Missing my depression?

[abumagny]

I have been on Prozac for about a year now and every now and then I feel something of missing my depression... i know I’m happy on my meds and would rather be healthy 100% but sometimes I feel like I miss it like “an old friend.” Is this normal? Does anyone else experience this?

[StarryNight72]

I’m not sure if this could maybe be what’s going on, but bear with me. I think, in my humble opinion, that it’s pretty hard to separate depression as a disease from depression as an aspect of who we are. It’s kind of blurry line because it’s hard to separate how you feel from how you identify as self. There’s a huge difference between saying I am depressed vs I have depression yet I often use them interchangeably. I think maybe, it could be possible, that if you “lose” the depression (which we all would agree is a good thing), it would make sense that you could possibly feel as if you lost a certain aspect of who you have always been. It sounds kind of like a grief reaction to losing something familiar, even if it’s something you don’t like. I could be way off base though... just my two cents!

[Dabela in reply to StarryNight72]

I completely agree with StarryNight72. I have suffered from depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember and there have been so many times when the thought of getting better scared me. I want to be better but at the same time I have been like this for so long who am I without it? Any change is hard to adjust to and make. Even if it’s a good change and the right one. So I understand how you feel.

[Kel12 in reply to StarryNight72]

That was a great way to put it. I, too, missed my depression while medicated and I can definitely understand and relate to how you defined what I missed.

[Kel12]

I was on Cymbalta for a year for anxiety and depression. It helped tremendously and I felt exactly how you are describing. I was happy, yet I missed my depression (and coffee and alcohol). I went off my meds and was fine for a few months the the anxiety and depression came back with a vengeance. I'm not blaming the meds on that, but I do believe going off of them was a terrible idea for me personally. Starrynight really put it into a perspective that I can agree with. I think that rather than missing the depression, I was missing a part of me that I identified with. A happier me was foreign and I needed more time to adjust to it and learn that that was how I was supposed to be.