Life On Life's Terms

Today I wanted to talk with you about emotions and how emotions heal through medication withdrawal and recovery. If you have been wondering what emotions will be like on the other side of the healing journey, please stay with me, because I would love to share some of what I've experienced and some of what I know about the healing process to encourage you through this, and to give you a picture of what that can be like on the other side.

Emotions and withdrawal is a really, really big theme, because a lot of us came to these medications because of something that was going on in our emotions, our mental health, our mood that was destabilizing us. And so this can be a big question mark: will I be okay emotionally without medication?

I'd love to describe some of what that journey was like for me, what my emotions were like when I was medicated, what it was like during the injury and the withdrawal experience, and what it is like now on the other side. I'm going to dive into some of my story, and whatever from that experience is helpful to you, just take it as encouragement. Whatever isn't, just leave it, because each of us are on our own unique journeys of healing.

Ten Years in the 'Meh' Range

I ended up on medication because of severe postpartum depression with some severe symptoms. That was my pathway onto medication. When I was medicated, I seemed pretty much myself after stabilizing from that first depression, though I did get worse on the medication at first before I did stabilize.

Over the course of ten years, I would have less joyful experiences and more mundane ones. My experience of life was more ordinary. For instance, if I went on a vacation that was supposed to be really fun or exciting, it just seemed to me to be exactly the same as normal life, but more money, or exactly the same as normal life but more stress to arrange it.

I thought that was probably because I was a young adult when I first got on the meds, and maybe things just didn't feel as fun or joyful as an adult. So I attributed it to that. There were a lot of things that kind of went in that category emotionally: I wouldn't feel those peak joys at special experiences, birthdays, holidays, family events, milestones.

To me they more often had just as much negative emotion as stressful ordinary days, and not a lot of payoff. And so I just interpreted that as: oh, I guess that's the way adult life feels. It's just kind of sad to think about it that way.

I have learned now that that can actually be an effect of medication. Each person's brain is unique, but it can keep you in this 'meh' range where you're not going severely down, but you're also not experiencing some of the peak joys. So that makes sense to me now. If I went on a vacation, it was like, well, this was a very expensive way to have another ordinary day.

Dark Clouds and the Missing Piece

Another thing I experienced while medicated was sometimes having really dark clouds looming, a feeling that things were not right, that something was wrong in my life, something major I needed to fix or repair. A looming feeling of sadness or loss, gray and overcast. So I would try to evaluate where it was coming from. Is it some trauma that needs to be resolved? I'd go to therapy. Am I living in an unhealthy environment? Is there a relationship problem? I would try to throw everything I could at it to feel happier or more positive. And it was just really strange because it would linger for such a long time.

So there were medication changes for me throughout the years as an effort to fix things. Sometimes because of side effects and the doctor would recommend it, or a friend would say a certain med worked great for her and I'd think maybe I should try that one. It was kind of a hot mess with medication changes. And I didn't realize that those medication changes could also have an effect on me lasting longer than about a month. That turned out to be the missing piece of the puzzle I did not understand at the time.

The Taper, the Injury, and What Came After

Ultimately I became very, very depressed, having worked so hard on trying to be healthy. The thing that really helped was some counseling and a greatly increased medication, but that ultimately was not the long-term healthy solution I wanted.

During my bad taper, my emotions did go down to where I felt gray and blue and miserable, depressed and upset, just a lot of negative emotions. I understood that as: well, that makes sense because I'm going off this medication. This was before I fully understood what it meant to become medication free, and this was all done independently.

I had reinstated and got a reinstatement injury when things went really bad. So my emotions got very dark, and I also started to have physical symptoms. At the time of the injury, my emotions became extremely dark, tormenting dark. There are not a lot of words to describe how horrific that experience was. We'll just partition that off as horrific emotions, the very, very severe end of the spectrum.

During my healing from that, my emotions were very heavy and dark. I had a lot of very intense fear, sadness and grief, a lot of neurological emotions that were negative: terror, anxiety, worst case scenario thinking, the worst kind of perspective of myself and my life and my future. I had anhedonia. All that positive stuff, hope, gratitude, peacefulness, joy, it felt completely unreachable. All I seemed to be able to experience was severely negative emotions, and it affected my interpretation of myself and my life and my future and my past.

Why Your Brain Tells Such Terrible Stories

It's easy in that state to think: oh, I was medicated all that time and now I'm waking up to reality. And reality is, oh, I'm a terrible person. I have no hope, I have no future. No one actually likes me. I'm not actually good at anything. I've screwed up my whole life, my finances, my relationships, and it's just a hopeless wreck.

The withdrawal brain is in a lot of pain. And in that pain, our mind is trying to find a reason for the pain. That's a survival skill our brains do: what did I do wrong that I can fix to get this better? And so your brain will tell you a story, your brain will tell you a reason, and it might latch onto anything. It might be like: you didn't work on your savings better, so that's why you're screwed. And logically that doesn't make sense. You could probably pull it apart and say, no, one plus three does not equal two. That's not true.

Or it might be about your money or your marriage or your kids or your house or your parents. It could be any number of life challenges or responsibilities your brain might come up with to explain why you're going through this. It might even be spiritual: you're going through this because of something you did that you're guilty of.

And the truth is that withdrawal is from a medication. It is from a medication you took on the recommendation of a doctor when you were seeking help. That's the story.

So if you're circling and spiraling, wondering whether it's because you didn't get the right career or didn't figure out your relationship early, I am just here to reassure you: withdrawal is from a medication injury, and it is something you can heal from. It is not permanent and it is not irreversible. The fact is it happened, but it's something your body is going to go through and then heals from.

Don't take your perspective now as if you're waking up to reality. You're waking up to pain. That's what this season is. If you're in withdrawal, you are waking up to pain. Yes, you probably had some numbness while you were on the medication, but that does not mean the story your brain is coming up with about what you were like on the meds is true.

My brain was telling me all kinds of things, like I was a horrible mother, completely drugged and out of touch. I came up with these atrocious, villainous stories about myself, and they weren't true, but they were so believable to me. I could barely give any space in my brain to another option. I could just barely entertain an alternative to those villainous stories of myself.

Yours might be different, but the truth is there were some things that were affected, and to be affected is not the same as the terrible withdrawal story our brains come up with when we're in the midst of it.

What Actually Helped

Things that did help me when I was spiraling were reassurance from people who knew me during that time, people I could trust who were supportive or understood withdrawal.

Reassurance did help: reassurance that I would heal, reassurance that this is a process. Having those withdrawal buddies or the people who are in your corner, like a spouse or a mom, somebody you can pick up the phone and call when you're falling apart, and they can say: hey, you're gonna be okay. You're gonna come through this. No, you are not a monster. You're gonna come through this and be better. That can make so much of a difference, giving you something to hang onto when your brain is really coming apart.

I also would write out a prayer on a little prayer card, and it addressed every one of my loops. I would write something truthful I could pray or ask God for. I also had reassuring quotes. If you have a quote from a friend that's really encouraging, or a quote from someone who inspires you or gives you comfort through this, you can write that on a note card. And I would use scripture, since I'm a Christian, and there were scriptures that were encouraging that I could write on a note card. Those written words of reassurance were another tool I used with those overwhelming emotions.

And then co-regulating with others, being around others who are calming. That might be a withdrawal support group, or a phone call with someone who's calming and soothing. One of my people would go on rides with their friend who was doing DoorDash delivery and just hang out with them all day because it helped calm them. They said: I need to get through the hours of the day, and this person is coming and they're my good friend and they're just doing DoorDash, so I'll just ride with them. Finding those little ways, those points of connection that help soothe and calm you, can be very helpful in this healing process.

Life on Life's Terms

Healing does come. You will round that bend, and the world will look so different and your emotions will be so different. I would love to share what the healing of those emotions has felt like, because it's been awesome.

It was around eighteen months that I really rounded a bend, and then I felt like fully myself plus some at two years. My emotions now are what I can only describe as "life on life's terms," a phrase from the recovery world. My husband has a recovery background and I've learned some of those concepts, and I love that one for describing what life is like for me now.

"Life on life's terms" to me means I have emotions that reflect the direct experience. If I go out for ice cream with my kids, I'm thinking about how great that ice cream is, or how cute my kids are, or how funny, or the texture of the seat I'm sitting on, or a joke my husband makes. I am experiencing the emotions of that moment, the flavor of the ice cream, what my relationships with my family feel like.

And if I get some worrying news about someone's health in my family, I might have feelings of: oh, that's really worrisome, I feel so stressed about that, I don't feel right about that, that really bothers me. I will have an experience that is direct to what's actually happening, and in proportion to what's appropriate to the situation. Maybe that means I talk with a girlfriend about it or pray about it, and I go for a jog, and then I'm like: okay, I feel better.

The joys of life I fully experience for the texture that they are, and then the stresses of life I fully experience for the texture they are, but they come through me, I feel them in my body and in my mind, and then it works itself out and I'm in a normal, clear, good state.

There is no longer this lingering dark cloud, this mysterious nebulous sense that something is just not right with me. It's completely gone. I feel a baseline of peace and joy and hopefulness and curiosity and adventure. And if something hard happens, I'm in it, trying to figure it out, and then we move on to the next thing.

It's such a relief to be able to experience life that way, where emotions actually make sense in proportion to the experiences. It's being alive. It's not being numb and it's not being in the agony of withdrawal. It's this beautiful, alive consciousness that feels like such a gift to experience, especially after going through all of that.

It's really such a gift to heal, and you are giving yourself that gift. You are giving others that gift by coming through this.

The darkness of withdrawal is not going to last. The despair and hopelessness, the negative perspective of yourself or your future or your past or of others around you, your perspective is going to transform as your emotions heal. As you heal, as your brain heals coming through this, you'll be able to enjoy and experience and engage with life fully on life's terms as you come out of this and come to the other side.

So take heart. You're going to get there.

❤️‍🩹 Joanna