My Depression is Returning

Even as I was answering the question, "How do I manage my depression"? I could feel my mood slipping. In my session last week I was frustrated that my creativity seems to have disappeared. The ability to paint, which seemed so innate, and was pouring out of me, is gone.

After talking with Dr. X about this, and him being supportive and suggesting it hadn't disappeared I came home and tried to paint. Leaving my appointments and trying to do what I tell my pdoc I cannot do is a common occurrence with me. Something about telling him I can't do something challenges myself to try.

So I tried, and nothing worked. I tried again the next day, and the outcome was pure frustration. I tried again the next day and I became angry and annoyed that something that seemed so easy a few weeks ago was so complicated and irritating now. I tried playing my guitar twice yesterday too, but again it ended in me feeling annoyed and angry that I could not get such a simple lesson. I had my blues lesson today and for the first hour I was awkward. My fingers and brain wouldn't connect. Simple rhythms would come and then suddenly disappear. My brain feels like a sieve; a sieve that only pours out things I want to learn, or things I want to do, things I want to retain, but instead on that holds in all the garbage I want to rid myself of; a clogged up and broken sieve.

My mood is slipping, and I'm scared the depression is sinking back into me. I am obsessing about my mouth movements (this is how the thoughts go...and they are rapid and circular and seem like they will never stop):

"Oh God I have Tardive Dyskinesia, but what if I go to the neurologist and he doesn't see the movements, so many of the movements are inside my mouth, my tongue is pushing in a weird way inside my mouth, my lips are pursing, and it feels like my lips are really tight together, my teeth are tapping, and grinding and clenching, but the only external notification of this is a tiny movement by my temples which is covered by my hair, My cheeks and lips are making strange movements every once in a while, my eyebrows are going up every so often, my toes are wiggling annoyingly but maybe I am just so conscious that I have a problem that I am making it happen, I feel it, but what if I'm just making it happen by thinking about it so much, what if the neurologist thinks I'm faking it, what if he doesn't believe me, what if he doesn't see what I'm seeing and feeling, what if he says nothing is going on, but I know something is going on, and I'm scared it will get worse, but what if no one see it, or believes me, what if it really isn't there and I'm imagining it (not consciously, but subconsciously), I have had so many times when I have felt physically ill, or like something is wrong and it often turns out to be nothing, what if I'm just a hypochondriac, but what if it's real, and what if it is permanent, and what if it gets worse, Oh God, I have TD....etc., etc."

This is what was going through my head all day yesterday, and it is back again today. The thoughts are obsessive, and relentless. On top of this the 4-8 bars of repetitive music is starting to come back into my head; the same beat/section of a song, over and over and over.

I'm not sleeping well again. I am irritable. I am feeling much more anxious. I do not want to see people. I have avoided the art clubhouse. I feel depressed again.

Oh God, please do not let my depression return .