Between Two Worlds

I am going back on my anti-depression medication after getting a perfect score on the “are you depressed” test.  I am right in the middle of building up the amount of medication I am taking in an effort to get to take the final dosage.  It feels like I am straddling two worlds.  One minute I feel like something bad is about to happen, and the next, I tell myself that “my thoughts are not my friends.”  I am still plagued by strong negative thoughts, but I am able to talk myself out of them.  It is truly weird.

The whole episode of being off drugs for a month and then getting so sick, shows the rational me that negative thoughts are brought on by a chemical imbalance, which medicine corrects.  However, I feel a strong resistance to believing that truth.

Thoughts are so powerful that it just feels like my ego must be generating them.  I like that idea better, because then it would be my fault that I have such anxious and depressive thoughts.  In other words, if my ego was running the show, I would somehow be able to CONTROL the process.  The idea that I control the whole mess is very attractive.  However, if it is a chemical imbalance, I have no power over the process, and only medicine or some other treatment can correct the problem of living with and believing negative and anxious thoughts.  In other words, I am powerless over my depression/anxiety.

It is just like the various physical illnesses I have, such as high blood pressure and a thyroid imbalance, both of which I control through medication.  So while I really hate being powerless over my depression/anxiety illness, I just have to work on accepting the reality that it is a treatable illness in most cases.  However, doing that is not easy.  Even putting this reality into words is very challenging.