Late May Monte Report

I am pleased to report that for some reason, on Wednesday May 6 my mood lifted, and it has stayed elevated since then. I had that day off work, and spent the day out in nature, and maybe that helped boost my mood. But I've spent plenty of depressed days out in nature. My doctor doubled the dosage of my Celexa a few days earlier, and perhaps that took effect quickly and has continued to successfully do its work. Regardless, I shan't sniff a gift fish. Let's hope it lasts!

With this elevated mood, things at work have been going more smoothly. "Issues" with my boss are under control, and I've been taking less Xanax at work. Maybe this smoothness at work is a result of my good mood, or maybe it's the cause of my good mood. Either way, it's good news.

I had my birthday last week and really enjoyed myself. I had a low-key celebration -- just dinner with friends and coworkers -- but it was fun. And this weekend I'm off to Arizona to spend a couple days with my Mom and my brother. I'm looking forward to it.

Here is this month's snippet from Dr. Allen's Coping With Depression:

"Throughout this book I have been emphasizing how depression stems from a pileup of stress rather than from a discrete stressful event. Moreover ... being depressed creates additional life stress. ... [W]hich came first, the stress or the depression? ... The chicken-and-egg problem arises because depression contributes to relationship conflicts and results from them; depression can be both cause and effect. To disentangle cause and effect, a number of researchers have taken pains to distinguish between fateful stressors -- those completely independent of the person's actions or beyond the person's control -- and non-fateful stressors, what I call partly self-generated stress, that is, stressful events in which the person's actions and difficulties played a role. ... This distinction between partly self-generated and fateful events has a great deal of practical importance because, to the extent that you can identify any active role you've played in the stress in your life, you have some leverage in reducing it." [pg 97]

I think I've included quotes along this line before. I am acutely aware that my conscious, controllable actions have a direct impact on the relationships in my life. Particularly with respect to my boss, I'm well aware of how stress in that relationship results from things I say and do. As a result, I am very careful with how I handle that relationship: if I play my cards right, the relationship will improve and the stress that comes from that relationship will decrease. Over the past three weeks things have been more friendly and less stressful -- but whether that's a cause or a result of my elevated mood is hard to say.