I have suffered from crazy mood swings all my life. I have early memories of horrible tantrums, my body exploding with frustration, kicking and screaming on the family room floor or in the doorway to the kitchen. My mother handled it well...she completely ignored me. Throughout my life, as I have trained in my profession as child therapist, I have changed my opinion frequently about what one should do with a tantrum in their child. But I do think she probably did the right thing. I try to relate how I act now, as an older adult, when I want to have a tantrum. Because there are times when I want to lay on the floor, kicking and screaming. Currently these strong emotions are more likely to come out in wanting to run away, my teenage coping method of choice. I remember fighting with my parents at a McDonald's. We were getting into the car at the time, and I simply turned and walked away. I walked miles before finally coming home. I sat on the wooded hill across the street and watched through the windows of the house, trying to decide what I could do instead of going back in. I saw my mother leave in the car, probably to go looking for me (it was late at night by this time),and return a short while later. She hadn't looked very hard. Cold and hungry (though why I was hungry, didn't I eat my hamburger before running away?), I climbed out of the tree and walked to the front porch as my mother was getting out of the car. She screamed with anger at me, grabbed at my long hair, pulling me up the stairs into the house. She pushed me to where my father was laying in bed watching TV (yes, it was a somewhat strange floor plan and their bedroom was just inside the front door.) Do something about her, she yelled. In his typical Carlos Castaneda style, he simply stared at me, shook his head with disappointment and said "Go to bed."
In my early twenties the emotional roller coaster continued, with thoughts of suicide when I was really troubled. I was never at an actual attempt level, just so sad that I needed some sort of escape, and thinking about escaping the unhappiness was comforting in itself.
Behold the dawning of anti-depressant medication. My doctor initially prescribed this for migraine headaches, but the side effect was a dulling of the pain. After a year on the medication I noticed a dulling of other things. A dulling of my vocabulary, a dulling of my motivation, a dulling of my excitement about life. At about that time Imitrex, a new migraine medication came onto the market. The Imitrex was the first (and only) medication that truly licked my migraine headaches. It was wonderful! There was a problem with taking the anti-depressant and the Imitrex (too much serotonin manipulation) so I stopped the anti-depressant.
Recently, while attending a conference put on by a well known therapist, I was shocked to learn some little known information about anti-depressant medications. To make a long story short - there really aren't good scientific studies to show that serotonin re uptake medication makes any difference at all. In fact, it might be that the only reason drug companies focused on this type of medication is the following: Our brains are filled with numerous chemicals, each filling functions we are just beginning to understand. Years ago we weren't even able to measure these brain chemicals. Serotonin just happened to be one of the medications we learned how to measure early on. There was never really any strong evidence that Serotonin actually has any thing to do with depression levels. BUT since we could measure it, why not? So this was the direction drug manufactures took the research. So now, on the basis of limited research, with very weak results, our whole country is taking anti-depressant medication. Don't get me wrong, there is about a 25% decrease in depression with the medication. The problem is there is also a 25% decrease in depression with a placebo. So it may not be the actual medication that is making folks less depressed.
What does current research show? That MEDITATION or other mindful practices actually work better than either the anti-depressant or the placebo medications.
That was a really long introduction to my next goal. As I have tried to increase my physical care through daily exercise and changing my eating habits, I am now adding the mental goal. Because, of course, the studies which show that meditation and mindfulness help, also show that CONSISTENT AND DAILY activities in these areas help. Just like eating and exercise these have to become part of my daily routine, not just events which occur when I remember or when I feel like it or when I have extra time.
It's certainly worth the effort to try.
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