Challenging life circumstances can bring about emotions that echo the experience of depression. Understanding the differences can help you utilize the right tools for your circumstance.
Dealing with negative emotions
For many patients who have been treated for a mental health diagnosis, challenging life circumstances can bring about negative emotions that echo the feeling of their mental health condition.
For example, we’ve had patients come to us after several ketamine treatments and tell us that their treatment felt like it was really working, and then all of a sudden, it isn’t anymore. They feel like their depression is coming back and like they are in a really dark place. After speaking with this patient a little bit more, we might find out that their parents are having health issues, and their job has been really unsteady, and their pet is in the veterinary hospital.
In speaking with this patient, we learn that it isn’t that ketamine treatment has stopped working. Rather, the patient is dealing with some really big things that are expected to feel bad.
While the negative emotions may feel similar, depression is not the same thing as grief or as sadness about a specific thing that is happening in your life. Depression is much larger and grander than that.
Where treatment comes into play
Interventional treatments such as ketamine or TMS can certainly make it easier to get through those difficult periods of time. However, we don’t expect or desire that these treatments are able to create feelings of elation or joy. We don’t want patients to be giggling at their father’s funeral, or laughing and having a great time while they’re dealing with a divorce or losing their job or handling a hospice situation.
Instead, what interventional treatments can offer during these experience can be resilience, flexibility of thought, and gaining different perspectives. It an help with being able to unfreeze our more rigid ideas, get out of fight or flight, out of rumination, and out of bed.
Many patients will say that treatment helps them be able to handle things.
We once had a patient in the active process of divorce. He had lost his kids, was living with his parents again, dealing with some DUI issues, and had lost his job. He told us, “I was never going to be happy during all of this, but I’m signing my divorce papers now. I’m writing my resume, and I’m networking again. I’m dealing with the things I need to deal with. Before, I was in bed with the covers over my head, just avoiding everything — but now I’m up and dealing with it. It doesn’t feel good, but I’m dealing with it.”
In the short term, avoidance feels good. However, there is an expression that we use in therapy that goes, “Grief will wait.” If you avoid your negative emotions with video games, or with alcohol, or with other drugs, or by hiding, grief will wait for you — and the same is true for anxiety. The longer you avoid, the longer you spend in those negative emotions.
While it is true that you may never recover from the grief of the loss of a loved one, or the loss of your idea of what life could have been, it can become less sharp over time as we move through and process that grief.
There are some things in life that are going to be painful and hard to deal with. Through therapy, coping skills, tools, and treatments like ketamine or TMS, we’re able to get through them and onto the other side.
About Us
Wells Medicine is a Houston-based practice designed to provide meaningful care for mental health. Providing targeted interventional treatments for Depression, Anxiety, OCD, PTSD and other conditions, with Ketamine Treatments, Stellate Ganglion Blocks, TMS, and Nitrous-Oxide Treatments. Focused on comprehensive care and integration with Psychiatry, Psychology, and Support Services. We are evidence-based, patient-focused and mission-driven.
The content here is for informational purposes and should not be relied upon for medical decisions. For the details of your specific medical conditions and treatments consult your doctors or other qualified healthcare professionals.
