I just thought I would wrap up the week with an assortment of the stuff that is floating around in my brain. It has not been a good decluttering week, although I am getting better at only saving the important school papers instead of throwing everything in the file box. I have spent a lot of time this week on various appointments and meetings, as well as following up with several insurance issues that had come to my attention.
My Sleep Goal
So, I said yesterday that I was making a goal of getting 8 hours of sleep every night. I managed to get 7 last night — I stayed up a bit too late after finding out that my weekend plans were changing and thinking about how I was going to work everything out. But tonight, I should be able to get 8 hours, and maybe even a bit of a nap tomorrow since we aren’t planning to go out due to the snow.
Anti-Depressants
Did anyone else see the article in Newsweek about anti-depressants? They are saying that they have not actually been shown to be effective in treating depression and that it hasn’t really been proven that raising serotonin levels affects mood. I have not heard this before and thought both of those things were accepted truth, so I am interested to find out more about this situation.
The article did say, however, that there has been some positive effect in treating more serious or long-term cases, so I’m not sure where exactly I fall in that continuum. And, of course, you should not stop taking anti-depressants without your doctor’s help because you can experience withdrawal effects (I know from personal experience this can be pretty bad).
Michael’s Progress
Well, it has been a long week, but I have been able to cross a few projects off my list at work – thanks in part to two coworkers who have been able to help with some of it. I also went to Michael’s parent-teacher conference today and was pleasantly surprised to see both the Learning Support teacher and the SLP at the meeting. I was able to let them know that he is due for a re-evaluation this year and will be receiving a Permission to Evaluate form soon.
Michael has been making good progress with his IEP goals, especially now that he has such a good TSS with him, and he seems to be handling the ups and downs of the day much better. There have been a couple of days in the last month that were rough for him, but overall we are seeing improvement. I am hoping we will see some lessening of his anxiety and some other issues once we get his supplements back on track with his current nutritional levels (we are going to a new place in March).
My Cute Story for the Week
Sometimes after I turn out Michael’s light, he still wants another story, and so I try to make one up for him. This is NOT a strong point of mine! The other night when I was struggling to think of what to say, he was trying encourage me and said, “It’s okay, Mommy, it can be anything–fantasy, non-fiction, human interest…”
Well, my ears perked up at that and I turned to him and asked, “What’s human interest?” I couldn’t wait to hear what he was going to say; sometimes I get some very interesting responses when I ask him to define something he just said.
“Touches the heart,” he says to me.
“Where did you learn about that?” I ask nonchalantly.
“Skills group,” he tells me.
He is in a second-grade reading group! I can’t even tell you how old I was before I knew what a human interest story was, and I probably couldn’t have described it in less than two sentences even a couple of days ago. How funny is that!
I have been so encouraged by everyone’s comments on the topic of knowing your limits – both that I’m on the right track and that I’m not alone in the journey.
Barbara from TherExtras brought up a really great point in her comment:
I relate to having learned and accepted my limits for helping people through therapy. People are still surprised, and resistive, when they are told the work must be done by them, the change must happen within themselves or their lifestyle, for themselves or their children.
How true that is – there is no magic pill, even though medication and therapy can help you get to the place where you can make the necessary changes in your attitude and your actions. I have had a few glimpses of what it is like to feel good about your life and the way you are interacting with the world, and it is a little more disheartening each time those feelings start to go away.
So now, instead of letting myself be swept along by emotions and circumstances or berating myself for not handling everything I think I should without a hitch, I’ve decided to apply my analytical, researching nature to dealing with it.
I found a good article at HelpGuide.org called Dealing with Depression: Self-Help and Coping Tips. While at first glance, it contains a somewhat overwhelming number of practical tips and steps you can take to make your way toward recovery, I was encouraged by this advice:
The key to depression recovery is to start with a few small goals and slowly build from there. . . . Take things day by day and reward yourself for each accomplishment. The steps may seem small, but if you make time for them each day, they’ll quickly add up.
So, that’s good, right? I don’t have to tackle it all at once, and I can be proud of each step along the way. But I still didn’t know where to start.
I have “tried” (in quotes because none of these were consciously chosen coping strategies but in reality that’s what they were) getting involved in everything that comes my way to stay busy, hyperfocusing on advocating for Michael until the team was probably tired of hearing from me, organizing and re-organizing my schedule and house, and even going the other way and retreating into reading and watching TV.
Obviously, none of these things have worked.
One of the many links offered at the end of the HelpGuide article led me to A Case of Catch-22 at Psychology Today. This article addresses a key issue in the treatment of depression – that the very “things a person needs to do to get well are the very things the illness makes it difficult for any person to do. Resistance is intrinsic to the condition, making recovery an extraordinary challenge that typically takes a long time.”
I can definitely relate to that, and to much else of what was said in the article. One part that really caught my eye, however, was the advice given by one of the doctors quoted, who gave his recommendation of how to proceed:
[He] recommends that patients prioritize. “Think in terms of a hierarchy moving from the physical to the mental to the interpersonal. Start with sleeping and eating. Then add activity; start with a 10-minute walk. Tackle the cognitive and interpersonal stuff later.”
So, okay. This is what I needed – a plan. A plan that I didn’t have to come up with myself and therefore don’t have to second guess again and again.
Now I just have to follow it. First goal – get eight hours of sleep every night.
I shared recently about how I had decided to start taking Michael to see a psychologist and promised an update on how it’s been going.
One of the original things that motivated me to take him was a concern over his levels of anxiety and his self-esteem. Whenever he would get frustrated about something or be sent for a timeout, he was constantly saying things like, “Everybody thinks I’m stupid” and “Nobody likes me,” usually at the top of his voice as he stormed off to his room.
After the psychologist met with me and then talked with Michael for a while, she felt that his feelings of low self-esteem weren’t pervasive and that it was more a function of him just coming out with something drastic when he was extremely frustrated, since he didn’t really know how to handle that much emotion. And, sure enough, within a month of so, he switched from yelling about how horrible he was to how horrible WE were, as is “I hate you” and “You are the worst parent ever!”
(At this point, I am ignoring the yelling as long as he is actually on his way to his room for some alone time – which is sometimes a mom-ordered timeout and sometimes a self-imposed break.)
I took him to meet with psychologist weekly for a while, and then she suggested having him join one of her playgroups, which each have up to 4 or 5 kids all close in age/functioning level. He started going to the Kindergarten-2nd grade group and enjoyed it at first – partly because he had started being aware that he was different from the other kids at school and wanted to meet these other kids I said were out there who “thought like him.”
After a while, though, the group was ready to move into a more free-form time, where the kids would negotiate what games or activities they would do together. Michael and one of the other children were having trouble with this and still needed to focus on the challenges of actually playing together, especially with non-preferred activities. So she split the group into two and continued providing a more structured environment for the one Michael now attends.
Over the past year, he has definitely shown some progress in his ability to control his whining, continue playing a game even when he thinks he might lose (in group and at school, that is, God forbid anyone should beat him in MarioKart Wii!) and allow another child to contribute to his imaginary play. The psychologist is actually talking now about having him go back to the other group once in a while and see how he does with it.
I still occasionally make individual appointments with her to discuss specific concerns I may have and for her to work with him one-on-one. Overall, it has been an extremely rewarding experience!
