lot on my plate”. I not only have a lot on my plate, I have a lot of plates. In a way, I am like those acrobats, carefully balancing all of those plates on little sticks in my mind and I run like a nut in order to keep them all spinning.

Usually, I am in a groove. A few weeks ago, though, my own head started spinning and I got dizzy and just couldn’t keep up with all of the plates. Seemingly one by one, they all came crashing to the ground leaving me with a bunch of broken pieces.

I have anxiety issues. Since I’ve been very young (like 3) I have been plagued with panic attacks and phobias, along with an impulse control disorder known as trichotillomania. That’s just a big word for compulsive hair pulling. You’ve all heard stressed out people say “I’m pulling my hair out”, right?

Most people just say that. I really do it.

No big surprise considering my genetic lineage. Some people come from a long line of doctors, athletes or military veterans. Not me. Oh no, I come from a looooong line of people with anxiety disorders on both sides of the family.

In spite of all of these things, I consider myself to be very responsible and I can handle a lot more than most of my non-anxiety disordered friends and acquaintances. I’m not normally comfortable about talking about extremely personal issues and very few people on this planet actually know the things I am dealing with all at once.

I can normally handle my own issues and pretty much those of everyone else, except one of my worst fears have come true. One of my daughters appears to have dipped in the anxiety gene pool and she is really struggling. Watching her wrangle with this ordeal has been complete torture to me and there’s a big part of me that feels terribly guilty. I know I didn’t contribute to this per se, but I also don’t know how I could have missed it until it got as bad as it is.

I did feel my own anxiety building. I even renewed my prescription for the anti-anxiety medication that I’m supposed to take when I feel that way. I guess I just didn’t take it as often as I needed it because my mind said “enough” and just like when you miss a beat spinning all those plates on sticks, I came crashing down. My usually optimistic self turned into a weepy, pessimistic soul. Not good for me and certainly not good for darling daughter right now.

I’ve only experienced depression somewhat like this at two other times in my life. The first was a postpartum depression after the birth of my third child and the second time was after having about a dozen surgeries in a year’s time. Neither time did I take an anti-depressant.

Please don't tell Tom Cruise, but this time I followed my doctor’s advice and began taking one. It’s been two and a half weeks and while I do feel a lot better than that one day, I still find that I’m dragging myself through things I used to do almost effortlessly.

My doctor says to be patient because it can take weeks for these types of medications to work and so far, this seems to be working with not all that bad side effects. The medicine is increasing the frequency of trichotillomania episodes (but so does anxiety) and I’m having panic attacks while I am sleeping which only happened very rarely before. My creative senses have also seemed to run off somewhere, too. It’s hard to write in my normal snarky manner.

I don’t know why exactly I am writing this post and I’ve struggled with the wording for the last four days. I guess I’m looking for stories from people who have struggled with similar depression and anxiety issues and have had success with an anti-depressant treating both issues. If you have anything you’d like to share, please e-mail me at jessicatherockchick@yahoo.com.