Soldato
I have anxiety, also get chest pains and tight feeling in my chest which I believe is linked to it in some way. Really need to get to the docs about it as trying to deal with it myself isn't working .
Has anyone here ever experienced any form of anhedonia after a long (several years) period of depression or as part of the 'recovery' process, or indeed anhedonia at all?
I never could reason if it was the ever increasing level of medication (when I last saw her 380mg daily of Venlafaxine) or just her own personality that felt nothing for anything or anyone. She never seemed to be like that when we first met, but it was not until a long time afterwards that I understood that she had kept a lot of her past and her present hidden from me and her family.
Venlafaxine is used for depression and anxiety and has had a great effect on me, reducing symptoms of both anxiety as well as depression.
I've been told I have anxiety by the GP, it sets all sorts of secondary symptoms off such as IBS and acid reflux which I have to take tablets for to control stomach acid.
Just to pick up on that point.
they are lost, with only shadows of what they were to guide them.
N.B. I am not a doctor nor an expert on the matter. This is just a perspective.
^
I can relate to the girl you are talking about. I was diagnosed with depression when I was 12 and have never really recovered although it feels like I now have a better understand how to make it better as I'm older. I can also see how badly it affected my family growing up with me..
My main issue is that I remove everything I can't cope with. I shut down and just don't deal with it any more.
I was kind of going to write loads here but I don't really know what to say. Meh
The root of many peoples hormonal depression lays, quite obviously, in their hormonal glands which aren't functioning correctly. For example, if you're an avid coffee drinker, sugar consumer and had intense periods of stress, it's quite possible your adrenal glands are fatigued, which could lead to anxiety, low blood sugars and subsequent insomnia. Maybe you've not had deficient iodine in your diet for years? Then it could lead to hypothyroid lending poor energy creation and metabolism. 2+ 2 = 4, as they say.
Your gut flora produces 80 of your bodies serotonin, whilst I can make no claim what affect this has on internal serotonin,
I dont expect you to take my word for it, its a huge paradigm shift after all, but thankfully some enlightened doctors agree that most mental illness starts in the gut and you can read what they have written. I implore you to have a look at Dr Natasha McBride's books on GAPS, or look around the internet to find out about the brain-gut connection, it could really help those ready to help themselves.
Quite obviously it doesn't because the first thing a competent doctor does is check thyroid hormone levels in anxious/depressed patients. Secondly adrenal fatigue doesn't exist.