Early February Monte Report

The past couple weeks have turned out to be extremely difficult. The new thyroid medication is not the miracle drug I was hoping it would be. There's a movie coming out next week that I want to see, but otherwise I feel as though there's nothing to look forward to in life. I try to look forward to things like spending time with friends; new books to read; the coming Spring and Summer when I can once again spend quality time out in the woods; that next bowl of ice cream; and my fantasy of one day moving back into my old apartment that overlooked the river -- but it doesn't really work. If I was in a better state of mind I'm sure I could find things to look forward to other than a silly movie. It seems imperative though that I find something else to really look forward to.

I saw my psychiatrist yesterday, and he theorized that something traumatic may have happened to me in my early childhood that left me so vulnerable to feeling abandoned. Feelings of abandonment are a key component of my depression, especially where figures of authority or respect are concerned. I can crash if my boss (who I really look up to) leaves work early, for example. (Sometimes my mood crashes when he simply goes to lunch). I know it's irrational, but a part of me ends up feeling as though it's my fault he's leaving, that I've done something wrong to drive him away. It's intriguing to think it may be connected to a traumatic abandonment of some sort when I was a toddler.

One key to coping with my depression, according to my psychiatrist, is learning to "detach" myself from the feelings -- to be able to step back and observe them from a more neutral perspective. It's actually not a new suggestion, but I'm newly reconsidering it, and how I might accomplish it. I've got a zillion self-help books -- you'd think it would be easy to turn my depression into a study exercise. With just a single lousy movie to look forward to, maybe I'll somehow manage to quickly learn to step back from the negative and become a neutral observer of myself, just to have something to keep me going beyond next week.