Ten Things I Didn’t Know Were Symptoms of My Depression

Why that awful period of trying to find the right drug is worth it.

Written by Jewels Magadán

Between the time I was diagnosed with clinical depression and the time I discovered which medication worked best for me, 20 years had passed. I had attempted treatment unsuccessfully many times during those 20 years, and I always gave up because it felt really pointless. I encountered so many negative and even dangerous side effects with each drug I tried.

I had tried various SSRIs, and a couple of SNRIs, as well as tricyclic antidepressants over the course of those 20 years, but I never continued trying once I learned a drug wasn’t working for me. I’d give a drug a go for a month or so, feeling like crap the entire time. Then I would stop treatment, and when my doctor would suggest that I try a new medication, I would tell him that I was over it and move on with my life until I came to another crisis.

Then one day, I found myself at a turning point in my life, because I had small children, and the depression was affecting my ability to parent. The sad thing was that I had already encountered the drug that works for me before, but I didn’t stick with it because I was so jaded by all of my past failed attempts at treatment.

1. Migraine Headaches

This one is the biggest one, because next to depression, this ailment caused me the most grief in my life. If you have migraine headaches, you know they are disabling. I can’t function during a migraine. Mine would get so bad that they came with a whole host of weird neurological symptoms, such as slurred speech, weakness in my limbs, confusion, and disorientation. That’s in addition to the typical nausea and vomiting, and sensitivity to light and sound. Once the depression left, so did the migraines, for the most part.

2. Obesity

When I was heavier, I just thought that I had a slow metabolism, because I started gaining weight pretty quickly during puberty. I always thought it was weird because I had been the smallest person in my whole extended family, earning me the nickname “skinny bones” as a little kid. By the time I had kids, though, I was technically obese. When my antidepressants started working, I realized that I had been overeating due to stress for a very long time. I didn’t need food to calm my nerves or make me feel better anymore, because my symptoms were managed with my medication. Slowly, the excess weight started to come off.

3. Sexual Dysfunction

I didn’t even know I had a problem until the problem was gone. The sexual dysfunction didn’t interfere in my personal life in anyway, but think of all of the marriages that might be suffering due to one partner’s secondary sexual dysfunction. As I started to get relief of my depression symptoms, I was ready to get back out there and meet the man of my dreams. Honestly, I could hardly wait.

4. Insomnia

I had periods where I couldn’t sleep well or felt like I wasn’t sleepy, yet I was too tired to do anything productive. My eyes would hurt and I’d feel an overall sense of unease. I’d toss and turn in my bed and keep getting up to try different things.

Maybe I need some socks.

Maybe I should adjust the thermostat.

hould I drink some chamomile tea?

Where’s the Tylenol PM?

It was exhausting. What’s funny is that when I tell medical practitioners that I take my antidepressant at night, they always say “You should take it in the morning. You’ll have difficulty sleeping if you take it right before bedtime.” Instead of the medication keeping me up at night, I sleep like a baby, because insomnia was a symptom of my depression.

5. Chronic Fatigue

I was always tired. When I was younger, my mom used to tell me I was the laziest girl she had ever met. I think she was seriously perplexed as to why I felt like it was such a chore to pick my towel up off the floor after a shower when I was done drying myself. Depression made it a huge burden to do something as simple as pick up after myself. It was sad because I actually derive a lot of satisfaction in cleaning up a messy space. Now I enjoy regularly reorganizing my closets and cabinets to give my home a refreshed feel.

6. Lack of Motivation

Getting out of bed in the morning used to be the most challenging part of my day. This led to me missing the city bus I took to get to school on many occasions. Later in life, I would have to get out of bed to care for my babies, but it didn’t get any easier. Things generally got better mid-day, when my babies were running around being adorable. By the end of the day, though, I didn’t even want to shower. I was no stranger to greasy hair back when I was depressed. I’d often sit in the bathtub and just scrub my body with soap and a washcloth to practice the bare minimum of hygiene. Now, I thoroughly enjoy a good shower. Thank goodness for modern medicine.

7. Cognitive Distortions

A cognitive distortion is basically an erroneous belief that you hold because of your perspective on a situation. Typically, people develop cognitive distortions because their perspectives are negatively influenced by trauma. Now, to effectively unlearn existing cognitive distortions and to reduce the number of cognitive distortions that you develop, I highly recommend psychotherapy. But that’s not what this article is about.

Before I ever enrolled in a structured behavioral therapy program, I first got my depression under control using medication. One big cognitive distortion that did go away with medication therapy was the idea that I was really ugly. I used to look in the mirror and be disgusted with my face. Once the depression goggles came off, my confidence shot up, because I wasn’t really ugly at all.

8. Nail Biting

This isn’t an official symptom of depression, but I would guess that it falls under the umbrella of maladaptive behaviors in response to anxiety. Maybe it’s somehow related to the stress eating — like an oral fixation of sorts. Whatever the case, once my depression was effectively treated with medication, I stopped biting my nails and started painting them with cute nail polish colors. I keep my nails nicely manicured to this day, and in preparation for the stay home/work safe order, I invested in a UV nail lamp and some gel polish.

9. Hair Pulling

This is also known as trichotillomania, but I don’t have a diagnosis. I used to pull my hair out when I was uncomfortable, and I got some kind of weird satisfaction or relief from it. During my worst periods of hair pulling, I might discover that I had given myself several quarter sized bald spots. I would try to pull from the back because one time I was pulling out the hair just above my ear along my hairline and it was noticeable right away when looking at me. I stopped having this urge when the other symptoms of my depression went away.

10. Increased Pain Sensitivity

I used to have chronic joint pain, and it hurt when I walked. My menstrual cramps were the worst. I took forever to recover from surgeries that my doctor said I should have already recovered from, like my c-sections, and my tubal ligation. I requested more narcotic pain medication and they thought I was drug seeking, so they didn’t give them to me. I just had to suffer through it for an extra couple of weeks. The good thing was that I was used to being in pain so it wasn’t such a shock to my body. Everything hurt more when I was depressed. Even my gums were more sensitive. This one took a while for me to realize. One day, maybe a year into medication treatment I realized, “Hey! Everything doesn’t hurt anymore!”

Honestly, if I had known that all of these issues were related to my depression, I may have tried a little harder at recovery. All of these things put together made for a pretty dreary existence. I had no idea that addressing one issue with effective medication treatment could make all of this stuff just a bunch of bad memories.

I highly recommend taking some time in your life to be consistent with treatment. Yes, going through the medications that aren’t for you is an awful part of the process. It may feel like a waste of your time or worse, you may have to deal with dangerous side effects. Depression can be a chronic illness for some, so treating it effectively can greatly improve your quality of life.

Major Depression is considered a disability, as it can interfere with your ability to work. If you need to take some time off explore medications and other treatment options, you may qualify for government food assistance. You could also look to your local food bank.

You may be able to get Social Security benefits to help you get through that time if you plan to be unable to work for a year or more. It can take 6 months or even longer to find the right medication because you have to give each medication time to do its job, so Social Security may be something that you want to consider.

If your job offers vacation time and sick leave, you could wait until you accumulate all the PTO that you can, and then take FMLA to protect your job while you’re gone. I did this once in order to enter into an intensive therapy program for 12 weeks.

Treatment might seem out of reach, depending on your circumstances, but if depression is holding you back and making your life feel pointless, you may seriously benefit from taking a leap of faith and spending some time getting your condition under control. I spent 20 years suffering with this disability for nothing. The medication I take now was developed in 1989. It was available and had already had long-term studies done on it when I was first diagnosed in middle school. I wasted so many years worth of opportunity because I didn’t have any faith and I didn’t see the point in going through the trouble of finding what worked for me, so now that I have a completely and wholly improved life due to effective treatment, I’m here to tell you: It’s totally worth it.

Written by Jewels Magadán | Original Medium article link: Ten Things I Didn’t Know Were Symptoms of My Depression