I was wrong about antidepressants

I started an antidepressant.

I didn't write notes for this one, didn't organize my thoughts, I just hit record on my voice memo app like I always do when I get the feeling that something needs to be said out loud.

If you saw my post yesterday you know I made the decision to start an SNRI.  There is no way to say everything that led to that decision in an instagram caption or a 30 second reel, so... here we are.

I've been living in this really confusing duality for a long time now. genuinely, deeply happy. and also the saddest I've ever been. both true at the same time. and I've spent this entire year trying to get to the bottom of it: HRT, trauma therapy, coaching, rest, pulling back on my business, all of it. I've exhausted every single tool in my toolbox except one.

This episode is about that one.

what we get into:

• the duality of being the happiest and saddest I've ever been at the same time
• complex PTSD, PMDD, postpartum depression, and what happens when you've tried everything else
• what my coach said to me mid-flare that finally made something click
• why I was against medication for so long and where that belief came from
• the moment — back to back family news in one day — that was my threshold
• the cycle I didn't realize I was repeating by staying stubborn about this
• why 100+ women commented on my reel saying they feel the exact same way (and what that means)

This isn't me telling you what to do, it's just me telling you my story.

If you see yourself in any of it... that's why I put it out there.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up, you guys? Welcome back to the Dopamine Diaries Podcast. This is Coach Kate. Um man, there's like I wanted to like write down notes for this episode and like organize my thoughts, but I really don't think that there's any way to do that. And I have always, when it comes to these podcast episodes, I've recorded based off of feeling. When I get the feeling, I whip out my phone, pull up the voice memo app right here on my iPhone, I hit record and I just upload it as soon as I'm done recording. Um, if you know you're newer to my podcast, that is my process. It's not fancy, it's very raw, it's very unscripted. Um, and it's always based off of feeling. It's always based off of man, I need to share this, I need to talk about this, this is what I want to put out there. And so um this episode is that. So if you are connected with me on social media, um I put up a post yesterday. Uh let's see, today is the 7th, July 7th. So I put up a post yesterday um talking about how I made the decision to begin an antidepressant. Um, and I want to talk about that in length because I it's impossible for this discussion to um be had in a short video clip on Instagram. It's impossible to be written in a caption, posted on stories. Like I really feel like um it deserves I could write a book on what led me to this decision and kind of my thought process behind it, but I'm just going to give myself um permission to very imperfectly share everything in my brain. I'm gonna do a little brain dump with you guys on my decision, how I feel about it, what led to it, um, and how I've changed my mind on something like medication. So if you've been around for a while, I never outwardly spoke um about being against medicine, but um I often talked about how I was able to work through a lot of things in my life, you know, six, seven, almost a decade ago without medicine. And that is true. That is true. Um, things like going through a divorce, things like emotional eating, um, things like you know, some difficulties uh in interpersonal dynamics, lots of different things, right? I did, and I still stand um ten toes down on being able to do that. Um, but where my life has kind of led me now and and what led to this decision. So this whole year, all six months of this year, um, I have been working deeply, deeply on getting to the bottom of um what is happening at a certain phase in my cycle. Um, PMDD territory, perimenopause territory. I have complex PTSD. I'm two and a half years postpartum. I experienced a loss early on in my pregnancy. Um, lots of different things. Like there are so many variables that we could essentially point our fingers at as being the reason for me continuously saying over and over and over again to my loved ones and my therapist and my support system that I am the happiest I've ever been in my life. I like I am. Like I am so grateful every day. I talk about gratitude, I feel gratitude. I've done episodes where it's like, man, I'm just so grateful. I just cry sometimes. That's all very true. And also, I've been living with this duality of I'm the saddest I've ever been. And it has been very confusing to hold both of those things at the same time. And we've tried to kind of point our fingers at, well, um, you know, it's the hormones, and we've been doing some HRT work um in the since January. Well, it's the PTSD, and I've been in trauma therapy for over a year. Um, while it's PMDD, and you know, there's only so many things that we can do for that. You just kind of got to buckle down. And I will be honest with you guys. I I don't want to speak for my mom or her mom or my dad's mom or any of the women that came before me, but I do want to say that I think all of the women that came before me probably needed more tools and more support that either weren't available to them or had a different stigma around it. And I do really believe that. And again, it's it's not my story to tell, but I I do really believe that. And I feel like because they did not have that support, um, they were limited and how they were able to um parent. And, you know, it's interesting, I'm 36 and so many conversations have happened with my mom where she has said things like, which PS mom, I think you listen here, so hi, I love you. Um, she, you know, has said to me so many times, like, she wishes she could go back and do things differently, or um, you know, she wishes there were things that she could have changed about how she parented. And and there are already things about how I've parented my daughter that I wish that I could change. One of them being I wish I would have um accepted medication earlier on postpartum when I was um very openly struggling with postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression. In fact, I was less than six weeks postpartum when I hired the um maternal mental health therapist that I did. Um, and it was very, very quickly realized that I was navigating some pretty intense postpartum anxiety. And I just kind of toughed through that. Um, I'm privileged in the sense that I work for myself. I have my own schedule. So where I would have bad days, I was able to take those days. I was able to rest. I was able to give myself what I need, and I'm very fortunate in that sense. I always recognize the privilege that I have, whether that be schedule-wise, time-wise, um, financially, whatever it may be. I am so privileged. I have utilized every single resource available to me, and I know that that is not the situation for everyone. But like I have been fortunate to exhaust everything I can exhaust: hormone replacement therapy, trauma therapy, um, coaching outside of trauma therapy, time off, um, removing things from my business that asked more of me so I could simply rest and recover more, right? Like I like I've done it. I've done it. I've done everything you could possibly do to work through and survive something like postpartum anxiety. But what I think has happened is I've fought so hard trying to survive that, that it's now created a level of postpartum depression. Um, and it has gotten to the point where it's like, okay, you know, I think my reservation with medicine in the past was I never wanted to make a decision to take medicine because I needed the medicine to make me happy. The seasons of life that I experienced, you know, before the six, 10 years ago. Yes, I worked through all of those things without medication, but um, there was a level of just like gratitude and happiness and joy in my life that I hadn't quite figured out yet. And I think looking back, my biggest like reservation against medicine for myself, it had been actually suggested to me so many times because I've dealt with anxiety and depression for my entire life. In high school, I had to start talking to the counselor every week because someone saw cuts on my leg. Like I'm no stranger to mental illness. I've I've battled anxiety and depression my entire life. Um, but at that time, about six to ten years ago, when I was really adamant against taking medication, it was because um I wanted to find a joy and a happiness in life first. I wanted to find it without it. And what I've realized now, making the decision to start an antidepressant, is um that's not what medication does. Medication doesn't make people happy. And that was where um I was wrong. That was where I've completely changed my mentality around it. Um, I look at medication now as the happiness and the joy is already there. But what the medication does is it drops the intensity of the chaos, it drops the intensity of the anxiousness and the quite literal brain changes that I've experienced from something like complex PTSD. You know, the more I've been um informed on that through therapy, the more I've come to realize that it's actually a brain injury. Like it's a brain injury, like it changed, it changed my brain forever, permanently. Um, and I think there was a a level of stubbornness around that. Like, no, no, I can fix that. Like, no, I'm educated enough. I can work through that. Um, and again, you know, I I will say, um, because of my education, because of my expertise in what I do for a living, I think that's the only reason why. Um I don't want to say I'm functioning because it's really more than functioning. Like I am thriving in a lot of areas of my life, and I have to credit that towards the work that I do as a nervous system practitioner because not only do I do that for people, but I do that for myself. Um, and it is that work that has allowed me to kind of be at this place where it's like, okay, the final piece for me is to also utilize this tool. It's the only tool that I haven't tried yet. Um, and it and it needs to be in my toolbox. It needs to be part of what I do alongside everything else that I do from a nervous system standpoint. You know, I was talking to my coach a couple months ago, and I I was in a flare-up during that session. I was um deeply fearful, um, not you know, fully there, mentally very spacey. Um, and it was a PTSC flare-up. And I'm talking to her and I'm crying to her in this session, and I'm telling her, like, you know, I don't understand why. Like, I'm doing everything I know to do when I'm stressed. I know I'm doing everything I know to do when I'm um, you know, overwhelmed and don't really know where to start for the day. And she looked at me and she said, Kate, like you're not stressed or overwhelmed. Like you are triggered and you are experiencing an emotion that um nervous system work alone is not going to touch. And it was the first time I think I had really understood that there was a difference between what nervous system work is meant to do for people that are dealing with burnout and overwhelm and stress and overthinking and all of those things, and what nervous system work can't do on its own. Um, for people that are experiencing, I mean, I'll just be very blunt, like um, you know, how blunt do I want to be? There some of my flare-ups put me in a headspace where I'm in fear for my life. Um and I can't really explain a trigger like that, other than um you kind of leave your body. It's like dissociation to an extreme. Um it's paranoia, it's um, you know, thinking that you're hearing things or seeing things because your brain is so convinced that that harm is going to happen. And it's like, you know, I'm experiencing things like that on a a Tuesday afternoon. Um, and then I'm expecting myself to be able to recover from that, not just emotionally and mentally, but energetically. And it has been a roller coaster to deal with those very intense triggers for um, you know, the last six months. And it's it's my reason for deciding um to begin taking an SNRI. Um not an SSRI, it's an SNRI, but um, it's that it's it's the finally realizing that what I'm experiencing is different than just um stress and burnout, and and I am happy and I did find joy and peace and gratitude in my life before I made this decision. And I think that was what was always really, really important to me. Um, you know, the other thing that kind of really woke me up to it is um it was a moment. It was a a moment of the day where um we got news about my sister-in-law, and about the same day we got some news about my dad. And it it was like my body very calmly said to me in that moment, okay, you you need to you need to get medicine because all of these things combined is too much. And you have a child, you have responsibilities, you have clients that depend on you, and more than anything, you have goals and desires and wishes for yourself, and and this is that threshold. It was that moment of getting the the news of both family members back to back recently that it I I just knew. I just knew I it was a very peaceful knowing of like, okay, yep, that is that is my threshold. I am pushing up against um my threshold to continue to be okay. And I thought about my daughter and I thought about my mom and I thought about the women before me, and I I realized that like I have been trying so hard. I talk about this, I'm open about this. My biggest mission in life is to um break some of the cycles that I grew up in and and create such a different life for my daughter. Do the things that my mom and her mom were never able to do and didn't know to do. That's my biggest mission, and I talk about it everywhere that I can. Um and I realized in that effort, in that like relentless pursuit, that um me being stubborn with not taking medicine was repeating a cycle. Um, repeating a cycle of a mother not being supported in the way that she needed to be supported. And there's a whole nother conversation to be had around why, you know, when I put that reel up on my social media yesterday about this decision, there's over a hundred comments on it from women and moms feeling the same exact way. And it begs the question of why do we all feel this way? And I think that's a systemic thing. I think that there, I could do a whole nother episode on that, and maybe I will. Um, I don't think that it's a coincidence that we all feel the same way and we all are carrying the same things. Um, and it breaks my heart to know that we all feel this way, but um I I've been so focused on taking care of my daughter and making things so different for her without sometimes realizing that the best way to take care of my daughter is to take care of me. Um, that the best way to honor the child that I lost is to take care um of that child's mother myself. Like, and I think someone else needs to hear that. This is not a like push you to go talk to your doctor. I don't know what your path is, or um, a lot of you guys already are from the conversations that I've been having, but um, I did want to put this out there because, like I said, there's there's no possible way to capture um everything that went into this decision and really all of the context and the reasoning behind it. And and this episode, you know, I'll listen to it back and I'll still probably feel like it's just the tip of the iceberg around um my experience and what led that what what led to this decision. But I did feel like it was important to say um for those that have been here for a while, um, even for those of you that have not, um, and for those of you that are moms right now listening to this that are struggling and having a really hard time, um, and maybe you've been thinking about it in the way that I was thinking about it, and it's permission that you need. Um I'm not gonna be the one to give you that permission, but I will tell you my story, and um if you see any parts of yourself in that, um yeah, that's why I'm willing to put this episode out there. So um yeah. I'll probably do another episode on it um later on down the road, because like I said, I do think system wide this is a much larger issue um than just what I've personally experienced that led to this decision. But yeah, if you listened to this whole thing, thank you. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye.