What has been your experiences with taking lithium to manage the?
About 9 years ago, a Psychiatrist prescribed Lithium as a mood stabilizer for my condition. I thought Lithium was the cause of some side effects experienced back then, when my symptoms were extremely bad. I have come to understand that many things cause the same side effects that I experienced when first prescribed Lithium. For those who have persevered with treatments of all sorts I am sure there will be similar cases to mine. I had not yet learned that all therapy that targets problems within us, causes some level of discomfort as we come to terms with the problem, before healing. It is a bit like having a broken leg bone realigned before it will begin to grow back together again. I will explain why I was wrong to blame the Lithium for any side effects. I experience similar side effects with all medication and behavioral therapy that attempts to change my habitualized conscious and instinctive thought processes. Anything that attempts to change the way I have learned to deal with the World around me, causes me frustration and anxiety. At the moment, we are attempting to retrain my instinctive responses to trigger situations. We are doing so by using a structured behavioral method. I diarise trigger moments and how I become increasingly aware of those moments. By writing each diary entry I become more mindful about becoming locked into anxious thoughts or locked into angry thoughts. After a while, I stopped writing every diary entry as I realized there were too many daily instances when subtle triggers I never was aware of before were making life unpleasant. Now I usually write a summary of each days events. This helps to retrain primitive brain connections to higher brain functions, so I am told by the therapist. But while doing this mental exercise each minute of each day it seems as if I am going to war with myself; going to war with my habitual responses to life situations. It is the exact same feeling I had when taking Lithium for the first time. It has helped me to return to writing my life story with PTSD, called, Many Walks Through My Valley of Death. The brain training exercise is helping me write of emotive triggers and remain more centered between fight and flight. It has forced me to simplify life and use the refrain I heard many times over the decades, where is this leading, will it make me happy or unhappy and will I still respect Me in the morning? It makes for a life of happier hedonism. It seems we can train our primitive brain to work better with our higher brain functions. Good luck with treatment. Persevere through the unpleasant parts, the good stuff comes later. Our bodies react to change the same as our minds. Expect the same thoughts to occur for both.