Here is how I’m different: I’m smiling more, laughing more and talking more. I sleep well and my daytime energy is great. I worry less, even while my personal life has recently increased in stress. At times this new peace has been unsettling because I’m not used to feeling such lightness and joy. Happiness feels foreign. This kind of humor reminds me of falling in love or the way I felt right after the ayurvedic panchakarma treatment in 2009. That made me feel really happy like this afterwards, but it didn’t last. If only this could last!
I told my husband, “Do street drugs make you feel better than this? Because if they do, I don’t need ’em!” When people ask me “How are you?” I answer from the heart, “I’m good!” I haven’t truly meant that in years. I’ve always thought that people who go around heartily and cheerfully greeting the world were bizarre freaks of nature, but I’m turning into one of them.
This new me is a result of eight intensive months of EMDR treatment, using EFT, talk therapy and finding the medication that works for me. I wonder how my life might have been different, damn it, if I had put this particular combination together for myself years ago.
Here is my advice: if one anti-depressant doesn’t work for you (eg. no effect, bad effects, etc.), keep trying different ones until you find what really works for you! Don’t let the doctor say there are no more options. I kept saying I needed something else until we finally got it right. Yay, me!
Life is good. That’s a simple statement that countless people spew casually or wear on their clothing, but I have never in my life believed it. I was sure they were stupid or deluded, but now I might be one of them! If being stupid or deluded also means feeing happy, I’ll take it. I don’t care because I feel good. This particular combination of therapies and meds have finally shifted my former view of myself and my life. Hard work with an EMDR therapist has finally gotten me, at the age of 44 and a half, to finally believe I’m good. I don’t deserve the worst. Life doesn’t always suck. I don’t suck. I know those negative beliefs were never true, but you couldn’t have convinced me of it. EMDR finally got me to see it on my own.
I am so grateful for this. The second half of my life looks so much better than the first half! (If I live to 89.)
hey, am so pleased to hear you say you're happy and becoming a freak of nature – a very happy one!!! xxx take care and stay happy!!!
I didn't say they were gone. Of course they're still there! But it turns out that when your chemically deficient brain gets what it needs, your need to self-medicate — say with sugar — lessens. I still want sugar, but I don't NEED it emotionally. YAY!
The sugar cravings will return, lol
Plus my sugar cravings are down! Miracle on top of miracle!