Early May Monte Report

My Mood-O-Meter shows a noticeable decline in my mood over the past few weeks. I'm still sleeping an awful lot -- 11 to 12 hours most nights, and more on the weekends. A couple weeks ago my doctor made another adjustment to one of my medications in order to see if that might help me sleep less, but it didn't work and my mood took a hit, so I've switched back to what I was taking before -- but my mood hasn't yet rebounded any. When I say "my mood took a hit," I guess what I mean is that I became more vulnerable to my triggers -- mainly work-related triggers -- and I started taking more Xanax and Seroquel in order to help me get through my workday.(Before my doctor changed my med I was hardly taking any extra Xanax or Seroquel at work.)

Even without my work-related problems, I'm still feeling depressed about my life. I feel as though I'm just going through the motions -- just trying to get from here to there, from laundry day to laundry day, from meal to meal, from one workday to the next, from Monday to Friday, from blog entry to blog entry, from sunrise to sunset . . . And I'm not really enjoying life in between each marking point. Hardly anything brings me pleasure these days. Between working, eating and sleeping, there's little time left over to enjoy in any case. I'm re-reading the Harry Potter series, and that gets me through my lunch breaks at work, and I'm watching "House MD" and "Lost" on DVD after work before bed -- and that's the extent of my weekday "fun." Weekends pose a greater challenge, since I generally don't know what to do with myself. Nothing interests me. I haven't been birdwatching since New Year's Day. I force myself to at least go hiking once each weekend, but even that brings me little pleasure. And so far I've failed to reach my goal of going on short hikes after work.

So I guess you could say I'm stuck in a rut.

Some appropriate quotes from Coping With Depression focus on Dr. Allen's view that "a substantial amount of stress that contributes to depression is at least partly self-generated":

"The perspective of agency draws our attention to the active role we play in shaping the environment that, in turn, exerts such a powerful influence on us. . . . Understanding whatever active role you played in falling into the hole of depression can help you climb out of it and stay out of it in the future. . . . Looking back and taking stock of your life, you [can] see your depression as an unwitting creation; an agent was involved, namely, you."

Clearly it would behoove me to ponder how my own actions contribute to my depression.