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Will I ever stop crying? :0(


Rylee

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I am so tired of crying about my mom. It will be 5 months on Oct 1st since she's been gone. I have been waking up crying in the middle of the night and sometimes during the day I will start thinking about things and missing her so much I start crying and feeling bad about things. 

When she was dying I prayed for God to take her and end her suffering. I cried in the Lord's ear on a daily basis. I couldn't handle watching all the suffering she was going through. She continually prayed and asked people to pray for her to die. She was slowly suffocating and that put her into a panic. So, it's not that I am upset that she's gone because I know she is in a better place and no longer suffering.

I just keep thinking about how much I wish she had been well and hadn't had to die in the first place, and how many things I could have done to make her life more comfortable like reading her scriptures to her and so forth. I think I've mentioned this in another post but those things are getting me thinking how much I didn't do for my mom and how much I could have made her life more comfortable. I stayed with her 24/7 for the last two weeks of her life and did everything I could but some things I could have done that I didn't and that gives me grief.

The other day I was crying about my mom being gone and then started bawling about my dad being gone too (he died in 2001) and it just hit me so hard I wanted to die myself. I hyperventilated and could barely breathe from crying so hard. I prayed and begged God to help me not feel so sad that they were both gone. It took a few minutes but I did calm down. However, that night I had gone to bed at 11:00 and slept for about an hour before I woke up crying and then couldn't sleep until 4:00am (that's the last time I saw a clock). My brains just wouldn't shut off. 

I just wonder how much longer I'm going to cry at the drop of a hat. I just can't take this much longer. I don't know how to deal with this right now. I don't know what is triggering these feelings and crying sessions. They just happen and my blood pressure goes up, my blood sugar goes up, my head aches, my body just starts hurting, my joints hurt and my neck hurts. I'm afraid I'm going to die of a heart attack or stroke if I can't find a way to keep myself calm more often. :( The doctor wants me to be on an anti-depressant but I don't want to be sleeping for days on end because the medication makes me sleep. What he gave me commonly makes a person sleep for the first few weeks or so. I can't do that. So I am just going to deal with this but I wish I knew better ways than medications to help with this. 

Rylee

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It won't be like this forever. It's really hard to have lost both of your parents - I have as well. But everything changes. Nothing stays like it is forever, including the most excruciating pain. Five months is not very long. I am at eight months and it is different than five months, but that's not really that long either. Grief is a hellish path. Try to give yourself a break. You may be right in having concerns about taking an antidepressant. Grief and depression are not the same thing. Hang in there and keep checking in with us, ok? We walk the same path you do...

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It sounds like he gave you an older medication.  I go back and ask for an SSRI, they can lead to drowsiness, but don't sedate like the old ones and if you take them at night they may actually help you sleep.  Unfortunately, the way modern society is built, other ways don't often fit into the responsibilities of daily life.  Medication doesn't mean your weak and you don't have to take it forever.

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I wish I had something to offer you that might be of help to you, but I don't know of any way but straight through the grief, and I know it's hard to endure and get through.  I remember losing so much sleep I don't know how I held down a job, let alone drove.

I do know it won't stay this intensity forever.  You are at about the hardest phase (approx. six months) as reality sets in and everyone else goes back to their lives and leaves you alone in your grief.  I didn't take anti-depressant, although the doctor offered it to me, because I knew the loss was permanent and I'd have to get used to it...I've sometimes wondered if I didn't make it harder on myself by not taking a sleeping pill or antidepressant.  But while grief has symptoms of depression, it is not the same as depression.  It is a normal and natural response to an occurrence in our lives, one that is hard to find your way through and adjust to.  Most doctors are not trained in grief and do not know how to handle or treat it.  They do so the same way they do in so many things, they shove a pill at us when really, there is a root of the matter we have to deal with and no bandaid will make it disappear.  That's not to say I disagree with taking a pill, only that that alone will not fix anything.

My heart goes out to you, I remember many nights I only slept an hour and then had to get up and go to work.  For that reason I think I would have been better off with a sleeping pill, like Trazadone, which is used in higher dosage for antidepressant and lower dosage as a sleeping pill.  My doctor said it was safe and non-addictive, although I think in a higher dosage it can be addictive.  He prescribed the lowest dosage for me, but I elected not to go there.  I think we do what we have to do to get through this though.  I will say the couple of times I have taken it for sleeping, it only kept me asleep for four hours and did not leave me tired the next day.  Four hours isn't much but it beats an hour.

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I have been taking Trazodone and it's been helpful on the sleep. I have 50 mg tablets and I go after them with my dad's pill-cutter. Half a tablet was good for a little while, but a whole one left me groggy the next morning, so I finally settled on 3/4. Still, the first half of the night is better than the second half. 

Rylee, I think we tend to focus on how grief emotionally, but I  think for someone like you - or me - who was a caretaker for a person who is near the end, it's like you are fighting a battle - mind, heart, soul, and body. You come out of it exhausted, and then the grief work begins, which is even more exhaustion. To me it seems like all of these things feed each other. We have thoughts that are kind of destructive, like unrealistic guilt. That makes our emotional landscape more treacherous to cross, which leads to more physical exhaustion, which makes us more likely to interpret things in a way that makes things seem worse, which leads to more painful emotions - as if it wasn't bad enough already. Anyway, that is how it seems to me - like a snowball gathering more snow and debris as it rolls downhill. 

Hang in there, and try to keep reminding yourself that everything changes and evolves and changes, even grief.   =^. .^=

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Mine were 50 mg (their lowest dosage) also but prescribed for two tablets at bedtime...two is too much, one is plenty.

I wish I'd used them after George's death but I didn't want to be on something permanently and since he wasn't coming back I figured it was a permanent situation.  What I didn't realize at that time is that we do get more used to it and better at coping so that I wouldn't have needed it permanently and it might have been of help to me at a time I desperately needed some sleep!

I later tried it a couple of times when my anxiety kicked in full bore, not allowing me sleep...sometimes my brain won't shut off.  It helped some, but I've only used it when I was absolutely desperate for sleep!

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This is a great topic. I lost my FOC (Father of Choice) suddenly & unexpectedly on 9-24-16. I'm not close with my biological father, and Bill was my friend & father figure. We were very close and I'm absolutely gutted.

 

i have never cried so much in my life. I have cried (at least once) every day since then and I wonder the same thing as you stated. And I'm already on antidepressants - of course my experience might not be generalizable as I have been on them for years for depression & anxiety.  Been on a stable dose & functioning just fine til Bill died.  My experience with using meds to treat my depression is that they aren't happy pills that take away feelings.  They take the edge off enough so I can function and find constructive ways to deal with the feelings.

 

Since Bill died, I have had waves of crushing grief so painful that I feel like my skull will just shatter into a million pieces. And I do cry every day and I wonder, am I crazy? Am I in a classic depression despite the meds and don't realize it?

But in my heart I don't think so. I'm taking care of myself and doing the important life stuff, and getting lots of support so when I can look at this with perspective, I just think well, I'm grieving the most major loss of my life so far, and this is all part of the deal.

 

its just hard, no two ways about it

 

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To me it seems like depression plus grief is just that - depression plus grief. Depression can certainly be exacerbated by life events, but I think the grief from a staggering losses a new thing as well. Say you already had a monkey on your back and now you have a new monkey as well. It would make the weight of the first monkey seem heavier, but now you have two monkeys.

If things change and the meds you were taking aren't working anymore, the best thing may be to go back to the Dr. or NP who is prescribing them, and realize you are likely to be in for a new trial and error experience as well. Good luck, Jen - I hope you can find something that works for you.

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4 hours ago, Jen71 said:

they aren't happy pills that take away feelings.  They take the edge off enough so I can function and find constructive ways to deal with the feelings.

That's what my anti-anxiety medication (Buspar/Buspirone) does.  But it has nothing to do with grief, I think I've always had anxiety.

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