I mean… I have been. We all are.
But up until this month I was clipping along decently, all things considered. And then… this malaise.
Putting things off
Last Thursday, Aaron came over and we had some Indian food. I hadn’t put the dishes away from when I’d done them Tuesday, so I put the plates by the sink.
They finally got put away Wednesday. And only because I really forced myself to do that and fold laundry. And I haven’t even been running the Roomba because I just didn’t feel up to it.
I’ve been pushing aside these warning signs as not having had enough sleep or some other random thing.
But Tuesday and Wednesday, I thought about the fact that my check was coming and I’d be figuring out monthly money stuff and… I just felt tired and slightly overwhelmed.
So clearly there’s cause for concern.
Although in my defense, there is a lot to sort out this month. I spent significantly less this month, so there’s a surplus. But also $1,100 that my insurance needs to withdraw from my account, the guest house rest, the remaining stimulus funds I haven’t spent/donated, and probably some other stuff. So… this month’s money math is going to be more difficult than usual.
Still, I should feel some excitement.
Overly emotional
The real clue, though, came Tuesday morning when I suddenly felt like I was going to cry with absolutely no provocation. I just felt on the verge of tears.
My first thought, of course, was that my depression was flaring. Which it may well have been.
But my cycle is completely out of whack right now, so there’s also the chance it was PMS. Though I don’t get that much anymore.
I’m also dealing with some frustration at work as I try to contact people who aren’t getting back to me, which keeps me from helping our customers.
So maybe it was that. But it could be even more than those.
A situational issue?
It may be that my depression is worse, but not for organic “your medication isn’t working sufficiently” reasons.
First of all, there’s the isolation factor.
I didn’t see Aaron for two weeks thanks to a variety of factors, and I realized recently that I’ve been leaving my house a lot less than usual, even by pandemic standards.
So some of this could be isolation-induced depression. Aaron is going to try to come over today (Wednesday) or Thursday if possible, so that will be a) nice and b) a good way to see how I feel after I see him a little more regularly. (Also, he just adopted two kittens, who he’ll be bringing along. Which should be good for my mood.)
Second, there’s the food factor. I’m not really eating, but it’s hard to decide whether that’s a symptom or a cause.
It’s now uncomfortable to sit in my jeans and even standing, I’m in slight muffin-top territory. Reasoning with myself to stop eating junk food wasn’t working. So I’m now wearing my jeans every day. When cravings rear up, I concentrated on the fact that the jeans are slightly digging in and tell myself no.
But my brain/stomach are basically a petulant child and if they can’t have what they want, they don’t want anything for dinner. So I’m eating the first two or three small meals of the day, but then it gets harder when the fourth meals is a salad and the fifth a frozen dinner that definitely isn’t delicious fried food or pizza.
So I haven’t been taking in a ton of calories, which yes I know is terrible in general and definitely for my metabolism but… There’s only so much I’ve felt capable of getting myself to do lately.
The issue, as I said, is figuring out whether the food issue is a cause or a symptom.
- Is the disinterest in food because I have yet to accept that I need to eat better? Or
- Is the disinterest due to depression? Or
- Was the disinterest originally diet denial, but insufficient calories are now exacerbating any depression symptoms?
I guess we’ll see
The problem is that right now, there’s no way to tell for sure.
I can figure out a way to force myself to eat, I’m sure, but it’ll take a couple to few days of that to see whether my mood improves. Or whether my appetite comes back in general.
I have an appointment with my psychiatrist on the 23rd, though I’m sure I can move it up if that proves necessary. But he’s going to ask pretty much the same things I’m asking right now. So I need to take a little time to figure out what is causing the depression.
If I do all the right things and the emotionality and brittleness continue, I’ll talk to him about going to a higher dosage of Seroquel. If things get better and stay that way until the appointment, I’d prefer not to toy with medication levels.
Some changes
So yes, I need to figure out a way to make myself eat while still being conscious of calories and the general healthiness of the food.
Also, I need to be less isolated. Which could be difficult.
Aaron and I keep having things come up that have kept us from seeing each other much. It’s been health stuff and work stuff for the most part. And while I think he’s allayed his health concerns, work is still hard to predict. I know he’ll be here if he can, but it seems to be a bad idea to count on him more than once a week until things die down a bit and the starts stop aligning against us.
But my friend Leila — who lives about five minutes away — is concerned and has said she’ll happily come sit outside, six feet apart if I need to see someone in person. So I will likely have to take her up on that somewhat.
And as I alluded to earlier, I’m going to try to force myself back into my old routine. This means making the bed in the morning, running the Roomba daily, dealing with things like dishes or unfolded laundry expediently and keeping up on cleaning, though that’s more of a Saturday morning thing.
Hopefully, a combination of these factors will prove that the symptoms are just temporary and don’t require a higher dosage of Seroquel. But if I do all of this and am still struggling in a week or so, I guess I’ll have a talk with the psychiatrist.
How’s everyone else doing?
Glad you have some people around 💛 I haven’t gotten that way in a while but I definitely have a depression – food repulsion – feel like crap spiral too and it’s no fun. I hope you bounce back soon.
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Yeah, my depression can really go either way: overeating or undereating. I did go see Aaron and the kittens (!!!) yesterday which I think helped. But we went to bed late so I didn’t sleep enough and it’s thus hard to tell exactly what my mood will be when I’m well-rested. But I suspect it did help a lot.
It certainly didn’t hurt. 🙂 yay for kittens and cuddles!
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You are wise to be attune to your moods. Don’t beat yourself up however. It may or may not be something you are doing/not doing, eating/not eating, medicating/not medicating. If you feel that it is your responsibility to figure it out now and make a change you will beat yourself up more for still feeling crappy.
Go see the kittens! Think of it as purr therapy.
I know you don’t want to walk outside. That is not your thing. When the weather permits have a picnic. Visit with your friends outside.
Yes, see your therapist and call your mom, but don’t feel like you have figure it out.
Yeah, my main concern with figuring it out is that my psychiatrist will ask these questions that I’m currently asking if I bring up needing to adjust the doses. So I need to at least add in some calories and a little more in-person time to see whether that’s going to be enough or whether I do need to increase the meds. I’m okay doing the latter if it’s needed. But if the other two things are the main issue, I don’t want to have too much of a med in my system. So I need to explore the effects of taking care of those things.
And yes, my friend Leila will come over if need be — she’s actually probably going to need company soon herself — so I told her that I think I still have a super long extension cord we could run into the house to keep our laptops charged and watch Teleparty and kibitz as though we’re watching the same screen in a living room. Just slightly cooler.
And I have to admit that this spring when I went out on (short) walks with Mom those were better than expected. So I won’t rule those out, especially if I go days without physically leaving the house or seeing anyone.
I think this is the hardest part of the pandemic. The vaccine is coming but it’s not being distributed fast enough. The winter doesn’t help most people and that has a cascade effect (maybe the people not getting back to you are struggling .) My anxiety is through the roof. I’ve had to get really strategic. I’m pretty much giving up on losing my Covid 15 for now (ok, it’s 30, ugh) and just focus on as much joy as possible to just get through the day. Which sometimes frankly looks like dessert. Is there delicious healthy takeout that you like? Can you see more friends for backyard meetups now that we have real data on masking? (yay for the double-mask!)
Sorry to hear your anxiety is so bad.
I’m trying to balance wanting to be healthier (and needing to have a stronger back and feeling more comfortable with a smaller belly roll when I sit) and being overly self-critical, since I have a history of body dysmorphia. It’s delicate.
I got to see Aaron yesterday and we found some mostly healthy takeout. He tends to eat healthily, so if I can keep my takeout to mostly just with him, I may be able to balance not always sticking to my diet with not plunging into junk food. (But my friend and I have already confirmed that calories don’t count on holidays, so all bets are off on Valentine’s Day!)
Amen to calories disappearing on holidays! And thanks for being transparent and supportive in your community here on your blog. Your words help me feel connected 🙂
Aw, that’s one of the nicest things I could hear. Thank you!
Thank you for this post. Honestly, same here and I didn’t realize it until I read this post. My motivation is down to zero so I’ve gotten nothing accomplished at work the past 2 weeks, which feeds into the lack of motivation because now everything is just so overwhelming. Sending you strength to get to the other side of this.
I’m sorry you’re in a similar spot. It just sort of creeps up on you, doesn’t it? Especially if you have periods of bad sleep, so you just blame the inability to do small things on being sleep-deprived.
I feel better having seen Aaron (and the kittens!), but I think I still need to be careful and stick to more of a cleaning routine so things don’t get to the point where they feel overwhelming. And if they do, I’ll go back to my old strategy when my depression was up and down a lot. I had a mental or physical list and I just told myself that I only had to do 1-2 things off of it on any given day. If that’s all I could manage, I still got to feel like I met a goal that day. But other times, getting one or two things done and not having descended into a weeping mess from the effort (usually), would spur me on to tackle another item or two.
What Katie says.
Here: sink so full it is hard to reach the faucet, not sleeping well, skipping exercise classes at the gym, laundry piling up, too tired to take meds as needed/scheduled, don’t want to eat, no patience to wait in drive thru lines for a cup of coffee and don’t want anything else (except maybe Burger King onion rings), aggravated and infuriated at the vaccine mess (let’s all schedule multiple appointments on multiple websites that don’t work for vaccine that does not exist in sufficient quantities), tired of all of the commercials on TV to buy buy buy when we are not supposed to be out and about, and snow and or ice every other day.
I do go out and shovel the snow and chip the ice. I really want a chocolate snowball with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle!!! I may adopt your method of wearing too tight jeans; I have a pair that I cannot close…..but the length is correct so my ankles would not be cold.
I did figure out that I’m not getting enough fluids/water, so trying to correct that. Will see if that improves my mood and situation.
Keep hanging in there, and know that we care about you and love you.
Thank you, Nancy, everyone’s support is always a huge factor in my mental health.
Sufficient fluids will hopefully help a bit. And yes, the fatigue of commercials and of vaccine anticipation coupled with continuing reports of difficulty getting appointments… It’s a lot.
I hope the kittens helped. If I wasn’t allergic, I know they’d help me.
I expected February to be the worst month since it’s usually peak Seasonal Affective Disorder for me, but I’m strangely in a good place over the last week.
A lot of life’s little fires have been mostly resolved and I feel like I can take a breath. My wife got the vaccine (health care worker) and COVID cases are down a huge amount from their all-time high average exactly a month ago.
I found that a lot of my emotions are tied to how my kids are doing. A couple of weeks ago, we were getting calls from the school every day about their bad behavior (yes they are in school and they have had one COVID case all year – which was quickly isolated). Lately, they’ve put down the video games to read graphic novels for hours on end. They seem to be in much better moods which helps their behavior.
Maybe it’s just a calm before a storm. I hope you figure out how to get back on track.
Lazy Man and Money recently posted…Passive Income Update: January 2021
The kittens DID help. Immensely. And yeah, February is pretty bad for SAD. In January, I was better about using my light, so I need to get back to that in the mornings.
So glad your wife got the shots! That’s one big relief, I’m sure. And it absolutely makes sense that your mood would vary with your kids’. I think worry for loved ones tends to take precedence in our minds unless things are really, really bad. I’m glad they’re evening out too — and that the school is being so good about cases!
Is it weird that i knew something was up? When you didn’t reply to comments i knew something was up. How’s your friend Kevin doing? Maybe you do need some in person contact with your friends six feet apart. These things seem to come in waves but i’m glad your are seeing the warning signs within yourself. Take care Abby
Well, given how little I’ve been on Twitter and yeah the lack of responses to comments… Definitely makes sense that you’d figure out something is up, since you see me on both platforms. Honestly, there were a few days where I legitimately forgot to check the blog comments, I was so out of it. I just thought, “Ok, I put a post up.” and then just didn’t check the site. Eek.
These things definitely come in waves, so I’m bearing that in mind too. While I shouldn’t be too passive, it’s good to know that this will likely pass one way or the other.
Kevin actually got a roommate who’s pretty concerned about COVID. It’s great that he has company, but I haven’t offered to go over because they wouldn’t be comfortable seeing me (even at a distance, I think) knowing that Aaron goes to the gym. He’s shown me pics and described it to the point where I feel he’s being safe even doing that. But everyone’s threshold is different, and they’re probably smart for not wanting to take the chance.
But my friend Leila will come over if needed. Since we live so close, we joked that we could probably get a bat-signal type thing. I said it would need to be in the shape of a cocktail glass though.
Our struggle is with being good enough parents for JB while we’re all exhausted with no breaks and they’re an energetic kid with very few outlets. Some days we wonder if we’re gonna make it without traumatizing them for life with our lack of patience! We need a whole other adult here to spell us for a bit and that’s not happening. Sigh. And I’m definitely going through stress loss of appetite too.
All that to say, in quiet, tired solidarity are we. I hope that whether it’s something you actively change or not, something shifts to give you some relief. Hugs.
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Having the energetic JB and now the smol acrobat…Well, I honestly don’t know you and your partner cope. My hat is off to you both.
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We aren’t quite sure how we’re coping either. We feel steamrollered most days.
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I’m also struggling with keeping the house up. I’ve been prioritizing snow removal, trash, dirty dishes, and stocking refrigerator. I’m trying to plan ahead for 1 thing a day. Cleaning ceiling fans tonight and going to laundromat tomorrow. I bought some cheater snacks like pre-sliced apples to take to work. Is there a fruit or veggie that you like to snack on?
Oh lord, I haven’t cleaned the ceiling fans in far, far too long I even have a Swiffer extender duster for it. Eesh. And man, I don’t know how anyone keeps up with snow removal. (I know, it’s a necessity but it would make me want to curl up and cry.)
I buy fruit when it’s on sale here, but I mainly stick to grapes or, if they’re in season, strawberries and cherries. Fruit sale prices have ruined me for even quasi-sale prices on fruit, which makes it hard to buy. Also, I eat a fair amount of fruit in one sitting. So while it’s still low calorie compared to junk food, it’s not as healthy as most people eating fruit. And it makes it significantly more difficult to keep track of calories for my diet. So it’s sort of a catch-as-catch-can thing, I guess.
Ugh. SAME. That’s all I can muster.
Sorry you’re feeling the same way. And yes, don’t muster your energy here. Save it for the overwhelming task of contemplating cleaning. That takes most of what I have some days. Just thinking about it.
Have you looked at food delivery like Freshly or something. Might be helpful.. and you could use a coupon.. I found it to be good … (said as I’m waiting on pizza delivery).. Might help get you through this tough times, easy and healthier but filling.
Yeah, I looked at Freshly at one point. (It’s on Mr. Rebates!) And maybe I should revisit that. At least they probably have calorie counts, so I could keep better track. And their food sounded quite good. Thanks for the reminder!
I wonder if this is quarantine fatigue. If so I think I have it too. I’m feeling a lot more fatigue and I can’t keep up with the housework. I’m also sick of cooking. Hopefully things will be looking up for all of us soon.
Yeah, I’m sure part of it is just one of the emotional walls I run into during this pandemic. I hit them from time to time, but I guess it’s better than bottling it all up? I’m sorry you’re feeling more fatigue. It’s the pits. take care of yourself.
A lot of us are “hitting a wall” this January & February, me included. I’m trying to be gentle with myself though. Even though I’m not facing any particular crisis that would “justify” feeling lousy, I’m finding it helps simply to acknowledge that carrying the weight of Covid fatigue+post-holiday letdown + the Jan 6th cesspool + dreading the 1 year anniversary of lockdowns… well it adds up. And it’s heavy. So it’s okay if I slump some days and rally on others. The dishes will eventually get done.
httpss://www.huffpost.com/entry/coronavirus-pandemic-wall-mental-health_l_601b3c9dc5b6c0af54d09ccb
I’m sorry you’re struggling too. And yeah, I don’t think anyone needs to justify feeling lousy at any point, let alone a pandemic. I was telling a friend that emotions aren’t logical but there’s a logic to most emotions. So if you feel lousy, unless you’re blowing something very tiny out of proportion for an undeserved pity party — and almost no one in a pandemic can be accused of that — you’re allowed to feel lousy without someone else agreeing that your life has a sufficient level of difficulty. So in a pandemic, we can all feel lousy whenever — and often do, but it gets worse at times.
And yes, it’s a huge thing not to beat yourself up and to just think “Yup, I feel awful and that’s that.” Trying to police your emotions takes precious energy away from the other stuff.
I thought I was doing ok, until February happened with massive snow and extreme cold. Ever since then I have been so disgusted and just over this whole situation. . If the pandemic was not enough, now really awful weather too, sheesh. You have to shovel every time there is new snow and salt like crazy. I am just exhausted and fed up.
Just trying to keep up with snow would probably take everything I have, honestly. So yup, I can see where cold weather and the resulting need for snow removal would be the proverbial straw. Take care of yourself — and stay warm.
I want my shot. I WANT MY SHOT! I’m tired of feeling vulnerable. (Probably can’t get it until March, though.)
Definitely have hit a wall. Fortunately, I’m able to make some adjustments to my work schedule and thus have been reading more and stressing less. I also have the great good fortune of living with someone who’s right there with me in the mutual-adoration department.
But like Linda B. says, I just wanna go to a movie. Or a play. Or to the symphony.
Patience sucks.
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Yeah, I think we’ve all been ready to go out for a long time. My friend and I keep sending each other funny Instagram posts about drinking with the caption “Us when bars are finally safe.” But they’re getting increasingly doleful because we know how far away that is. I’m so glad you have DF with you for mood and just general loving company.
Don’t get me started, Abby, I may NEVER shut up! ;o) I hope you feel better very soon.
I did get to see Aaron on Wednesday night. So I got play time with kittens and some time and physical contact with a real-live person. So that did help my mood. Aaron said he’s going to try a little harder to make sure we see each other regularly, even if it means a late start. (Usually, we decide not to meet up if we’d be starting much later than 5:30 p.m., since the goal is to be in bed around 9 p.m.)
I’m glad you’ve noticed it. So easy to just slide into that malaise without seeing it.
Back in December, I upped my dose of antidepressant. Has helped me. I hope the routine and other mitigation factors you’re working on help!
I’m glad you were proactive and got the adjustment in dosage. I’ve decided to do the same and I’ll just look into decreasing when the world is less awful.