Doubt

I had just seen my Wizard, The Shrink, and I was in our local groovy pharmacy today getting another prescription filled for anti-depressants. I decided to kill some time by perusing the store's book selection, and found this: "The Zen Path through Depression". The irony of me finding this book on Zen while waiting for my anti-depressants was not lost on me. I didn't know whether to chuckle at myself or to burst out in tears on how hopeless it all was.

When I first started taking anti-depressants three weeks ago, I was started out on Well.butrin. I felt the effects immediately. I went from 0 to 60 in a couple of days. I felt like the Energizer Bunny compared to how down in the dumps I was feeling before. Magic told me that he looked at the chemical structure of Well.butrin, being a wiz in this type of thing, and that basically, it's very similar to metham.phetamine. I needed to function, so the extra boost was welcome as I had a lot of catching up to do from the down time of my IVF cycle and pregnancy. That lasted for about a week, until the depression started creeping in again, but that may have been situational. My Shrink put the medicines in perspective for me. "We are just trying to get you to the shore," he said. "We aren't going to give you a speed boat, you'll still have to swim." I liked this analogy, and it made me think of Sharah's brilliant post on "Infertility Island". If you haven't read it yet, go read it now, or this next part won't make sense! I feel like I've been drifting in the current ever since my ferry capsized and haven't know which shore to swim to. I still have a lot of inner work to do, so I better get swimming, as that shore looks kinda far away!

I was prescribed another anti-depressant today, to cover all the neurotransmitter bases. The Well.butrin increases dopamine and norepinephrine. Too much norepinephrine can cause side effects, like interfering with sleep. I now have Cel.exa, an SSRI drug to increase serotonin, to mellow out the speed like effect of the Well.butrin, and hopefully make me sleep more.

As I was waiting for the Cel.exa prescription to be filled, I browsed through the contents of "The Zen Path through Depression". I gravitated towards the Chapter titled "Doubt".

"...in depression [my note: feel free to substitute with infertility here] all the reassuring and comfortable touchstones we had, or thought we had, in our lives are gone. We feel adrift, with nothing to believe in. The doubt within us sits heavily in the pits of our stomachs. We can't seem to get rid of it no matter how hard we try."

I have doubt about a lot of things. Doubt if we will try again. Doubt about my ability to be a good mother. Doubt about whether I really want to have children or that I want to live childfree. Doubt that I really know what I want in life, or that I really know who I am, for that matter of fact. Doubt that God or the Universe cares about me, that maybe I'm just the butt of a cruel cosmic joke. Doubt that I should have ever gone down this road of IVF with all the agony it's brought me. Doubt that I know what to do with my life next.

"We must be willing to reside in the midst of this enormous doubt and let it be all right. In fact, we must accept that it may never be resolved and that this will still be all right.

This means that we continually question; we never simply accept the answers others give us. It means that we do not hold on to the answers even when we have discovered them for ourselves.

If we can live with this doubt, we can then be continually ready to be surprised - by life, by ourselves, by our answers, by our experience."

The author describes how Zen koans, which are like riddles to meditate on that have no answer ("what is the sound of one hand clapping?"), are used to increase doubt. I feel that I have been given a koan to meditate on. I wanted to have children all my life and went to great lengths to achieve that goal. Yet, I had a lot of contradictory thoughts when I was pregnant. Was that prenatal depression? One book I have on depression and anxiety says this:

"Pregnancy does not protect women from depression. In fact, at no other time is a woman at greater risk for the onset or relapse of a psychiatric disorder than during pregnancy and the post partum period...For women who have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, pregnancy and labor and delivery can also trigger flashbacks, nightmares, and intrusive thoughts about prior traumatic events."

What trauma was I reliving? I've already worked on my childhood issues a lot, so I was completely unprepared to deal with the intensity of emotions that surfaced around this during my pregnancy.

I know I need to find some answers about what happened to me while I was pregnant. I want resolution, though I know that it may never be resolved. For now, these questions, these koans keep me up at night.

References:
Healing Anxiety and Depression, by Daniel G. Amen, M.D. 2003.

The Zen Path through Depression, by Philip Martin. 1999.

Bury My Heart

After I read the book "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", I felt pretty depressed. After I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., I was bummed out for two days. But this is personal. This is one of the hardest losses I've ever had to deal with. It's been four weeks, and I'm still crying everyday. It's the first time I've ever taken anti-depressants. The anti-depressants allow me to function, so I don't wallow in depression, but they do not numb the pain. I still have my feelings, and I still have my sadness. Sometimes I just feel like I want to bury my broken heart.

I can't tell you how many times I've listened to Tracy Chapman's song "Remember the Tinman" over the last couple of weeks. I've been really resonating with the whole theme of losing your heart. Yesterday, I paused to reflect on these two lines at the end of the song that caught my attention:

"And remember the Tin Man
found he had what he thought he lacked.
Remember the Tin Man,
Go find your heart and take it back!"

A part of me looks at having a baby as fulfilling a part of my life that is empty. I feel deficient for not having children. Maybe the part of me that feels empty will still feel empty even after I have a child? Or maybe what I am seeking in having a child I have already? I know it's my ego telling me that I'm deficient and that I must have a child to make my life whole, but intellectual knowing and feeling like crap are two different things.

The repetitive negative thoughts get in the way of my grieving process. When the thoughts keep rolling over and over like the hamster on the wheel, I have to consciously stop them, take a deep breath, feel my heart, and that is when the tears come, again and again.