Lived Experience Forum

[Melody90]

In the last 4 years I have been diognosed with Depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, Primary Sleep Disorder, Restless Leg Syndrome and Bipolar Disorder. Obviosuly some of these diagnosis's are related and thus my doctors now believe OCD and Bipolar to be my primary illness' with all the other illness symptoms stemming from them. Due to my extreme, varied and complicated symptoms I have not yet been successful in maintaining stability of symptoms for more than a few weeks at a time. I have recently got a new team of professionals working with me to get better. BUT I am not having any success yet and I am rapidly losing faith that I will ever be able to live a stable life. There is only so many times someone can tell me 'this should stabalise your symptoms' or 'this is a very good medication' or 'things will get better for you' before you start to think it's all wishful thinking. 

I've so far been on 9 different medications (at different doses) to help control my sympotms with none being successful yet. Has anyone else been fighting this battle also? 

[Rockpool]

Hi @Melody90,

A warm welcome to the SANE Forums!

Thank you for sharing your experience with us! It sounds like you have been going through a lot in terms of getting the right diagnosis for you and trailing different medications.

It can be frustrating when you don’t feel as though you are having any success with the treatment and it can be easy to lose faith when you have seen multiple professionals and you don’t feel as though anything has worked just yet.

@Melody90, you have done a great job in sticking out the sometimes tedious process of assessment and diagnosis and now you are in the next phase of your journey to find the right medication/treatment for you. It can be a common experience with mental illness to go through a period of ‘trial and error’ with medications as not everyone will react the same way to the same medication. Different people will experience different side effects, etc which ulitimelty impacts on whether that particular medication is for you or not. I encourage you to continue with this process as you have already come so far, even if you don’t feel that way. Even new medication you try hopefully brings you another step closer to finding one that will be the right one for you.

There is another thread that you may be interested in called Living with Bipolar that may be helpful as members have shared some tips on what they find to be helpful.

Does anyone have any other tips they would like to share?

I wish you all the best @Melody90 and hope to see you around the forums soon.

Rockpool

[Melody90]

Thank you for making me feel welcome. I appreciate your words, its hard to find people to talk to in person about my struggles so I hope these forums could be the next best thing, I will check out the living with bipolar thread as well, thanks again. 

[NikNik]

I would like to second that welcome @Melody90 🙂

Your experience is so common that there is a discussion dedicated to coping with switching meds! You might find it useful - you can find it here

Looking forward to 'seeing' you around the Forums.