Thanks... I'll hopefully respond in more detail tomorrow. For now... it's still confusing. No one sat down with me and went through why I was given my diagnosis. But then I wasn't in a state where much made a lot of sense.
But here I am, I've been on anti-depressants for nearly 6 years, and am in the slow process of reducing the dose, but my GP is in no rush to do this, as she's wary of my ... being engulfed by darkness, I guess I'd describe it as.
I don't see myself as wasting resources, I know I need help with what I have been living with in myself for many years - but depression? Back before I was diagnosed it was all just to me a mass of distress and worry and jumpiness and bleakness and exhaustion and vulnerability. Which I was worried might have been Schizophrenia, but apparently isn't. The relationship I feel to my symptoms [although my symptoms are less 'severe' now] I feel in right now is pretty much like how I felt towards my difficulties before I was diagnosed. But I have much more understanding and awareness of the complexities of my head of course now! It's a feeling of "How can all this be ... that?"
I know that 'depression' is the loosest possible description and doesn't cover everything that causes me distress. It's almost a generalisation. But it's the primary thing that a trained psychiatrist 'picked on' as the 'label of choice' for me.
You see, if I were to subjectively describe my distress states, it would indeed describe a state of depression - what happens when my mind shuts down and cannot bear a feeling. Suppressed feeling, and recovery is involving me in unsuppressing and becoming conscious and learning to feel... safely. It was never safe to feel when I was growing up. But when I look at the medically sanctioned diagnostic criteria I think "Really? At a stretch, yes. But?"
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